A nation’s strength and stability is synonymous with the power of its institutions of governance. In democracies, strong, independent institutions discharging their duties and constitutional obligations to society, are necessary checks and balances against the exercise of arbitrary and/or authoritarian power by ephemeral governments elected for specific terms. Unfortunately, except in the Nehruvian era (1950-64) when in the first flush of independence a conscious effort was made by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to respect and strengthen Parliament, the judiciary, bureaucracy, media and academia even if not industry, successive governments in New Delhi have exhibited scant respect for the separation of powers and have weakened these institutions of governance. This unfortunate tradition is being continued — arguably accelerated — by the BJP government elected to power in 2014 with the largest Lok Sabha majority since 1985.
The phenomenon of entire sessions of Parliament being washed out with sickening regularity because of unruly protests staged by members of both houses, is a new millennium development. And it would not be inaccurate to state that paralysis of Parliament’s business through orchestrated disorderly behaviour is substantially a BJP invention. When the Congress-led UPA II government was beset with the Commonwealth Games, 2G spectrum and coal auction scandals, the BJP leadership and party members set the precedent of disrupting entire sessions of Parliament through unparliamentary and disorderly conduct. Now it is being paid back in its own coin at the nation’s cost.
However, the country’s premier legislative body is only one of the institutions whose foundations have been severely eroded during the past 30 months. Currently, the BJP government is locked in a stalemate with the Supreme Court on the issue of primacy in the appointment of apex and high court judges. Moreover it has disregarded established tradition on the issue of appointment of chief of army staff; the prime minister hasn’t yet called a press conference; reckless appointments of unqualified individuals to apex level positions in institutions of higher education have been made, and the government —specifically prime minister Narendra Modi — has imposed great hardship upon hundreds of millions of citizens through a fiat demonetising 86 percent of the national currency without proper planning and preparation. Consequently the authority of the autonomous Reserve Bank of India which is constitutionally mandated to supervise and control monetary and currency policies of the nation, has been gravely undermined.
This a good time for the prime minister to step back and reflect upon the long-term advantages of strengthening the other estates — Parliament, judiciary, media, as also the academy and RBI. For the prime minister to evolve from a mere politician into a statesman, a cooperative, consultative style of governance is the better alternative.
Chance to Make a Clean Break
The death in chennai on december 5 of J. Jayalalithaa, a former film actress and undisputed leader of the AIADMK party, who served three five-year terms as chief minister of Tamil Nadu (pop. 77.8 million), marks the end of an era in the history of this southern seaboard state gifted with an educated and industrious population, but saddled with political parties drawing inspiration from the make-believe world of Indian cinema. With her main political adversary, M. Karunanidhi (93), a former cinema scriptwriter, director, leader of the opposition DMK party and himself a three-term chief minister of Tamil Nadu in poor health, and unlikely to lead the DMK in the next assembly election due in 2021, this is an opportune moment for the state’s short-changed electorate to break the film industry-politics nexus.
By aggressively practising the politics of caste-based reservations — 69 percent of state government jobs and seats in education institutions are reserved for scheduled castes, tribes and other backward castes as against the 49 percent ceiling imposed by the Supreme Court — the AIADMK and DMK have severely eroded the quality of public administration in Tamil Nadu where corruption is rife. If despite this the state has emerged as a hub of the automobile, IT and textile industry, the credit must accrue to its hard-working, entrepreneurial people who have succeeded modestly despite government.
Yet perhaps the greatest damage done by the competitive populism of Tamil Nadu’s cinema-centred parties, is in education. In 2010 the then incumbent DMK government legislated the Uniform System of School Education Act 2010, which abolished the state’s private, autonomous Matriculation, Anglo Indian and Oriental School examination boards and decreed a common curriculum and textbooks for all schools which were forcibly affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Education (TNSBSE). This legislation enacted to create an egalitarian school system, has seriously levelled down primary-secondary education because the TNSBSE syllabus/curriculum has been progressively diluted to enable students of government, especially rural schools, to pass the class X and XII school-leaving exams. As a consequence over the past decade, the number of school-leavers from the state who normatively topped national public exams such as IIT-JEE, CAT, AIPMT, UPSC has dropped sharply. Inevitably, industry and agriculture productivity is also declining.
While undoubtedly the late Jayalalithaa was a loved and popular leader of the masses, her political populism based on inflationary give-aways and levelled down education has extracted a high hidden price from the people of Tamil Nadu. Her passing offers the productive but short-changed people of the state to make a clean break with the fantasy world of Tamil cinema, and place their bets on more grounded politicians and leaders.