Why India is Losing its Democratic Nature?
Sachin Kumar Jain
Vikas Samvad Samiti, India
After 2014, the concept of ‘nationalism’ in India has turned into a soft militarization of systems both within the country as well as at the borders. It’s a fact now that all critics and oppositions and watchdog institutions are now perceived by the ruling dispensation as hostile and anti-national entities.
The reality is that the biggest need of India at this point of time is to make available quality education that promotes scientific and judicious temper in the society.
Another irrefutable fact is that India is now the home to the biggest population living with hunger and malnutrition (about 200 million people live with hunger and 65 million children are afflicted with malnutrition).
It’s also a fact that in the 30 years of Economic Growth, India has not been able to efficaciously address the basic problem of economic inequality, poverty and unemployment. Also, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that grave crisis of unemployment is rearing its head in India despite good economic growth rate until the recent years. Rather than taking steps to resolve these staring crises, the implementation of laws and policies appear to be serving the interests of some 100 corporate families in enabling them to exercise monopoly over the natural and state resources of the country.
On one side, the unemployment rate has reached a critical 30% during the COVID-19 crisis, the service and manufacturing sectors have come to a halt, on the other. Notably, two corporate establishments in the country have posted 50% more profit than all others put together.
It may be mentioned that according to report of Oxfam (2019), the 63 billionaires of India had more property than the entire budget of the country (Rs 24.42 trillion). Just one percent of the richest of Indians own four times more assets than that held by 956 millions of Indians taken together.
To avoid debates on such issues, process of suppressing civil society organizations, human rights defenders and activists has started. A journalist who reported unavailability of mid-day meal to children during the COVID-19 crisis was slapped with the legal case of criminal conspiracy.
In India, 570 million people are dependent on agriculture and allied works. In the past 25 years, 330,000 farmers have committed suicide due to distress and more than 55% farmers are under debts. To improve their condition, the clear policy has been there that the state will provide fertilizer subsidy, good quality seeds at affordable price, ensure minimum support price for the farm produce and protection from exploitation in unregulated open market. However, the implementation appears to be blind to the policy obligation.
At present only those 9 million out of the 100 million farming families receive the benefit of minimum support price from whom the government purchases the produce. Other 91 million farmers do not get proper price for their produce because the establishments purchasing the produce in open markets are not legally bound to provide minimum support price to the farmers.
The process of giving approval to farm, labor and CSO laws in the last 4 months gives a clear indication of the Indian State becoming authoritarian. Even as the country was battling the COVID-19 crisis, the union government came up with such farm laws where there is no legal binding on anyone to provide minimum support price to the farmers. Not only this, the government had decided that farmers can sell their produce anywhere other than the agriculture produce markets (government centers each set up for 50 to 100 villages) and anyone or any company can purchase the produce. This is like giving the big companies a chance to exploit the farmers, because they are not bound to give minimum support price to the farmers.
Not only this, India has had law to stop black-marketing, hoarding and causing artificial price surge for the essential commodities. The government of India has now done away with these provisions that could legally control black-marketing and hoarding. This has been done with an objective to allow the companies dealing with agriculture produce to operate with maximum profiteering. The GoI(Government of India) has also made a law which says that the agriculture companies can sign contract with farmers for purchase of any produce, but in case the companies violate the norms of contracts, the farmers cannot legally challenge this. It is thus clear that farmers and laborers will have no legal protection in India henceforth. Drastic amendments were also brought about in the labor laws during the COVID-19 pandemic, which says that companies employing up to 300 laborers can anytime lay them off. Now, when farmers and the laborers are opposing the provisions of these laws, the State is trying to label them as anti-national.
The changes in the agriculture and labor laws also prove that the Indian system is moving fast towards authoritarianism, because when these laws were being passed the members of the opposition parties were not present in the Indian parliament. Eight MPs had been expelled. Not only this, no discussions were held with organizations or representatives of farmers and laborers. Now, when the farmers are protesting against the law, serious legal action is being initiated against them.
There is not only centralization of natural resources, but even opportunities, services and industries are being centralized in favor of some specific corporate establishments.
To cover up the disastrous discrepancies arising out of these policies, the right winger ‘nationalist’ central government in the country is taking steps to suppress all kinds of protests, reviews and dissent. For example, towards the end of year 2019, the Indian government amended the Citizenship Act that defines the citizenship process in the country and also simultaneously started the process of creating the National Population Register. The intention seems to be review of the citizenship of people of Muslim community in the country. The surprising thing is that the Indian government has started such process where the citizens are forced to present documents dating back to around 1970s. Nurturing the hardcore rightwing nationalist ideology, a provision has been made that if members of Hindu, Jain, Buddhism, Sikh do not have the relevant documents, they will still be considered to have citizenship but other communities (mainly Muslims) are likely to face crisis of existence and identity.
Between January and March 2020, widespread protests were held across the nation against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The protests died out only after the COVID-19 pandemic struck. But since June 2020, the government started arresting the social activities and representatives of those organizations and bodies who were opposition the CAA and NRC. By October 2020, more than 280 social activists have been taken into custody and many are being booked with the charges of sedition and conspiracy against the state. The process of suppression is still on.
