The two largest democracies?
The Two Largest Democracies of the World are India and the United States of America.
With a population of over 1.3 billion people – and growing – India is the world’s largest democracy, and the second largest country on the planet after China. At the 2014 general election – the largest in the world, Narendra Modi’s BJP won the most seats and went on to form a government. The country is due to go back to the polls in 2019.
The United States of America, with a population of over 325 million, the nation, by population, is the third largest in the world, as well as being the second biggest democracy in terms of population.
Last year, the country elected its 45th president, Donald Trump, who surprised the world first by winning the Republican nomination and then by winning the presidency.
They may be the largest democracies, but, they are NOT necessarily the greatest democracies, that is according to The Democracy Index, an index compiled by the UK-based company the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) that intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 165 are UN member states.
The index was first produced in 2006, with updates for 2008, 2010 and the following years since then. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorises countries as one of four regime types:
Full democracies are nations where civil liberties and basic political freedoms are not only respected, but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and media that is diverse and independent. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.
Flawed democracies are nations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honored but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement). These nations have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.
Hybrid regimes are nations where consequential irregularities exist in elections regularly preventing them from being fair and free. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opponents, non independent judiciaries, and have widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.
Authoritarian regimes are nations where political pluralism has vanished or is extremely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meager significance, infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair and free, the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and they are characterised by the presence of omnipresent censorship and suppression of governmental criticism.
Across the world this is the way that democracy looks in 2017 according the Democracy Index!
India, as the world's largest democracy comes in at Number 42 in the Democracy Index as a flawed democracy, scoring 7.23 on the Index scale.
The United States of America, the second largest democracy in the world comes in at Number 21, equal with Italy, and with a score on the Index scale of 7.98.
Are the two largest democracies in the world "low intensity democracies"?
In Samir Amin's Eurocentrism he comments on the second largest democracy:
The combination specific to the historical formation of American society, a dominant biblical religious ideology and the absence of a workers' party, ultimately produced a still unparalleled situation, in which a de facto single party, the party of capital, hold the reigns. Today, American democracy is the advanced model of what I call low intensity democracy. It operates on the basis of a total separation between the management of political life, based on the practice of electoral democracy, and that of economic life, ruled by the laws of capital accumulation. What is more, this separation is not subject to radical questioning, but is rather part of what is called the general consensus. But this separation destroys all the creative potential of political democracy. It castrates representative institutions, making them impotent when facing the market, whose dictates are accepted without question.Is it the case that, in some respects, India has also separated political life from economic life, and the political life is increasingly dominated by a form of communitarianism, that, under the umbrella of an Indian version of secularism, would make the formation of a workers' party an uphill struggle?
(pages 48-49)
Socialism in India
There have been, and are, political parties of the left in India, going back to the early years of the twentieth century, both socialist and communist, but the fractures and fractions of Indian society, with its rich cultural diversity, have been a stumbling block to the formation of a worker's party, and a working class identity.
The Indian independence movement
The Indian independence movement was a series of activities whose ultimate aim was to end the occupation of the British Empire in India and encompassed activities and ideas aiming to end the East India Company rule (1757–1857) and the British Indian Empire (1857–1947) in the Indian subcontinent.
The movement spanned a total of 90 years (1857–1947) considering movement against British Indian Empire. The Indian Independence movement included protests that were peaceful and non-violent, and militant, sometimes violent, mechanisms to liberate the population from the British Administration and rule of India.
The first organised militant movements were in Bengal, but they later took root in the newly formed Indian National Congress with prominent moderate leaders seeking only basic rights, such as to sit for Indian Civil Service (British India) examinations, as well as establish more economic rights for the people of the soil.
The early part of the 20th century saw a more radical approach towards political self-rule proposed by leaders such as the Lal, Bal, Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai. The last stages of the self-rule struggle from the 1920s onwards saw Congress adopt Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's policy of nonviolence and civil disobedience, and several other campaigns.
Nationalists like Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Bagha Jatin preached armed revolution to achieve self-rule.
Poets and writers such as Subramania Bharati, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Josh Malihabadi, Mohammad Ali Jouhar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Kazi Nazrul Islam used literature, poetry and speech as a tool for political awareness.
Feminists such as Sarojini Naidu and Begum Rokeya promoted the emancipation of Indian women and their participation in national politics.
B. R. Ambedkar championed the cause of the disadvantaged sections of Indian society within the larger self-rule movement.
The period of the Second World War saw the peak of the campaigns by the Quit India Movement led by Congress, and the Indian National Army movement led by Subhas Chandra Bose. All in all, the Indian self-rule movement was a mass-based movement that encompassed various sections across Indian society. But it also underwent a process of constant ideological evolution.
