Dear Express reader, Three issues — the farmers’ strike, the US presidency, and the Covid vaccine — dominated discussions in the past week. As the week wound down, the country started the vaccination drive, with 1.91 lakh healthcare and frontline workers receiving the first shot of the vaccine on Saturday. The Indian Express welcomed the beginning of the vaccination drive, but had a word of caution as well. The editorial in this newspaper stressed on the importance of public communications in the vaccine outreach. Public trust is crucial to the success of any vaccination programme, more so in the case of COVID-19, where a vaccine has been fast-tracked in a bid to stall the destructive march of the virus. As always, there are vaccine sceptics. But they ought not be confused with those who have asked probing questions about processes and procedures. Those concerns are legitimate and the government will need to engage with them in the interest of public safety and trust. The importance of winning public trust was at the heart of two articles that appeared on the Oped pages. Suhas Palshikar wrote about the attempted coup by the supporters of the outgoing US president Donal Trump. Late last week, an angry mob, instigated by Trump, had sought to storm the Capitol Hill and disrupt the proceedings that cleared Joe Biden’s election as the new American president. The attack was put down by security forces and Congressmen across the party divide condemned the brazen attack on a democratic process, public institutions and authority. Palshikar sought to answer the question if something similar can happen in India. India did see an executive coup in 1975 when then prime minister Indira Gandhi declared internal emergency, suspended civil and political rights and jailed a number of her political opponents. India became Indira and Indira became India, as one of Emergency’s court jesters said. The Emergency lasted 19 months and was lifted by Mrs Gandhi, who also chose to face the voters. The Opposition was in a disarray going into elections, but the moral leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan was enough and more for voters to endorse a ramshackle Janata Party and hand out a rare electoral defeat to Mrs Gandhi. It has been assumed since that the Indian political class learnt its lessons from Mrs Gandhi’s experience and, therefore, it was unlikely that India will ever witness an executive coup again. However, Palshikar is not so optimistic. In fact, he warns that “the current phase of Indian politics might be recorded in history as the second executive coup India has had — and a much more successful and durable one”. He writes: “In terms of constructing a constituency of the mob, the present moment is probably more dangerous than what India has seen so far for two reasons: There is a carefully orchestrated and sustained use of mobs which are excited prior to being unleashed and, two, a network of ideologically motivated organisations systematically whips up mob mentality among sections that are emotionally pushed to the precipice. Thus, the ‘science’ of mob politics is employed in a nuanced manner with a rhetorical discourse legitimating the mob as the people. Secondly, the present moment is characterised by an unprecedented institutional collapse. Executive coups are dependent on bureaucracies for their operational competence and on courts for the constitutional location of political chicanery. The ease with which both these institutional safeguards have crumbled has only made it easier for the coup to become viable and respectable. Three, the vigour of the political establishment to fight against the coup is completely lacking. With the media as cheerleader, the coup has marched on. The ruling party and the legislature have been easily set aside — much as Indira Gandhi did. But what is even more striking is the way in which the so-called Opposition has caved in. The failure of the Opposition is not merely in its inability to fight back but more in its inability to grasp the severity of the moment and its willingness to share the same traits of autarchy.” Palshikar points out that Trump and Mrs Gandhi relied on megalomania and were swayed by their own image. “But in the present moment, we have a combination of megalomania with systemic ingredients ensuring that in an Orwellian fashion, democracy will not be defined by what ought to be, but on the basis of what is claimed as democracy.” A second article — ‘A shapeshifting justice’ by Pratap Bhanu Mehta — spoke about the crisis in another venerable Indian institution, the Supreme Court, which has manifested in the court’s attempt to mediate in the farmers protests. Though evidently a political matter, the court announced a committee to negotiate with the farmers and the government and end the impasse in talks. It also ordered that the farm bills, passed by Parliament, be put on hold, which Mehta says, has set “a terrible constitutional precedent, bereft of judgment”. He writes: “The issues in the farm bills are complex. But no matter which side you are on, you should now worry about how the Supreme Court is interpreting its function. It has suspended the implementation of the farm laws, and created a committee to ascertain the various grievances. But it is not clear what the legal basis of this suspension is. The court’s action, at first sight, is a violation of separation of powers. It also gives the misleading impression that a distributive conflict can be resolved by technical or judicial means. It is also not a court’s job to mediate a political dispute. Its job is to determine unconstitutionality or illegality.” Mehta also warns that “it (the Supreme Court) finds ruses to defuse genuine democratic protest. Yet it will not facilitate the orderly and law-bound expression of protest”. Farmers have been on dharna braving the cold at Delhi borders since early December. They have ignored attempts by the ruling sections to brand them as anti-nationals etc. and sat across government representatives multiple times to find a resolution to their concerns without success. As Mehta writes, “any mediation to break the stalemate is welcome. But the mediation has to be a political process between the government and the people”. By intervening in the manner it did in what is clearly a dispute of political economy, the court “has created mistrust in farmers about its intention”. Mehta writes: “The court seems to have given the government a setback, but it is more a ‘get out of jail’ card: Saving it from being on the political backfoot in the face of a movement. By this order, the court has forfeited the very thing it needs most: Being a repository of trust.” This is, in fact, the crisis of our times: The failure of institutions to assert their autonomy and stand sentinel to constitutional values. Till next week, Amrith | .jpg)
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