Posts Tagged ‘Emergency’

30 Jun

50 years on…history repeats itself

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

June 25 is a date that has long receded in my memory. The sudden invocation of this date by the Prime Minister at the start of the 18th Lok Sabha triggered off many memories. I remember standing at a bus stop in Delhi on the morning of 26 June 1975 when I heard of the imposition of the emergency in India. I reached home to hear the voice of Indira Gandhi announcing the imposition of the internal emergency. As a politically naive college student with a passing interest in politics, the implications of the Emergency never struck home till far later. I saw the first display of opposition to the emergency when protesting students, including the then Delhi University Students’ Union President Arun Jaitley, were rounded up by the police and bundled into buses before their incarceration in prison.

Over the next 18 months till the end of 1976, we, the citizens of India, were bombarded with news of the remarkable changes taking place in the economy and society (reminiscent of the pronouncements in Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984). As news of the demolitions in Turkman Gate in Delhi and the forced sterilisations filtered through to us through a largely quiescent print media, disgust and cynicism started building up in the general public. The 1977 Lok Sabha elections blew the safety cover off the pressure cooker, with the Congress party getting the least number of seats in 25 years after the 1952 elections.

The past few years are strangely reminiscent of the Emergency: the difference is in the use of the knife rather than the hammer to injure the body politic. The use of MISA during the emergency to detain political opponents has been replaced by laws like the UAPA and PMLA, which have been used to arrest those voicing dissent against or opposing the ruling dispensation, ostensibly on the vaguely worded grounds of threat to the integrity or sovereignty of India or the likelihood of striking terror in people or for economic offences. Just as the use of MISA was made immune from judicial review during the emergency through inclusion in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, the stringent provisions for grant of bail under Section 43D(5) of the UAPA and Section 45(1) of the PMLA make it very difficult to secure bail, as they virtually require an opinion of the judiciary that no prima facie case establishing guilt has been made out. The continued incarceration of a number of the accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case and of a serving Chief Minister and a former Deputy Chief Minister are evidence of the reluctance of the judiciary to grant bail even when the accused pose no flight risk and are not likely to tamper with the evidence or influence witnesses. As in MISA, the present scenario allows for continued detention for long periods while the investigating agencies take their own time to file chargesheets and the judicial process moves at a snail’s pace.

The cavalier attitude of the administration towards the rule of law is another feature common to the emergency and the present day. Excesses committed by the bureaucracy (and the police)  during the emergency have been well documented by the Shah Commission. Today, demolitions of even residential buildings, especially, but not restricted to, of the Muslim community, are carried out for apparent infractions like protesting against arbitrary executive actions or even alleged violation of anti-beef laws. There is a marked reluctance of the executive magistracy and the police to act firmly against hate speech and to strictly enforce the law when processions violate the rights of the minority community. The support of the police for the actions of vigilante groups in various states ruled by the BJP emboldens these groups to enforce their writ in matters relating to alleged “beef” consumption, “love jihad” and “conversion”. Indira Gandhi’s concept of a “committed bureaucracy” seems to have taken shape in the recent decade.

During the emergency, in the famous words of the paterfamilias of the BJP, L.K. Advani, “when the press was asked to bend, they crawled.” The situation today is more pathetic: large sections of the media genuflect before power and fail in their duty of keeping a check on executive excess. Not only that, they have taken it upon themselves to put a gloss on all actions of the government.

The Supreme Court faced its moment of truth during the Emergency in its inability to confront the denial of civil liberties by the government, best exemplified by its judgment in the ADM Jabalpur case. Today, the higher judiciary (the Supreme Court and High Courts) are facing the stonewalling by the central government on appointment of judges. Delays in hearing cases with major constitutional implications and perplexing, contradictory judgments by the judiciary at various levels has eroded the faith of the citizen in the judicial process. Unfortunately, in comparison with its 1977 predecessor, which conducted the then Lok Sabha elections admirably, the Election Commission of India has, in the recent Lok Sabha elections, been far too lenient in enforcing the Model Code of Conduct, leading to a rather bitter, acrimonious election campaign: but then those were times when, in spite of political differences, decency prevailed in public life. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has been rather chary in releasing reports on the performance of Ministries and PSUs in recent years, in marked contrast to the alacrity it displayed in the pre-2014 period.