Although the basic ideology of the movement was anti-colonial, it was supported by a vision of independent capitalist economic development coupled with a secular, democratic, republican, and civil-libertarian political structure. After the 1930s, the movement took on a strong socialist orientation, owing to the influence of Bhagat Singh's demand of Purna Swaraj (Complete Self-Rule).
The work of these various movements led ultimately to the Indian Independence Act of 1947, which ended the suzerainty in India and the creation of Pakistan. The Partition of "British India" is as much to do with the British approach to a divide and rule policy as it is to do with irreconcilable differences between diverse communities in India. It was a disaster.
An act of parliament proposed a date for the transfer of power into Indian hands in June 1948, summarily advanced to August 1947 at the whim of the last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten. This left a great many issues and interests unresolved at the end of colonial rule.
In charge of negotiations, the viceroy exacerbated difficulties by focusing largely on Jinnah's Muslim League and the Indian National Congress (led by Jawaharlal Nehru). The two parties' representative status was established by Constituent Assembly elections in July 1946, but fell well short of a universal franchise.
Tellingly, although Pakistan celebrated its independence on 14 August and India on 15 August 1947, the border between the two new states was not announced until 17 August. It was hurriedly drawn up by a British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, who had little knowledge of Indian conditions and with the use of out-of-date maps and census materials.
Communities, families and farms were cut in two, but by delaying the announcement the British managed to avoid responsibility for the worst fighting and the mass migration that had followed. India remained a Dominion of the Crown until 26 January 1950, when the Constitution of India came into force, establishing the Republic of India; Pakistan was a dominion until 1956, when it adopted its first republican constitution. In 1971, East Pakistan declared independence as the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
Revolutionary inspirations
The development of the independence movement in India looked for inspiration in other such movements, such as the war of independence waged by the thirteen American colonies against the colonial power, Britain. This included the influential American Declaration of Independence , the American Constitution , and from the legacy of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen 1789, that had become models for emerging states breaking free from the colonial powers.
The American Revolution, was a precedent, and an inspiration for the revolutionaries of 1789 in France, but, as Amin notes, was "only a limited war of independence without social significance".
In their revolt against the British monarchy, the American colonists wanted to transform nothing in economic and social relations and sought only to no longer have to share their profitswith the ruling class of the mother country. They wanted the power for themselves, not to do anything different from what they were doing during the colonial period, but to continue doing the same thing with greater determination and profit. their objectives were above all the pursuit of westward expansion, which implied, among other things, the genocide of the Indians (see Note below). The continuation of slavery was also not questioned. The great leaders of the American revolution were almost all slave owners and their prejudices in this respect were unshakeable.
(page 47)
Note: The use of the term Indians to stand for the indigenous peoples of North America, is another example of a European cultural and psychological projection that was part and parcel of the colonial enterprise. Eurocentrism is much more than Orientalism!
The Native American name controversy is an ongoing discussion about the changing terminology used by indigenous peoples of the Americas to describe themselves, as well as how they prefer to be referred to by others. Preferred terms vary primarily by region and age. As indigenous people and communities are diverse, there is no consensus on naming, aside from the fact that most people prefer to be referred to by their specific nation.
When Ghandi planned the Salt March in early 1930, significant social transformation was on the independence movement agenda.
At midnight on 31 December 1929, the Indian National Congress had raised the tricolour flag of India on the banks of the Ravi at Lahore. The Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, publicly issued the Declaration of sovereignty and self-rule, or Purna Swaraj, on 26 January 1930. (Literally in Sanskrit, purna, "complete," swa, "self," raj, "rule," so therefore "complete self-rule".) The declaration included the readiness to withhold taxes, and the statement:
We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraji or complete sovereignty and self-rule.The Salt March, also known as the Dandi March and the Dandi Satyagraha, was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to produce salt from the seawater in the coastal village of Dandi (now in Gujarat), as was the practice of the local populace until British officials introduced taxation on salt production, deemed their sea-salt reclamation activities illegal, and then repeatedly used force to stop it.
The 26-day march lasted from 12 March 1930 to 6 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. It gained worldwide attention which gave impetus to the Indian independence movement and started the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement. Mahatma Gandhi started this march with 78 of his trusted volunteers. The march was over 240 miles. They walked for 24 days 10 miles a day.
The march was the most significant organised challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22, and directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930.
Gandhi led the Dandi March from his base, Sabarmati Ashram, 240 miles (390 km) to the coastal village of Dandi, which was at a small town called Navsari (now in the state of Gujarat) to produce salt without paying the tax, growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way.
