Mainstream WeeklyIndia is facing widespread systemic challenges – in legislatures, judiciary, bureaucracy, police, educational institutions, religious places, safety of women, etc. These make citizen’s life difficult. This spreading malaise is caused by the fraying of institutional independence. If institutions do not work the way they should, they won’t deliver what they are supposed to and that impacts societal functioning and leads to disarray.
Election Commission
The latest example of institutional failure is the expose of the autocratic functioning of the Chief Election Commissioner. It has brought into question the independence of the Election Commission and the impartial conduct of the recent elections. The implication is that the legitimacy of the ruling party’s victory in these elections is in doubt. The victory of some opposition parties in some elections in the country does not change this impression of Election Commission’s bias.
There have been accusations of manipulation of EVMs and fixing of elections. Politically, voters are sought to be influenced by accentuating communal, caste and regional divides and via inducements through freebies and pure bribery. Massive expenditures on rallies and posters are used to overwhelm the voters. All these strategems damage democracy but they pale in comparison to the current suspicion of compromised neutrality of the Election Commission. If indeed it is partisan then voting and elections becomes meaningless. No wonder some analysts are suggesting boycott of such elections by the opposition parties.
Tragedies
There has been a series of news of breakdown of systems prior to the news of goings on in the Election Commission. There was news of molestation of women and their safety and the suicides of students in premier institutions. A little before that was the collapse of the illegal PG building under which many students got buried alive. Gone from the public gaze is the fire in the illegal guest house in Hauz Rani and another building collapse in Saidulajab, Delhi.
Some of the major occurrences in 2026 have been, the Sagar District Spurious Liquor Tragedy, Uttarakhand Cloudburst, Wayanad Landslide, Delhi Building Collapse and water logging at Delhi Airport, Sikkim Tunnel Gas Suffocation, Visakhapatnam Steel Plant Explosion, Lucknow Commercial Building Fire, Vedanta Power Plant Boiler Explosion, Virudhunagar Firecracker Factory Blast, Nagpur Explosives Factory Blast, Nalanda Stampede, Andhra Pradesh Fireworks Explosion, Meghalaya Illegal Coal Mine Blast, Belagavi Sugar Factory Boiler Explosion. And many more daily occurrences.
In July, GenZ agitated against question paper leakages and cancellation of examinations. There are fake degree certificate rackets, proliferation of coaching and commercialization of education which is leading to widespread illegality in the field of education. In the field of health any number illegality are surfacing with deaths of children and mothers and fake medicines and over charging for medicines by no less than 200 times.
Justice
Then there is the shameless theft of offerings in temples and illegality in ‘prasad’ distributed/sold to the devout. There are lynching that have gone unpunished and bulldozer justice in spite of the courts pronouncing them illegal. It has spread from state to state in clear violation of the orders of the Courts. The Courts themselves spread confusion. They have said the rule is ‘bail not jail’ and yet, so many needlessly languish behind bars. The Ayodhya judgment opened a Pandora’s Box by declaring the demolition a criminal offence and yet allowing the construction of the temple. That has enabled a settled law to be challenged in numerous cases, like in Kashi, Mathura and Ujjain. The simmering cauldron is now boiling.
The police often lodges false cases, especially against labour when it protests, like, recently in NOIDA and earlier in Manesar. Police has used fifth columnists to engineer stoning and violence and then claiming that the crowd had turned violent and that is why it had to use force. This was evident in the case of the GenZ protests. The police was later forced to withdraw the cases that it had launched against the innocent protesters whom it had used lathis and pellet guns.
Legislatures have turned moribund because debate is dead. The majority bulldozes its agenda, ignoring the views of the minority which then has no alternative but to protest and stall the legislatures. So, laws and bills are passed with little discussion, thereby weakening democracy and resulting in big mistakes with adverse impact on society.
Partisanship
The ruling party is practicing partisanship at a grand scale. It is systematically putting its people into every institution, encouraging them to be partisan and ignoring their blatant indiscretions. Earlier too, partisanship existed but at a lower scale and broadly maintaining a semblance of fairness and respect for institutional norms. That is no more the case.
