How strong political leaders threaten India’s democratic institutions

The Rafale controversy, certain aspects of which are being heard by the Supreme Court, is still raging in public perception. This is one issue in which the autonomy of three democratic institutions has attracted attention. One, whether the Prime Minister’s Office conducted parallel negotiations with France, undermining the defence ministry’s role; two, whether the apex court’s judgement was affected with the government placing inadequate or misleading information before it; and three, whether the government undermined the autonomy of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Over the past five years, democratic institutions have come in the spotlight for the singular reason of the executive’s interference. Democracies run with institutional support. Their effectiveness holds the government accountable, protects people’s interests and ensures a democracy’s functioning. With the change of government, people expect that institutions will outlast elected leaders. In his book, Democracy and Its Institutions, Indian political sociologist Andre Beteille notes that the term “institution” has two meanings as “an enduring group with a distinct identity and with boundaries that mark it out from its environment” and as “a pattern of activities that are recurrent, legitimate, and meaningful.”

During the tenure of the current government, a concern emerged that institutions are under attack from the executive under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In Aurangabad, sociologist Sadiq Bagwan told me recently: “Cult politics in the US under Donald Trump, in India under Modi and in the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte, is damaging democracy in these countries.”

Bagwan, an assistant professor of sociology at the Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University in Aurangabad, said that the emergence of “strong leaders” is associated with the fact that they can violate established institutions and the laws, thereby weakening the democratic systems. “Strong leaders initiate the process of weakening institutions,” he said. However, Modi is perhaps the second, not the first, strong leader facing such criticism. One of the first leaders was Indira Gandhi who undermined the democratic institutions, especially the judiciary.

Bagwan’s concern that the prime minister undermined institutions is buttressed by hard facts. The Election Commission (EC), perhaps for the first time since TN Seshan, came under pressure twice from the Modi government. In 2017, it delayed the declaration of dates for the Gujarat assembly elections which was interpreted as a bid to allow the BJP government to announce pre-election sops for voters. The EC also disqualified 20 MLAs of Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, which was deemed as a partisan move and was ultimately reversed by the Delhi High Court in 2018.

In 2018, the University Grants Commission (UGC), a totally non-political institution, directed universities and higher educational institutions to celebrate September 29 as “surgical strike day”–to commemorate India’s retaliatory strikes on launchpads used by terrorists in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The UGC’s move was viewed as propaganda that would benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party. Two governors of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel, resigned over differences with the government which were viewed as undermining the RBI’s autonomy.

With deterioration in people’s trust in institutions, there were reports that the Modi government did not consult with the RBI, the Cabinet and the finance minister, except in the last few hours, when announcing the demonetisation of ₹1,000 and ₹500 notes on November 8, 2016. It was also reported that only seven persons–the PM, chiefs of RAW and Intelligence Bureau, the National Security Adviser, and chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force–were in the loop about the Indian airstrikes in Balakot in the early morning of February 26, 2019. Effectively, it means the country’s defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was not even consulted.

These instances show that under Modi, democratic institutions are being marginalised, overruled and weakened. In this regard, two biggest events in modern Indian history must also be mentioned. In January 2018, four senior-most justices of the Supreme Court–J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph–held an unprecedented press conference where they mounted public criticism of the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, warning that “administration of the Supreme Court is not in order” and “democracy will not survive”. It appeared in the public eye that the apex court was under political pressure in the way some benches were constituted by Justice Misra.

And, the Modi government’s decision in October 2018 to issue a midnight order to remove Alok Verma as the director of the CBI revealed the government’s panic over the Rafale issue. More such instances can be given where it appeared that the government was interfering with established procedures and systems, notably in changing the criteria for calculating gross domestic product (GDP), withholding the Central Statistical Organisation report on jobs, preventing ministries from publishing data on employment and farmers’ suicides, and the like.

Democratic institutions, despite being part of the executive, are supposed to work autonomously and in public service. However, the Modi government’s interference—both overt and covert—sent a message that the democratic institutions are no longer in public service but in the service of the governing party’s quest for power. In India, this is not something new.

In an interview with me, Shrinivasrao Sohoni, who served as advisor to the president of India, wondered: “When was it that institutions in India were not under stress?” He pointed out that the Cabinet system which worked well from 1935 onwards through the Second World War, faced its first challenges under Jawaharlal Nehru. He cited the example of Dr BR Ambedkar’s resignation from the Nehru cabinet and how rumours were floated that he had resigned due to ill health and corruption. But Ambedkar spoke in Parliament saying that he quit due to the violation of the Cabinet form of the government by ignoring the collective responsibility of the council of ministers.