Ghandi breaking the salt laws 6.30am 6th April 1930
When Gandhi broke the salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes towards Indian sovereignty and self-rule and caused large numbers of Indians to join the fight for the first time. After making salt at Dandi, Gandhi continued southward along the coast, making salt and addressing meetings on the way. The Congress Party planned to stage a satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt Works, 25 miles south of Dandi. However, Gandhi was arrested on the midnight of 4–5 May 1930, just days before the planned action at Dharasana. The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage.
The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi's release from jail and negotiations with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference. Over 60,000 Indians were jailed as a result of the Salt Satyagraha. However, it failed to result in major concessions from the British.
In his call to Indians to resist British domination, Mahatma Gandhi often referred to and drew inspiration from the American revolution.
A tale of two democracies - From the Salt March in India to the Civil Rights March on Washington, USA
Washington: February 12, 2009
The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution recognising Mahatma Gandhi's influence on Martin Luther King Jr and commemorating the golden jubilee anniversary of the American civil rights leader's visit to India in 1959.
Why are there no "workers' parties" in the two largest democracies in the world, India and the USA?
The American dream? - OR - Once Upon a Time in America?
The American ideology that Amin identifies, and that for him is the foundation of the liberal virus that is leading to the Americanization of the world, is, for Amin, strengthened by the successive waves of immigration that have taken place in the USA over the last two centuries. He says:
The immigrants were certainly not responsible for the misery and oppression that caused their departure. On the contrary, they were the victims of it. But circumstances led them to abandon the collective struggle to change the common conditions of their classes or groups in their own country, in favour of adhering to the ideology of individual success in the host country. This adherence was encouraged by the American system, which suited it perfectly. it delayed the development of class consciousness, which, scarcely had it started to develop, had to face a new wave of immigrants that prevented its crystallization. But simultaneously, immigration encouraged the communitarianization of American society, because individual success does not exclude strong integration into a community of origin (the Irish, the Italians, and others), without which individual isolation could become unbearable. Yet, here again the strengthening of this dimension of identity, which the American system uses and encourages, is done at the expense of class consciousness and the education of the citizen. While in Paris the people got ready to assault the heavens (here I refer to the 1871 Commune), in the United States gangs formed by successive generations of poor immigrants killed each other, manipulated in a perfectly cynical way by the ruling classes.
(pages 47-48)
The Gangs of New York and the New York City Draft Riots
Is communitarianism a stumbling block?
Amin continues:
In the United States, there is no workers' party and there never has been. The communitarian ideologies were not and are not a substitute for a working-class socialist ideology, even the most radical of them in the Black community. By definition, communitarianism is part and parcel of the context of widespread racism, which it fights on its own ground, but nothing more.Socialism in the United States began with utopian communities in the early 19th century such as the Shakers, the activist visionary Josiah Warren and intentional communities inspired by Charles Fourier. Labor activists—usually British, German, or Jewish immigrants—founded the Socialist Labor Party in 1877.
(page 48)
The Socialist Party of America was established in 1901. By that time, anarchism also established itself around the country while socialists of different tendencies were involved in early American labor organizations and struggles which reached a high point in the Haymarket affair in Chicago which started International Workers' Day as the main workers holiday around the world (except in the United States, which celebrates Labor Day on the first Monday of September) and making the 8-hour day a worldwide objective by workers organizations and socialist parties worldwide.
Under Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, socialist opposition to World War I led to the governmental repression collectively known as the First Red Scare. The Socialist Party declined in the 1920s, but nonetheless often ran Norman Thomas for President. In the 1930s, the Communist Party USA took importance in labor and racial struggles while it suffered a split which converged in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.
In the 1950s, socialism was affected by McCarthyism and in the 1960s it was revived by the general radicalization brought by the New Left and other social struggles and revolts. In the 1960s, Michael Harrington and other socialists were called to assist the Kennedy administration and then the Johnson administration's War on Poverty and Great Society while socialists also played important roles in the Civil Rights Movement. Socialism in the United States has been composed of many tendencies, often in important disagreements with each other; it has included utopian socialists, social democrats, democratic socialists, communists, Trotskyists and anarchists.
The socialist movement in the United States has historically been relatively weak.
Unlike socialist parties in Europe, Canada and Oceania, a major social democratic party never materialized in the United States and the socialist movement remains marginal,
"almost unique in its powerlessness among the Western democracies".Oshinsky, David (24 July 1988). "It Wasn't Easy Being a Leftist". The New York Times.
