We have just completed two years of disaster called demonetisation and today the coup against the CBI shall be heard by Supreme Court. This festive season has seen strange political and financial intrigues. The government is coercing the RBI into parting its contingency reserves of over Rs 2.5 lakh crore to meet the Central governments growing deficit in the election year. The – never – before – used provision of the RBI Act may be invoked as the RBI governor, who then winked at the government decision of demonetisation now finds the same government directions to lower the dignity of the apex Bank and chip its institutional integrity.
Just before demonetisation the then governor of the RBI Raghuram Rajan was eased out and if the current RBI governor resigns, over the finance ministry’s extortionist demands our country will become world’s laughing stock.
The country got a dose of ‘Gujarat model’ in 2014. It is all about brazenness with which support is mobilised for the government in general and the PM in particular. When bodies of art, culture, education and history were muzzled, we looked the other way. After attempting to capture and safronise educational institutions, criminalising dissent and polarising society to the sole purpose of getting through ‘first pass the post’ at polls, now it is the turn of CBI, RBI and may be CJI to get dismantled in the onward march of the of the Gujarat model. The way demonetisation was brought without the nicety of taking the RBI on board showed the government cares very little for credibility and integrity of institutions.
The dismantling of country’s premier institutions started soon after May 2014. The Planning Commission which played a stellar role was done away with, only because planned economy was associated with Jawaharlal Nehru. If our country has not followed the path taken by other Asian countries, role of institutions built under the stewardship of Nehru deserves a special mention. It was said earlier, the institutions built by the father, were systematically subjugated by the daughter! Even the Supreme Court is supposed to have buckled under pressure during the emergency. If the country overcame the aberration, it was our robust institutions that helped us tide over that 19 months’ period. To her credit, Indira Gandhi did not tinker with functional independence of the RBI, despite her coming to power on the ‘Garibi Hatao’ slogan.
As the legislature and the executive let us down, the country depended on the courts. It was felt our other structures were weak, but the courts were strong enough to deal with authoritarian tendencies. They became panacea of all evil. Now, last bastion is also in a state of stress. The press conference addressed by four seniormost judges in early 2018 almost questioned the role of the CJI in allotting sensitive cases to select judges and as Arun Shourie puts it ‘when any politically important case is assigned to a particular judge, you can forecast what the judgement will be. This was the charge of the four judges that cases were being selectively assigned”. When all institutions decline, how can only Supreme Court stand tall?
The way the Election Commission of India handled the Gujarat elections particularly the delay in announcing the elections and permitting large scale sops including the relaxation on GST on select items has undermined the institutional credibility of the ECI. The credibility of the premier investigation agency, the CBI has never been so low (not that it was high anytime!). What credibility an investigation agency can have when the two top officers accuse each other of being corrupt. The civil war in the CBI is a result of decay in all rungs of administration. The brazen and arbitrary manner in which the CBI director was pushed out at the dead of night demonstrates that the government has no qualms about functional independence and institutional integrity. All authoritarian leaders look for moments of weakness in any institutions. What a golden opportunity to disrupt the institutional independence of the CBI under the pretext of putting the institution on the correct path? The finance minister, a former senior Supreme Court advocate had the audacity to tell us ‘the country is taller than any institution’. It must be re-stated that country is what it is due to its institutions. His ignorance is our misery
The fact of the matter is leaders with authoritarian tendencies have no regard for the very idea of an institution. They just can’t believe that institution should work according to regulations and accepted norms. They believe law of the land must be the will of the elected. They refer to the reasoned decisions of the institution as the tyranny of the unelected. Autocrats have never been appreciative of debate and open spirit of inquiry. It is that antipathy to the ethos of discussion, debate and free exchange of ideas that JNU, University of Hyderabad Jadavpur University and the Ambedkar Study Circles were sought to be suppressed. The idea of pluralism is never the forte of autocrats who would resort to coercion to have their way as opposed to tolerance of diversity of views. In such an atmosphere, it is individuals not institutions that matter. Raghuram Rajan’s call for ‘competition in the market place for ideas’ possibly made the path clear for his exit.
The way the present regime is demolishing institutions built over a period of time is simply unacceptable. The country’s ‘jewels’ cannot be permitted to be frittered away in this manner. Their launch of insurrection against democratic structures must be halted and people’s faith in the institutions restored. That will be the greatest challenge of 2019.
(The writer is practising advocate, senior faculty in law and political analyst)
