India became a modern republic, a sovereign, democratic republic, in 1950 amidst widespread skepticism about the durability of both democracy and the republican form of government in the country. It is now 2017 and the Indian Republic not only survives but thrives. What explains the durability of the form of government embraced by the country 67 years ago? Many explanations have been offered as to why these two political forms flourished in the fledgling state beset with regional, linguistic, religious and caste conflicts.
This article will explore political formations in ancient India and the extent to which proto-republican states can be said to have existed in ancient India. Can it be that proto republics and ancient forms of democracy were part of an old heritage of Indic civilisation and citizens of modern India simply harked back to an old reality? The focus of this article is republics of ancient India; democracy in ancient India deserves a separate article and will be dealt with here only tangentially.
In searching for the origins of modern democratic and republican systems of governance, historians often tend to look at the republics of Ancient Greece. However, evidence of such republics can also be found, arguably, in other civilisations such as ancient India.
Most of the textual evidence for the existence of these ganas comes from Sanskrit and Pali texts. Apart from Vedic and Pauranic texts, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Greco-Roman descriptions of India during and after the times of Chandragupta Maurya, Buddhist and Jaina works and the Mahabharat offer compelling evidence for these ganas.
These ancient texts are not easy to interpret, which, along with a lack of physical evidence for Vedic kingdoms, makes the task of reaching conclusions on the nature of republicanism in ancient India complicated. However the contours of political history do become clearer and kings and religious teachers mentioned in different texts can be identified as real historical figures as can the different kingdoms around the 6th century BCE. Numismatic evidence can be adduced to bolster the argument for the existence of these kingdoms.
To establish the extent to which the forms of government of some of the mahajanpadas could be considered republics we will look at historiography, evidence of the existence of these ancient kingdoms and the characteristics of their political practices.
Historiographical Background
After the publication of Buddhist India by Professor Rhys Davids in 1903, the work that first remarked on the republican institutions of this era, many nationalistic Indian scholars such as K P Jayaswal and K P Mukherjee took up research in the field, in part to prove that there was a basis for democracy and republicanism in India and that the political institutions of ancient India were at least as good as those of ancient Greece. This was in the background of the struggle against the colonising power, Great Britain.
At the same time, there was also a strong resistance to the possibility of proto-democracies in India by other historians, K M Shembavnekar, for instance. (He put forward the view that a gana means nothing but a collection of animals!) To maintain the status quo, so that ancient Greece would be the earliest civilisation to have even remotely democratic governance, and India would be seen as the cradle of oriental despotism, Western historians were unwilling to consider evidence in a non-partisan manner. Later writings of those like J P Sharma adopted a more dispassionate approach and there has been a fresh look in past years.
Evidential Basis
The Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda apart from certain other samhitas are the earliest sources, where we find first mention of early forms of democratic and republican institutions. The Shanti Parva of the Mahabharat also mentions proto-republics.
A later text that describes the proto-republics is the Ashtadhyayi by Panini (4th century BCE). Panini called people of the city-states of the time janapadins. He clearly noted that while some of these people were subject to the rule of a monarch, others governed themselves in a republican fashion. Both the Ashtadhyayi and the MajjimaNikaya of the Buddhist canon use the terms gana and sangha interchangeably in the political context to mean a proto-republic. Gana, sangha and ganasangha signify broadly the same political formation.
The Buddhist Pali Canon contains many details of daily life in India at the time of the Buddha and mentions clans that made public decisions in assemblies or parliaments. These accounts strongly suggest that republicanism was a common feature in the governance of certain mahajanpadas that existed at the time with the political system being described as fairly inclusive.
Buddhist and Jain Prakrit sources list the names of the 16 powerful mahajanapadas extant in the sub-continent at the time; they are divided into rajyas or monarchies and ganas or proto-republics which were not ruled by a king, but perhaps by oligarchies where power was exercised by a group of people.
The Vajjis of eastern India, north of the Ganga river and extending up to Nepal and the Mallas of Kusinara and Pava were two of the most important ‘ganasanghas’. The Sakyas of Kapilavastu, the Koliyas of Devdaha, the Bulis of Alakappa, the Kalamas of Kesaputta, the Moriyas of Pipphalivahana and the Bhaggas of Sumsumara Hill are some of the other ganansanghas mentioned by Buddhist texts. The Arthashstra mentions the Lichchavis, the Mallas, the Madrakas, the Kurus and Panchalas amongst others.
The Arthashastra, which can be taken to be a manual for the Maurya monarchs, also mentions ganas specifically in Book 11. It details the special methods to be used to subdue such kingdoms, a glimpse into the methods due to which, perhaps, the proto-republics died out and were subsumed into the Mauryan Empire.
When Alexander of Macedon’s forces arrived at the borders of the Indian subcontinent between 327-324 BCE, records state that they discovered large territories governed by non-monarchical means. One of these kingdoms, that of the Mallas, offered the toughest resistance to Alexander in his march across the north west.
Information on ganasanghas in the references to the Indika of Megasthenes and from works of Diodorus Siculus and Arrian seems to correspond with the time and place at which the republican mahajanpadas could have existed, lending credence to the claim that some of the states of the time had a proto-republican system of governance.
Interestingly, some of the names of the ganas mentioned in the sources above can be cross-referenced. For instance, the Arthashastra mentions the Vajjis and Mallas of the Buddhist sources and these are also mentioned in Greco Roman writings.
The ganasangha form of government appeared to be concentrated in the Himalayan foothills of eastern India while the Gangetic valley nurtured monarchies; these were parallel political formations. It has been hypothesised that ganasanghas of the Vedic period found themselves pushed to the east as monarchies became more and more powerful in the post-Vedic period.
The Vajji-Lichchavis with their capital at Vaishali were the most powerful ganasangha and Magadha the most powerful monarchy. Their clash for supremacy was inevitable and it was only after the defeat of Vaishali that the monarchical system took root across the sub-continent. Magadha laid the ground for the future emergence and consolidation of the Haryankas, the Nandas and then the Mauryans who united the sub continent under the peacock flag.
In terms of physical evidence it is only in the centuries of the common era that names of ganasanghas such as the Yaudheyas, Malavas, Uddhehikas, Arjunayansetc occur on coins of the period and also in inscriptions. Samudragupta famously married a Lichchavi princess and was called a Lichchavi-dauhitra (grandson of the Lichchavis) in inscriptions pointing to the still resonating importance of the ganas upto Gupta times. It is a different matter that it was probably the Guptas who finally wiped out the ganas from the face of Indian political history.
In the next part of the article we will consider the practices and characteristics of ganasanghas which will throw light on their functioning in the political or, alternatively, martial or economic field. Were they proto-republics or proto-corporations or martial groups living by force of arms?
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.