New Delhi, Jan. 27 -- India's embrace of democracy has been affirmed many times over by the 'power of the vote' as a lived experience. That We the People live in a republic, with no hereditary right to rule, remains far more abstract in comparison.

Three-quarters of a century ago, whether democracy would endure was seen as our big challenge. In his last address to the Constituent Assembly after the 'final reading' of the Constitution, on 25 November 1949, B.R. Ambedkar made a case for 'social democracy,' based on a union of liberty, equality and fraternity. If any of these were to be divorced from the other, he held, it would defeat "the very purpose of democracy."

The weak link, in his view, was equality: "On the 26th of January 1950, ...