At around this time, the legal provisions for environment impact assessment of mega projects were also relaxed. The social activists who opposed this were booked in criminal cases and process to consider them as guilty of anti-state activities started.
In India now, whenever questions are asked of government on issues like employment, conservation of natural resources, health, hunger, malnutrition or social harmony, the response is to negate them and rather the confrontation with neighboring countries like Pakistan and China are brought into centre stage of debate. In response to basic questions on socio-economic issues, the recurring answer is that the country is in crisis, security of the nation is in danger and the defense forces were safeguarding the nation by putting own lives to risk. It may be mentioned that 2014 onwards, border tensions and armed forces actions have been almost permanent electoral issues for national, state and even local body level elections. The right wing ruling party and their organizations never reach out to voters with any programmes on issues like employment, hunger, diseases and environment protection and rather seek to exploit the fear of terrorism and attack by neighboring countries.
Civil Society Organizations in India have regularly reviewed the socio-economic development policies of the government and ask tough questions. Therefore in September 2020, the Government of India (GoI) brought about such amendments to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) that almost 100,000 social activists in the country have been forced to give up their work in a weeks’ time. This is because through the amendments to FCRA, the GoI has made a provision that more than 20% of the grants/donations received for socio-economic development cannot be spent as administrative expenditure. Also all expenditures like all remunerations, running of office set-up, travel, documentation, expenses for team building and legal processes have been included in the administrative expenditure. Also, the amendments have made a provision that the organizations receiving foreign grants will not be able to share any part of it with other support organizations registered with it, which in turn means that in India, network based programmes and campaigns cannot be run anymore. The logic given by the government of India is that the amendments are necessary for national security, whereas the fact is that the present government does not want to allow any research or review work on basic issues facing the country, so that the system of economic disparity and socio-economic bondage continues to thrive.
We have to understand that the political powers are helping the capitalists to monopolize the resources of the country. When there is struggle to prevent this, the protesters are first dubbed anti-development and then anti-national. The political powers then connect it to nationalism. Every medium has been used repeatedly to raise the point that those talking about human rights were helping separatists and are anti-development and it is because of them that the country was in crisis. “Armed forces are struggling on the borders and these people are concerned about human rights”, is commonly heard from the elements that are pro-dispensation.
From the national to local level elections, there is a fixed pattern of eulogizing of nationalism and armed forces. There has been a planned strategy to establish that national security was possible only with militarization and arms.
Laws like Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) are being used blatantly to suppress dissent. The current situation in India is that a dictatorship has been established in the biggest democracy of the world, where arguing in favor of justice, equality, people’s liberty and fraternity is being attempted to be portrayed as sedition. It is important to note that the most barbaric law (UAPA) gives freedom to arrest and keep a person in custody without bail for 6 months to the executive and there is no role of judiciary in keeping an oversight on the case. It is to be mentioned here that 90 percent differently-abled and ailing professor academician GN Saibaba has been sentenced with life imprisonment with fabricated charges and he is not being allowed to receive medicines from the family, 81 Year old tribal right Jesuits Sten Swami is also arrested under the same law and he is not being provided with a straw and sipper to drink water as he is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The National Investigation Agency lawyer has asked 20 days time to file a reply on his request for straw and sipper.
In current situation, one cannot raise questions on agriculture, or hunger or on health. The latest example is from one of the most backward and deprived state of Bihar (from where about 4 to 5 million laborers in unorganized sector migrate at a time to work in other states as employment, education and health service facilities are very poor in Bihar) where State Assembly polls were recently held. During the campaign for these polls, the ruling right wing political party and its coalition partners did not speak on employment, equality and prosperity. Rather, the chief of the biggest political party of the country, which is running the central government, said that 300 terrorists were at the border, poised to enter the country. “If you do not vote for us, they will enter the country and engage and terrorist activities”, he sought to exhort the electors.
Good Governance in India now means presence of authoritarianism and absenteeism of opposition and criticism, where as development in India means maximum exploitation and monopolization of resources and opportunities in favor of selected set of business houses and all this is being done by bringing un-ethical and anti-people polices and laws in force.
In reality, the experience of India in present times tells us that merely mentioning democracy in constitutional documents doesn’t make a country democratic. A country becomes a democracy only when its people have the functional literacy about the principles of citizenship, fraternity, equality and justice and when the country is governed not on the issues of political divisiveness, but on the principles of equality, peace and socio-economic justice. An excellent constitution was drafted and handed over to the country in the Year of 1950. But the Indian society and Indian state, both did not adopt it in letter and spirit. This led to a situation when fundamentalist right wing, communal, fascist political forces got into power using the constitutional ladder and a wide section of society became its blind supporter.
That democracy could be a way to dictatorship is being proven in India. This is happening because the society is losing faith in democracy and human rights. Now the State has become the conduit to establish hardcore political ideologist. To be plain, it is heading on the way to establish “Brahmincal Hindu Rashtra with Monopoly on Governance and Resources”.
