Can Modi stay with status quo he has created?

Will Modi change the way he has been treating the opposition parties? Will he change how he has been dealing with Parliament? Will he change the way he has been dealing with his party and the partners in the National Democratic Alliance? While deciding portfolios of his ministers, he has shown that he hardly cares for the sentiments of his partners in the NDA. He allocated unimportant portfolios to his NDA partners

There is a fierce fight between the status quo and change in India. This status quo is quite different from its predecessors in the past. Modi’s status quo is the disruptions he has brought to Indian democracy during his 10-year rule. Here, the meaning of change is stopping the disruptions brought out by Modi and bringing democracy back on track. Can Modi succeed in maintaining the status quo? It will be simplistic to think that he can do it. People may analogize the example of PV Narasimha Rao, who ran a minority government for the full term. But the analogy is simplistic.

Let us define the nature of Modi’s status quo. A close look will reveal how authoritarian Prime Minister Modi has been in his last ten years of rule. He destroyed the autonomy of institutions; snatched the freedom of the media, and crushed dissent. The case is different from the loose authoritarianism of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the emergency of the late seventies. Another basic difference between the two regimes also needs attention. This is Indira Gandhi’s adherence to the rule of law. She brought about an emergency by invoking constitutional provisions. In Modi’s scheme of things, the constitutional arrangement hardly matters.

He does not care whether his actions conform to parliamentary procedures or traditions. It does not care much about whether his decisions violate any constitutional arrangement. He decides first and then seeks its approval from the Constitution. The note-ban is the classic case. He went on with his decision and accordingly extracted an endorsement from the Reserve Bank of India. It is now known that the ban on notes devastated the unorganized sector and pushed the Indian economy into permanent distress. He never admitted the folly of his decision. The servile media enthusiastically stood in the chorus.

Modi unhesitatingly used the vulnerability of institutions in his favor. He did not much for it. He had only to ensure that these institutions must be filled with people who were ready to obey. Institutions include the constitutionally empowered Election Commission of India. He changed the law to appoint persons of his choice. Many may argue that recent poll results have given too many seats to opposition parties, and the BJP even failed to get a majority. This is too simplistic a way of looking at things.

The robustness of the polling system lies in the involvement of millions of people. None of the parties can mobilize this vast number of people to do things they like. The credit for the little fairness shown in the polling goes to countless people who do not belong directly to the ECI. They are teachers, bank employees, police, and government employees. The Election Commissioners acted in a manner that only showed their readiness to toe the lines of the ruling party. The long duration of elections, inaction on violations of the Model Code of Conduct, and the delay in revealing the voter turnout are examples that exhibit how partisan the ECI has remained all through the elections. There was no playing field for the opposition.

Modi’s status quo means a few more important things: the opaqueness of the system, the use of investigating agencies as political wings of the ruling party, and the lack of accountability in dealing with parliamentary procedures. The electoral funding through electoral bonds was the classic case of opaqueness. The Supreme Court scrapped these bonds. However, Modi and Amit Shah have been opposing the verdict and defending the system. Had they found time, as they did in the case of the appointment of the election commissioners, they would have come out with some arrangement to defy the SC verdict. Now, the government may try to devise some other way of opaque electoral funding.

Will Modi change the way he has been treating the opposition parties? Will he change how he has been dealing with Parliament? Will he change the way he has been dealing with his party and the partners in the National Democratic Alliance? While deciding portfolios of his ministers, he has shown that he hardly cares for the sentiments of his partners in the NDA. He allocated unimportant portfolios to his NDA partners.

Is it arrogance? No, it is not arrogance. It is the arrangement he has made with the Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu and the Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar. No one knows the terms of the arrangement. Are special statuses for their states part of the terms? Are they ready to sacrifice broader issues of democracy and freedom?

These arrangements he has made with his allies only show that he has not changed his functioning style. It only confirms his style of politics. In it things are managed, not the norms are followed. The selection of Lok Sabha speakers will reveal more. During his regime, the presiding officers have functioned in a partisan manner.It hardly needs any elaboration. The Lok Sabha functioned without a Deputy Speaker for its entire tenure. This post is usually given to an opposition party.

If Modi selects the Lok Sabha speaker from the non-BJP parties, it will indeed be a change. It will show that he is ready to follow the norms of an alliance. The tallest leader of his party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had given miniseries such as Defence, Rail, and others to his NDA partners. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh also functioned in the same manner.

The final question comes to mind: why is Modi keen on maintaining the status quo he has created during his tenure? The answer is simple. His image is associated with it. How can he keep his brand intact without enslaved institutions, a servile media, and crushed dissent? He needs to maintain the status quo to continue with his cronyism as well.

(The author is a senior journalist. He has experience of working with leading newspapers and electronic media including Deccan Herald, Sunday Guardian, Navbharat Times and Dainik Bhaskar. He writes on politics, society, environment and economy)