Institutions of higher learning are supposed to be more democratic in their functioning than other institutions. So, if the situation has deteriorated there, it is bound to be worse elsewhere. Partisans are appointed to head these institutions and tasked to appoint ruling party people all down the line, irrespective of their capabilities. In an interview to appoint a Professor for micro economics, candidates were asked, ‘the property of cow urine?’ The person who came prepared to answer that got selected. The selection committees are made compliant by calling experts who are not on the roster prepared by the department. The established norm of appointing Deans and Chairpersons by seniority has been given up. In one case 54 academics were superseded for appointment of Dean. They are in the selection committee and do the bidding of the top.
Mainstream media has largely been taken over by the ruling party through the multiplicity of hold over it. Media gets from the government many full page advertisements and TV time every day. More than that, the rulers can squeeze the owners of media houses who now have multiple businesses. Thus, the Fourth pillar of democracy has come substantially under control and is called ‘Godi Media’. The social media has been a thorn in the flesh of the rulers. This is sought to be rectified by tightening Information Technology rules under the IT act 2000.
Why is it easy for authorities in India to cow down people so that there is minimal protest against wrong doing and manipulation? Because of prevalence of feudal attitudes of people who are willing to follow those in authority – right or wrong. This is true nationally in institutions and in political parties. Generals, bureaucrats and police officers are appointed to head institutions of higher education, under the belief that these institutions need law and order and not an atmosphere promoting critical thinking. They carry out orders from above and expect those below to follow orders. Such thinking is reflected in the statement of a favourite bureaucrat of the previous regime, who when appointed as a VC, did not say that the University should produce 19 world class Ph.D.s and instead waned to produce 19 IAS officers.
Inter-linkages Dent Independence
Society is a collectivity. Its smooth running requires institutional arrangements and the rule of law. This is true even for autocratic or feudal societies. Whatever the law, it needs to be enforced which requires efficient functioning of the police and justice system, like during the colonial rule in India. If that does not happen, because the powerful manipulate the institutions, societies decline.
Modern democratic societies require institutional independence even more so since they require enforcement of the will of the people and a check on those in power. Partisanship that undermines institutional independence undermines democracy.
Institutions are inter-related so that a decline in one affects the others. As partisanship spreads across institutions, independence of all of them gets eroded. For instance, if political parties function undemocratically, the choice of legislators is impacted and that sets the decline of legislatures. That impacts the choice of people to man the independent institutions, like, judiciary, election commission, UGC, Universities, etc. The various wings of the government get impacted and interference with the functioning of businesses and media grows. The general public also begins to accept the partisanship and resistance declines.
Accountability
Institutional decline breeds illegality which thrives on declining accountability of businesses, political class and the executive - the triad which fuels the black economy and undermines the integrity of the institutions. In turn, even if partisanship does not exist, because the rule of law is eroded, the independence of institutions, like, judiciary, police and bureaucracy gets compromised. Not only do citizens have to bribe to get their routine government work done, they may have to pay hafta to the police and face challenges in education, health, housing, civic amenities, etc. When systems do not deliver, citizens turn cynical and accept illegality as a way of life. They do not resist it and where possible they become a part of it. Reform becomes difficult.
The black economy is concentrated in the hands of 3% of the top income earners and the rest lose. This accentuates the already prevailing huge inequality. When the citizens see the elite earning through illegal means, their sense of social justice erodes and alienation sets in.
In brief, institutional independence has been further eroded by partisanship practiced at a grand scale by the ruling party. The result is a failure of systems resulting in needless tragedies, policy failures and poor delivery to citizens. It is undermining of democracy whose latest example is the expose of the Election Commission’s functioning and the botched SIR exercise.
Gandhi’s critique of the British Parliamentary system in Hind Swaraj points to partisanship undermining institutions. He says, ‘The Prime Minister is more concerned about his power than about the welfare of the Parliament … (and) securing the success of his party’. Indian democracy is facing this on a grand scale.
(Author: Retired Prof of Economics, JNU; He is alos the author of ‘Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis: The Impact of the Coronavirus and the Road Ahead’. 2020)