Is democracy fading in India as the year 2024 fades? Or, are we merely seeing a state of accelerated backsliding which can be arrested if a few turns of the key click right, or if the opposition – with its contours slippery and hazy – can do a reset, or better still if the government itself – uncharacteristically – can turn more respectful of constitutional sensibilities, by force of circumstance, if nothing else?
But what if what we see turns out in reality to be something worse than just a quickened backslide of the democracy path? Then what do we call it and what will it be, exactly? And will democracy be prone to recovery after such a churn? These questions come to mind in looking at the present year and seeing it as a part of the broader package of policies, ideas and actions seen in the time of Prime Minister N.D. Modi in the last ten years.
What should we as a nation make of the recent happenings in parliament when recently the ‘One Nation One Election’ (ONOE) bills were introduced (among other egregious developments), and of the crucial change in the election law effected late last year, as well as the change made in election-related rules only a few days ago? These render the machinery of state and national polls captive in the hands of the Union government – the Modi regime – arguably the most regressive and the most repressive India has known.
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In the backdrop of changes to the election law and rules, the ONOE mantra, pushed by the PM for several years, becomes a death sentence for parliamentary democracy as we know it, no less.
Its import is likely to be felt way beyond just hurting the federal structure of the constitution that many non-BJP parties fear. The ONOE scheme has now grown well beyond the embryo stage and has been sent to a joint parliamentary committee for discussion before it is brought to the House for discussion and passing, if the government sees fit.
Since late last year, when the selection of the chief election commissioner and other election commissioners was left solely in the government’s hand under the changed law, in disregard of the hallowed principle that the election authority must be an independent entity to ensure fair play in a democracy, the government – or the ruling party – openly controls the play area at election time, subordinating the voting public to its will.
In the event, the government’s opponents may win only when permitted to do so. Sometimes for tactical reasons, in order not to arouse widespread disbelief with the results or suspicion of wrong-doing, this becomes a necessity. In fact, this permits the government to claim that the opposition has an equal chance since it does win seats and sometimes even state majorities.
This is what we have seen in the various state elections in the past year. In the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year, the ruling party could not prevail as extensively as it may have liked because of the angry mood of the voters on the ground in several states. Thus, official intervention to favour the ruling party couldn’t succeed wholesale, causing the Modi-commanded BJP to lose its majority in parliament. Uttar Pradesh was a striking example in this regard. But people’s will is unlikely to be exercised with such vehemence, generally.
New gimmicks, new rules
To the already skewed picture in favour of the government on the law side, a new rule was added last week. The amended rule does not permit citizens (voters) to examine video footage of the polling station and the EVM machine at work even when corruption and foul play are alleged or suspected.
‘Do not question!’ – that’s the order to the people.
Most recently, this played out after the recent Haryana assembly election, although the new rule on disallowing access to video footage had not been passed then and is likely to have been in the works. When the poll results in many areas appeared illogical, even outlandish, and citizens asked to be shown the video documentation, the poll authorities stonewalled with cryptic answers.
Now the option of asking to see the video footage has been barred. This means, in effect, voters must accept with grace the meal the EC serves them; they must not complain it was unfit for human consumption.
It is appropriate to recall that earlier this year, weeks before the Lok Sabha election, the regime had frozen all bank accounts of the Congress, the main opposition party, doubtless with a view to being the only national player in the field by unfairly removing the main rival from the arena.
With the election process being brought comprehensively in the grip of the government through change of legislation and rules, the implementation of the ONOE scheme, if it goes through in parliament, would facilitate an easy capture of state power in its entirety by a rogue party through the election process at the national level and in the states. And this would be legitimate!
Is India still a republic?
This is startling, coming 75 years after the inauguration of the republic in India following a non-violent, decades-long, peaceful, mass struggle and insurrection led by a prophet-like fakir. And the one who means to upend the republic is already being recognised, even in sympathetic circles, as the master of legerdemain and worshipper at the altar of the big capital.
In some recent discussion in the West in relation to the burgeoning of right-wing regimes or the enhanced acceptability of right-wing parties in Europe, and the return of President Donald Trump in America, the expression “neo-authoritarianism” is heard, and the same tends to get extended to the current regimes in Türkiye and India.
In general, what this probably suggests is that demagogues have got to the centre of things by making tall, undeliverable promises on the economic side or exploiting worsening economic conditions to divert political agendas in atavistic directions – religion, race and the like – and concocting the hateful “other” to attack without remorse. Behind the backs of people is conducted the drive toward a hard right market agenda dominated by big capital – although this is couched in populist vocabulary – easily understood by the hard-worked citizen who is looking for a short-cut relief from everyday misery.
For something similar, the leading Indian Marxist political economist Prabhat Patnaik prefers the term “neo-fascist”. This is partly based on the patterns seen in the German experience but also relies on his understanding of the evils of “neo-liberal” market agendas being pursued internationally and dutifully emulated in India – leading to the acceleration of “nutritional poverty”, to take an example that is close to the bone.
