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In a place of stasis or inertia, disruption may have its uses. India is chaotic. It does not require further disruption. It needs order and predictability in governance;
Being indecisive is seen as a weakness though, often, indecision is only another name for thinking something through carefully. And, if on occasion there is uncertainty or potential turbulence beyond tolerable limits, one does not conclude or decide on a course of action.
many Indian voters, especially the urban upper classes, appear to engage with politics in the same manner as they do to Bollywood. The appeal of the politician is similar to and perhaps the same as the appeal of the film star. The depth of engagement from the audience is also the same. No delivery in the real world is actually expected of either; the performance on screen is all there is.
How is it then possible for Indian newspapers to exist and be profitable? Advertising, of course, which is by far the largest source of revenue for media companies. And the largest advertiser in India is the Union government through its Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP). In the year ending March 2017, the Modi government spent nearly Rs 1,300 crore on advertising and publicity, of which Rs 468 crore went to newspapers. This was down from Rs 508 crore the year before, though DAVP’s budget went up by 8 per cent.
The democratisation of social media carries with it the understanding that its users will be responsible.
Modi had been specifically warned by the RBI—the body that actually had to demonetise the notes of currency its governor had guaranteed with his signature and was arm-twisted into doing so—that demonetisation was a mistake. Raghuram Rajan resigned as governor after having discussed and disapproved of this move.
The RBI’s response to the government was: That the economic growth referred to by the government was real while the rise in currency was nominal and not adjusted for inflation and ‘hence this argument does not adequately support the recommendation’ for demonetisation. That most black money was held as land or gold and not cash, and abolishing currency would have no effect on curbing black money. That demonetisation would have a negative impact on GDP. That Rs 400 crore in counterfeit currency was insignificant (only 0.02 per cent) compared to the total cash in circulation, which was Rs 18 lakh
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Despite its best efforts to keep people from exchanging currency, it ultimately turned out that over 99 per cent of the cash came back.
An unusual rise in imports in the quarters after demonetisation led to speculation that India’s supply chains had been ‘disrupted’—meaning firms had gone bankrupt and shut down. And so India was importing things it could no longer produce enough of.
Former RBI governor Y.V. Reddy has said of India’s GDP data that ‘everywhere in the world the future is uncertain. But in India even the past is uncertain’.63 This was always the case with the Modi government.
A July 2019 paper by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) doubted that India achieved a ‘staggering 8.2 per cent growth rate in the year of demonetisation when more than 80 per cent of the cash in the economy was removed from circulation overnight dealing a severe blow to the unorganised segment of the population’.
The first government data on employment that showed things were bad came when it was reported that millions had lost their jobs because of demonetisation and unemployment was at a four-year high.72 This report was ‘withheld’ and not revealed even to parliament.73 It was released only after the 2019 elections were over.
But it became clear that, as economic growth and hope fell away after 2016, Indians began to spend less as they had less confidence in the future.
on the night of 24 March, a part of the population found itself stranded with no work, few resources and no means of reaching safety. The total lockdown made no exceptions and all public transport was shut down. Millions of workers and their families began walking to their villages. Many starved, many died. Many who walked on the highways were harassed and bullied by the police. Some walked on the railway tracks to avoid harassment and were run over. The State had shown zero responsibility towards these millions. Avoiding accountability, the Modi government lied to the Supreme Court, saying
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Think-tank members on leaving have said the prime minister was receptive to ideas that were in conformity with what he wanted but uninterested in the rest. Knowing this, his bureaucracy also stopped passing along material from his advisors which was in contrast to what they thought he preferred.137
Modi has no real economic framework and no depth of strategy.
Atmanirbhar Bharat privileges the industrialist over the consumer, but that is not the way that it is advertised. Who does the policy seek to make atmanirbhar? It is not the consumer or the citizen, who must pay more. It is those selected favourites of the government who have been tasked with winning, while the rest are left deliberately to fail.
The foreign policy objectives of Modi may be vague, but the damage has been concrete.
The assumption that issues decades-old between nations are merely awaiting the arrival of an individual to be resolved at an instant is not rational.
The primary problem lies, once again, in the lack of application of thought.
Kashmir has no new economy—no Uber, Ola, Dunzo, Swiggy—because internet is either patchy or totally blocked. Its economy resembles the Indian economy of decades ago.
