The answer to South Asia’s political disillusionment is to think local

Even if it may not seem so, winning is the easy part for successful parties in countries that undergo periodic electoral exercises to win political mandates from the public for governance. Translating these mandates from projected progress to actual socioeconomic development is harder.

It is often hard – particularly in countries in South Asia known more for under-governance or outright poor governance. With 2024 a record year for national elections across the world, this misalignment explains why harsh post-election reality-checks are undermining public trust in democracy.

Take recent elections in the region. Elections – held last month – seemed like the perfect solution to Pakistan’s political paralysis and dysfunction of the past few years. A simple parliamentary majority was expected that could end discord crippling the economy. Instead, a hung parliament resulted, an uneasy coalition government ensued and an all-time high distrust in the state’s ability to hold controversy-free elections has helped increase uncertainty. 

To dismantle disillusionment, local should be the new national in South Asia.

- Adnan Rehmat

Similarly, elections over the past few weeks in Bangladesh, Maldives, Iran and Indonesia have not resulted in reducing political polarization or disillusionment that the electoral exercises had set out to resolve. India goes to the polls in a few months and the current muscular political majoritarianism undermining pluralisms there is expected to grow, not dissipate. 

Different countries try to address this persistent post-electoral disillusionment in different ways but not necessarily successfully even when a critical mass of support exists for proposed solutions. The new coalition government has called for a new ‘political and economic contract’, a common-ground charter that can help end unnecessary opposition to radical political, legal and economic reforms.

The moment is certainly ripe for it. Everyone agrees to it – except the party of Imran Khan, despite wanting a curtailment of the military’s ability to meddle in politics and the economy, which is a central tenet of the proposed charter. It is too angry at the election results to support any government initiative. If even elections can’t reduce acute political polarization and establish a new productive socio-economic development trajectory, then why hold elections at all, one might ask.

A controversial election, a hung parliament and a fuzzy coalition government are their own justification for consensus public interest agendas revolving around common minimum promises made by all key political parties in Pakistan. But the paralysis continues. 

It is the same in Bangladesh and Iran after recent elections. Suffocating majoritarianism there has survived intact – nothing seems to have changed. All that the elections in these countries seem to have done is entrench the status quo and inject fresh life to seemingly persistent disillusionment. 

How to fight this disillusionment and a sense of entrenched alienation of the people that feel cut out from the system that governs them without addressing their key concerns? There is no simple answer but any solution that works must inevitably deal with ending the tyranny of overt centralization of the systems of these countries – Pakistan included.

This stranglehold of centralization of political power away from the literally hundreds of millions of people in the region is common to all forms of systems whether it is populist governments in India and Bangladesh, or perennially fractious coalitions such as those in Pakistan and Nepal – or even simple majority regimes such as in the Maldives and Sri Lanka that are no less messy. It seems that no form of government is satisfactory for the masses in the region and elections are not managing to do the single thing they must: end or reduce disillusionment. 

Sub-regions within these countries are not treated equally and development unevenness is rampant.

Local level socio-economic and political-fiscal empowerment development agendas have been subsumed by overt centralization. This has blurred the line of responsibility between an elected prime minister or president’s job description and that of a local councilperson.

This has spawned unrealistic expectations from leaders who deflect attention toward populist agendas and slogans and therefore perpetuate the cycle of disillusionment. One way of dealing with disillusionment with such national level democracy is to address growing cynicism and distrust in government and refocus on local governance structures for states to become functionally more decentralized through optimal transfers of authority and finances at the local level. 

The states in South Asia need to grow beyond procedural democracies into functional ones with broadened shareholding in ownership of political and development agendas. To dismantle disillusionment, local should be the new national in the region. 

- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science. Twitter: @adnanrehmat1