Purushottam Agarwal - Towards a Ban’ana Republic?
The week ending March 5 acquired significance indicating the
direction we, as a country, seem to be heading in. In the preceding five days,
there was a ban a day in the country, including the one on beef in Maharashtra
and on the screening of the BBC documentary, India’s Daughter. The documentary
is detrimental to the nation’s reputation abroad – the nation was told by one
of its most phony ‘conscience keepers’. Beef is, of course, supposedly
detrimental to the religious sentiments of the majority of Indians. Banning is
the easiest solution in both situations. Democracy is all about numbers and
vote-banks and their sentiments. Is it not? Freedoms of expression and that of
choice are easily dispensable. Aren’t they?
That is why governments across party lines seem to be
outsourcing the business of managing hurt sentiments. A vigilante group of the
powerful OBC (other backward classes) lobby forces an author to declare his own
death, and the Tamil Nadu government actually facilitates this ‘compromise’.
Only a couple of weeks later a TV channel suffers a bomb attack for the alleged
crime of discussing the historicity and desirability of ‘thali’ (mangalsutra)
in the same state with a similar cynical response from the government, which is
remote-controlled by a ‘strong’ leader and ‘able’ administrator.
But, then, there are pragmatic realities. Within 15 days of
the Maharashtra ban on beef, the BJP-led government in Goa decided to import
beef from the neighbouring states. The ban on India’s Daughter was made
ineffective courtesy YouTube and Facebook. Incidentally, according to data
released by Facebook, in the second half of 2014, India topped the list of
countries making requests for the removal of ‘objectionable’ content.
Here is some more news in similar vein. The Haryana assembly
has passed “the most stringent law” against cow slaughter. Initially, it
considered prosecuting the ‘culprits’ of cow slaughter under IPC 302 (murder);
now, mercifully, the penalty would be milder, just three to 10 years of
rigorous imprisonment, and a fine up to '1 lakh. A 71-year-old Christian nun is
gang-raped in a small town in West Bengal by young men, 15-20 years old. No
arrests have been made in this horrific incident till the time of writing. In
Malda district of the same state, a women’s football match is banned by the
administration in consultation with the top leadership. The reason is not
difficult to guess – local maulvis had objected to the players’ clothing. The
prime minister is reportedly upset about the attack on a church in Haryana, but
seems to be quite alright with some of the most aggressive voices being
nominated to the national executive of his party.
The central government is hell bent upon bringing in its
‘development friendly’ land acquisition legislation, even if its allies and
even Sangh Parivar outfits are sceptical of its provisions. As the major
opposition party, the BJP had supported the law just two years back, which it
now finds obstructive for its development ideas. Here is an interesting
difference between the development ideas of Hindutva and those of Moditva. The
land acquisition bill has also galvanised the Congress and other opposition
parties to put up stiff resistance, even if the prime minister has made it into
a personal prestige issue, typically spinning to the underprivileged that the
opponents of the bill are obstructing the construction of schools and
hospitals.
On another front, swine flu shows no signs of abating – it
has already killed more than 1,700, and the number of cases has crossed 30,000.
At the same time, the health budget along with the education allocation has
been reduced in this year’s pro-investor, pro-business and pro-growth (whose?)
budget. But, of course, arbitrary land acquisition will take care of it all.
Incidentally, there is no credible audit of the use of land already available
with the government, in fact, the idea of any such audit and social impact
assessment is anathema to the Modi government.
It is important to
grasp the structural connections between the indifference to attacks on free
speech, alternative viewpoints and diversity on the one hand and insistence on
a very regressive land acquisition law and cuts in health and education
expenditure on the other. The connection signifies the withdrawal from the most
crucial duties of a modern, democratic state. The twin ideas of the protection
of rights and implementation of the law are the very raison d’etre of a modern
state. The indifference to attacks on free speech and cultural diversity
indicates an unwillingness to protect the rights of citizens. The eagerness to
appease any and every vigilante group and all kinds of politics of hurt
sentiments reflects the unwillingness to implement the rule of law. In the
aggressive insistence on the land acquisition bill, the very notions of rights
and responsibility are at stake. The government wants to empower itself not for
the general good, but for the benefit of the super-rich.
That is why there is an active hostility to the idea of
social impact assessment coupled with deliberate vagueness in expressions like
‘infrastructure’ and ‘national interest’. How else, such an aggressive
acquisition of land can be justified when the proper land audit has not taken
place? How cynically vague expressions like ‘infrastructure’ and ‘public good’
could be used can be easily grasped if we recall that almost all the land taken
for huge golf courses was acquired under the colonial-era land law of 1894 for
‘public good’?
A democratic welfare state is, of course, committed to
development and recognises the important role of private industry, facilitates
fair play and hassle-free transaction of business and commerce. Being a welfare
state does not imply being hostile to business and enterprise, but it certainly
implies being committed to the empowerment of citizens. Freedom of expression
is sine qua non of such empowerment. It is not some middle-class luxury, but a
crucial guarantee of an individual’s right to record his or her will. It is
about the right to an alternative point of view on any given matter.
As opposed to the welfare state, there is the idea of a
client state. Historically, demagogues of various hues come to power by
invoking religious, cultural, even civil sentiments (for example, the disdain
for corruption in public life) with the help of the super-rich of society and
seek to create a state dedicated to unbridled money-making on part of a tiny
minority. Such a state deliberately subverts the rule of law in order to
encourage crony capitalism, which is detrimental even to the classical capitalist
ideals of free competition and hassle-free enterprise. Not to speak of the
foundational capitalist idea of the right to property, which has essentially
been abrogated under Modi’s new land ordinance. The appeasement of, in fact,
active abetment to the politics of hurt sentiments is an integral part of this
strategy.
The idea of a ‘banana republic’ implies conversion of
democracy into a mere formality. The state in such a scenario tends to be soft
in the spheres where it needs to adopt a no-nonsense posture (for example, in
the case of Khap diktats from Haryana to Tamil Nadu; and the posturing of
‘hurt’ sentiments of all hues) and to be very harsh on the fantasised enemies
of the people, nation or culture; to be indifferent to the welfare of people,
and to be subservient to the wishes of one’s friends and financiers. Let us
reflect calmly, but urgently – how far are we from such a dystopia.