What marks the difference between the environment of the emergency days and that of the present day are the deplorable fissures that have developed between different communities and groups in today’s society, as well as the atmosphere of bigotry and intolerance that seems to envelop society like a dark cloud. The Lok Sabha Speaker, just after his election to that august post, called for two minutes silence in remembrance of the dark memories of an emergency that is half a century old. Given the serious reservations in large sections of civil society and the political class about the infringements and restrictions on basic human rights and freedoms in the last decade and the erosion of trust and fraternity between social groups, it would have been in the fitness of things if, instead of the two minute silence, he had announced a full day discussion in the Lok Sabha to ascertain the views of members, especially those from the augmented opposition benches, about the worsening social cohesion and harmony between groups and the lessons all of us, especially those governing the country, need to imbibe from the Emergency. Unless we, as a nation, introspect on where we are headed, we will be left ruefully contemplating the words of the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

30 Nov

Revisiting Old Favourites

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

In the summer of 1975, I was a typical middle-class college student: apolitical, though not unaware of political events, immersed in college activities and casting fleeting glances at the road ahead in life. The Emergency was a turning point for me and many others. After the initial shock, we witnessed the arrests of many activists, including prominent members of the current ruling elite, on the Delhi University campus, and got used to boring fare in the daily newspapers. Slowly, frustration started setting in — fear of speaking out because of rumours of police informers prowling around the campus, being incessantly subjected to glowing accounts of the achievements of the government, including the heir-apparent, and the reports, as 1976 wearily dragged on, of demolitions in Old Delhi and forced sterilisations, most markedly in the Hindi belt. The announcement of elections in January 1977 came as a relief, followed by joy when Congress party stalwarts deserted an obviously  sinking ship and euphoria on the morning of 20 March 1977 when Indira Gandhi’s party was given marching orders by the people of India.

I am not, though, soliloquising on those momentous days, but rather on three books that strongly attracted me during the Emergency and its aftermath: George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon. The Emergency era, with its midnight arrests, glorification of the leader and breathless media  accounts of remarkable economic achievements, was drawn straight from the scripts of  these three classics. Post-1980, although India went through its multiple convulsions, these books, while occupying pride of place on my bookshelf, gathered dust as the Fukuyama liberal democracy era seemed to indicate that we were moving to more hopeful times.

Not any more, though. 1984 has been replicated in the scenario of recent years. Big Brother, in the shape of the Great Leader, beams at us from giant-size hoardings, full-page newspaper advertisements and from television screens, in country after country. Media reports are full of government’s achievements in the financial, economic, social and foreign policy spheres. The television screens scream shrilly at us when exposing dastardly “anti-national” conspiracies, with news anchors frothing at the mouth and their coiffured hair popping up a la Kishore Kumar in the Hindi film Padosan. And with the daily cacophony of alleged attacks by disaffected elements, including migrants, minorities and liberals, that day is not far when we will be treated to public displays of captured enemy soldiers.

Darkness At Noon has its echoes in the recent midnight drama at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) headquarters in New Delhi. That the government saw fit to undertake a coup against a senior police functionary under cover of darkness is alarming; that it posted ham-handed, heavy-footed sleuths to snoop on him the next day betrays a paranoia that would have done Stalin proud. The pattern is the same elsewhere in the world: a senior Interpol representative vanishes in China, a journalist is strangled and dismembered in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul and journalists and liberal thinkers are summarily despatched in countries like Russia and India. Concentration camps and Gulags may have become passé but detention camps have come to stay in the world’s largest democracies, India and the USA, all set to house “migrants” from neighbouring countries.

Animal Farm is, of course, a perennial favourite in describing politics of any hue. Every politician promising change morphs into the image of his/her predecessor: the “oppressed” imitate their oppressors in every single case. Even more telling is the popularity of fake news, reminiscent of “Four legs good, two legs bad” metamorphosing into “Four legs good, two legs better”. History is rewritten so that the dumb animals can no longer remember their initial revolt against the tyrannical Farmer Jones.

