SECOND TAKE
THE GUARDIAN: Autocratic Narendra Modi bows to funders
The Indian premier has offered to delay agricultural reforms but he should start again with a more democratic tone
26 January 2021 - 14:54
Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, has probably never read Lord Hailsham. But he should. The former lord chancellor’s 1976 BBC lecture contains perhaps the most penetrating assessment of parliamentary democracy, of which India is its largest version.
Lord Hailsham’s argument carries a constitutional lesson at an opportune moment for Modi. The Conservative peer warned that Britain risked becoming an “elective dictatorship”, in which a government’s parliamentary majority is merely tempered by political realities and MPs’ consciences...
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