Archive for the ‘political economy’ Category

1 Nov

The Rumblings of Global Hunger

Posted by vramani in health & nutrition, political economy, public affairs. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Every now and then, the release of a Global Index comparing countries in respect of some metric sets off a chain reaction in government circles in India, whether it be press freedom, the state of democracy or human rights. The latest controversy swirls around the release of the Global Hunger Index 2022 (GHI-22), which places India at the 107th position in a list of 121 countries for which data is available.

The GHI-22 score for each country is based on a weighted average of four standardised indicators. While one could always quibble about the excessive reliance on under-five child nutrition and mortality indicators and the sample sizes for estimating the prevalence of undernourishment in arriving at the GHI-22, there is no denying the fact that, in international comparisons, India still has way to go to reach the levels of even some of its South Asian neighbours. The NFHS-5 percentages for child stunting in Indian states like Bihar, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh are uncomfortably close to those in some African countries and higher than most of India’s immediate neighbours. Child wasting percentages in most Indian states are in excess of 15 percent, higher than those in most countries of the world.

Rather than spending time disputing statistics, governmental energies can be more usefully deployed in effectively tackling child undernutrition. Four areas suggest themselves for immediate attention. The first step has to be the use of real-time accurate data, based on anthropomorphic indicators of weight and length/height of every child in every anganwadi, to zero down on the specific locations where stunting and wasting are serious problems. The tablets provided to anganwadi workers under the Poshan Abhiyan campaign will serve their purpose only if online growth monitoring charts of each child, based on current height/weight/length measurements, are available to ICDS field staff (Anganwadi workers and their supervisors) to enable immediate corrective action in respect of children who are stunted and wasted and/or whose growth is faltering.

Secondly, the health and nutrition status of pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers must be given priority. Nearly 50 percent of pregnant women in most states are anemic; about 20 percent of women have subnormal body mass indices. The state must provide maternal nutrition and health support in areas with the highest incidence of child stunting/wasting and mortality — this will check the incidence of low birth weight and the onset of malnutrition at the stage of infancy. States like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka are providing pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers with a daily hot meal at the anganwadis. Apart from the nutrition aspect, this measure also enables attention to be given to micronutrient supplementation, nutrition education (especially breastfeeding advice) and peer support to women. Both the union government and the states need to provide budgetary support to this programme. The pernicious practice of contractor-driven supply of Take Home Rations to mothers and under-3 children should be discontinued forthwith, with womens’ self-help groups (SHGs), in association with anganwadis, being entrusted with the work of providing hot meals to mothers and children. Nutritional support, along with provision of creches for under-3 children, run by SHGs, would not only promote nutritional and cognitive development in these children, but would also enable their mothers to earn a livelihood to enhance family incomes.

The third policy focus should be on the care of the infant, especially in the first 28 days after birth. The SRS data of the Registrar General of India shows that 80 to 90 percent of under-5 child mortality occurs in the first year of birth. Equally dismaying is the statistic that, in nearly all Indian states, over 70 percent of infant deaths occur in the 28 day neonatal period, indicating that neonatal mortality accounts for over 60 percent of child mortality. The responsibility here falls largely on the Public Health department of states, since neonatal monitoring of the newborn is one of the weakest linkages in the nutrition-health chain in government. The NFHS5 data shows that nearly 80 percent of mothers and children received postnatal care from health personnel within two days of delivery. This contrasts sharply with the UNICEF 2021 State of the World’s Children Report which shows figures of 65 percent and 27 percent for maternal and child postnatal care, though this data may be a couple of years older. In any case, anganwadi workers and ASHAs need to regularly monitor the nutrition and health status of newborns in their first 28 days of life and refer all cases where the nutrition and health position of the child is severely compromised to the nearest medical centre.

Above all, governments need to prioritise maternal and child nutrition and health in a meaningful manner. My experience as Director General of the Rajmata Jijau Mother-Child Health and Nutrition Mission in Maharashtra showed that political and bureaucratic commitment from the very top is crucial in instilling a sense of accountability in implementing departments and in promoting inter-departmental coordination to tackle this issue which spans a number of government departments. Regular reviews at the levels of the Chief Minister, the Ministers for Health and Women & Child Development and the Chief Secretary lead to greater attention being given to solving problems at the district and sub-district levels — budgetary support for programmes in specific areas, resolving personnel issues and ironing out interdepartmental problems in implementation are some of the positives from such high-level interventions.

This is not to minimise the importance of macro interventions on the economic and social fronts. Empowerment of women, through access to higher education, skill development and income-earning opportunities and enhancing community awareness on good health and nutrition practices would impact the problem significantly. Strong economic growth, coupled with job opportunities, would increase family incomes and improve nutrition outcomes. But a determined government focus on the issues mentioned in the earlier paragraphs would lead to significant improvements in the situation in the short and medium term, even as the longer term measures take root in the country. As Nelson Mandela said “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children”.

(Published in the Free Press Journal (30 October 2022)

27 Oct

A Tale of Two Elections

Posted by vramani in political economy, public affairs. Tagged: , , .

India benefited in two ways from her association with Great Britain — the English language and a parliamentary system of government. But there is a third useful lesson India can learn from Britain: how to conduct the election of the leader of a political party. The process that has played out in the British Conservative Party after the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July this year stands out in stark contrast to the confused muddle in conducting the election for the President of the Indian National Congress (INC).

The procedure for election of the leader of the Conservative Party, who would become the Prime Minister, involved a two-stage process. In the first stage, Conservative MPs voted for selecting the two candidates who would confront each other for the top job. This exercise narrowed the choice down to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, with the former emerging the winner in an election where over 80 percent of over 170,000 Conservative Party members exercised their franchise.

Contrast this with the process that has characterised the election of the President of the INC. With the anointed heir apparent to the throne playing the reluctant suitor, the election was fixed for 17th October, rather close to the crucial state assembly elections slated for December/January. Noises from various party functionaries and carefully planted media reports made it obvious that there ought to be a consensus candidate favourable to the party high command, without the need for an election. With Shashi Tharoor throwing his hat into the ring, the election process, however, had to be gone through.

In an age when electronic lists are the norm and the British Conservative Party can conduct online elections involving 170,000 plus members, the INC’s delay in releasing a list of under 10,000 PCC members bordered on the ludicrous. After much urging from some party members, the existing lists of these 9000 plus members were made available to the candidates standing for election. The campaign by the two candidates revealed clearly the culture that prevails in the party. In state after state, party functionaries preferred to go along with Mallikarjun Kharge, seen as the “high command” candidate, despite his contention that he has his independent position on various issues. The party old guard did not look too kindly on the younger interloper, and it is little wonder that the election was a one-sided affair reminiscent in style if not in degree of the INC President election of 2000, which brought Sonia Gandhi to the helm of affairs.

