Pursuing authoritarian rule through democracy : Narendra Modi

Despite the elitist skepticism about the electoral politics in India and many infirmities in the practice of democracy in our country, few will dispute the fact that both Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee had roared to win their respective state assembly elections with massive democratic mandate. Modi for the third successive reign, Mamata for the first time after demolishing the red citadel of 34 years standing. The pathways to power were very different. As persons they have many differences in characteristics, so also may be in their officially projected worldviews including political ideologies and affiliations. But there appears to be a singular unanimity in certain basic features of temperament and style of functioning when one observes these two currently prominent politicians in India. In this first part we deal with the peregrinations of Modi. We hope to devote a future post to Mamata.

-         Modi’s initial gambit was to project a hardline Hindutva face to encash the majoritarian anxiety and anger sweeping Gujarat like many other parts in the country following the communal riots post Babri Masjid demolition in Mumbai and elsewhere and then the Mumbai blast 1993 and thereby create a strong base in Gujarat. The Hindutva dividend accrued to him through a clear-cut democratic process, namely, the assembly election in 2002 that took place with the backdrop of the Gujarat carnage.

-         In the next stage, the challenge of wide spread national and international condemnation and criticism that the state government and administration faced with regard to its acquiescent role during the pogrom and willfully partisan rehabilitation policy it followed in the aftermath, was cleverly turned into an opportunity for consolidating his vote bank among the majority community in Gujarat in the name of defending the ‘asmita (pride)’ of the five crore Gujaratis and promoting the cause of Hindutva under attack from the ‘pseudo-secularists. In course of time by a subtle spin Hinduvta was made synonymous with nationalism. Fighting Islamic terrorists, axiomatically assumed to be Pakistan-supported, by any means, extra-judicial or otherwise, was a duty a truly nationalist chief minister and his administration was justifiably proud of executing. The 2007 assembly election results handing him an absolute majority mandate gave him confidence in continuing more vigorously his ongoing experiment with a model for an economic development of Gujarat he had already embarked on and that he would later claim as a panacea for the whole country.

-        The third stage was the economic transformation of Gujarat along the clear-cut capitalist prescriptions. The liberal economic policy pursued by the government coupled with the traditional entrepreneurial zeal and the business skill of the Gujaratis helped the state notch up a very good macroeconomic growth rate (among the highest achieved by various states in India). The stick-at-nothing approach to achieve this goal made Gujarat the most business friendly state in the country, acquiring land for infrastructure (roads and connectivity) and other ‘public purpose’ that included private industry and other entrepreneurial activities, encouraging cash crops, allowing preferential share in scarce water resources to agri-business and industry. There was no ambivalence as to who and what the government stands for and no pretension for equity or inclusiveness. Income disparity, children malnutrition, water scarcity and agricultural distress in many drought affected districts, increasing segregation of the urban population along the religious lines, poor and dwindling rehabilitation of the 2002 riot victims and to top it all increasing debt that the government incurred in order to live up to its promise of business friendliness – all of these and more were brushed aside in the name of achieving the enviable growth statistics. An impression has been created among the upper and middle classes, not only within Gujarat but in many urban centers of India that an economic miracle has been engineered in Gujarat. 

-         Through these ten odd years of rule Modi had managed to decimate opposition Congress party electorally through huge democratic mandates which was rationalized as a popular response and support of the state electorate to first his Hindutva ideology and later his image as a leader of an efficient business-enabling state administration taking the state to great and demonstrable prosperity. That he had always had his detractors within his party, BJP, and wider organizations of the Sangh Parivar was always known. There were both muted and open criticism within the party and the Sangh about some of his policies, biases and most importantly his autocrat like brook-no-opposition style of functioning. But the spectacular way he had managed to sideline senior state party leaders like Waghela, Keshubhai Patel and others and alienated an important Sangh apparatchik like Sanjay Joshi and eventually pushed them out of the party and even hounded some of them out of the state politics confirm his Machiavellian prowess and the determination to remove any obstacle to the path of his preeminence in the party. Interestingly, he has even reconfigured his relationship with the Sangh Parivar, maintaining a studied distance from some of its important organizations like VHP, the ones that gave him his initial break.

-         Modi’s brand of democratic functioning is most illuminatingly demonstrated recently in the new Lokayukta bill he is said to be piloting in the state assembly which he hopes to turn into law by dint of his ‘democratic’ majority. He is clearly trying to sabotage the currently nominated Lokayukta (his dogged opposition to the decisions of the Governor, legal challenges at the High Court having failed to yield desired result, i.e. a Lokayukta of his choice) by bringing in a new law where a new selection procedure is being suggested that will clearly be subservient to and controlled by the chief minister.

-        Post his third time anointment as the chief minister after winning absolute majority in the 2012 assembly elections his script is showing up a trajectory of him coming up with increasing frequency to Delhi and many other places (recently Haridwar). These involve occasions of not merely attending important BJP party meetings and functions of national significance but special seminars, meets, discussions for projecting himself, quite successfully, towards the party rank and file, to media and the public at large as the one and the only alternative for BJP’s the prime ministership candidate. If the topmost leaders of BJP are already feeling the heavy breathing of an ambitious and ruthless leader like Modi on their shoulder they are not showing it and making brave noises about democratic functioning of the party. But the first capitulation has already happened in that Modi has bulldozed his way into the top decision making body of the party, namely, the parliamentary board which, at the appropriate time, is expected to ‘democratically’ nominate one among the many equals as the potential prime minister of the shadow cabinet.