The failure of Delhi’s political institutions is rendering collateral damage upon the country’s social institutions.
by Riju Agrawal
As a country of 1.3 billion people, more than 800 million of whom are eligible to vote, India takes pride in being the “world’s largest democracy.” India has often lauded its ability to transfer power peacefully every five years since the first general election of 1951 (except for Indira Gandhi’s experiment with autocracy in 1975). Most recently, even news of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections is keen to point out that state elections in India are larger than the national elections of several European countries. However, while such self-aggrandizing statistics highlight the monumental task of the Election Commission of India, they do nothing to validate India’s success as a democracy. Rather, a superficial satisfaction with the size of India’s elections risks perpetuating ignorance of the underlying issues that plague India’s democracy.
The health of a democracy cannot be measured by the size of its voter base nor simply by the peaceful transition of power. Such standards of evaluation may be sufficient for nascent democracies struggling to implement the practice of universal adult suffrage (such as countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are experimenting with democracy in the wake of the Arab Spring), but not for India, which has a more mature democracy. India aspires to become a secular, liberal, global superpower and considers itself a counterweight to undemocratic regimes in its backyard. As such, voter participation is a necessary—but insufficient—measurement of how far the country has come since its independence and how much further it has to go to truly uphold the ideals of democracy. If much of India’s soft power (as well as its moral superiority) against China, Pakistan and other competing states arises from successful democratic tradition, then India must ensure a more complete understanding of the challenges its democracy is currently facing.
Even if India’s democracy was measured by the size and success of its elections, its efficacy is called into question by news of candidates bribing voters, using threat of force to sway voting behavior and otherwise finding ways to ignore or circumvent the principles safeguarded by the Election Commission. Even when elections are not overtly manipulated, electioneering that focuses on identity and caste politics promotes the selection of suboptimal candidates, without respect to their merit or the substance of their policies. This adulteration of the election process has a ripple effect leading to perverse outcomes through the rest of the democratic institutional machinery.
As India’s democracy continues to mature, an increasingly important indicator of its health will be the health of its constituent political institutions. The key political institutions responsible for executing the functions of democracy and protecting its founding principles of liberty, equality and justice constitute the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. Not only is each branch of government important in its own right, but it is even more important that all three branches work in concert to check and balance each other’s powers. Institutions such as the Parliament of India, which function upon the principle of majority rule, are counterbalanced by institutions such as the judiciary, which are responsible for protecting the rights of the minorities against the potential abuses of the majority. Institutions of the executive branch fall within the ambit of both aims, as they are responsible for executing the dictates of Parliament, while also enforcing laws that protect minorities. If the health of India’s democracy were gauged by the efficacy of its political institutions, then it would likely be judged to be in a fragile, and perhaps dismal, state.
For example, the most visible of all democratic institutions, the Parliament, has largely lost the faith of the electorate. The election of Members of Parliament who are underqualified has eroded the Parliament’s ability to pass laws and be responsive to the needs of the nation. More than one-third of the current Members of Parliament have criminal charges pending against them. Though they are permitted to serve under Indian law (but face the risk of dismissal if they are convicted), such ignominious qualifications do not befit a role of national leadership. Furthermore, the inability of elected representatives and Parliament to think holistically (rather than for the narrow benefits of their caste and constituents) has led to a fractionalization of the political assembly that has rendered ineffectual and mired in gridlock. Representatives are either looking to fill their own purses, to satisfy the whims of their narrow vote banks, or to oppose the initiatives of the majority for the sake of opposition itself. As a result, Parliament often fails to pass meaningful reforms regardless of which political party is in power. Even the conduct of Parliamentarians, who are keen to employ feuds, foul language and hysteria on the floor of the chamber, has become an entertaining soap opera, but has eroded the public’s trust in this keystone institution. The nature of Parliament as a forum for thoughtful debate of issues facing the nation is clearly at risk, reflecting the endemic failure of the election processes, despite India’s claim to the title of “world’s largest democracy.”
The judiciary, on the other hand, has been host to a plethora of problems that are slowly becoming more dominant and frequently discussed. The backlog of court cases and the short-staffing of India’s judicial system has ensured that justice cannot be served in a timely manner, if at all. For those charged with a crime, securing bail is the primary objective, as it enables avoidance of jail time while the case languishes in the queue for years. Considering the large number of criminal cases pending against Members of Parliament, the court’s inability to serve as a timely watchdog is directly linked to the current deplorable state of Parliament. At the same time, while the lower courts remain hobbled, India’s Supreme Court has become more vocal recently on a wide-range of issues, and is now seen as an institution of action, in contrast with the never-ending gridlock of Parliament. However, this increasingly vocal institution has also begun to stray into issues that are constitutionally ambiguous or irrelevant, and is setting a dangerous precedent of overreach. This will weaken the public’s confidence in the institution as the final arbiter of law and justice, rather than a bully pulpit to enforce social and cultural values. The court’s authority must be used cautiously and sparingly, and it must not forget its mandate to protect the fundamental tenets of democracy against the excesses of the majority.