The high command structure in place in the INC since the time of Indira Gandhi has played havoc with the INC’s regional power bases, leading to election fiascos for the party in state after state, and at the national level. Maharashtra is a prime example: no INC CM after 1972 has spent a full five years in office. With dissidence against incumbent CMs having become the norm, it is little surprise that the INC has had 12 CMs in the 36 years it was in power in Maharashtra between 1972 and 2014. As in UP and Bihar, the INC is fast losing its relevance in Maharashtra, occupying fourth place (44 seats) in the number of MLAs in the assembly, a far cry from 1985, when it held 161 seats. The failure of the INC to establish its electoral dominance in national and most state elections since 2014 is, at one level, an outcome of the disgruntlement of state-level leaders — Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have all witnessed revolts against the party leadership.

An ambitious politician finds her/his path to the top obstructed by the “old guard” and/or by a suspicious leadership. Ambition not being seen as a desirable quality, contenders for a more meaningful role in the party are compelled to switch to other political formations.

Coupled with ambition are the two vices of greed and fear. Politics offers easy pickings through patronage networks and the non-transparent nature of decision making in government departments. This tendency has been accentuated in recent years by the allure of inducements for switching sides immediately after elections or sometime between two general elections, the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India having repeatedly failed in checking defections midstream. The disease of treating ministerial posts as avenues for personal aggrandisement also renders most politicians vulnerable to investigations by law enforcement agencies, a tool which comes in handy for the party in power to arm-twist politicians into shifting their loyalties. A former Maharashtra Congress Minister has openly admitted that he breathes easy ever since he switched sides.

The drama that surrounded the INC presidential election is symptomatic of the disease that affects ALL political parties in India. Most parties in India are family-managed enterprises, where the hereditary right of succession seems to be a given, regardless of whether the successor displays any political ability. Even where there is no “dynasty culture”, the party morphs into an outfit run by one or more leaders, with a small coterie to advise them. Both at the state and national levels, the preference is to nominate persons for specific posts based on their loyalty to the party bigwigs or to ram through candidates for party and government leadership on the basis of the choice of the high command.

In such a scenario, loyalty and commitment to the party’s ideology (if it has one, in the first place) and to its success in elections are replaced by individual expediency. Almost overnight, politicians spout rhetoric that was anathema to them just a short while earlier and eulogise their new leaders whom they had no qualms about abusing and criticising while in the earlier party.

The noted author Ramachandra Guha had, fifteen years ago, characterised India as a 50-50 democracy. More recently, he downgraded this rating to 30-70. Given the absence of inner party democracy across the board in Indian politics, one wonders if India is nearer a 10-90 democracy.

7 Sep

Let’s rescue politics from resorts

Posted by vramani in elections, government, human interest, political economy. Tagged: , , , .

Almost exactly twenty years after ‘resort’ politics was resorted to in Maharashtra to save the Congress coalition government of Vilasrao Deshmukh, history has repeated itself in the recent rebellion within the ranks of Shiv Sena legislators. While bundling away legislators in bulk to resorts to keep away prying suitors was a novelty in 2002, it is the norm in 2022. From Gujarat to Rajasthan, from Karnataka to Madhya Pradesh, the flock of disgruntled dissidents or loyalists (depending on which side of the table you are on) have been spirited away before crucial voting or before governments are toppled. There are, of course, states like Goa and Manipur where the resort to resorts is not even necessary: it is game, set and match even as the election process ends, with wholesale defections to the party which offers the best terms.

What boggles the mind is the scale of operations today. In my view, cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL) has a hoary ancestor in the Indian Political League (IPoL): the latter commenced functioning around 1967, a good forty years before the IPL was born. Players in the IPoL are free to switch teams whenever auctions take place: these could be before elections or at more frequent intervals, depending on team managements. Auctions can adopt a carrot and/or stick approach: positive inducements, such as signature bonuses and subsequent access to ATM assignments, and/or negative pressures, using law enforcement agencies to uncover the murky pasts of politicos. Once safely home in her/his newly adopted political party, the freshly laundered politician has a new launching pad for her/his political future.

Where does this continuous cycle of saam-daam-dand-bheda leave the ordinary voter? Increasingly, her/his vote ceases to matter. No matter whom s/he elects to office, there is no guarantee that that person will remain loyal to the party and the ideology which may have influenced the voter in her/his favour. The anti-defection law has proved to be a non-starter. Developments in recent years from Arunachal Pradesh to Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have not dampened the enthusiasm of Aaya Rams – Gaya Rams to jump ship at the call of the Sirens. The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India seems to indicate clearly that two-thirds of the MLAs/MPs of a party have to switch allegiance to another party to retain their membership of the legislature (the Goa pattern) and not attract the anti-defection provisions. Although the Tenth Schedule vests all powers to decide on disqualification of members with the Speaker (or the Deputy Speaker, as the case may be) and bars the jurisdiction of courts, there has been judicial intervention in both Arunachal Pradesh and Maharashtra. With the impartiality of the Speaker/Deputy Speaker being questioned whenever disqualification proceedings are launched, the Tenth Schedule is fast becoming a dead letter. India has made rapid strides in recent years in “anti-defecation” measures: it is time now for “anti-defection” measures with more teeth.

What is, therefore, required is legislation that discourages modern day Aaya Rams and Gaya Rams from flitting from one party to another. For a start, a winning candidate set up by a political party must resign her/his seat if s/he decides to join another party. Similarly, independent winning candidates who declare their support to the government formed by a particular political party must resign their seats if they switch loyalties to any other party. Drawing on the recent happenings in Maharashtra, I would propose that even if more than two-thirds of the legislators of a party withdraw support to the party that put them up for election and opt to join another party, the opinion of the party functionary who issued Form A at the time of nominations for election should be the clinching factor; if this functionary does not ratify the withdrawal of support, the withdrawal of support should be deemed to be grounds adequate for disqualification. The decision for disqualification must be that of the Speaker of the House and, if there is no Speaker, that of the Deputy Speaker. Additionally, the disqualified member and her/his family members (covering at least the spouse and all sons/daughters) should be ineligible for standing for election for a period of six years from the date of disqualification, thus removing them from the election process for effectively the present and next term of the House. This will rule out those legislators who think they have the necessary financial and social clout to get reelected even if they have to resign from their seats. There should also be a mandatory assessment by the Income Tax department of the income and assets of the member and his/her family members to check the flow of illicit funds to their accounts in return for the switch in loyalty.

I know that I am asking for the moon in proposing measures that will rein in incentive/disincentive-induced defections. In the current political climate, these measures are unlikely to find any resonance with political parties. The opacity of the electoral bonds regime in place today and the multiple avenues for stashing away windfall gains in safe tax havens make it highly improbable that unscrupulous politicians will be deterred from looking for easy political capital. However, we have reached a stage today where the very sanctity of the electoral process is in jeopardy. If money and muscle power can dictate who comes to power, the voter will repose little faith in the electoral system, the surest recipe for a democracy to head on the path to disaster.

 

P.S.: A little bird just whispered in my ear that future legislators whose loyalty is sought to be bought are likely to ask for more exotic resorts to spend time in while the political drama plays out. Antigua, Bali and the Cayman Islands are doing the rounds as possible venues. To which I can only quote Cicero: O Tempora! O Mores!

 This blog was published in the Free Press Journal on 29 August 2022 (here)

27 Aug

Bilkis Bano case – the interface of law and ethics

Posted by vramani in government, human interest, political economy, public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , .

