The medical term for the condition is “pain empathy”. Although not personally impacted in any way, I have been a mental wreck for the last few years, psychologically lacerated by what Narendra Modi has wreaked on this once vibrant democracy. It’s got so bad that those closest to us – living in America – have accused me of nursing a psychotic Modi fixation.
But since Trump’s “accession” as President, these solicitous critics have themselves been obsessing about the Trumpian blight on their lives. And they represent a cross-section of American society – an AID programme executive, three professors, a physiotherapist, a federal employee and four corporate fat cats who are in a state of shock and rage at what’s unravelling.
For that matter, anybody in America who is not a racist, is appalled by Trump’s wholesale sacking of Federal and AID employees, irrational tariffs and the sheer heartlessness of the mass deportations. While empathising with their plight, the bitchy side of me couldn’t help reminding my kin of their offhand dismissal of my angst vis-à-vis Modi’s depredations in India. I quoted the old Native American proverb: “Before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes!”
Americans are experiencing today what we have been dealing with for over a decade in Modi’s India. Significantly, while these two narcissistic authoritarians have a common intent, they differ in their methods. In venturing to upend their democracies and calibrate the entire governance ecosystem to do their personal bidding, Trump has gone at it hatchet-style, whereas Modi has done it with a scalpel.
Both Trump and Modi are wedded to ideologies of hate
Both are wedded to ideologies of hate that propagate the inherent superiority of one ethnicity over another and the “othering” of sections of society. Trump makes no bones about his commitment to Christian nationalism which is essentially white racism while Modi has been nurtured in the toxic doctrine of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism. They are hell-bent on institutionalising the politics of division and hate, which is a death blow for democracy in multi-cultural societies.
Using religion as the smokescreen for rallying supporters, the mechanics for strengthening and expanding Trump’s power as President have been spelt out in Project 2025, the blueprint for governance, which is a product of the Heritage Foundation, an extreme right-wing think tank. The New York Times found that in his first month in office, Trump had made more than 60 significant pronouncements that smack of the exhortations contained in Project 2025,
But long before Trump hit his political straps, Modi had commandeered right-wing think tanks that have helped steer the Hindutva agenda in the last ten years. The shadowy Vivekananda International Foundation, conceived by national security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and peopled with bureaucrats, serving and retired, and owing allegiance to the RSS, along with the India Foundation which has Shaurya Doval – the NSA’s son – as a director, have been hugely influential in navigating the ship of state in the last ten years.
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In the alternate universe of the authoritarian, all the institutions of governance – the civil service, the courts, the law enforcement agencies, the media and various ombudsmen – are to be brought to heel. Immediately after taking charge, Trump let loose the psychopathic Elon Musk and his chainsaw on the Federal bureaucracy of around 2 million employees.
The stated aim is to rid the system of what Trump derides as “the deep state” that, he alleges, is determined to sabotage his agenda. Thousands of federal employees, including in the FBI and CIA, have been fired or sent on leave. The unilateral firings and other constitutionally dodgy executive actions have resulted in an avalanche of lawsuits. In the first fifty days, more than 40 court rulings, including by the US Supreme Court, have at least temporarily halted some of Trump’s rogue initiatives.
Gaming the entire system
But Modi, under cover of democracy, has covertly abridged our freedoms and put in place an infinitely more insidious “electoral autocracy” that, although diminished post the 2024 Lok Sabha election, still holds fast. Unlike Trump’s incendiary and even brazenly unconstitutional actions, Modi has masterfully gamed the entire system, weaponising the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary, apart from using gangster-like intimidation, blackmail and plain bribery to ensure that he has free rein.
Instead of summary dismissal of public servants, he has used government’s executive powers not only to position his loyalists in key positions in various ministries but also in pivotal institutions like the Election Commission, UPSC and the UGC. The most scandalous is the government’s recent order permitting civil servants to be members of the far-right RSS – akin to the US government allowing federal employees to be members of the Proud Boys.
Education has always been a prime target of authoritarians. Using the proverbial sledgehammer, Trump has already closed key Department of Education offices and fired half of its workforce. He has withheld funds from institutions that incorporate diversity, equity and inclusion, the goal being to dismantle the Education Department altogether and revoke the federal government’s core responsibility of ensuring equal educational opportunity for all. Besides, Trump is determined to re-write history and “promote patriotic education” to align with the purposes of his ultra-right constituency.