Where then does it look as though humanity is collectively headed to? Hopefully not the terrifying society envisioned in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the United States of America becomes an authoritarian theocracy, with the regulation of thought and speech at every step and selected women serving as reproductive vessels for a fast-vanishing elite. For me, the mind-numbing moment in the novel came when the central character, June, is suddenly informed at a shopping counter that she can no longer draw money from her bank accounts. Flashback to 8 PM on 8 November 2016 when over one billion citizens were summarily informed that in four hours’ time, currency of particular large denominations held by them would become worthless and they would have to approach their bank branches as beggars to release even limited amounts of their own money. Even though the Supreme Court has not accepted the mandatory linking of bank accounts to Aadhaar numbers, the fact remains that 99 percent of Indians have been compelled to link their bank accounts with their Aadhaar numbers. I shudder at the thought of a future dictator arbitrarily and unilaterally deciding at the stroke of the midnight hour to freeze all bank accounts and gain complete control over the finances, and other actions, of his/her country’s inhabitants. Should that ever occur, our venerated poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore’s famous line in Gitanjali will have to be modified to “Into that hell of unfreedom, my Father, let my country  not awake.”

 

21 Mar

When the President of India speaks

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

(March 21, 2017 marks the fortieth anniversary of the lifting of the Emergency in India)

We normally get to hear the President of India speak on three formal occasions: on the eve of Republic Day and Independence Day and at the joint session of both Houses of Parliament marking the start of the Budget session. Of course, the President of India also makes speeches on various other platforms over his/her tenure. But what marks all these speeches is their standardised nature – they are either listing the priorities and achievements of the government of the day or are exhortations to select audiences on specific subjects. Which is why the publication of the first of his three volume memoirs by President Pranab Mukherjee was interesting: it was the first by a President while still in office. More intriguingly, it dealt with his first fifteen years in Lutyens Delhi during the Indira Gandhi era.

Of particular interest to my generation, which received its political education from the Emergency years, is his analysis and understanding of the Emergency – the events that led to it, the rationale for the Emergency and the happenings during that period and the political resurrection of Indira Gandhi in the post-Emergency years. Even today, forty years on, I remember my feelings on the morning of 21 March 1977 – “Bliss was it that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven”- when a captive All-India Radio and Doordarshan had to admit that Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party had been decisively routed in the polls. At a juncture now in the country’s and world’s history when strong personalities bestride the political scene and when the tenets of liberal democracy are being seriously questioned by the inhabitants of such democracies, there is need to try and understand the social forces at work in a country like India and what these imply for a country which has defied its critics and sceptics by doggedly persisting with a democratic form of government, despite all its flaws and aberrations. A comparison of 1975/77 India and her offspring of 2017 bring out the bright and dark sides of present-day India and enable possible prognostications of what the future holds for us Indians.

