Ex-CEC S.Y. Quraishi's analysis of democracy in South Asia gets UK launch

London, Nov 11 (PTI) There are important lessons that democracies in South Asia can learn from each other’s experiences, former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India Dr S.Y. Quraishi said at the UK launch of his in-depth analysis of the state of democracy in the region.  ‘Democracy’s Heartland: Inside the Battle for Power in South Asia’, which followed Quraishi’s Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Fellowship at the King’s India Institute, came full circle with its launch at King's College London last week.

In the book, released in India in September, the former CEC argues that no other region has embraced the democratic experiment as fully, or as fiercely, as South Asia.  “Dr Quraishi has spent his career in service to, and in defence of, one of the key institutions of Indian democracy: the Election Commission of India – the body that oversees elections to national and state-level parliaments in India,” said Professor Shitij Kapur, Vice-Chancellor and President of King's College London.  “What better place to discuss this book than the King’s India Institute – one of the world’s leading centres for the study of democracy in India. Beyond India though, the book pushes us to look at democracy more broadly in the other countries of South Asia – including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka," he said.  The launch event in London involved a discussion around the thematic approach adopted by Quraishi, who served as the 17th CEC of India and has observed elections first-hand in many of the countries he covers in his latest book.

It uses the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) grouping of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to compare and contrast democratic experiences in the region.

“I selected SAARC because 40 per cent of the world's democracy lives there,” explained Quraishi.  “I have taken care to give equal treatment to see all these countries through the same lens and not tried to be partisan to India, unlike my other books,” he said, with reference to his previous works such as ‘An Undocumented Wonder: The Great Indian Election’ and ‘India's Experiment With Democracy: The Life of a Nation Through Its Elections’.  "There are certainly lessons they can all learn from each other," he noted.  His latest work, which draws on decades of first-hand experience, combines sharp analysis with untold stories from the front lines of elections across the region to explore how democracy survives, adapts and even thrives in South Asia, despite all odds.   “Dr Quraishi’s ‘Democracy's Heartland' can really be seen as a laboratory for understanding the wider trajectories of democracy across the world today – from growing challenges of centralised and autocratising control, to the potentialities of youth protest and street power, to the entanglements of civil and military power," observed Louise Tillin, Professor of Politics in the King’s India Institute. PTI AK GRS GRS