2020 has been a bad year for the health of the Indians and also for the health of the Indian democracy. The Modi-Shah regime, authoritarian by instinct and belief, has used the pandemic to further undermine the processes of constitutional democracy and strengthen its control over the state and society. In pursuit of its ambitions, the regime has launched a multi-front attack against the Indian Parliament, Indian federalism, the Indian press and Indian civil society organizations. Let’s consider these in turn.
In the years when he was Prime Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi showed a constant disregard for the legislative procedure. A report compiled after spending a decade in office showed that of all Gujarat’s top ministers since the state was formed, Modi called the fewest assembly sessions.
Months would go by when the assembly would not meet; when it did, one day would be enough to resolve the issues at hand, with plenty of time devoted to mourning members who had passed away. As is well known, aside from ignoring input from the Opposition MLAs and even his own party, Chief Minister Modi rarely consulted his own cabinet on important political decisions.
Modi has carried this disdain by consulting with him to New Delhi. For him, Parliament is a place to make the odd poignant speech, not a chamber for deliberative decision-making. The partisan attitude adopted by the president of the Lok Sabha and the president of Rajya Sabha is very much in line with the way of thinking of their leader. Its deputies act in the same way.
Consider the way the agricultural bills were “passed” through Rajya Sabha, with House Vice Speaker Harivansh violating all rules and regulations of Parliament by refusing to allow actual voting and turning the bills into law. on the basis of your own sense of home.
On this deviation from democratic practice, PDT Achary, former secretary general of the Lok Sabha, wrote: “The systems of parliament are designed to allow the opposition to express its opinion and the government to get away with it. If the former is not possible, the parliament as a democratic institution cannot survive for long ”.
Turning a blind eye
Those who are Modi bhakts, or who believe that the end justifies the means, have ignored these violations and received the bills as “historic.” On the other hand, supporters of the agrarian bills with more scruples and a deeper understanding of history have honored us with warning of the dire consequences of such disregard for Parliament.
Thus, as lead attorney Arvind Datar writes, “The enormous economic loss and dislocation of normal life around Delhi could have been completely avoided if the bills had not been crushed by Parliament. The agitation teaches us the importance of following parliamentary procedure not only in letter, but also in spirit. ”
Union ministers may blame the opposition parties, the Khalistanis and the urban naxals, but, as Datar points out, it is the “extraordinary haste with which the agricultural bills were passed in both houses. [that] it has created the current crisis, which can only exacerbate the economic problems caused by the pandemic ”.
More recently, the government canceled the winter session of Parliament citing the pandemic, even as the Union Interior Minister was addressing large political demonstrations in Assam and West Bengal.
As Prime Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi claimed to believe in “cooperative federalism”. As prime minister, he has tried to savagely curtail the rights and responsibilities of states. Again, the farm bill can serve as an example. As Harish Damodaran has noted, since the Constitution clearly places both “agriculture” and “markets” on the state list, in these matters “the Center can encourage, incentivize, persuade and cajole states. However, it cannot legislate by itself ”.
However, through a creative (mis) interpretation of an article on the concurrent list covering trade and trade in food products, the Center passed these bills, through the dubious procedure in Parliament described above, and without consult the states at all.
The pandemic has seen a more widespread attack on the federal principle. The powers of the Center have been strengthened by laws of the colonial era and the National Law on Disaster Management. Meanwhile, state governments run by opposition parties have been undermined by bribing, cajoling, or intimidating lawmakers into changing their allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
A true indicator of how much power matters to the BJP and how little the health of Indians cares was that the prime minister waited for the swearing-in of the new government in Madhya Pradesh before imposing a draconian lockdown four hours in advance.
Partisan governors
In its attack on federalism, the BJP has focused especially on two large states: West Bengal and Maharashtra. Here, governors more loyal to the ruling party in the Center than to the Constitution and central investigative agencies more loyal to their ministers than to the law have been used by the Modi-Shah regime to harass non-party governments. BJP and currently governing these states. . This intimidation has become so blatant that the BJP’s once loyal and long-term ally, Shiv Sena, was forced to declare: “What if our Prime Minister has a vested interest in destabilizing state governments? The prime minister belongs to the country. The country stands as a federation. Even states that do not have BJP governments, those states also speak of national interest. This feeling is being killed. “
In his years as Prime Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi deeply distrusted even the most apolitical civil society organizations. It has brought this mistrust to New Delhi. The year 2020 witnessed a tightening of the already significant restrictions imposed on non-governmental organizations. The new amendment to the Foreign Tax Regulation Law, argues one analyst, is designed to facilitate “arbitrary and vindictive action by authorities.”
By curbing and limiting NGOs, the bill “will have far-reaching consequences in the fields of education, health, people’s livelihoods, gender justice, and indeed democracy in India. “.
Narendra Modi has never been very fond of journalists who think for themselves, as evidenced by his refusal to hold a press conference in six and a half years as prime minister. The year 2020 saw growing attacks on the independence of the press in India. In the first two months after the shutdown was imposed in late March, some 55 journalists faced FIR, physical intimidation, and arrest. The highest number of attacks against journalists was recorded in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh, all governed or controlled by the BJP.
As a report by the Freedom of Expression Collective noted, “2020 has been a bad year for journalists in India… Killings and attacks on journalists have continued unabated. While self-censorship within the media remained an open secret, the government sought to increase regulation of the media, with media policies, funding and administrative mechanisms for online media.
India is now ranked 142nd on the World Press Freedom Index, ranking well below Nepal, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, although the fact that we are three places above Pakistan may bring some comfort to deshbhakts.
Stigmatize Muslims
Apart from attacks on Parliament, federalism, civil society organizations and the press, 2020 has also seen increased stigmatization of India’s large and vulnerable Muslim minority. This stigmatization has been overseen by two of the most powerful politicians in India. The hand of Interior Minister Amit Shah is most visible in the BJP’s Bengal campaign and in the police’s partisan handling of the Delhi riots and its aftermath and the hand of Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Adityanath in the imprisonment of a growing number of people. Muslim men charged with shady, flimsy or nonexistent charges.
Despite the prime minister’s recent speech at Aligarh Muslim University, it is clearly Adityanath’s majority that represents the deep and internal sentiments of the party’s faithful, as manifested in the enthusiasm of other BJP chief ministers to enact discriminatory laws and practices adopted in the UP.
When the new laws on agriculture and labor were passed, there was a chorus of applause from free market columnists who shouted: “The crisis has not been in vain.” The chorus was gullible, because sustained economic growth requires both a level playing field and the rule of law. Nor does it exist and cannot exist in the Modi-Shah regime.
Capitalists who contribute the most to the secret ballot bond scheme will receive preferential treatment over those who do not. To politicians who defect from other parties to the BJP, miraculously, all corruption cases against them are dropped. The police, the bureaucracy, and even the courts allegedly act in the interests of their political masters rather than in accordance with the law.
Accountability for the state and private sector requires the transparent gaze of a free press, an informed debate in Parliament, and independent civil society organizations. With what happened in 2020, we have even fewer of these than before. Finally, you cannot have social harmony if the state and the ruling party treat non-Hindus as inferior to those who are.
For the prime minister and his party, political power, ideological control and personal glory take precedence over the economic and social well-being of the citizens of India. Therefore, they have used, or rather abused, the crisis to weaken the institutions of Indian democracy and the traditions of Indian pluralism in order to promote the construction of an authoritarian and majority state, which they seek much more diligently than any another thing.
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This article first appeared in The Telegraph.
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