If 2012 saw the conscience of a nation shaken by the Nirbhaya rape incident, 2022 has witnessed an equal nightmare in the wholesale release of eleven men convicted of gangrape and mass murder in 2002 in Gujarat, that too on the very day that India was celebrating the 75th anniversary of its independence. The Government of Gujarat utilised its good fortune in being declared the “appropriate government” by the Supreme Court decision of May 2022 (which overrode Section 432(7) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC)) to arrive at the facile reasoning that the 1992 remission policy provided for remission of life sentence (even in cases involving rape and murder) after 14 years in prison. The subsequent tightened guidelines on remission by the Government of Gujarat (2014) are apparently not applicable since the 11 men were convicted in 2008, when the 1992 remission policy was in place.

The decision of the Government of Gujarat begs many answers. Let us accept the argument that, as per the 1992 remission guidelines, these 11 men were eligible for release from prison. Some other nagging questions of law still remain. The case was prosecuted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), an agency created under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. Section 435 of the CrPC makes it mandatory for the state government to consult the Union Government in cases prosecuted by the CBI (note well that consultation here means concurrence of the Union Government). If such permission was not taken, the remission of sentence is ab initio void in law. If concurrence was taken, the Union Government is a willing party to this decision. Since, as in many other decisions of the Government of India today, no clarification is provided on this issue, the public is left guessing. Even if concurrence of the Union Government under Section 435 of the CrPC was taken, there is still the matter of taking the opinion of the presiding Judge of the court which passed the original order of conviction, regarding grant of remission of sentence under Section 432(2) of the CrPC: this has been mandated by the Supreme Court as well. This process has definitely not been gone through in the appropriate special CBI court in Mumbai.

These are the legal issues on which no clear answers are forthcoming as of now. But even more troubling is the process of decision making at the level of the committee on remission headed by the District Magistrate, Godhra, and the Home Department, Government of Gujarat. Even granting that the 1992 remission guidelines allowed for remission of sentence to those convicted of murder and rape, there are still other considerations that have to be kept in mind when granting remission. The Supreme Court has, as far back as 2000, laid down guidelines for remission of sentence which include, inter alia, whether the crime affects society at large and whether recurrence of commission of crime is possible. In the Bilkis Bano case, there can be no doubt that the nature of the crimes committed — gangrape and mass murders — definitely affected society at large. On the issue of possible recurrence of criminal acts by the convicts subsequent to their release, newspaper reports indicate that witnesses were threatened when the convicts were released on parole during their incarceration. Whether these factors were taken into consideration while granting remission is a matter of speculation — there is no clarification from the state government.

However, as much as these legal issues, what ought to concern us all as citizens of a humane, compassionate society are the ethical dimensions of this entire episode. Photographs have been shown of the distribution of sweets to the released convicts; even more appalling are reports of the felicitation of the convicts by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, this in a criminal case monitored by the Supreme Court and where verdicts of conviction were confirmed by the Bombay High Court. Common decency dictated that the release, even if in accordance with the procedure laid down by law, be kept low-key in deference to the sentiments of the survivors of the crimes. A member of the remission committee and a sitting ruling party legislator went so far as to suggest that the convicts were of high caste, had good upbringing and that charges were framed against them because of ill intentions of some persons. It was incumbent on the administration of the Government of Gujarat to take steps to prevent the organisation of such events and to discourage such statements which could cause unease in the minds of the victims and the minority community.

In fact, the Government of Gujarat should have taken the initiative to organise a reconciliation meeting between the victims and the perpetrators of crimes. The effort should have been to bring a sense of closure to the tragic incidents of 2002 and promote a spirit of harmony in the village where both sides would be residing henceforth. Nelson Mandela adopted this approach with his Truth and Reconciliation Commission, following the end of apartheid in South Africa, to build an atmosphere of trust and cooperation between the coloured and white communities. Our own Bapu, Mahatma Gandhi, spent the first Independence Day wiping the tears of the victims of communal fury in Bengal.

It is this spirit of fraternity (bandhutva) that is sorely lacking in the India of today. We can debate till eternity whether the 11 persons should have been released or should have continued in prison, depending on our ideological predilections. But unless those who committed these crimes are fully aware of the damage they have caused to the psyches of their victims and are truly remorseful for their past misdeeds, there can be no meeting of minds between the different communities. Immense damage is caused to the social fabric, when vested interests dabble in spreading hatred and misunderstanding among communities. Let us, in this 76th year of India’s independence, move from untruth to truth and from darkness to light: only then will we truly be free.

15 Aug

The Idea of India – at 75

Posted by vramani in political economy, public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , , , .

As India celebrates the 75th anniversary of her existence as an independent nation, it is time to reflect on what ‘India’ truly represents. What has given this country the resilience to meet multiple challenges on the economic, political and social fronts over three-quarters of a century and retain her status as the largest democracy in the world (even if there is still a gap between the actual and the potential)?

India has been fortunate that eminent personalities oversaw the transition from imperial to democratic rule, developing a robust Constitution of India (‘the Constitution’) that has, in spite of many amendments, stood the test of time. At this juncture in our history, it would be appropriate to identify the core principles that have enabled India to chart her course of nationhood. The strength of India rests on three fundamental principles embedded in her Constitution: the primacy accorded to the individual, the emphasis on pluralism and the operation of the federal structure of the nation.

India has, over the ages, taken into her fold people from diverse races, cultures and religions. The country displays a heterogeneous collection of languages and traditions. Pluralism is not confined to religion: it is the trait which welcomes and embraces different ethnicities, linguistic groups and those from diverse cultural backgrounds. The Constitution’s greatest boon has been its focus on bringing together in one nation-state people who were earlier subjects of British India and nearly 600 princely states. It has located a number of pluralist measures in the Part on Fundamental Rights (‘Part III’). These include the freedom to profess, practice and propagate any religion as well as the protection of cultural and educational rights of minorities. Discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth is specifically prohibited.

What is equally noteworthy is the primacy accorded to the individual in Part III. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law to all persons, irrespective of whether they are citizens or not. The subsequent Articles lay down clearly the rights of citizens — of life and liberty, freedom of speech and association, public employment, etc. This marks a sea change in a social milieu where the collective, in the shape of the family, clan or community, was, in centuries past, the arbiter of the rights and duties of the individual. The Constitution gives the individual a dignity of her own, not linked to any entity other than the nation of which she is a citizen.

It is significant that the very first Article of the Constitution defines India as a ‘Union of States’. The territories administered by the British and the princely states which signed the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union were amalgamated into different states. Article 1 of the Constitution was a recognition of the reality that it was these states that constituted the nation.  There is a clear division of responsibilities between the Union and the States in the matter of governance. The Seventh Schedule delineates the subjects which are the exclusive domain respectively of the Union and of the States (as well as those where there is concurrent jurisdiction of both). The Constitution provides for a Finance Commission to propose, at regular intervals, the allocation of financial resources between the Union and the States; it also created All India Services that serve both the Union and the States. These provisions are intended to ensure a collaborative and synergistic relationship between the two, often governed by different political parties. Recognising that federalism has to strike roots below the state level, the Constitution (73rd and 74th) Amendments provided for substantive devolution of powers to rural and urban local bodies.

