When Nitish Kumar and Pinarayi Vijayan's cries are crushed by federalism under Modi
Poor Nitish. What would you do if you were in his shoes and had his political sense, having to do business in the Modi-land? People say he is gravitating towards Modi.
Who else would you like him to gravitate to? Rahul's Congress? Sharad Pawar's NCP? Omar's NC? Nitish is sliding towards Modi as a truck slides, after it hits an oil slick on the road.
There are at least two things you need to take into account in making sense of Nitish's predicament. First, he was with the BJP not so long ago. So, he knows who is calling the shots.
Any surprise, if that sobers him? Second, the exposure of the political bankruptcy of Opposition parties in the wake of Modi's demonetisation. In point of fact it was not two denominations of our currency that got demonetised, but the Opposition.
The so-called Opposition parties have been put to the test and found utterly wanting.
If NDA were in the Opposition and UPA-3 had gambled with demonetisation as Modi has, BJP would have caused a veritable earthquake. I don't say this to the derogation of that party.
I say this both because this is the truth and because it shows up how geriatric and impotent the Opposition parties have become.
Recall what happened in November. On November 25, 2016, the Congress and a few Opposition parties — that are held together by mutual suspicion and subterranean jealousies — called for a Bharat Bandh to mount pressure on Modi.
They did so sensing a kill. Their reading was correct too. But in quick time they began to eat their own words. They discovered that disrupting the Parliament was an easier option. They developed cold feet that the people would not be with them.
If they took the issue to the streets, they knew they would be alone, and look miserable, on the streets. There could not have been a worse, more self-damning public display of impotence. It destroyed people's confidence in these parties almost irreparably.
So, the ground reality is clear: there is little survival space for these discredited parties. The worst is that they still refuse, in spite of hell, to reckon the extent of their alienation from the people.
It is this that makes the situation look almost irredeemably lost.
Kerala's Pinarayi Vijayan is now crying. He has woken up and discovered that Modi's dispensation does not respect federalism.
Through the days and weeks since demonetisation, Amartya Sen kept warning everyone that the foremost issue in demonetisation is the undermining of federalism.
Demonetisation was slapped on the country as though state governments did not exist, as though we are in a unitary, presidential form of democracy. It was Modi all the way.
The finance minister was a pale shadow that could, like stars in the sky, sparkle after the sun sets.
In the American model of democracy, which influenced the spirit, if not the total structure, of our Constitution up to a point, the two supreme safeguards against the tyranny of the Executive are the independence of the Judiciary and Federalism.
It is not an accident that both are now under strain in our country. It will take a long while before the tears that Justice TS Thakur, the former chief justice of India, shed in the presence of the prime minister, disappears from the face of Indian judiciary.
How can we forget that the darkest face of the internal Emergency that Indira Gandhi clamped on India was the attempt to arm-twist the judiciary to be a politically committed one?
Admittedly, finance comes within the province of the Union of India. But, insofar as the burden of demonetisation was to fall on the people of India, for whom the state concerned is more immediate as compared to the Centre, the spirit of federalism did demand taking the states into confidence.
The alibi that the states could not be trusted and that all parties other than the BJP are corrupt and devious insults the spirit of federalism, even if it is factually maintainable.
The health of our democracy should be a greater priority than the health of our economy, if we are forced to choose between the two.
A point comes when "efficiency" becomes an alibi for oppression than an investment in good governance.
History is witness that almost anything, including murder and mayhem, oppression and human rights' violations, can be justified invoking efficiency. Democracy itself can be discredited by pitting efficiency against it.
The discipline of dialogue, the renunciation of the shortcut of coercion, the painstaking process of evolving consensus as compared to the brash effectiveness of "cutting the Gordian knot", are all inherent in democracy.
This is an issue, says Alexis de Tocqueville, that the framers of the French Constitution in the wake of the Revolution in 1789 agonised over.
The French mindset was still overcast with the clouds of aristocratic disdain towards "the people".
Our predicament today is not substantially different. It is difficult to maintain with any degree of honesty that democracy, as it has been practised in our country, is "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in letter and spirit.
"The people" are at the receiving end of state charity, dictated almost wholly by political expediency. The feature common to all parties in India is this cynical condescension towards the common man. So long as this remains we shall only have a pleasing illusion of "government for the people".
It is wishful thinking that such an executive will respect the independence of the judiciary and the constitutional discipline of federalism.
In the days ahead significant patterns could unfold and it would help to be watchful.
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