Thus in many ways Modi’s is a saga of using his apparent democratic advantage to allow him to pursue a type of authoritarian rule that has many historical parallels with classic developments of fascism in Europe during the last century. One waits with bated breath if the country's democratic system could be subverted yet again to construct the second attempt at installing a quasi-authoritarian dispensation at the center.

The new Indian ‘animal spirit’

As a part of his opening remarks made by the prime minister at the interaction with selected newspaper editor on June 29, 2011 he said :

“… frankly speaking in our country this constant sniping between government and opposition or if an atmosphere of cynicism is created all round I think the growth impulses, the entrepreneurial impulses of our people will not flourish and that is what worries me. We must do all that we can to revive the animal spirits of our businesses (our emphasis)”.

What the PM implied was that he was worried that the animal spirit of entrepreneurship of Indians unleashed by him in 1991 might get bottled up in the wake of the corruption controversies, media’s zeal to unearth more scams within government, industry (including proponents and beneficiaries of what has come to be known as crony capitalism), bureaucracy and of course the politicians. Clearly he did not think what he minimally described as “businessmen cutting corners” anything more serious than a weakness in our regulatory system. For him fixing loopholes in the regulatory system is all that is required to address and remedy the clear wrongdoings by parts of bureaucracy, politicians and the beneficiaries in the industry which were pointed out by the CAG, a constitutional body, essentially part of the government. For him too much criticism of the ‘elected government’ would make the bureaucracy hamstrung and lead to impeding or curtailing of the liberalizing economic reforms, affecting the enthusiasm of the entrepreneurs, industry captains and investors. Reviving this ‘animal spirits’, for him, was, has been and is a priority rather than chasing issues of corruption, ‘cutting corners’ by the spirited animals of a new India. 

It may be true that this animal spirit that has helped to drive India’s GDP growth over better part of the last two decades and provided the new-found confidence of Indians in industry, business (especially service sector) and in advertisement, entertainment, fashion and sports. However, one suspects the misplaced spiritedness also having had a hand in the rising rowdiness/arrogance of a certain section of the population highlighted by increasing number of cases of road rage and drunken driving (leading to death and disability to pavement dwellers), kidnapping for ransom, rape, acid attack and other kinds of violence against women, and finally murder for flimsy reasons. The final denouement in the Aravind Adiga novel ‘Last man in tower’ about unsheathed greed goading ordinary people to enact a chilling Macbeth like scenario does not probably appear too contrived in the backdrop of swelling testosterone of animal spirits in a new and almost unfamiliar India.

Though road rage per se is not a cognizable offence under Indian penal code (though often leading to severe assault and death which then becomes one), nor even recorded as a traffic violation, it is probably a very sensitive barometer relating gratuitous violence to apparent economic propsperity (at least to some sections of the population). Roughly 10 million cars, buses, trucks, scooters and motorbikes crowd New Delhi's roads every day, causing long traffic jams and frayed tempers. The city's roads have not kept up with the growth in traffic. While the number of vehicles has grown by over 200 percent over the past two decades, the number of kilometers of road has grown only about 15 percent, as per the transport department. People are on the road for a longer period, and everyone has become impatient. The result is a situation in which even a small verbal confrontation might soon escalate to a physical fight. Vehicles especially new spanky cars, being often a powerful symbol of a newly acquired wealth of a person, if someone on the road even inadvertently scrapes it and leaves a scratch this may feel like an assault on a person's status which is considered unacceptable and a fight ensues. [The above statistics and conditions on the Delhi roads adapted from a write up entitled “Road rage in India growing along with economy” (NDTV.COM ,December 28, 2010)]

There are enough statistics to nail the myth of the benefit of economic growth percolating to poor doing the rounds of government departments, planning commission and their appologists in the press and television. Assuming, however, it is only percolating and not exactly flooding the BPL India with food and fuel, the penetration of the TV and particularly mobile phones, on the other hand, among the Indians in the far corners of the country has been much more noteworthy. Unwittingly for the ruling classes, while these new communication media whetted the economic and social aspirations in the rural hinterland it had also brought home to them the undeniable inequality among ‘us’ and ‘them’ and the growing disparity of incomes. Nor has the growth of employment over these two decades of liberalized economy regime been anything but tardy despite the prime minister’s protestations and promise. Incidences of scams, swindling by the crony capitalists, on the other hand, grew. There has been, in recent years, a rise in the death of whistleblowers, RTI activists (anybody who resists/question cronies and criminals who usurp the spoils of the so-called liberalized economy). And of course the statistics on drunken driving, road rage, rape, kidnapping and murder show an upswing. Whether or not the famed ‘animal spirit’ of the Indian entrepreneurs is in evidence or not the animals in India, including the WHITE TIGERS, are growling. Be advised.