However, there are areas where closer attention from the Union and state governments, the judiciary and civil society is necessary if India is to serve as an example of a healthy democracy. Powers of arrest are still exercised by law enforcement agencies in a routine fashion and subordinate courts treat bail applications with a negative frame of mind, so much so that the Supreme Court was constrained to recently observe that India should not become a “police state”. Special acts have severely circumscribed the granting of bail in certain cases. These lead not only to the “process becoming the punishment” (as observed recently by the Chief Justice of India), but also to the burgeoning number of undertrials in jails in India. The 2006 directives of the Supreme Court to insulate the police forces from political pressures need to be implemented by all governments in letter and spirit if the sanctity of individual liberties is to be maintained.

The pluralist ethos has come under strain in recent years, through a combination of executive actions (and inaction) and the emergence of vigilante groups that seek to deliver ‘justice’ in a summary manner. Increasing intolerance for the views of others, especially with the explosive growth of electronic and social media, has contributed to the growing incidence of hate speech, which sows the seeds of bigotry and hatred in large segments of society. It is time governments impartially administer the laws which check such actions (and courts take a severe view of infractions of laws causing social unrest). The media and civil society also need to call out those elements that seek to sow dissensions among different sections of society.

There is an urgent need to tone down the adversarial relations between the Union and state governments. A spirit of mutual goodwill, respect and consensus between the Union and state governments, especially those governed by parties other than that governing the Union, is crucial in furthering the economic development of the country and improving the lot of the common citizen.

The promise in the Preamble of the Constitution to secure to all citizens of India justice, equality, liberty and fraternity will be realised in ample (if not full) measure when all the stakeholders in the country actively promote the values enshrined in the Constitution. Only then will India’s tryst with destiny truly be fulfilled.

This blog was published in the Free Press Journal (15 August 2022) (here)

15 Dec

The loaves and fishes of office

Posted by vramani in government, human interest, irony, political economy, public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , .

The recent brouhaha over the extension of tenures for specific officers of the Government of India even when they are well past the normal age of retirement has brought into focus again the issues of the sanctity of the retirement age and the possible interference by government in the independent functioning of officers handling crucial organisations, especially those endowed with enormous powers to investigate offences, both economic and otherwise. However, this is no recent development: fixed tenures for the Cabinet Secretary, Home, Foreign and Defence Secretaries, and Directors of the Intelligence Bureau and Research & Analysis Wing, extending beyond the normal age of superannuation, have been in vogue for a number of years now.

What has occasioned concern in recent days has been the Government of India’s decision to give five-year tenures to the heads of two Central Government investigative agencies that have often been caught in the crosshairs of political wars. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is no stranger to controversy: no less a body than the Supreme Court termed it a “caged parrot”. To the CBI has been added the Enforcement Directorate (ED) which has come into the public eye only in recent years. These two agencies, along with their country cousins, the Income Tax department, the National Investigation Agency and the Narcotics Control Bureau, have developed into falcons from parrots, with their deployment by the Central Government in a wide range of cases, amidst concerns as to whether these serve merely political ends or the ends of justice (the Sushant Singh Rajput and Aryan Khan cases serve as examples). Of even greater concern are the cases of raids, and selective disclosures, that surface whenever election time surfaces. Karnataka in 2018, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu in 2021 are states where politicians of parties opposed to the BJP received special attention from central investigative agencies.

It is significant (and glaringly obvious) that officers were being given tenure posts or extensions in service just days before their date of superannuation (as witnessed in the appointment of the Police Commissioner of Delhi and the last-minute extension of tenure of the Director, ED). The recent amendments in Fundamental Rules and the changes in the Acts governing the CBI and ED aim to legalise extensions and attempt to put them beyond the pale of judicial challenge.

What is equally notable is the plethora of appointments to post-retirement posts, from the ranks of both the higher judiciary and the top echelons of the civil services. That this practice has the sanction of precedent is no cause for comfort. There have been far too many cases in the past three decades where the appointments to crucial posts of retired judges and bureaucrats have raised uncomfortable questions about possible quid pro quos for decisions favourable to the government of the day taken by the beneficiaries while in positions of power. While some of the pre- and post-retirement appointments go through a committee which has, apart from the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as its members, other crucial appointments, as for example, the Election Commissioners, are made purely at the discretion of the executive.

At a juncture in our democratic existence when many executive decisions are viewed with some measure of suspicion, there is need to evolve norms for appointments to the highest positions in the civil services that ease such suspicions as also mitigate the rising apprehension that serving civil servants are being induced through the carrot of continued service to shed their independence and impartiality in decision making. I venture to make some suggestions below to address this vexing issue.

Superannuation from public service should be mandatory on attaining the age of 60 for all members of the civil services. On attaining the specified age, civil servants should follow the shining example of RCVP Noronha, former Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, who refused any extension and rode away happily from the Secretariat on his Luna moped on the day he superannuated.

For all senior positions in constitutional/statutory bodies, like Members/Chairpersons of Commissions and Tribunals, where judicial/administrative experience is required, selection should be through a process of application. This should also apply to the heads of major investigation agencies, which enjoy powers of. search, seizure and confiscation. The final selection should be done by a Committee which comprises representatives of the concerned government, the judiciary or the Union Public Service Commission and representatives of opposition parties (for specific constitutional/executive posts, as is the case at present).

Most importantly, the selection of civil servants for all higher posts (administrative and quasi-judicial) should be structured such that the person superannuates from the post at the age of 60 years. This would imply that a person would be selected for such a post around the age of 55 years (for those in government), so that (s)he would cease to hold office, after a tenure of five years, at or just before her/his normal superannuation date. This has certain implications, both for these functionaries and for those in the organisations they have left in order to hold these select posts. For one, those who move to posts outside the government structure will create openings for their juniors to move into senior positions in their departments/organisations. There may also be cases where, in full knowledge of the fact that (s)he is not likely to be in the running for the top job in the executive, a person may choose to move laterally to these posts. It would certainly enable governments, both at the centre and in the states, to dispense with many posts at apex levels, which (especially in state governments) seem to be virtually dished out with the rations.

As for the contention that officers’ talents will not be used beyond their age of superannuation, these talents and competencies can well be displayed in a variety of other fields — media, business, academics, social service and politics being obvious avenues. Rephrasing the recent utterance of a noted senior advocate, “the heavens will not fall if a worthy replacement takes on the responsibility of the retiring incumbent.” Nor does it preclude the truly ambitious from aspiring to governorships/ambassadorships/Rajya Sabha memberships, depending on their equations with the central government of the day.

In the final analysis, such a change would spare us the unseemly spectacle of persons jockeying in their final days of service with the powers that be to ensure their continued access to naukar-chakar-bangla-gaadi, apart from the heady access to power and prestige that continued occupation of prestigious posts brings. Civil servants, indeed all humans, would do well to heed the words of Adi Sankaracharya in the Bhaja Govindam:

दिनयामिन्यौ सायं प्रातः, शिशिरवसन्तौ पुनरायातः।

कालः क्रीडति गच्छत्यायुस्तदपि न मुन्च्त्याशावायुः ॥१२॥

Day and night, dusk and dawn, winter and spring come and go again.

