Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam knows his history.
While praising the "uniqueness" of Indian democracy, he defended the East Asian model by pointing out that democracy used to be limited in Britain and America too.
"It was not until 1930 that Britain got Universal Suffrage. The US did not get Universal Suffrage until 1965," he said.
He was referring to the 1965 Voting Rights Act which made it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote after the 1964 Civil Rights Act ended racial discrimination.
Britain gave the vote to women from the age of 21 only in 1928. Only older women, from the age of 30, had been allowed to vote in Britain since 1918.
Mr Tharman recalled: "In Britain, before the Reform Act of 1832, only 1.8 per cent of the adults had the vote. After that Act, 2.7 per cent got the vote. After the Second Reform Act of 1884, 12.1 per cent got the vote."
But while democracy was limited, there was stability, economic growth and the middle class grew, he said.
Neatly, from there, he segued to the East Asian model. "A group of men (usually men) centralised power, planned in the long term interests of the country and executed those plans quite smoothly. Some of these countries did not hold elections…
"But, on the whole, the countries progressed. People received education, were empowered, the infrastructure developed, the economies grew steadily."
He added: "There is no clear correlation between dictatorship and progress... Outside of East Asia, in the post World War II period, dictatorships have in fact a poor record in delivering progress to the country as a whole --- but then, the sad fact is that democracies also have a poor record in those countries."
What is unique about Indian democracy?
All adult Indians have had the right to vote since independence in 1947 even though many of them are poor and illiterate, said Mr Tharman.
But, he added, "there is the price of democracy".
Popularly elected politicians are not always the most capable leaders and they may "champion narrow ethnic/religious causes".
India lags behind in many ways, he pointed out. "Infant mortality is high. India has a literacy rate of 61 per cent."
But he acknowledged: "India appears to be set on a path of steady growth. It should easily register six to eight per cent growth."
The point to note is this: He did not shy away from openly talking about East Asian dictatorships.
And look at the clever connection he made between East Asia and the evolution of democracy in Britain and America.
This was not a typical politician speaking. No sound bites here, solid examples from history.
Opinion has long been divided on the virtues of Indian democracy and the advantages of the East Asian model.
Amartya Sen: The other side
The Nobel Prize winning Indian economist Amartya Sen gives his own take in his new book, The Idea of Justice.
He mentions Singapore and writes:
The detractors of democracy… see… serious tensions between democracy and development. The theorists of the practical split --- "Make up your mind: do you want democracy, or instead, do you want development?" --- often came, at least to start with, from East Asian countries, and their voice grew in influence as several of these countries were immensely successful --- through the 1970s and 1980s and even later --- in promoting economic growth without pursuing democracy. The observation of a handful of such examples led rapidly to something like a general theory: democracies do quite badly in facilitating development, compared with what authoritarian regimes can achieve. Didn't South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong achieve astonishingly fast economic progress without fulfilling, at least in the early days, the basic requirements of democratic governance? And after the economic reforms in China in 1979, didn't authoritarian China fare a lot better in terms of economic growth than democratic India?
But development cannot be equated only with economic growth, says Sen.
The assessment of development cannot be divorced from the lives that people lead and the real freedom they enjoy… Development can scarcely be seen merely in terms of … a rise in the GNP (or in personal incomes), or in industrialization, important as they may be… Their value must depend on what they do to the lives and freedom of the people involved, which must be central to the idea of development.
With India growing rapidly now, one can no longer argue democracy is incompatible with economic growth, he adds.
He is right. (More about his book in my previous post.)
And there is evidence that countries at a certain stage of development dump the East Asian model. Look at South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia.
But hats off to Mr Tharman. You really have to know your history to draw any analogies between East Asia and America and Britain.