This is what happens to complex enterprises that are run from the top but with no interest in detail. The national security strategy of an aspiring great power has come apart in a short time under Modi. There is no ownership of the intellectual aspects of the work, little application, little enthusiasm for the hard but boring tasks and too much focus and emphasis on meaningless
Three years into Modi’s first term, a research report found that 97 per cent of all cow-related violence in India came after he was elected.
The promotion of animal husbandry, which is the claimed reason for the ban on cattle slaughter, is not the reason for the violence over beef. It is religious passion and hatred that is the driver. The very idea that this violence is happening because people are concerned about animal husbandry is lunacy.
The legislations and speeches on cattle and beef are written to provoke. They are catalysts deliberately stirred up to produce the violence needed for polarisation, which in turn is beneficial in electoral policies and appeases the Hindutva constituencies.
India’s laws allow inter-faith marriages only under the Special Marriage Act (SMA), making it difficult for couples to keep their faith when marrying someone of another. Under the provisions of the SMA, couples must give 30-day notice, a copy of which is to be displayed in ‘some conspicuous place’ in the office of the marriage officer, usually a district magistrate.
The State, top-down, deliberately stokes sentiment and introduces the legal mechanism through which Muslims can be harassed. Society takes the cue and acts. Polarisation ensues, which is beneficial and necessary for majoritarian politics because it makes voter choice easy. India is damaged permanently but that is acceptable to those doing it. It is only collateral damage, if the damage is thought about at all, which it usually isn’t.
The following year, the target was made more modest and, instead of emulating a European city, it was stated that the Smart City of India would provide citizens with adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation, public transport, affordable housing for the poor, safety of women, health and education. This was, of course, not different from what cities were focussed on in any case. The problem was one of hard governance and not logo and nomenclature alone. This may be why the Modi government’s interest in this waned almost immediately.
The Wire’s piece referred to above and written by Shaguna Kanwar pointed out some primary flaws with the Smart Cities mission. It emphasised high-end infrastructure and technology-driven surveillance, but did not address amenities—water, schools, public hospitals, housing. With its area-based development, it was focussed on spending most of the money on small patches of city centres that were already developed.
When Congressman Shashi Tharoor complained in a tweet in 2017 that the BJP had merely changed the names of 23 Congress schemes, and said that Modi’s was a ‘name-changing’ government and not a ‘game-changing one’, his claim was put to the test. It was found that he was right about 19.32
It turned out that the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was the UPA’s Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account; Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana was the same as the National Girl Child Day programme; Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana was the Rajiv Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana; Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation was the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission renamed; the BJP’s neem-coated urea was the same as Congress’s neem-coated urea; the Soil Health Card scheme was the National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility; the Atal Pension Yojana was the
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This also undid the idea of deregulation, carried out in 2010 so that fuel prices would rise and fall with the price of crude. They no longer fell. When crude rose, the cost was passed to the consumer, when it fell, the government took in more. The price of fuel had been deregulated because the consumer was protected by the government each time the price of crude rose and the state-run oil companies took a hit. The opposite has happened under Modi: now the government is protected and the logic of deregulation is undone.
Things that were difficult to do and required hard governance were first taken up and then abandoned. This was true even when the project was as hallowed as the Namami Gange, taken up in June 2014 immediately after the election victory. It was given an outlay of Rs 20,000 crore ‘to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution, conservation and rejuvenation of National River Ganga’.
When the lockdown in March 2020 led to the temporary shutting down of polluting units, the Modi government claimed that the Ganga had been cleaned.
Instead of assuming responsibility for his actions as leader of the nation, Modi instead told chief ministers to fend for themselves. The Union as the sovereign should have raised or printed money to fill the hole it had created. But states were instead ‘given permission’ to borrow money from the market.
After three decades of coalitions and governments led by parties in a minority, India had become accustomed, wrongly, to the notion that cooperative federalism was baked into the polity. Modi provided a cold and harsh reminder that it was not. Power resided overwhelmingly with the Union government and in the hands of a man willing to exercise it freely and recklessly—this would be made manifestly clear to the chief ministers. With this power came no desire to assume responsibility.
