Notwithstanding various government claims of its achievements, relationship between different institutions, both autonomous as well as official, and the Modi government has been at best uneasy.
On 26 May 2018, the BJP-led NDA government completed four years in office. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now entering the last year of his term with the determination of retaining the power with a renewed popular mandate in the next general elections, due next year.
The four-year-period is good enough to make a dispassionate appraisal of the performance of the government on different counts. It is time to have a look at various policies and initiatives of the government and the impact they have made on the national life and that of the life of citizens.
Governments are remembered by posterity and are counted for building new institutions. At the same time, one of the significant duties of any government is to sustain old established institutions by strengthening and maintaining them.
Confrontation between the government of the day and institutions is not happening for the first time in India’s political history since independence in 1947. Such a pattern of conflict and undermining of institutions was particularly on display during former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s tenure.
While double-speak and disinformation have been the tools of communication of the political parties for a long time, deceit, disruption, destruction, disinformation and fake news have been added to the political armory of the political establishments, that have sought to replace discussion, debate and dissent.
Disruption and destruction have been one of the significant hallmarks of the BJP for some years and the Modi government has put them to use effectively to unsettle the established order and status-quo. In many instances, it has caused uncalculated damage to the functioning of the polity and society.
The ongoing confrontation between the government and the country’s judiciary is one of such manifestations of the same policy. Within few months of riding to power on popular support in 2014, the Modi government had enacted a legislation for setting up a National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), seeking to change the rules of appointment of judges and their transfers to the high courts and the Supreme Court by replacing the present system of collegium. This move sowed the seeds of discord between the executive and the judiciary.
The Constitution, in Article 50, states on the issue of separation of judiciary from executive: “The State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from executive in the public services of the State.”The rift between the executive and judiciary, whose separation of power is mandated by the country’s Constitution, began to grow when the latter stuck to its ground by declaring the NJAC Act as unconstitutional. There is no denying the fact that an independent judiciary is the foundation of the democracy because people’s faith in the government and democratic system would be eroded — partially or completely — if judicial process was not perceived and accepted as fair and non-partisan.
The judiciary stands today at crucial crossroads. If concrete steps are not taken immediately to arrest the burgeoning distrust between the two autonomous wings of the democratic polity, there is every danger of its destruction.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), established in accordance with the provisions of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, has evolved over the years and has come to acquire functional autonomy. In the very first year of the Modi government, a rift appeared during the tenure of former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan whose policies of stable interest rates and tight control of inflation were seen by the Government as anti-growth. While the Government pushed for lowering of bank interest rates, Rajan stood firm keeping them relatively high so that inflation remained tamed.
The government did not extend Rajan’s three-year controversy ridden tenure. In his place, Urjit Patel was appointed, who took charge of the RBI on 4 September 2016. Now, even Patel does not seem to be on the same page as that of the government in dealing with inflation and growth.
Modi’s trust in the instrument of disruption was again on evidence on the night of 8 November 2016 when the Prime Minister informed about the demonetisation of currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination, declaring 90 percent of the country’s currency illegal. The decision was announced in a televised address to the nation. A close look at the media reports of that period strongly suggest that the government’s demonetisation decision was not well coordinated with the RBI. The replacement of the demonetised currency notes with fresh currency notes took a lot of time, putting the citizens in great difficulties. Even the choice of the replacing of high denomination currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 with Rs 2,000 notes proved to be wrong as it added to the hardship and woes of the users.The country’s economy, even after 18 months, has not fully recovered from that assault, forcing one to surmise that the RBI was in the dark about the decision. Because if it was on board with the government decision, the over hundred-year-old institution would definitely have taken steps to ameliorate the difficulties and hardship that confronted the citizens.
However, here too there was a controversy when the Modi government chose to supersede two senior officers of the Indian Army to appoint General Bipin Rawat as the 27th Chief of the Army Staff in 2016. This has happened second time in 33 years when the government of the day has not followed the tradition of choosing the senior most general for the top post.
General Rawat’s political statements, appearing to be out of cuff or out of turn, have possibly been made with the approval of the ruling establishment since official spokespersons have never disowned them or issued a denial. In earlier governments, Armed forces personnel, particularly top ranking officers, were not encouraged to issue statements on subjects that were considered to fall in the domain of the ruling party or the ruling coalition.
The institution of the prime minister itself, under the BJP-led NDA government, seems to have undergone a change. Modi has chosen to abandon past conventions and traditions by being far more political. He has often committed serious mistakes while quoting figures and historical facts, thus lowering the credibility of the institution of the prime minister in public eye, particularly among the informed sections of the civil society. He has also not refrained from attacking and running down of the opposition during his foreign visits, discontinuing with the past tradition when prime ministers did not raise domestic issues on foreign soil.
At the target of the government was also the educational system of the country. Convinced that the country’s colleges and universities were centres of left wing thought and liberal values, the RSS asked its government to change the present system by packing central universities and government-held institutions with persons owing allegiance and loyalty to right wing Hindutva thought.
Premier universities like the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), University of Hyderabad (UoH), Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Banaras Hindu University and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) are some institutions worth mentioning here where the instrument of disruption has been used to damage them with the objective of replacing the accepted value system with that of the RSS.
Dissent, discussion and debate sought to be first stifled and then replaced through single-track nationalism. Faculty and students were divided between those who conformed to the official RSS-BJP line and were therefore nationalist and those who stood with old liberal system and came to be dubbed as anti-nationals.
Violence and muscles were used to create trouble and the state machinery often stood on the side of those who indulged in criminal acts. Some State governments crushed youth and student agitations with a hard hand, thus reducing and eliminating democratic spaces for debate and discussions. University Vice Chancellors and other academic institution heads behaved with adult youth like schoolchildren, trying to discipline them with threats of expulsion or not allowing them to appear in annual examination for not attending classes and other acts of indiscipline.
On the other hand, one of the biggest disruptor of social peace and communal amity has been the movement of cow protectionism or cow vigilantism. It has destroyed centuries’ old traditions causing huge and unimaginable disruption in both trade and industry.
While cow protectionism was conceived as a political instrument to garner votes, its enthusiastic implementation by Sangh parivar supported anti-social and lumpen elements has caused sharp divisions within Hindus, with Dalits bearing the main brunt. There have been attacks on Muslims and Dalits by cow vigilantes, disrupting social peace, a prerequisite for economic development.
Another institution that stands seriously damaged is media whose independence and freedom is crucial to the functioning of democracy. The Prime Minister does not hold press conferences in the country, thus blocking every opportunity to question him. His predecessors used to hold open press conferences regularly. He also stopped the tradition of taking media representatives during his foreign tours.
Press freedom too has come under government attack. The government attempted to control the media by using Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax authority and other state agencies against relatively independent media organisations.
In short, irreparable damage to the democratic polity of the country has taken place in the four years of the present Government.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Satish Misra was Senior Fellow at ORF. He has been a journalist for many years. He has a PhD in International Affairs from Humboldt University ...
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