Time sports and life ebbs away, and yet the gust of desire never leaves us.

1 Dec

The Road to Authoritarianism

Posted by vramani in government, human interest, political economy, public affairs. Tagged: , .

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…” (Charles Dickens: The Tale of Two Cities)

The opening words of Dickens’ novel capture the situation today rather forcefully. Liberal democracy, which has seen many ups and downs since 1688, through 1776, 1789, the 1940s-50s and 1989, is facing an existential crisis circa 2021. Human society is no stranger to authoritarian domination but its creeping engulfment of liberal democracies one after another in the absence of major wars or other crises (barring possibly the COVID pandemic) threatens the values that inspired the numerous movements for self-determination over the last few centuries. An analysis of authoritarian trends, whether in religion, society or the polity, shows that four A’s (Abnegation, Ambition, Apprehension, Apathy) nourish the growth of the fifth A (Authoritarianism).

Abnegation

Whether in social groups, religious denominations, ‘godmen’ cults or nation states, surrender of the members is the first step towards the development of an authoritarian environment. Tribal and caste loyalties and the divinity ascribed to an omniscient being, ruler or ecclesiastical organisations were prominent in pre-industrial societies. Norms and rules ostensibly handed down by prophets served to keep the masses in thrall to those in authority, with no challenge to the established order. The ferment engendered in societies worldwide over the past two and a half centuries for the establishment of the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity seemed to have ensconced the idea of liberal democracy as the guiding principle for nation states since the 1990s. The 2008 economic crisis and the failure of most liberal democracies to tackle growing economic inequalities in their societies, coupled with a growing disillusionment with the governing elites in most countries, have deepened insecurities and led to a desperate desire for a strong man (no woman currently in sight) in countries across different continents, ranging from Trump and Bolsonaro in the Americas to Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India and Duterte in the Philippines. “The leader can do no wrong” is the mantra chanted by the glitterati and the chatterati, with enough support from sections of the electorate to see the leader and his party safely home.

This phenomenon of surrender of one’s critical faculties is rooted to some extent in the authoritarian environment that obtains to a significant extent in families, the education system, religions and the workplace. But it is equally, if not more, a reflection of the deep insecurities that confront humans as they struggle to come to terms with their lives and the desperate need to entrust their ‘souls’ to a comforting, omniscient being or organisation. The terrifying prospect of a lonely contemplation of one’s existential dilemmas is mitigated, and even removed altogether, by participation in a group with a larger purpose. A messiah with whom one can lodge all one’s worries and anxieties is the path that most such souls crave for.

However, this Faustian bargain of complete surrender of one’s soul comes with the tag of unquestioned obedience and willingness to act according to the commands of the messiah and his organisation. We have been witness over the past century to millions of humans blindly obeying the diktats of autocrats, even if it meant the extermination of countless of their fellow humans. That this was seen in supposedly “rational” societies was bizarre; that we observe its continuance today in countries with a long history of liberal democratic practices indicates that basic human traits have undergone little change despite education and exposure to liberal, humanistic values.

Ambition

Sections of society feel that they never got their just due in a liberal environment. These could range from academics with a pronounced right-wing orientation (as in India) to disgruntled politicians in opposition parties to those in the permanent employment of government who are of the view that their talents were not recognised. However, there are also many other individuals, from sectors ranging from the media, entertainment, academics and the bureaucracy, who smell the coffee in hitching their stars to an ideology that loathes liberal democratic ideals and places emphasis on adherence to nationalism, in its narrowest, exclusivist sense. Expediency rules the day: echoing the mantras of the ruling dispensation and providing unquestioning (and unthinking) “intellectual” and administrative support to the ideas propounded by the ruling dispensation enable these individuals to rise to and continue in positions of power and influence in the ruling order of the day. But ambition, to be really successful, must be accompanied by a willingness, indeed a fanatical urge, to outdo other potential competitors in anticipating the wishes of the leader (what, in Nazi parlance, was termed working towards the Fuhrer). This includes blindly implementing hairbrained schemes of the leader, unquestioningly harassing dissenters and opponents of the regime and indulging, repeatedly, in nauseous and fulsome praise of the thoughts and actions of the leader.

Apprehension

In this third category fall those who, though not really sold on the vision of the leader and his party or not ambitious by nature, fear the adverse consequences of not being seen as loyal to the ruling regime. These could include bureaucrats who fear being sidelined or media tycoons who fear that action may be taken against their empires. This group includes many political leaders who, apprehending executive action against them, find it more convenient to join hands with the ruling party. It may also cover those who participate in activities approved by the regime to avoid being perceived as not sympathetic to the ruling ideology.

Apathy

By far the largest segment of societies moving towards authoritarianism comprises those who choose to distance themselves from taking any ideological position. Their horizon comprises themselves and their immediate families and they are unwilling to, in any way, be seen as supporting or approving actions that may be perceived as inimical to the interests of the ruling group. Their attitude manifests itself most starkly at election time, when they vote for the leader’s party without any real conviction or understanding as regards its programmes and ideas. They will parrot the WhatsApp views of their neighbours, family members and friends, who are enthusiastic votaries of the ruling ideology, though they themselves would be hard pressed to explain what it is about the ruling dogmas that attracts them. The Eichmanns of the world arise from this category: even when sending Jews to the gas chambers, he was not moved by any emotion but merely saw himself as efficiently executing his job.

When the above four categories of individuals predominate in a society (generally with a combination of more than one of the four traits), the descent down the abyss of authoritarianism can be fairly rapid, even though the warning signs were probably there for decades prior to the actual denouement. The consequences for liberal democracy can be disastrous. Institutions charged with maintaining checks and balances on unbridled executive power are the first victims, as the regime sets about stripping them of their powers and packs them with its apparatchiks. Civil society is the next target: a combination of saam-daam-dand-bheda is employed to persuade / purchase / dissuade / divide people in this sphere to ensure that no effective dissent remains to question the actions of the government of the day. The stage is then set for the executive to fashion laws and rules to meet its ends: the rule of law, as understood in a liberal democracy, ceases to operate.

The real tragedy lies in the ratchet effect of the change brought about in society. Societies that go through these traumatic transitions to authoritarianism find it much harder to reestablish a liberal democracy years later. Institutions, once destroyed, are not so easily established again. The psyche of a people that has undergone a metamorphosis from a liberal underpinning to an authoritarian grip will take years, if not generations, to change. After all, it has taken not even seventy years after the trauma of the Second World War (and thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall) for serious crises to develop in liberal democracies. How people endowed with wisdom and foresight handle this existential threat to liberal democracy will determine its trajectory for the rest of this century and probably future centuries.

17 Apr

The Seven Pillars of Authoritarianism

Posted by vramani in political economy, public affairs. Tagged: , , , .

