A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

by Josy Joseph

The fixed-line phone that came home when I was a child still holds pride of place at my parents’ home, a sepia-tinted memory made real. It rarely rings. We speak now on mobile phones operated by private companies. The state-controlled company that provided the telephone is struggling to survive in one of the most profitable and vibrant telecommunication markets in the world. The telephone, the government primary school, the government hospital, they are all victims of the new-found ambitions of India’s new masters, a loose collection of politicians, businessmen, regulators and others who managed to get a foot in. Systematic plunder has reduced many of India’s public institutions and companies to mere shadows of their former selves. Expensive assets of government companies have been sold off cheap in the name of divestment.

To his right was a small window through which you could see the barren village farms. The window’s iron railings were twisted. ‘One night someone broke the wooden door of the window, bent those railings and entered this room. They stole one-and-a-half sacks of rice,’ the principal said. How desperate the thief must have been to steal rice meant for children, I thought. Everyone in the room was vocal about the many ways in which the government and its indifferent bureaucracy had been snatching what should rightfully have come to the children of Hridaychak. The government is so distant, unreachable – and that was at the centre of their collective grouse. In New Delhi, all discussions are now about transforming India into a manufacturing hub, building smart cities and strengthening the country’s IT power status. A new government is talking about regaining India’s past glory and its rightful place in the global order. But here in Hridaychak, those words mean nothing. When the children here graduate from middle school in class eight, the nearest high school is more than 3 kilometres away in Kaler, and that is if they trek their way through the farms and desolate land. During monsoons, they will have to roll up their pyjamas and trousers to wade through stagnant water to get there, drenched in rain. Even an umbrella is a luxury for most families here. In summer, after school, Hridaychak’s students dip their handkerchiefs in water and place it on their heads to hold off the seari...

It was almost 2.30 p.m. and there was still no sign of the midday meal. Three women sat crouched outside the school kitchen. Food was ready, but I gathered that they did not want to serve it while I was there. What if I tasted the food? What if the food was not as nutritious as it should have been? What if I caught the school staff out for undercutting the food meant for kids? The children chattered on. They did not seem to care too much about their own hunger or the missing amenities. I did not want to delay their lunch any further. As I left, I asked one of the children, ‘What do you want to be?’ The boy, in a torn sweater and inadequate winter clothes, stared at me and then looked at his friends. They all began to laugh.

Chamkalo Paswan is an articulate and angry old woman with a wrinkled face and sunken eyes. We were standing in front of her house in the Mahadalit quarter. ‘Where is the sarkar (government)? Is there something like that?’ Not once in her life has she received any assistance from the government. ‘Our children do not get scholarships and uniforms, boarding schools meant for them have all become hotels. Our children get nothing,’ she said. It is not that the government does not impact her life at all. From the government-run anganwadi, where her grandchild studies, the family is supposed to get 1.5 kilograms of rice and 500 grams of lentil once a month. That is the incentive offered by the government to get the family to send its children to the centre. But she gets only 1 kilogram of rice and 250 grams of lentil. Through the public distribution system, they are also entitled to 25 kilograms of subsidized rice every month; only 18 kilograms reach them. ‘We know what we should get, but whom do we complain to,’ she asks.

Rajendra Kumar Dhawan was only a couple of feet from Gandhi as she took those bullets, but not one of them grazed him. That was Dhawan’s default position in contemporary India: a few steps removed from history. He was close enough to his boss to hear what she whispered, watch for her signals, keep away intruders and take down dictation. He was close enough to witness at close quarters India’s struggles to evolve as a democratic nation, with all its intrigues, drama and violence. He also became the single point of contact between Gandhi and most people, including her ministerial colleagues.

After Thakiyuddin’s death, Salma Biwi’s routine changed too. She was no longer interested in her cows and visitors. She would sit on the veranda of her house, singing. She sang about a hero, his naughty and enterprising childhood, the epic struggles of his youth and the great fortunes he amassed on distant shores. She finished with a heartfelt rendition about the hero’s death, savagely killed by evil men one evening on a street where he was revered. Her eyes welled up as her songs drew to an end, and she would weep uncontrollably. She was narrating folklore from religious traditions, and also telling the tale of her own favourite child’s improbable life. There is no shadow cast on his heroics in her narration. His morally complex life in Bombay was far removed from her own in the village, where she tended her cows, greeted village folk, and where Thakiyuddin and the other siblings came visiting regularly.

By the end of May 1996, the BJP government had to resign. Everyone wanted to avoid elections, and regional political satraps formed an alliance to put together a coalition front of smaller parties, leaving out the Congress and the BJP. At a meeting of the regional parties in Delhi, Karnataka chief minister H.D. Deve Gowda wasn’t the most attentive – in fact, many believe he slept through most of it. So great was the political turmoil of the time that the meeting elected this untested man as India’s next prime minister. Gowda, a farmer and a wily politician who had not until then sought his political fortunes outside Karnataka, was overwhelmed and intimidated by New Delhi and its sweep of power games and politics.

Goyal – a young, hard-working man from Punjab with no known family, financial, political or educational backing – has an equally dramatic story. He remains a controversial figure, and one who continues to surprise and infuriate. But Goyal symbolizes contemporary India. Without an examination of the rise of Goyal, it would be impossible to appreciate the crisis at all levels of the Indian democracy – the oligarchy that is India’s political class, the power of money to swing decisions, the meek regulatory systems that are bent and broken regularly by business interests, the elite’s blatant disrespect for laws and norms, and eventually, the disappearance of even a semblance of morality from public life. As a diverse society struggles to strengthen its institutions in the face of powerful politician–businessman nexus, it would be yet another Indian miracle if democracy survives and flourishes. If democracy continues to gasp for breath, and finally dies one day, it would be the final outcome of a collective conspiracy. It would be a death foretold.

A gigantic national flag was hoisted in its central park in March 2014 and flutters there to this day. The flag is 60 feet wide and 90 long wide and is hoisted on a high mast. Eight 2,000-watt bulbs illuminate it at night; it looks stunning against the city’s polluted night sky. This well-protected flag was installed by Naveen Jindal’s Flag Foundation of India and is among the biggest in the country. I often wonder if the poor of Raigarh know that their nation’s biggest flags are now hoisted and looked after by Jindal.