IN any democracy worth its salt, simple violation of rules of governance, leave alone outrageous ones like the Modi government has inflicted on the country, would have forced an abject apology if not the fall of the ministry. There was once a time in India when senior ministers would quit over a train mishap here or a financial bungling there. A court had the integrity to sack Indira Gandhi from office for a trivial indiscretion by today’s standards: she spoke from an election podium built with public funds. It’s not how Mrs Gandhi reacted to the charge by suspending everyone’s civil liberties, but remember that a system was in place that could put an ex-prime minister in Tihar jail, which it did. A law court could dare to throw out the prime minister of the day from his or her office for the smallest of violations.
Today, the government and its managers wake up the governor in the wee hours to swear in their choice of chief minister in a politically crucial state, quietly, surreptitiously, lest the city wakes up and subverts the plan. This was what happened in Maharashtra before the plot recoiled on the Modi-Shah duo. The breaking up of Jammu and Kashmir could be pushed in parliament only after the chief whip of the Congress party mysteriously resigned the night before the vote. This kind of stuff happens in Hindi movies. News reports now say the MP had switched over to the BJP after late night canvassing. This wasn’t the first time parliament was subverted. The globally touted economic reforms were rooted in bribery. A group of tribal MPs were tutored to vote for the Rao government. They were later convicted and jailed for accepting bribes from the minority government. Their vote helped clinch a narrow win on which India’s grand economic superstructure is predicated.
The world was aghast when the prime minister, wilfully, announced the demonetisation of 85 per cent of Indian currency notes. Terrorism and black economy were cited as targets. Perhaps the ‘vishwaguru’ would enlighten the world on how to choke terror with demonetisation. The misery it inflicted on the poorest strata bordered on criminality. The benefit for the government was huge though. It siphoned off the opposition’s funds ahead of the critical Uttar Pradesh elections of 2017, leaving them too cash-strapped to challenge the world’s most powerful election behemoth. The economy hasn’t recovered from the shock and the pandemic only turned it into a double whammy for millions of both rural and urban poor.
Adding to the brazenness, we now have the Pegasus outrage. Modi is refusing to clearly deny buying or using the extremely intrusive snooping software from Israel. He doesn’t even want to discuss the issue in parliament. Tycoon Anil Ambani and French President Macron have been mentioned among those listed for snooping. They share much considering their role in the Rafale warplanes deal whose terms Prime Minister Modi changed overnight to allow Ambani into the frame.
Read: PM Imran's number among those targeted for surveillance by India using Israeli spyware
Many things will get known when the government changes, if it ever does.
One would love to see the reaction in robust democracies to the revelation that snooping may have been done on the woman and her family who worked with the then chief justice of India, the man she accused of seeking to sexually exploit her. The judge sat on his own hearing and dismissed the case. He later made the landmark judgement that cleared the road to a temple in Ayodhya. The judge was promptly elevated as a Rajya Sabha member. But what about the snooping charges on the woman and her family? Was the Pegasus intrusion carried out to facilitate the Ayodhya project? Many things will get known when the government changes, if it ever does.
Meanwhile, some kind of opposition seems to be taking shape at Mamata Banerjee’s call and Sharad Pawar’s initiative. All members will be crucial in the project that should be a mission to plug the holes for all time to come to make the constitution invincible and the system inviolable — from the police to the judiciary, from the access to business in the affairs of the state to foreign buccaneers who see India only as a market and not as a nation of a billion-plus unequal and marginalised citizens. The political skein is too complex to accommodate everyone’s wishes and fears in one go. Akhilesh Singh doesn’t support one-third reservation for women, so be it, for now. Lalu doesn’t get along with the Dalits in Bihar though he is close to Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, or so goes the charge. The Shiv Sena targeted Muslims in the wake of the post-Ayodhya violence. The Left Front hates Mamata and supports the BJP’s stance against immigration from Bangladesh plus targeting Maoists. Mehbooba and Farooq don’t see eye with the Hurriyat.
In this vein, my daughter spotted the street hoarding from the car window and announced the man in it was a disappointment. It was Arvind Kejriwal and he had recently supported the death penalty. The daughter’s politics is straight and narrow but earnest. I said I liked Kejriwal with all his regressive traits, as he was the rare one who would not hesitate to call out big businesses exploiting the Indian economy with the help of conniving governments. Rahul Gandhi also has been naming names of late, which is a rare feature among contemporary politicians, but he got emboldened to speak against the powerful tycoons, I think, only after Kejriwal led the assault on crony capitalism. Kejriwal was the Edmund Hillary among those emboldened to rally against the loot. Gandhi was a close second. Navjot Sidhu is the third. The media reviles them all, in degrees, strategically, while promoting the rivals. Therefore, if you don’t like some of the opposition’s qualities, it’s fine. Apply Deng Xiaoping’s litmus test. “Does the cat catch the mice?” If it does, it doesn’t matter what colour the cat is.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2021