While the aforementioned institutions are political in nature (and therefore their problems may be perceived to be remote from India’s flourishing private sector), they are equally important to India’s economy and to its growth prospects. First of all, the erosion of the Parliament leads to a weakening of other institutions that are under the purview of the country’s elected representatives. Though organizations like the Reserve Bank of India, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and the Central Statistical Office (amongst others) are all supposed to be politically unaligned; governments in power have been able to exert pressure and influence to shape these organizations’ behavior to fit the dominant political ideology. Modi’s implementation of demonetization without due consultation with the Reserve Bank of India is one of several recent examples of the weakening of important institutions that have much broader implications than just “politics.” Furthermore, the protection of property rights, enforcement of contract law, the establishment of the bankruptcy code (amongst many other business-related regulations) and the protection of individual liberties (which help foster creativity and entrepreneurship) are responsibilities of India’s political institutions, but are integral to the functioning of the broader economy and the private sector. The protection and enforcement of these business regulations, and the adherence to rule of law more broadly, are critical prerequisites to attracting foreign capital and investors into the country. The adulteration of India’s political institutions is inextricably tied to the recent economic sluggishness, and it is unlikely that economic growth can be sustained over the long-term without more holistic reform of India’s political institutions. Leaders who are myopically focused on wooing investors with trips overseas and headline-grabbing “memorandums of understanding” will likely find limited success in translating this momentum into real development unless they can ensure a stable legal and regulatory environment to reduce the “risk premium” associated with investing in India.
The failure of India’s political institutions is also rendering collateral damage upon India’s social institutions, such as its civil society and free and vibrant media. In addition to the courts, a vigilant civil society helps protect the rights of minorities in a democracy (for example, it is often civil society that will take unjust legislation to the courts). It is incumbent upon Parliament and the judiciary to maintain the pre-conditions and enforce the constitutional morality that allow such social institutions to thrive. Such institutions are as important to the health of the country’s democracy as opposition parties in Parliament, both of which help challenge the excesses of the majority. Hence, authoritarian leaders are often tempted to curtail the freedom of the press, given that it has arguably become more potent than the opposition party as it is unconstrained by the protocol of parliamentary process. In today’s India, social institutions, especially those that seek to protect minority caste, religious and social groups, are being undermined by the unchecked weight of the majority. Given the important balancing role that these institutions play in India’s democracy, their marginalization will lead to further amplification of majoritarian chauvinism.
The adulteration of key political institutions such as Parliament is on a dangerous slippery slope. The failure of elected representatives to respond to the wishes of the electorate, and the widespread public perception that politicians are corrupt and focused primarily on their personal gain, has led to retaliatory responses that will further undermine the legitimacy of Parliament and weaken its ability to correct the underlying problems. For example, in response to the endemic problem of corruption, the agitations led by Anna Hazare focused on establishing an omnipotent ombudsman, underscoring the view that even elected representatives could not be entrusted with the nation’s governance. Ultimately, this approach of holding the government hostage failed because it sought to circumvent India’s democratic machinery, rather than fix it. Such extra-constitutional efforts are dangerous for both sides of this debate. The loss of faith in lawmakers spurs such campaigns, but these campaigns may reactively spur a loss of confidence in civil society if splinter groups, factions and vested interests take it upon themselves to protest every law they find unfavorable. For example, more recent agitations by various castes and ethnic groups, though they reflect meaningful unaddressed grievances, also represent a use of undemocratic methods to demand a greater share of the economic pie. Fixing the country’s key political institutions and ensuring that India has the most qualified and visionary national leaders is the only way the country will be able to permanently address society’s underlying political, economic and social ills. Otherwise, the slope India has started down will only get steeper and slipperier.
Riju Agrawal is an engineer, former policy analyst and finance professional. He is currently with The Blackstone Group's Energy Private Equity team and was previously with Morgan Stanley’s Global Energy Group. He has also interned at the White House, where he worked on energy and climate change policy. Riju studied mechanical engineering at Harvard, where he also served as copresident of the Harvard College Global Energy Initiative and co-founder of the Harvard U.S.-India Initiative.
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