Abstract

 In this paper I contribute to the debate on India’s democratic crisis exploring its determinants. My argument is that the present democratic drift is a structural problem which is related to the nature of India’s social structure (that, according to Ambedkar (1949), is ‘essentially undemocratic’ and ‘totally incompatible with parliamentary democracy’) and to the failures of successive governments in building democracy’s social foundations to improve the conditions of deprivation in which a large part of India’s population lives and works.

The analysis is carried out by means of an eclectic conceptual framework that combines John Rawls’s theory of ‘justice as fairness’ and Nussbaum’s ‘capability approach’. Both are redistributive theories that aim at improving well-being. For Rawls, a society is “fair” when citizens are free and equal and the basic social structure – i.e., social and political institutions – are able to distribute available resources and goods to meet the basic needs of all. For Nussbaum the well-being of a society should be understood in terms of ‘capabilities’ – ‘doings’ and ‘beings’ that people can achieve – and ‘functionings’ – capabilities that have been realized, depending on individual and social features. Moreover, Nussbaum points out 10 ‘human functional capabilities’ that every fair and democratic society must ensure to people, defining also a ‘threshold level’ for each capability. By means of the eclectic framework, I show that the lack of democracy