Posts Tagged ‘liberal democracy’

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.

1 Dec

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

Posted by vramani in elections, government, public affairs. Tagged: , , , .

(After a nine month hiatus, the Gadfly Column resumes publication today. Blogs will be published on the first and fifteenth days of every month. The blogs will also be carried on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Comments are welcome)

 

It is a reflection of the irony of our times that a blog on liberal democracy has, for its title, the words of Chairman Mao in 1957, when he said “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Over sixty years later, the jury is still out on whether this represented a genuine attempt to encourage inner party democracy or whether it was a shrewd move aimed at weeding out dissidents, followed as it was by a ruthless purge reminiscent of the Stalinist Soviet Union of the 1930s. And yet, the beauty of Indian liberal democracy since 1947 has been the space given for alternative views to flourish and for state policy to reflect the consensus arrived at after listening to opinions from all shades of the political spectrum.

Of course, there have been the occasional hiccups like the Emergency and the tendency of successive governments in India (both at the centre and in the states) to use draconian legislation to curb views interpreted by them as seditious or as a threat to public order. But Indian democracy has survived so far, despite the gloomy prognostications of many Western “Cassandras”, precisely because of its diverse population, drawn from a khichdi of languages, religions, castes and ethnicities.

I will stick out my neck by saying that caste divisions in the majority Hindu community and the formation of linguistic states postponed the slide into a unitarian state ruled by one community. Undoubtedly, there is much to be said for reforming Hindu society through the “annihilation” of caste as a marker of social privilege. But the assertion of specific caste groupings through the electoral process in different states ensured that political power did not remain with a monolith like the Congress. When the Janata party experiment failed in 1979, one of the reasons was the discomfort of various coalition partners with what they saw as the efforts of the then Jan Sangh to use the levers of powers to build up its sectarian political base. The fall of the V.P. Singh government, backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in 1990 was a foregone conclusion right from day one of that government. The Raja of Manda knew his survival as Prime Minister was contingent on withstanding the Ram Mandir Shilanyas programme and L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra. His Mandal gambit was intended to check the possibility of the consolidation of the Hindu community on the emotive Ram Janmabhoomi issue. Unfortunately for him, not only was the Congress Party not willing to back him, the “Young Turk” Chandrashekhar was only too ready to assume the mantle of Prime Minister, even if only for a little over seven months. The 1990s rise of parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), based on the support of specific castes and social groups, ensured that, for twenty five years after the Babri Masjid demolition, the party that stood to gain from its demolition was in power for just five years in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

Nehru and Rajaji were strongly opposed to the creation of linguistic states, worried as they were about the development of fissiparous tendencies in the new republic. It took the martyrdom of Potti Sriramulu to hasten the move towards linguistic states. Political developments in the 1960s seemed to vindicate their fears: the attempted imposition of Hindi provoked a backlash in Tamil Nadu (then Madras State) and the bifurcation of Punjab raised strong passions in the Punjabi Sikh population (to be unfortunately revived in the years after 1980). But the creation of linguistic states also had a positive spin off in the formation of strong regional parties, starting with the DMK in Tamil Nadu, followed by the star duo of MGR and NTR in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and spreading like wildfire to states all across the country, from UP, Bihar, Maharashtra and Karnataka to Odisha, Assam and Bengal.

The clout of regional parties has diminished somewhat in recent years, thanks to a variety of reasons. Poor governance, especially in states like UP, has cost parties like the BSP and SP dear, while the influence of “Big Brother” BJP has reduced the scope for independent maneuvering by parties like the Biju Janata Dal and the Telugu Desam Party. With legislators apparently ready to desert the ship that won them the elections (for reasons that do not need to be explicitly spelt out here), India has entered a phase of fluid politics, where the results of an election do not guarantee which party or parties will govern a state for the next five years. “Aaya Rams” are back with a vengeance more than fifty years after 1967, though whether they will metamorphose into “Gaya Rams” over time is still a moot point.