  • “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” – Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary, United Kingdom, August 1914
  • “I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality…” – Goethe
  • “The river of fire flowed past the French Embassy whence, with heavy heart and filled with foreboding, I watched its luminous wake.” – Andre Francois-Poncet, Ambassador of France to Germany, quoted in William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an autobiographical account of the exploits of British army man T.E. Lawrence (played by Peter O’Toole in the 1962 David Lean starrer Lawrence of Arabia) draws its title from the Book of Proverbs. In todays’ world, the growth of authoritarianism in liberal democracies across America, Europe and Asia bring to mind the fateful words of the British Foreign Secretary, except that what we are increasingly witnessing is the feeble flickering and extinction of liberal democracy across the globe. This is by no means a Black Swan event; rather it reminds one of the frog getting roasted in increasingly hotter waters till it is too late to avoid the scalding. The path to authoritarianism is paved with the cobblestones of the veneer of democracy. What explains the inability of significant sections of the population in many liberal democracies to learn from past history? The answers lie in the seven modern pillars that support authoritarian structures.

  1. The need for an authority figure

Voltaire’s famous statement “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” can be paraphrased into its twenty-first century version “If a strong man does not exist, it is necessary to create one”. Human beings are exposed to authoritarian tendencies right from infancy – the family, education system, job hierarchies, religious dogma, fear of the police, etc. Independent thinking is punished at different stages of life, sometimes severely. Repeated chastisements, perceived or real, at the hands of an authority – father, teacher, boss at work, policeman, God – convince a very large section of humanity that it is better off submitting to a “superior” force. The myth of the need for a “strong” leader is built on the gradual erosion of religion as an institutional authority over the past four hundred years. With no traditional belief to cling to, the modern human has shifted his/her allegiance in the past few decades to either the different versions of Marxism or to those claiming to provide alternative spiritual paths.  The greater danger arises when this unquestioned submission to an authority figure transmutes into blind reverence, more so when the authority figure is a political leader. Dr. Ambedkar’s prescient warning of the dangers of going down this path find resonance in what goes on in a number of democracies around the world today: “Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

  1. Narrative based on a mythical past and a glorious future

The majority group which brings the leader to power needs to have a point of reference in the past when it was a dominant force and exercised firm control over society. Centuries when other groups exercised political and economic power have created bitterness in the minds and hearts of this group. Hence the hearkening back to a past that was perfect, one where milk and honey flowed in the land of one’s birth. The invader is blamed for all the infirmities that apparently hobble the majority community and prevent the nation from attaining its true pedestal in the world. This emphasis on the perfect past is buttressed by the contention that a glorious future awaits citizens of a culture who are proud of their superior heritage.

  1. Cashing in on insecurity and fear of the “other”

The failure of the neoliberal framework to address the problems of inequality and joblessness has led to disenchantment with existing governing elites and the yearning for a messiah who can lead the flock to the Promised Land. The messiah paints a picture of the rosy future s/he will bring about. Since the objective conditions that obtain in the economy and society are unlikely to bring about any appreciable improvement in the economic conditions of the populace, recourse is taken from the outset to identify an entity which is the ‘enemy’ of the dominant group that the messiah claims to represent. This ‘enemy’ could be one outside the country’s border, such as a hostile neighbour. But history and current events point to many instances where this ‘enemy’ is a group within the country’s borders, which aligns with the perceived ‘enemy’. This group is often a minority population, based on race, religion or ethnicity, which is accused of having received favoured treatment from political dispensations of the past. To these are added other sections of the ‘discredited’ elite, often liberals, intellectuals and academics.

  1. Working towards the leader

The task of the leader to achieve complete control is facilitated by factotums who anticipate every wish of their leader. The system operates on a logic where the leader does not have to spell out his/her wishes. Very often, the leader may not even be aware of the undemocratic excesses that are executed in his/her name. With the media being muzzled or playing to the tunes of the ruling regime and its leader, the ‘truth’ is often hidden from view. The political and administrative machinery strains its sinews to project the image of the leader as omniscient and omnipotent, even without any compulsion being exercised on it. Such ‘‘workers’’ fall in three categories. The first comprises those who blindly revere the leader. Nothing s/he does can ever be wrong. In this grouping are often those who have the intrinsic need for domination by a strong authority figure. It is not surprising that many who started their lives as ardent Marxist followers reach the extreme right wing recesses of the polity in their later years, as their need for authority trumps the use of reason and skepticism. The second group are the rank opportunists, who have perfected the art of switching masters during their tenures in politics, the bureaucracy, mass media or other civil society institutions. In the third category fall those who fear the adverse consequences of opposing the diktats of the state or voicing their opposition to patently illegal acts by organs of the state or non-state actors. When these three attitudes permeate those in the ruling elite, a situation develops where the decisions of a small coterie at the apex will be blindly obeyed without the rationale being questioned. This may well see repeated flip-flops in decision making, as inadequately thought out policies are first rushed through, then rolled back and finally implemented in a revised, piecemeal manner.

  1. Only doing my job, not aware of the larger picture

The Eichmann syndrome is very much visible in sections of the bureaucracy, including the police, which reassure themselves that they are only following orders. What they conveniently overlook is that these orders often violate not only existing laws but also constitutional principles, as well as eternal human values, which are the bedrock of a democracy. The political theorist Hannah Arendt has termed this phenomenon the “banality of evil”. Adolf Eichmann helped organise the deportation and mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime. As I have brought out in an earlier blog (The Evil That Men Do Lives In Them), “…Eichmann was no more than a mediocre bureaucrat executing as efficiently as possible the orders he received from above. It is chilling to contemplate that the Holocaust was the product of the thoughtless actions of numerous individuals: there was never any reflection by them on the consequences of their actions, no stirring of what we term as “the voice of conscience”. The Magistrate who blindly signs a proforma detention order or the police officer who registers a case on directions from others without ascertaining the true facts are symptoms of this malaise. The history of the forced sterilisations carried out by the bureaucracy and police in different parts of India during the 1975-77 Emergency period is still fresh in memory.

  1. Looking the other way

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” A democracy unravels through the indifference and inaction of the bulk of its citizens who rationalise their failure to protest or stand up for the truth by pointing to their insignificance and their inability to make any difference to the current state of affairs. This preoccupation with the future of oneself and one’s near and dear leads to a situation where the violation of the democratic rights of others and the emasculation of independent institutions charged with safeguarding democracy do not raise even a whimper. Such silence is seen as tacit support by those who seek to alter the democratic framework of society and emboldens them to pursue their goal of absolute control. It is reflective of modern societies that their educated, “intellectual” elites have little acquaintance with the Constitutions of their respective countries, leave alone having heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is as though overweening consumerism has consumed all the finer elements that comprise human existence.

  1. Destruction of the system of checks and balances                                             

            A major fallacy in many liberal democracies today is the mistaken perception that elections equal democracy. In actual fact, a democracy is better defined by the events that occur in the interregnum between two elections. Chief among the characteristics that constitute a democracy is the independence of institutions that act as a check on the arbitrary exercise of executive power — the judiciary, media and other statutory bodies that conduct elections and monitor the actions of the executive in different spheres. What marks out present day authoritarian regimes from those of the twentieth century, notably Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Communist China, is their ability to control and manipulate independent institutions within the facade of a seemingly functional democracy. Elections are held regularly, there is a judicial system in place and the executive appears to function within the four corners of a constitutional structure. Institutional capture by the state (what some authors have termed as colonisation of the state) is revealed in the insidious manner in which independent institutions function. Whether motivated by adulation (for the ideology of the ruling dispensation), fear (of possible reprisal by the state) or anticipatory collaboration (in the expectation of future rewards), institutions hitherto deemed to be independent comply with the wishes of the government of the day. Ultimately, it is individuals who determine the strength of institutions and their ability to withstand the pressures of the executive. When individuals are compromised, either through blind belief, fear or prospects for self-advancement, institutional health suffers. Such a development during the tenure of a particular regime has its deleterious effects, which continue into the future and imperil the continuance of liberal democracy in a country.

