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Ashok Mitra

Indian polity in deep trouble

Why not admit it? The republic of India is in tatters. It is not just the woebegone state of Kashmir: remove the occupying army contingents and the valley people will instantly claim to deeply breathe the air of liberation.

The ambience is no different in the north-eastern states where more than 40 years of army and police surveillance have not made the slightest difference to the mood of sullenness and rebellion: the pattern is common whether it is Nagaland or Manipur, or, for that matter, Arunachal Pradesh or Mizoram.

Temporary peace is brought in this or that area by bribing, heavily, this or that chieftain. There can, however, be no question of escaping from the claustrophobic presence of the dominant reality: this whole chunk is alien tract, and India is an occasional interlocutor.

Also consider Assam: the United Liberation Front of Asom and the Bodo insurgents in effect run parallel administrations in the state, while the Asom Gana Parishad wears a terribly tentative look.

In Bihar, Ranbir Sena brigands have a free run of the countryside. Or not quite such a free run: numerous Naxalite and other factions have, almost equally competently, organised counter-resistance on behalf of landless peasants and small-holders; the setting promises the spectacle of a fight to the finish, the Union of India has, rest assured, little or nothing to do with it.

And what alibi do we have for ignoring the curious case of Uttar Pradesh, with musclemen swearing allegiance to an assortment of self-proclaimed caste and sect leaders, each vowing to protect their bailiffs come hell or high water? Can we turn a Nelson's eye either to the phenomenon of knife-wielders, murderers specialising in contract jobs, drug runners, currency racketeers, et al who have a solidest reason to list Bombay as their private fief, and conventional law and order have long ceased to be on the agenda.

Kindly haul your memory back to the eerie circumstances of December 1992-January 1993. Bal Thackeray was openly inviting his goons to embark on a programme of murder and mayhem against religious and linguistic minorities in the state; his exhortations were gleefully acted upon by his acolytes; Maharashtra was a burning cauldron, and yet none in the administrative hierarchy either in New Delhi or Bombay had the courage to order Thackeray's arrest.

Shall we proceed further? Near anarchic conditions, who can deny, continue to reign in different parts of Andhra Pradesh; dalams of the People's War Group have rendered unsafe for the city slicks at least a quarter of the state's territory.

That apart, what conclusions can one reach from the singular display of nonchalance by Veerappan, the ivory smuggler, who has managed to keep at bay for years on end the gendarmerie in the service of the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka? The fact that the distinction between history sheeters and ruling politicians is fast being obliterated only contributes a humdrum foot-note to contemporary history.

The polity is in deep trouble. There is not much point in railing against agents, real or imaginary, of foreign governments who supposedly want to fish in India's troubled waters. Foreign agents will naturally avail of whatever opportunities are opened up for them. Such opportunities have been opened up for them by native ministers and their mandarins.

The country happens to have a beautiful written Constitution; it has been amended on nearly 80 occasions so as to improve its functioning. The country has also an elaborate legal apparatus and formidable institutions charged with the responsibility of enforcing the rule of law.

The claptrap of the Constitution and the intricate statutory framework are nevertheless hugely infructous. India is dangerously close to rack and ruin, or such at least would be the conclusion reached by pundits, foreign as well as domestic, acknowledged as foremost analysts of the mystique of state systems.

Fair enough. But does not honesty demand that certain other relevant facts too are analysed with equal dispassion? It is not just the primal forces unleashed all over the country by the excesses of democracy that have made a mockery of the Indian polity despite its written Constitution and the elaborate flourish of its civil and criminal procedures codes.

Please do recollect the famous occurrence in the nation's capital barely eight months ago, following the collapse of the H D Deve Gowda government. The Indian bourgeoisie, given their innate propensity, for internecine warfare, could not prevent that collapse. Consternation all around, for the fall of the government implied the scuttling of the so-called dream budget their finance minister had just presented.

That budget, replete with a bonanza of assorted descriptions intended to accelerate the pace of economic liberalisation, was lapped up by the upper classes; it promised them a painless transit to the paradise the 'reforms' were supposed to be agents of.

Businessmen and industrialists, simple souls, were yet to come to the wisdom that the 'dream' budget was actually a package of nightmares, facilitating greater imports of durable as well as non-durable goods that were bound to seal the fate of domestic manufacturers, including those in the small scale sector, and choke all capital-formation activities; the bourgeoisie were much too enamoured of the across-the-board direct tax concessions the finance minister had laid out for them on a platter.

It was regarded as calamity hour; the Deve Gowda government caved in and the 'dream' budget was still to receive the imprimatur of approval from Parliament. The flowers of the Indian bourgeoisie gather together. No escape clause in the Constitution; once a government fell, its budget proposals were also dead and gone; once a new government was ushered in, it would be its prerogative to formulate and present fresh proposals.

Such is the norm. But the bourgeoisie have little patience for the observance of norms where it would be hazardous to their class interests.

What followed was extraordinarily high drama. The country's leading industrialists invaded the portals of Parliament and invoked the support of the Lok Sabha speaker so that he could save the dream budget.

Newspapers flashed across their front page pictures of the speaker welcoming this group of industrialists in his chamber. In strict terms of jurisprudence, the speaker was the eye and the ear exclusively of the House. He, in other words, had no business in getting himself involved with a plea of businessmen. Some would even venture to suggest that he should have thrown them out of his chamber and hauled them up for contempt of the House.

He did not. On the contrary, he called in leaders of the different political groups represented in Parliament. These groups may be arrayed against one another where other issues are concerned; but the class issue of saving the 'dream' budget instantly brought them together. The speaker beamed his beatific smile and the parties collectively agreed to cheat the Constitution.

No new budget, it was agreed between them, was necessary for formal presentation even when a new government was installed. Never mind if the earlier government had folded up; its budget proposals, the speaker ordained, were now the property of the House and the House could adopt them without bothering about the ritual of a fresh budget.

This piece of first-rate opportunism was as good as murdering the Constitution. The 800-odd individuals assembled in New Delhi, claiming for themselves the right to represent the people of India, can keep pretending that they can bend the Constitution and the laws to suit their convenience. The example they set will, however, be a trailblazer. Between a Veerappan who lays down fantastic terms for fulfilment before he would condescend to return to a regime of law and order and members of Parliament who said boo to the Constitution in order to save their dream budget, there is hardly any difference. They are in a joint venture to pull down Indian democracy.

Ashok Mitra