Why Civil Society Action Is Indispensable For The Success of Democracy In India The deepening conflict between Govt. of India and civil society is really a battle for primacy between the ‘rule’ of representative democracy and the imagination of a participatory democracy. The tragic irony is that civil society has been reduced to obsequious seekers of mercy and crumbs at the doorstep of the Indian state and its rulers. While profit seekers have the ears of the highest officials, non-profits are made to wait, chastised and diminished. Earlier this month, while the UN Human Rights Council stated that giving ‘space to civil society is not optional’, the Government of India warned that “civil society must operate within the framework of domestic laws”. Renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz went so far as to say that ‘India is looking bad’ for its crackdown on civil society voices. How is representative democracy different from participatory democracy? In a representative ...