It is in this context that the recent statement at a conference by the Prime Minister endorsing the idea of “One Nation, One Election” and stating that this is not “just an issue of deliberation, but also the need of the country” has set the cat among the pigeons. No report on his speech has clarified whether “one election” is restricted to just parliament and state elections, though that is the inference we can draw for the present. The issues of expenditures on conducting elections every now and then and the impact of frequent elections on development works can be debated. What is more crucial are the implications of such a move for the federal nature of the Indian state. A state government does not draw its legitimacy from the central government, given that India is a Union of States, affirmed by no less sanctified a document than the Constitution of India. Issues that are prominent in state elections do not often figure on the national agenda. More importantly, in the absence of any provision to recall legislators, elections offer people the only opportunity to hold their representatives accountable. There is also the issue of the lack of predictability of the tenure of a Vidhan Sabha (or, indeed, of the Lok Sabha). Loss of majority of the ruling party or dissolution of the House could trigger fresh elections well before the due date. It would be well-nigh impossible, without major constitutional changes, to manage such contingencies were simultaneous elections to become the norm. I am not holding the simplistic view that simultaneous elections necessarily lead to the same party winning at both the state and central levels. But in recent years, there has been a marked tendency to highlight issues of nationalism and patriotism, with even the armed forces being dragged into election speeches. Playing on people’s emotions could skew results in state elections, especially where large sections of the electorate, including the so-called “educated middle class” have no nuanced understanding of the issues at stake, falling prey to the barrage of fake news streamed at them by social and electronic media. There is also the very likely danger that, given the opacity of the Electoral Bonds system, one party could garner a very high proportion of the funds donated, something that recently available information seems to corroborate.

But, above all, I value the festival of democracy characterised by elections at regular intervals at different levels of government, from the gram panchayat level up to the Lok Sabha. Having conducted and supervised elections at the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and municipal levels, I have observed the coming to life of people who are otherwise immersed in the mundane chores of life, whether in Motihari, Muzaffarpur or Mumbai. The right to vote is an affirmation by the citizen of her dignity as an individual. She has the unfettered right to exercise her discriminating judgment each time there is an election, whether to the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha or local bodies, and the full authority to question those who seek to represent her on issues, be they national, state or local. She may be, in daily life, a domestic worker, nurse or shop salesperson. But come election time, she is the power behind the throne, determining the future of those who seek to govern the country or state. It would certainly be churlish to deny her her place in the sun for brief periods at regular intervals in a five year period. Why reduce it to just one time in five years, when governments spend money on so many unnecessary items? Nor are elections the main reason why governments function so inefficiently in executing development works. The ability to handle transfers of power without bloodshed is the mark of a mature democracy, no matter what the cost is in terms of time, energy or money.

6 Oct

The Strong Man Cometh

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

(*: Man refers in this article to the species homo sapiens and has no gender connotations)

“Après nous le déluge” (Madame de Pompadour)

“Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” (The Second Coming: William Butler Yeats)

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” (Voltaire)

The apocryphal quote attributed to the mistress of Louis XV of France sums up the attitude of sections of the population to the demise (and the removal from the earth) of a strong, autocratic personality from their midst. One saw it in Uzbekistan, where one despot was replaced by another; why, even in a state like Tamil Nadu, which is part of the noisy, fractious democracy that is India, it was difficult for people to come to terms with Amma’s Anno Domini. The Pandava Yudhishthira was spot on in his reply to the Yaksha’s question “Day after day countless people die. Yet the living wish to live forever. What can be a greater wonder?” This futile desire of the masses to immortalise their icons is reflected in the conviction of those worshipped that they are destined to live, if not forever, at least into the distant future. This is possibly one of the reasons why there is no attempt at succession planning, though the fear of a far more competent successor may well weigh on the mind as well. Be that as it may, what is more worrisome is that more and more societies, especially those with a tradition of liberal democracy, are turning towards perceived “supermen” and “superwomen” to tackle the vexing problems of the twenty first century.

It is not as though there have been no dominant ruling personalities in history – just think of Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great and Napoleon. What distinguished the despots of the twentieth century from their predecessors was the access to technology that enabled them to so totally dominate the minds and actions of their subjects. Stalin, Hitler and Mao, and an assortment of lower-scale tyrants, could impose their will on every citizen, using the reach of communication technology to create an atmosphere of unpredictable terror and herding together citizens into camps and communes (for reeducation, ethnic cleansing and indoctrination) in numbers never contemplated in earlier centuries. Superior weapons, instruments of terror and ideology-brainwashed bureaucracies eliminated millions in the name of future utopias. The inevitable end of the controlling autocrats led to the unravelling of their tyrannical systems. But Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall have not quite led to the expected explosion of democracy. In fact, China continues to combine a liberalised economy with a highly restrictive political system and Russia, after flirting with democracy for a few years, is headed for a one-man, one-party dictatorship for the foreseeable future. Authoritarian regimes are thriving in many countries in Asia, and Africa and Latin America swing between democracy and absolute rule.