Epitaph for liberal democracy?

            It is significant that the written Constitutions of the two largest democracies in the world — the United States of America and India — start with the words “We, the people”. Implicit in this is the clear assertion that it is the people of the country who have resolved to govern themselves in accordance with the provisions laid out in their Constitution. Both Constitutions stress the liberty of the Individual. In fact, the cornerstone of both the Constitutions is the centrality of the Individual, as against the age-old practice of giving the privileges of the social order primacy over individual rights. Securing these rights requires a vigilant citizenry, aware of and watchful over any transgression on these hard-earned rights. As the foregoing paragraphs bring out, it is the individual who will determine the character of democracy. When the individual chooses to forego this privilege, won after centuries of arduous struggle, it can truly be said that the death knell of twentieth century liberal democracy has been sounded.

1 Mar

The Castor-Chomu dynamics in Indian society

Posted by vramani in human interest, humour, political economy. Tagged: , , , .

I was introduced to the Castor-Chomu classification of individuals when I visited BITS-Pilani in 1975 to participate in its cultural festival, OASIS ’75. Apparently, the city-bred, convent educated students, whose lingua franca was English and who favoured Western pop and rock music constituted the Castors. In contradistinction were the Chomus, the students drawn from mofussil towns, who were patrons of Vividh Bharati and Hindi film music and communicated with each other to a large extent in the vernacular tongue, especially Hindi. This distinction struck a chord in me, a person who fitted into neither mould. To avoid being accused of a class bias, Castor, for the purposes of this blog, refers to the largely metro-based individual who received education in ‘elite’ institutions in India and abroad, coming from families that qualify as upper/upper middle class, securely employed or possessed of inherited wealth. Chomu covers those from medium to low income families, educated mostly in vernacular medium schools, whose parents sweat and toil to give them access to quality education that will open up remunerative job avenues for their wards. The distinction I employ here resonates with my classification of two elites in an earlier blog, the Lutyens ‘47 gang and the Lutyens ‘92 group (see The Lutyens’ Class Wars).

Although educated in a ‘mission’ school, I was nowhere near constituting part of the Castor elite. I still remember my first appearance for my school team in the Bournvita Quiz Contest when, in reply to a question on my hobbies from that doyen of quizmasters, Hamid Sayani, I mentioned Hindi film music, only to see the opposing girls’ school team dissolve in a fit of giggles at my plebeian choice. This dichotomy continued when I joined St. Stephen’s College (or Mission College) to pursue my undergraduate studies. A significant number of Stephanians were from public schools (a more correct term would be ‘private’ schools) like Doon School and Mayo College. Aping our colonial forebears, those of us in hostels were deemed to be “in residence”. The English-vernacular dichotomy was again quite pronounced: it was more fashionable to attend English debates and Western music shows rather than listen to Hindi film music and Hindi debates. The election for the President of the College Union Society (Stephanian isolation from the rest of the University did not allow for sullying one’s hands in sordid University politics) saw a metro-based candidate pitted against a rival from what we would today call a Tier-2 town. The former could be said to have to have broadly had the support of the Castors and the latter of the Chomus, though in the best of democratic traditions, there was a fair amount of floor crossing and cross voting. As it transpired, the metro man won.

History reversed itself in 1980, which I consider a watershed year in the Castor-Chomu epic struggle. I qualified for the civil services in the first year when a new system of examinations were introduced, which gave candidates from hinterland areas a far better chance of being successful. The Castor-Chomu conflict manifested itself in the Mussoorie training academy during the election to the Presidentship of the Mess Committee. The Castor nominee, supported largely by Delhi-bred and educated probationers lost to his Chomu rival from a second tier town, supported by the officers from small town and rural backgrounds. More significantly, the civil services, in the years to follow, saw the entrance of officers from smaller towns from all over India and a large influx of professionals from the engineering, management and medical fields. The hegemony of the Delhi University history postgraduate in the civil services literally became history.

Even though the social composition of the younger echelons of the civil services underwent a radical change, the veterans were still the old urban-based class, most comfortable with English and tied to each other by the common bonds of an elite university education and membership of a closed Delhi group which had access to the rarefied portals of the Delhi Gymkhana, the India International Centre and the Delhi Golf Club. Coveted positions in the bureaucracy, especially choice foreign assignments, still went to those younger officers who were the protégés of these venerable worthies. Journalism and academia were two other areas where the Castor influence was still evident, with those educated in Delhi’s premier universities dominating the landscape. The bureaucrat, journalist, academic and the increasingly ubiquitous representative of international organisations formed a cosy set which frequented the same watering holes, attended the same seminars and went on junkets abroad, financed by the aforesaid international organisations.

1992 marked the second watershed in the upward ascent of the Chomu. The demolition of the Babri Masjid gave cheer to a large number of Indians who had never been accepted in the rarefied environments of Lutyens Delhi or South Bombay (as it was then). The eclipse of the Congress in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections paved the way for governments that comprised persons removed to at least some extent from the Castor influence. Gradually, those who would, in the normal course of events, have comfortably continued in the Castor group shifted their allegiance to the Chomus. The years 1998 to 2004 saw this internal churn in the Castor group, with a goodly number of educated intellectuals, especially those who felt they had been bypassed in the issue of just rewards in terms of high office and posts in government, moving firmly to the ranks of the party that was seen as espousing and supporting Chomu aspirations to a more exalted position in society and in the political framework.

But it was undoubtedly 2014 that ushered in the decisive shift in the balance of power to the Chomus. The previous decade of UPA rule had witnessed a gradual disillusionment about the Congress party in influential sections of the Castors, who pined for a decisive leader and a party that was not tainted by widespread allegations of corruption. (That they forgot to imbibe the lessons of George Orwell’s Animal Farm is another matter altogether). The last seven years have seen many who would earlier have been visualised only as Castors casting their lot with a party that relies to a considerable extent on Chomu support and makes no bones about its dislike for the descendants of the Castor class, pejoratively referring to them as the Khan Market gang (for those not familiar with Delhi, Khan Market is supposed to be the watering hole of the swish, westernised set of Delhi).

Little wonder then that there have been systematic efforts in recent years to create a new weltanschauung in the Indian psyche. Universities, under enthusiastic Vice-Chancellors, have sought to reframe the academic curriculum, long seen by right-wing academics as overly influenced by liberal and Marxist thought. The Indian middle class from the majority community has been inundated with a surfeit of rhetoric and propaganda designed to stir its nationalist instincts and invoke pride in its cultural heritage spread over millennia. The Central Vista project to redesign and rebuild the entire architecture of Lutyens-designed New Delhi represents the apogee of the aspirations of those who seek to give a specific shape to the Chomu identity. India’s masses will no longer have to genuflect to the symbols created by an imperial power and by those who, though Indian in name, represented the same world view.