  • The educated middle class expansion and its implications: Post-1991, the middle class population in India has grown significantly in numbers apart from being engaged in a variety of occupations. The 1975 Indian middle class was largely employed in government service and beholden to the rulers of the day. The present day middle class Indian could be an entrepreneur, one who works in the organised private sector or is self-employed, very often one with international footprints. She has had access to improved education opportunities, is far more aware of thought currents across the globe and has many more avenues to express herself openly. And yet, the educated middle class is today far more susceptible to the allurements of narrow nationalism, jingoistic pride and intolerance of the views of others, as evidenced by the vicious attacks on social media. The ideals which guided the framers of the Indian Constitution find little resonance with the millennial generation. The technocratic worldview has little patience for liberal, humanistic values. It is little wonder then that liberal democracy is facing an existential crisis today.
  • The explosion in mass media: Freedom of expression has been facilitated by the internet revolution and the humongous growth in electronic and social media. Those of us who had just All India Radio and Doordarshan for meeting our information needs during the Emergency find the current Babel Tower of the electronic media refreshing, even if somewhat irritating at times. Twitter trolls notwithstanding, there is opportunity for every Indian with digital access to put forth her views. And yet, the flip side can be disquieting. While print media in the past was privately owned, big business has now come to dominate both print and electronic media. Editors and news managers are under increasing pressure to conform to the business interests of their owners, unlike in the past. The dissemination of news is also coming to resemble a cricket Twenty-Twenty match, with inexperienced reporters (having little understanding of ground realities) excitedly putting forth garbled versions of the true picture. Even more dismaying is the tendency of news anchors (puffed up with self-importance) functioning as judge, jury and executioner, silencing all inconvenient voices and sending to the gallows those they consider lacking in patriotism and national pride.
  • The Big Brother syndrome – I am the State: We are now in the era of the strong man, whether in India, Russia, the USA, Turkey or the Philippines. Indira Gandhi in 1975 was strong in her own right but she did not have the wide, rapturous acceptance of her predominant position that a Narendra Modi enjoys today. The problem is that the person, party, state and nation are today all seen through the same prism. Criticism of any one of these is seen as opposition to the nation-state. An aura of invincibility is sought to be created around the superman, using the media and capitalising on an ineffectual political opposition. It is true that unlike 1975, when Tamil Nadu was probably the only prominent non-Congress state, today’s political scene is marked by a multiplicity of parties, especially regional formations, ruling in different states. Many of them are often hostile to the ruling party at the centre and lose no opportunity to oppose it on a variety of issues. However, with power and money rather than principles and convictions being the bases for political conduct, there is no certainty about the opposition either, as the recent events of manufacture of governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Manipur show.
  • Diversity – of language, customs and religion: Running a subcontinent of India’s size and heterogeneity is no easy business, more so for a centralised, authoritarian government, as Indira Gandhi found to her cost in 1977. The multiplicity of tongues, religious beliefs and customs, cultural and dietary patterns render the enforcement of a uniform, majoritarian worldview well-nigh impossible. But, in recent times, efforts are being made to impose straitjacketed versions of history, culture and ideas that are drawn from the Gangetic plains. Conformity with the majoritarian mindset is sought to be ensured through indoctrination, legislation and government action and, where these prove inadequate, through resort to vigilante action, whether to dictate what women can wear and do or what people can eat, see and talk.
  • Institutional capture: The first attempts by the government of the day to bend institutions of democracy to its whims and fancies started in 1975 with the supersession of judges of the Supreme Court and the enunciation of the concept of a committed bureaucracy, apart from very crude efforts to muzzle the media. History seems to be coming full circle once again, with steps being taken to exert the influence of the political executive on appointments to the higher judiciary and with no clear system being adopted for appointments to the elite bureaucracy at the level of the Government of India (the media has already been tamed to a great extent, as mentioned earlier). Institutions of higher learning and statutory bodies are being packed with appointees beholden to the reigning political order.

It is impossible (and highly risky) to hazard any definite conclusions about the likely direction of politics in India in the coming decades. Inferences can at best be drawn from the straws in the wind as revealed by the actions of the government and the averments of its spokespersons. In totting up the balance sheet for India’s political system, what gives cause for some comfort is the resilience of the Indian people and their refusal to tolerate incompetent, corrupt and authoritarian behaviour on the part of those elected to represent them. In the first volume of his memoirs, Pranab Mukherjee has glossed over the rationale behind the Emergency, apart from sticking to the usual Congress line of opposition indiscipline, unrest and the call for the resignation of the Prime Minister: having been a loyal Congressman for most of his life, it would be too much to expect him to frankly analyse the inner motivations of the primary actor in first imposing the Emergency and then calling for the elections that led to its end. What is important is whether, forty years hence, we as a people understand the significance of a functioning democracy and the rules and conventions by which it should operate. Sadly, we, the so called “thinking classes”, are ready to hand over our powers (and even our freedoms) in our quest for security and certainty, forgetting that democracy is eternally a story that is in the making. It is we, the citizens of India, who have to write that story, learning from past mistakes. Else, there will be need to revert to a perennially favourite quote of mine “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”