The abolition of the Planning Commission by Modi had severed the political link that was present between the Union and the states. The Planning Commission was concerned with the development of states. Its replacement, the NITI Aayog operates as Modi’s personal think-tank; there is no accountability and therefore it is free to do whatever takes its or, more precisely, Modi’s fancy. It has sprung to the defence of Modi’s most eccentric initiatives and provided some convoluted justifications for them. It has busied itself with producing clickbait lists—aspirational districts, innovation index—and
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When the second wave of Covid crashed into India, and it became apparent that the vaccine plan— more accurately the lack of it—had failed, Modi dumped the problem on states (more on this in the chapter ‘Mahabharat’). Having blundered in not ordering enough vaccines or ensuring supply in advance, he shunted the problem and asked states to procure them instead.
The Chief Justice’s power to assign cases is important because the judges of India’s Supreme Court do not sit together as do the justices of the US’s Supreme Court. In India, cases are heard in smaller benches—usually two judges and sometimes three. Allocation and assignment of cases thus becomes crucial.
Justice Mishra was made a judge of the Supreme Court on 7 July 2014, just after Modi was elected. There were many justices in the Supreme Court other than him. His influence came purely from the number of ‘sensitive’ cases he was allotted by the Chief Justice.
Bhatt said he was present at a meeting on 27 February 2002 at Modi’s home, when Modi had authorised reprisal attacks on Muslims following the Godhra train fire in which 57 Hindus were killed. Bhatt also submitted a series of emails between Tushar Mehta, who was then additional advocate general of Gujarat, and some of the accused in the riots, alleging that Mehta shared confidential information and legal documents with the accused against whom the state was conducting cases. The bench dismissed all of this. The judgement said Bhatt’s claims were not credible because he had been in touch with
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has been noted that Justice Mishra always ruled in favour of the government when it was an appellant.
Dave said that out-of-turn allotment to Justice Mishra and then quick judgements in Adani’s favour had also happened on 29 January 2019 and 29 May 2018. Justice Mishra and Chief Justice Gogoi did not respond to this accusation or initiate any action. None of the other judges said anything. An investigation by journalists Abir Dasgupta and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta into seven Adani cases showed that Justice Mishra had always ruled in favour of Adani.
On 10 August 2020, a petition filed by N. Ram, Arun Shourie and Prashant Bhushan challenging the constitutional validity of the Contempt of Courts Act was deleted from the cause list of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and K.M. Joseph and listed instead before a bench comprising of Justice Mishra, who was already judging (and would go on to convict) Bhushan in another case of contempt. The three men withdrew their petition.
Born on 17 July 1974, Justice Vishal Mishra will retire in 2036. If elevated to the Supreme Court, he will retire in 2039. His young age means he is likely to not only become chief justice of India if elevated, but will have a long tenure in that position.
Former Justice A.P. Shah said, ‘The message it sends to the judiciary as a whole is that if you give judgments that are favourable to the executive, you will be rewarded. If you don’t do so, you will be treated adversely or you might be transferred or not considered for elevation.’35
Nobody in government and nobody in the Supreme Court, including all its judges, did a thing in this tawdry matter. The media, as we have noted, was afraid to take it up. The matter was allowed to slide as if nothing had happened. From being an accused to appearing as judge in his own cause, to an inquiry which wasn’t really an inquiry, which found for the accused but reinstated the complainant, the dropping of charges, the arbitrary and vengeful arrests and suspension of family members, the complicity of the Delhi Police in this, the nomination to the Rajya Sabha, the cases settled in the
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In March 2015, Modi undid a previous deal under the Manmohan Singh government to purchase 126 Rafale fighter jets. Under Modi’s deal (which he struck himself), India would instead buy 36 jets and Anil Ambani’s Reliance Aerostructure Limited, and not the State-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, was selected as the Indian Offset Partner. France would not offer a sovereign guarantee to India on the deal, and its leader, Francois Hollande, said Ambani had been inserted into the deal by Modi.
An RTI revealed that, as of February 2021, there were 54 pending habeas corpus petitions in the Supreme Court, of which one was 16 years old.42
The court also did not intervene in the matter of the PM CARES fund. The prime minister has no obligation to transfer the money to the National Disaster Response Fund, which is subject to an audit by the CAG. The PM CARES account would not be similarly audited and the court dismissed petitions that Modi be compelled to do so.43