As the Castor-Chomu dynamics of politics and social power play out on the Indian landscape, there is only one crucial issue that remains to be kept in mind, namely the Holy Grail that represents the Constitution of India. If Abrahamic religions can be said to rely on a holy book, the Indian nation has come into being on the foundations of this document. Having drawn on the best principles of different Constitutions from around the world and on healthy democratic practices, the Constitution of India came into existence as the result of the informed deliberations of an august body of individuals in the years immediately preceding and following India’s independence. This is a Constitution that is meant to be followed not just in letter, but in spirit. As Dr. Ambedkar stressed in his speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949 “The first thing…we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives.” He also emphasised the close interrelation of the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity enunciated in the Preamble to the Constitution of India. It is the manner in which citizens of India abide by these cardinal precepts of democratic behaviour, in thought, word and deed, which will determine the future of India as a haven for democracy, in a world buffeted by the storms of autocratic practices.

 

1 Feb

Opposition In Residence

Posted by vramani in human interest, political economy, public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , , .

(James Hacker, Minister in Her Majesty’s Government: “The Opposition aren’t the opposition…They’re only the opposition in exile. The Civil Service is the opposition in residence.” – Yes Minister, Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn)

Politicians in India, at least from Indira Gandhi onwards, have, notwithstanding their pious public utterances, always veered in favour of a “committed bureaucracy”, faithfully executing the dictates of the party in power. The general public, therefore, has this mistaken impression that civil servants mindlessly toe the line of their political masters (I don’t dare use the feminine equivalent). This is not quite the whole truth, at least in the three decades when I was in service from 1980 onwards. Not that we did not have our share of those who were ready to oblige the political executive for a mess of pottage. But there were sections of the civil service that did their utmost to ensure that their political bosses did not get their way in issues that reeked of impropriety or financial wrongdoing.

I have written earlier on the tactics that can be employed to forestall patently illegal requests from the political class (see here). These include (a) let us see, “Parkalam” in Tamil and “Baghoon sangto” in Marathi; (b) making oneself scarce; (c) sending the file into orbit; (d) setting up a committee; (e) recording one’s views on file; (f) asking for written orders; and (g) asking/getting  ready for a transfer. These distracting tactics are not necessarily a reflection of bureaucratic ego or of an innate desire to take no decisions. Mostly, they are intended to give time for reflection on the proposed course of action or to make the vexed issue irrelevant with the passage of time.

Apart from the bureaucratic bulwark against impetuous, risky decision making, there are even more crucial checks and balances in a functioning democracy which are intended to check autocratic tendencies in the political executive. Brute majorities in the Lok Sabha (think India 1971/1984/2019) tend to invest a sense of infallibility in the minds of the majority party leaders. It is easily forgotten that democracy is not just the exercise of their electoral rights by citizens at five year intervals but also the giving of voice to their hopes and aspirations in the interregnum between elections. Four institutions play major roles in this theatre of democracy: legislatures, the judiciary, media and civil society.

Central and state legislatures are the first check on arbitrary executive actions. Even where the opposition is in truncated numbers, its voice can be powerful when its representatives speak fearlessly on issues of public importance. In the Nehru-Indira heyday, politicians like Minoo Masani, Piloo Mody, Nath Pai, Madhu Dandavate, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Jyotirmoy Basu commanded respect with their scathing denunciations of ruling party actions, couched always in parliamentary language. House committees were dreaded by bureaucrats for their interrogation of executive actions. Parliamentary debates, reported fully by the print media, gave citizens an idea of what their leaders were up to. Bills went through discussions in select committees before they were put to vote. Ordinances were resorted to as a last, emergency option only when the House was unlikely to convene in a reasonable time period. That these vital functions of the legislature have been given the go-by in recent months and years is a cause for concern. Important bills are either subject to inadequate legislative scrutiny or are rushed through as money bills, obviating the need for passage by the Upper House – abrogation of Article 370, passage of the CCA and farm bills are prime examples of legislative bulldozing. Ordinances are now the new flavour, with the COVID pandemic providing a ready excuse to bypass legislatures.

The courts are the main support of citizens against arbitrary executive actions backed by pliant legislatures. While the seal of approval given by the highest court of the land in the early years of our democracy to preventive detention and sedition laws caused unease in liberal minds, the court did qualify the exercise of such sweeping powers by the state in a number of landmark judgments. The enunciation of the principle of “basic structure of the Constitution” in the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati case had reassured the public that the judiciary would safeguard the Constitution against executive encroachment. That the Supreme Court went against this principle in the 1976 ADM Jabalpur case was a setback to personal freedoms, though the court corrected its position in this case forty years later. With the Supreme Court entertaining public interest litigations (PILs) and taking suo motu cognisance of issues of vital public importance, the next few decades saw a phase of judicial activism that seemed to bode well for a healthy democracy where the judiciary kept the executive in check. This trend has, unfortunately, gone into reverse gear in recent times with a number of executive and legislative actions yet to go on the anvil of judicial scrutiny. Prominent among these are the electoral bonds issue, demonetisation, the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, the CAA law and the three farm laws. More worryingly, the Supreme Court (and many High Courts) are yet to pronounce on executive actions that have impinged on basic freedoms of citizens: the large number of pending habeas corpus petitions, the internet restrictions in Jammu & Kashmir and the incarceration and denial of bail in many cases involving civil society activists, journalists and intellectuals.

The media, both print and electronic, has largely abdicated its role as guardian of the qui vive. During the 1975-77 Emergency, it crawled when merely asked to bend: now it is, with notable exceptions, ready to lend its services for dissemination of inaccurate, sensational news and take partisan positions on issues of public importance. The spread of digital and social media has mitigated this one-sided view somewhat but, with the likely introduction of curbs on such independent media, the prospects for free and frank expression of points of view appear dim.

Finally then, it is left to civil society, especially those in its ranks who cherish the values enshrined in the Constitution, to raise the flag for the fundamental rights listed in Part III of the Constitution. When all other avenues to secure timely justice and redress of grievances seem to be foreclosed, sections of civil society have resorted to the satyagraha route propounded by Mahatma Gandhi during the freedom struggle. This was vividly illustrated in the two mass movements — the anti-CAA and the farmers’ protests — over the past year. As the Mahatma was to emphasise in his experiments with satyagraha, it is based on an inviolable relationship between the means and ends, with its essence in the purity of means, totally non-violent in nature, adopted by a pure person, as also in the constant quest of this person to purify her/himself through self-examination. The satyagraha effort can be undermined and brought to a close because of external “Chauri Chaura” events, such as civil disturbances (riots/violence) or natural occurrences (COVID), as witnessed in recent times.

Mutual tolerance and respect for institutions are the hallmarks of true democrats. A democrat at heart is aware that (s)he holds the position of power for only as long as the people wish and that there has to be space for opposing viewpoints in a functioning democracy. Equally, other political formations have to be given due regard and the space to function freely. But even more important is the recognition of the inviolability of institutions meant to safeguard democracy. It is these institutions that, as the checks and balances in a democratic society, act as the real “opposition” in keeping the executive under control. As in the case of charity, democracy too begins at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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