Is that the appropriate vocabulary for India? The question appears fair, but until we hit upon the appropriate linguistic paradigm for Bharat that takes into account her diversities and geographical spread and contested but syncretic past, “neo- authoritarianism” and “neo-fascism” could be inexact substitute expressions but reasonable working guides, nevertheless.
Call for a reckoning
Looking at history, the first thing to remember is that false messiahs do not deliver. They usually lead their people to destruction, as Hitler did. Trump in his first term didn’t do much to relieve economic anxieties but has still bounced back after a gap. This suggests that the state of society, based on atavism primarily, permits failed gods to return. Patnaik notes this but this flexibility phenomenon may not have a theoretical underpinning.
Modi is not dissimilar to Trump. This populist demagogue has indeed led the ordinary Indian to pauperisation step by step but finds a way to return to power riding on the back of religion-based propaganda – and also on account of the absence of a viable opposition. The invocations to imaginary religious angst helps.
The fraudulent promises to build the stairway to heaven still fetch votes though people are slowly catching on. But because he can see the hurdles rising, Modi thinks up schemes that may lead to dictatorship but appear to be within the bounds of permissible constitutional change. This keeps the intellectual class gabbing and splitting hairs.
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The Modi dispensation has worsened economic hardships. The national economy has shrunk. Private investment is badly down because there is a falling effective demand from people getting poorer, joblessness has never been higher, and the prices of essentials remain stubbornly high over stretched periods. Average nutritional levels have contracted.
The government has dropped collecting poverty-related data. While wages have stagnated even for the professional classes, to say nothing of those down the ladder, big business profits have soared as if on a cryogenic charge. This is because the wage component of production costs is drastically down. But how is such precarity to be politically managed and exploited for votes?
The question is obvious and in Modi’s India, so is the answer – by digging up every mosque in sight to look for a temple in order to raise the communal temperature which is a kind of preparation for religious war. Anyone who differs is dubbed “anti-national” or “anti-Hindu”.
The politics in parliament and the state legislatures controlled by Modi’s party is characterised by metaphorically beating up the opposition through wild mis-readings of past or present events, or just plain lies. The by-and-large controlled media dutifully magnifies the government’s message, always seeking to put the opposition on trial and finding virtues in the government’s vilest acts.
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The just ended session of parliament, which notionally marked 75 years of the adoption of India’s constitution, with a discussion in both Houses, was converted by the prime minister himself into a sorry spectacle as he launched an unprovoked, partisan, low-grade and uninformed attack on the main opposition party, the Congress, as if he is frightened by its very shadow.
A lurking ghost of the Congress’ most prominent leaders, starting with the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, seems always around to haunt Modi and ready to ambush him, so often that he seeks to berate India’s stalwart first leader, practically every single day. It is not clear why, though one guess is that Nehru’s undisputed great stature as an anti-colonial fighter, and the part he played on the world stage, gives Modi a dreadful complex.
Perhaps, more importantly, Modi’s strong aversion to Nehru is rooted in the fact that in the aftermath of the Partition riots and the communal bloodletting which accompanied it, the first prime minister took a forceful stand and beat back the gathering forces of religious fanaticism and crypto-fascism which had attempted to overwhelm the nascent democratic order by force. He did so practically single-handed as Mahatma Gandhi was gone, assassinated by the same forces.
Seven decades on, the memory of that ideological defeat and failure to mount an ideological counter-narrative to the freedom struggle, evidently continues to rankle and torment the likes of Modi to such a degree that the prime minister was not done, during the recently concluded session of parliament, until he had denounced on Twitter (now X) “the rotten Congress ecosystem” to his heart’s content.
Clearly, it is the all-embracing credo of the Congress – of not promoting the cause of any one section of society – which makes Modi nervous. The party itself is now a pale shadow of what it was in its glory days. Even so, Modi’s ire is now invariably turned on Nehru’s great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha.
This is because Gandhi appears to carry the genetic chip – to borrow from electronics – of his famous ancestor in his passion to stand up to religio-nationalist mischief and bullying that is attempting to take over the system, seemingly through chopping and changing the constitution (which is permitted) but in a way that nullifies the republic’s founding document itself. That appears to be the game currently underfoot as we seek to pass into the new year.
But what of politics in the year 2025? It needs to be thought of anew, based on going back to the people, and not on coterie consultations or to advance leaders’ ambitions. The INDIA bloc had a purpose. Time may have come to look beyond it in a new way.
Such is the repression, or at the very least, expressed antagonism against those who are not outright regime supporters, that nothing less than a united front of social forces – and not merely of opposition parties – may need to be on the active agenda.
Opposition parties as well as social and professional organisations and voluntary agencies have a role in this effort. The mobilisation needs to be for people’s livelihood demands, against repression, and against the communal fire, not necessarily against specific politicians or parties.
Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.