What, however, gives greatest cause for concern is the growing tendency for citizens of liberal democracies to readily jettison the basic tenets of democracy – pluralism, tolerance, free expression – in a world where they perceive themselves as insecure, in the economic, political and social senses. It started with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, led to the political earthquake of last year in the USA and is now spreading slowly but surely across Italy, France, Holland and Germany (although the citizens of France have thwarted it for the time being). A figure from the right end of the political spectrum is emerging in every democracy who promises heaven on earth to his leaderless flock. So what traits characterise such men (and women) and which environments provide the best soil for their growth and entrenchment in a society? I can think of six such elements:

Megalothymia

Megalothymia is defined by Francis Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man) as “the desire to be recognised as superior to other people”. This desire for recognition typically aims at dominating others and bending them to one’s will. Mostly observed in the political class, but equally recognisable in corporate chieftains, top bureaucrats and orchestra conductors, this trait manifests itself in the conviction of the megalothymic person that he has a unique mission to fulfil during his tenure on earth. Fukuyama argues that even a person like Socrates stressed the need for a class of courageous and public-spirited guardians who would sacrifice their material desires and comforts for the common good. But Socrates was also clear that the megalothymic tendency needed to be curbed if the political order was to be preserved. Liberal modern democracies attempt this discipline through the existence of countervailing centres of political power and the second, third and fourth estates (the legislature, judiciary and press respectively) and what could be termed the fifth estate (viz. civil society).

Social engineering:

The unique mission of the megalothymic leader has, since the early twentieth century, taken the form of engaging with the transformation of the very structure of society. Communism and National Socialism represented ideologies that had their own visions of the future course history should take. Forced collectivisation and gulags in the Soviet Union, the solution of the Jewish question in Nazi Germany and its wartime acquisitions and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in Communist China were efforts to direct societies in specific directions envisioned by the Great Leader, with the terrible consequences being borne by millions of people in the half century from 1925 onwards. Recent actions or intentions, like extra-judicial executions in the Philippines, demonetization in India, promoting the Islamic way of life in Turkey and the proposals of the new President of the USA to reduce immigration and restrict individual choice in personal matters like abortion and same sex marriage also bear the imprint of social engineering imposed from above.

Infallibility:

In the effort to impose his vision on society, the Leader has, always, to be steadfast in the certainty of his convictions. George Orwell’s “Big Brother” is always right. No opposition or dissent is tolerated, with likely competitors being dealt with through purges (Bukharin), assassination (Trotsky) or reeducation (Deng Xiao Ping). We can observe this trend in political life in India, both in national and state-level parties, where heresy (opposition to the Leader) is punished by banishment from the party and political exile. Democracies have this cardinal virtue: as the philosopher Karl Popper put it, governments can be replaced in a bloodless way, acting as a salutary check on the hubris and vaingloriousness of potential autocrats.

Authoritarian predisposition:

The megalothymic personality is quite likely to display authoritarian tendencies. What encourages this trait in him is the display of an authoritarian predisposition in the population he rules over. Karen Stenner (The Authoritarian Dynamic) has pointed out that, in times of perceived normative threats, this authoritarian disposition is activated and leads to support for the authoritarian who promises a return to a secure, glorious past. Support of the majority of the population is not required; it is enough if a vocal, aggressive section of the population backs the autocrat, with the rest of the population either too divided or disinterested in offering any meaningful opposition. The minority then employs extra-constitutional, vigilante methods to terrify the general population through its unpredictable responses, as Hitler’s Storm Troopers did in the early years of his rise to power.

Exclusivist ideology

The regime of the strong man requires the development of an insular approach, with the ‘other’ identified as the source of threat. Policies are tweaked to restrict the freedoms available to specific groups, related to association, livelihood, movement and expression. Media outlets are encouraged to spread an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. The results are already visible in the world’s two largest democracies, where vigilante groups and individuals are dispensing “street justice” to the victims of their ire, innocent citizens who are merely going about their daily lives.

Institutional capture

Institutional capture begins with the electoral process. Adverse domestic economic conditions, an insecure external environment, joblessness, inflation and (increasingly in many countries) a harkening back to past glories, religious dogma and perceived historical injustices bring electoral majorities to the strong man. With the legislature under control, other institutions are subtly subverted. The media, which is already overwhelmingly under business control, is slowly moulded to conform to the vision of the strong man and to hail the utopia he is bringing about. Packing the senior judiciary with persons whose ideological stances mirror those of the ruling dispensation enables dilution of the one check on executive power. The civil service is kept in line through side-lining independent professionals and promoting those committed to the ruling ideology. Above all, the control over pedagogic content is ensured through staffing educational institutions with loyal apparatchiks and rewriting history to mould the minds of the coming generation to accept a worldview vastly different from that of their preceding generation.

The emergence of the strong man in society after society comes at a time when liberal democracies are coming under increasing threat. Those who have benefited economically and socially from the efforts of past governments readily run down the achievements of these previous governments and place the blame for all ills on the inertia and corruption of the past. With a largely technocratic approach to life, and discounting the liberalism and pluralism that have been the fundamental bedrocks of prosperity, the citizens of the “Brave New World” yearn for certainty and security, forgetting that it is they who have the power to make or unmake their future. In this environment of disenchantment and hopelessness steps in the strong man fulfilling the dire prediction of Yeats “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”