Sohoni cited cases when Nehru ignored the Cabinet, notably on issues like Kashmir and China. He took away the powers of the Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to handle the Kashmir issue. Sohoni also noted that Nehru didn’t have respect for Rajendra Prasad and did not go to the funeral of the first president when he died on February 28, 1963, in Patna. When the Janata Party came to power it passed the 44th Amendment, especially restoring the Cabinet system under Article 352 (3) which disallows imposition of Emergency-like measures without the Cabinet approval.

However, once Indira Gandhi returned, she ran the Cabinet much as she wished. Judiciary too came under political pressure. In his book Supreme Whispers, Abhinav Chandrachud narrates numerous instances of “executive interference” in judicial appointments right through the first two decades of Indian democracy and how “government used tactics to intimidate judges after 1971, using weapons like supersessions, transfers and non-confirmation of additional and acting judges, to undermine the independence of the judiciary.”

This continued until the collegium system in the 1990s “took away the government’s power to intimidate judges.” In search of “committed judges”, writes Chandrachud, Indira Gandhi “started packing the court” and “judges started being appointed to the Supreme Court, for the first time, by openly considering their political ideologies.” Chandrachud observes: “Judges are still appointed … on the basis of region, religion, caste and gender, as they were in the 1980s and before”, but “with the advent of the collegium, the ideology of a judge seldom makes its way into the judicial appointments process.”

This discussion underlines one point: institutions have always been used and misused by the governing parties. The Enforcement Directorate, the CBI, the Income Tax department and the police force are routinely used and abused by leaders in power to harass political opponents and to favour those on the side of the governing party. Since the misuse of democratic institutions is a politically divisive issue, responses of critics also suffer from bias. For example, the supporters of Modi are eloquent when it comes to the criticism of Nehru and Indira Gandhi while being economical with words about the current prime minister and his BJP.

In Pune, I met with Dr Rajeshwari Deshpande, head of the department of political science and public administration at Savitribai Phule University and asked her if democratic institutions are under stress in India. “That has always been the case,” she said, adding that “there is an acceleration of the process under which institutions have come under stress”, but “internal checks and balances are important.” She also noted that the same political party which says something in opposition goes on to misuse the institutions when in power.

“Overall the nature of democracy has changed a lot over past 5-10 years. It can affect the functioning of institutions in the coming years. It is also a global case,” she said, citing the example of Vladimir Putin, the president who became prime minister and then president again by subverting the established system. “Political democracy and institutional democracy cannot be separated,” Dr Deshpande said, adding that examples like the political pressure on the Election Commission are no exception, all institutions are under stress because they are part of the political culture. She felt that the CBI issue was “blown out of proportion” and “internal destruction of institutions” also occurs. She wondered: what if the Lokpal, whenever appointed, becomes another CBI?

In Kolkata recently, I asked BC Dutta, associate professor of political science at the city-based Maulana Azad College, to weigh in on the subject. “The institutions are given by the Constitution of India. Because of the institutional structures given by the Constitution, democracy in India is flourishing,” he said. “Despite governments’ efforts [to the contrary], institutions remain. People are maturing. They are the source of the strength for democracy,” he added.

Institutions must be reformed or created as part of a natural process. In 2005, the Manmohan Singh government enacted the Right to Information Act to address shortcomings in the workings of democracy. The Modi government too renamed the planning commission as Niti Aayog and redefined its scope to achieve cooperative federalism and sustainable development goals. The move was not seen as partisan because there was realisation–since the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989–that the socialist model of top-down planning has become an impediment to development.

While democratic institutions will experience strains, Dutta’s point that people nurture democracy is vital. The increasing democratic awareness acts as a bulwark against authoritarianism in India. While Indira Gandhi has been severely and rightly criticised for the Emergency, Andre Beteille wrote: “The Emergency did not abolish the institutions of democracy, but by subduing them, it created at least for a while a deeper awareness of their value.” This is the awareness which has forced people to take note of the executive’s interference with democratic institutions now.

Beteille added: “India has a large and articulate body of public intellectuals comprising journalists, lawyers, social scientists, and many others.” Much like the Emergency made Indians aware of the value of institutions, the large body of intellectuals–and 900 million voters in India should be counted among them–acts as a wall against the executive’s interference. The institutions which came under attack during the last five years will certainly outlive the Modi government.