Democracy is not defined by how old it is, but by how well it serves its people. My recent participation in the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP) reinforced one truth: India, the world’s largest democracy, and the United States, the oldest, have much to learn from each other’s successes and failures.
Over three weeks, I travelled through Washington D.C., Boston in Massachusetts, Manchester in New Hampshire, Columbia and Lexington in South Carolina, and Salt Lake City in Utah. I engaged with senators, state legislators, mayors, councillors, sheriffs, and civil society leaders across party lines. What I observed was not a perfect democracy, but a living one—sometimes inspiring, often sobering, always thought-provoking.
Federalism in action
One of my strongest takeaways was the US model of local governance. American mayors and councillors run schools, parks, healthcare systems, markets, waste management, and even community festivals. In Lexington, Mayor Hazel Livingston, the city’s first female mayor, knew her citizens personally and introduced reforms tailored to her community of just 27,000 people. Power was visible at the grassroots.
India’s municipalities and panchayats, by contrast, often lack both funds and autonomy, leaving real power concentrated at the state level. If democracy is to deliver effectively, India must empower its local bodies with financial and administrative authority.
At the same time, the US can learn from India’s democratic scale. With thousands of elected representatives across panchayats and municipalities, India operates the largest grassroots democratic system in the world. While America gives authority, India ensures breadth of representation. The ideal balance may lie somewhere in between.
Retelling history as nation-building
Another striking feature of American democracy is the honesty with which it retells its history. The National Museum of the American Indian openly confronts the displacement of Native Americans. Civil War memorials in South Carolina acknowledge the brutality of slavery while honouring the struggles of abolitionists. Even the Boston Massacre, where just five lives were lost, is immortalised as a turning point in the birth of the nation.
In India, the sacrifices of countless regional heroes are too often reduced to footnotes, overshadowed by a few towering figures. Our civic spaces, textbooks, and museums rarely capture the diversity of our struggles. If we want the future generations to inherit both pride and perspective, we need to institutionalise our history through state-level museums, plaques, and curricula, revealing the full story of India’s democratic journey.
Here, too, the exchange works both ways. While America excels at institutionalised history, India’s civilizational traditions of oral storytelling, epics, and folk performances keep history alive in the daily imagination of its people. Democracies need both—the permanence of institutions and the vitality of living traditions.
Changing global perceptions of India
One of the most rewarding experiences of my journey was hearing how The US leaders perceive India today. Time and again, senators and councillors spoke of India as a modern, progressive, and spiritual nation. Our democratic resilience and economic rise under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership are closely watched.
India’s diaspora amplifies this story. In the states and cities I travelled, I met Americans who admired India not just for technology or yoga, but for the values carried into communities by ordinary Indians abroad. To many, India is a partner that combines progress with civilizational wisdom, embodied in phrases like Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family).
This shift in perception is significant. For decades, the West viewed India through the lens of poverty and instability. Today, it sees a nation of both scale and soul. It is a reminder that global narratives can be reshaped by consistent governance, people-to-people ties, and values-driven diplomacy.
Social challenges and governance learnings
But democracy is never without contradictions. America’s political divide between Democrats and Republicans is so sharp that consensus has become a rarity. From debates on abortion to gender identity and gun rights, the divide runs so deep that it often paralyses consensus-building. This kind of entrenched partisanship serves as a warning for India that our own ideological differences must never be allowed to weaken governance.
I also witnessed challenges that felt jarringly out of place in one of the world’s wealthiest nations: rising homelessness, widespread drug abuse, and persistent domestic violence. Yet here, too, there were lessons for India. When I visited Manchester Police Headquarters in New Hampshire, I learned that police undergo fitness and performance checks every three years. This should be a must learn thing for India.
Survivors of domestic violence have access to 24/7 hotlines, safe and dignified shelters, and integrated NGO–police support systems. These mechanisms may not eliminate the problem, but they provide accountability and structured response—something India still struggles to implement consistently.
Conversely, India’s ability to conduct massive elections with high voter turnout is a strength America could learn from. In the US, frequent elections often result in voter fatigue and participation as low as 10 per cent in primaries. India’s citizens, despite challenges of scale and logistics, continue to show remarkable faith in the elections.
Women in politics: A tale of two democracies
One contrast that stood out during my visit was women’s political representation. The United States, despite being the world’s oldest continuous democracy, has never had a woman president. Hillary Clinton came close in 2016, and Kamala Harris made history as the first woman vice president in 2020, yet overall representation remains low.
India, by contrast, has seen women rise to the highest offices—Indira Gandhi as prime minister, Pratibha Patil and now Draupadi Murmu as presidents, and Nirmala Sitharaman as finance minister. The recent Women’s Reservation Bill further strengthens our commitment to inclusion. While India must still create stronger pipelines for women leaders at the grassroots, structurally, it has moved faster than the US in ensuring visibility at the highest levels of governance.
A shared democratic journey
India and the US stand at different points in their democratic journeys, but both face the same underlying challenge: how to preserve freedom while ensuring responsibility, how to embrace diversity without collapsing into division.
The US offers lessons in empowered local governance, institutionalised memory, and robust systems. India offers lessons in scale, voter participation, and civilizational values of inclusivity. Neither democracy is perfect, but both endure because they adapt.
In the end, democracies do not survive on age or size alone. They survive on humility, the humility to learn, to reflect, and to evolve. If India and the US can continue learning from each other, they will remain not only strong in themselves but also guiding lights for a world that urgently needs hope, resilience, and freedom.
Dr. Vinusha Reddy is BJP spokesperson from Andhra Pradesh.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.