Modi has been lethally effective in giving a right-wing orientation to education. The seamless appropriation of the institutional framework by the acolytes of the Sangh Parivar in the last decade has defiled every facet of education that will have far-reaching consequences. Through subversion of the system, the Parivar has succeeded in large measure in imposing a dubious Hindu nationalist narrative into our understanding of the past.
During electioneering, Trump was the quintessential populist, playing on the fears and anger of farmers, working and middle class and promising fulfilment of the ‘American Dream’ that would ensure material wealth and upward social mobility for them. But at his inauguration in January, the richest men of America were lined up behind him, a dead giveaway that his concerns are purely plutocratic. It recalled the $ 1.5 trillion of tax cuts for billionaires in his first term when, for the first time in history, billionaires paid a lower rate than the working class.
In like vein, Modi has embraced the plutocratic economic model, a full-blown capitalism of deregulation and wholesale privatisation. The entire system has been rigged for the rich, particularly two corporate biggies, through offering state enterprises for a song for privatised commercial plunder, reducing tax rates for corporates and writing off a mind-boggling Rs. 16.35 lakh crore owed mainly by corporates to public sector banks in the last decade.
Disruptive economic policies like tariff wars and demonetisation
Of Trump’s disruptive economic policies, the craziest is his tariff war directed mainly against America’s traditional and closest allies – Canada, Mexico and the European Union. It has already hurt US households and businesses by fuelling inflation, hitting hardest the agricultural and durable goods manufacturing sectors that rely heavily on global trade and investment. Fears of a recession have triggered a US stock market sell-off that has wiped out $4 trillion from the S&P 500 peak in February.
But we can ill-afford to snigger at such stupidity. Who can forget the insanity of Demonetisation, the brainchild of our homegrown despot, that wrecked our economy, rendered millions unemployed and shaved off 3 percent of the GDP!
Also Read: Trump Now Says USAID’s $21 Million for Voter Turnout in India ‘Given to My Friend Modi’
On the environment, the world has denounced Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty and dismantling environmental protection measures within the country. Trump’s callous rallying call to the fossil industry to “Drill, baby, drill!” says it all!
In contrast, the Modi government has escaped international censure with disingenuous claims regarding environmental protection while going full throttle on fossil fuels, denuding forest cover and pressing on with environmentally disastrous infrastructure projects such as the Chardham yatra and sundry thermal and hydel projects. Glaringly for a country with 13 of the 20 topmost polluted cities in the world, ‘amrit kal’ India has no national policy on environment protection or climate change.
Using a battering ram to clamp down on media platforms and cow journalists critical of him and his agenda, Trump has run the entire gamut of bullying, legal harassment and arm-twisting of media owners but so far with marginal success. Modi, on the other hand, has masterfully enslaved the mainstream media, skilfully deploying the carrot and stick strategy and profiting from his thriving corporate crony links.
Arguably the most corrupt but definitely the most brazen US President ever, Trump has issued an executive order directing the justice department to halt prosecuting Americans accused of bribing foreign government officials to win contracts, conveying he message that anything goes in business.
Without resorting to such cynical endorsement of wrongdoing, Modi has systematically undermined the fight against corruption through calculated diminution of the Lokpal and the subversion of the Right To Information (RTI) law. The Modi regime has created an environment where only the corruption of its opponents is investigated and criminally prosecuted.
A dying democracy and a democracy struggling to be reborn
In America, democracy is dying, and in India, following a recession for ten years, democracy is struggling to be reborn. Leaving aside the underlying causes for the rise of authoritarianism, the prime executioners of the democratic breakdown in the two countries are incontrovertibly, Trump and Modi – two peas in a pod. And obviously, the only way to recover the democratic spirit and essence is to ease them out but that’s easier said than done. In our deeply polarised societies, these two wannabe dictators are still the most popular leaders in their countries.
History reminds us that mass protests have brought down the most oppressive tyrannies. But so polarised are our societies that today’s protests have become ineffective sectarian expressions of outrage at injustice, swatted away by the brute power of the reigning oligarchies. A divided world is what shores up authoritarians. Tragically, that’s our present plight!
The writer is a former civil servant. The views are personal
