Bring out the linkages between political culture and civic culture with special reference to India. (1995)
Political culture is the pattern of citizens’ orientations towards political objects; every society has one. Civic culture is a particular form of it, a mixed political culture that Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba (The Civic Culture, 1963) found congruent with stable democracy. The two are linked as genus and species, and India shows both the link and its limits.
The Conceptual Linkage
| Criterion | Political culture | Civic culture |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Universal, descriptive category | One specific configuration |
| Building blocks | Cognitive, affective, evaluative orientations | The same, in a set balance |
| Types | Parochial, subject, participant | Participant layered on subject and parochial |
| Link to regime | Any regime | Democracy, through congruence |
- Derivation. Civic culture is built from political culture’s own elements: orientations to the system, inputs, outputs and the self as actor.
- Balance. Civic culture is not maximum participation. Active citizens coexist with passive ones; citizens feel able to influence government but seldom try. This latent competence keeps rulers responsive while leaving them room to govern.
- Congruence. Democratic structures last when the political culture supports them. Civic culture is the name for that fit.
- Social base. Robert D. Putnam (Making Democracy Work, 1993) added social capital: trust, reciprocity and horizontal associations turn orientations into a working civic culture, while vertical, patron-client ties undermine it.
The Linkages in India
- Structure ahead of culture. B. R. Ambedkar warned (4 November 1948) that democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic. India adopted democratic institutions first and relied on them to create the civic culture to match.
- A mixed culture of its own. W. H. Morris-Jones (The Government and Politics of India, 1964) found three idioms, modern, traditional and saintly: a mixture, but not the Anglo-American one.
- Tradition as a bridge. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) showed caste associations turning parochial loyalties into participant organisation.
- Participation from below. Yogendra Yadav‘s second democratic upsurge reversed the Western pattern: Dalits, Adivasis and the poor vote more than the privileged. In 2024, women’s turnout (65.78%) again exceeded men’s. The Lokniti-CSDS National Election Studies record rising political efficacy.
Where the Linkage Breaks
- Participant inputs, subject outputs. Indians vote readily but approach the state as supplicants. The mai-baap expectation and brokers who secure benefits are vertical ties, Putnam’s opposite of civic community.
- Uneven civic engagement. Ashutosh Varshney (Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 2002) found that cities with inter-communal business, trade-union and professional associations kept the peace, while those relying on everyday contact alone proved riot-prone. Civic culture exists locally, not nationally.
- The yardstick. Almond and Verba expected participation to rise with education and income. India’s poor out-voting its rich shows that participant culture can grow without the social base the model assumes.
Conclusion
Civic culture is political culture in a democracy-sustaining balance. India has achieved the participant half of that balance through elections and group mobilisation. It remains weak on the civic half: horizontal trust, tolerance and associational life across communities. Institutions have created a participant culture; they have not yet created a fully civic one.