ABSTRACT
Thirty years after independence, in 1977, India took a giant leap forward towards a consolidated democracy, while Pakistan embarked on a path of enhanced and entrenched military rule. India seems well set in its democratic ways, but it has not crossed the threshold level of economic development that seemingly guarantees its future as a democracy (see Przeworski and Limongi 1997), and it will undoubtedly face crises of some sort in the next thirty years, whether a war-or a climate-change-produced catastrophe, or something else. So we need to assess how strong its democratic foundation is.
