Democracy Backsliding

Democracy backsliding

Our Prime minister before he became one was the Chief Minister of a state for 13 long years running into three successive election victories. He is seen as one who is straight forward and reckless in his beliefs yet seen to carry conviction of the masses at an easy pace. He is perceived as the villain yet gets the applause of a hero. Such is his aura and image that people have come to compare and associate him to the Iron man of India.

He is seen to take unfamiliar stands but comes out victorious in spite of all the hue and cry. He is often predicted to receive a drubbing at the polls yet comes out victorious with a thumping majority. He is simply unbeatable and irresistible. He can tweak his way to the top and can twist an initial thought to serve many ends.

The demonetization of the economy was carried out to defeat the scourge of black money not the ones lying in Swiss banks, but the counterfeit kind which was equivalent to building a parallel economy, but he cleverly turned it to suit other ends like digitalization etc. It is actions like this that make him seem as a larger than life hero, someone who can justify a wrong and succeed in carrying it along without simmering discontent in any quarters.

After the Gujarat riots in 2002 no one gave him a chance at the Chief Ministers chair for the second time, yet he overturned all predictions to occupy it a second time. In spite of several opposition parties shouting out his sins and in spite of various government agencies intermittently applying the brakes he rode on to complete his second term. Anyone would have thought that the minority community who sees him as a conspirator would hardly vote for him, but for his third term he came out with even bigger numbers. Poll pundits and political analyst could not figure out why this was happening.

How could someone who had made enemies with the minority become victorious in every sphere of election? This clearly was baffling and learned people even ventured to opine that the minority was intimated and subdued and threatened to vote for him. The ones who voted against him started scratching their heads as soon as election results were out. They could not figure out where their votes had vanished. Everyone kept quiet because it was ridiculous to challenge a verdict of the people.

But was this a verdict of the people? Who could tell, given that the ones who voted against him did not want to claim it in the open for fear of showing their hand? However a good and astute politician will be able to calculate his chances. That is why opportunist’s politicians jump ship nearer election time. They can smell defeat and change ends to ensure that they are victorious.

Thus all political parties have a feel of the results going into elections, but they normally do not disclose it for fear of lowering moral of workers, because there can be only one winner. However when the results are grossly disproportionate some screeched louder and that is how a former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati shouted from the roof tops that there was something baffling about the Electronic Voting Machines.

So strong was the narrative in favour about EVM’s in the country that people were afraid to turn against it. Talking against the machine would tantamount to surrendering ones intellectual capabilities, since the majority were convinced that the process of voting had become easier to monitor and safeguard given the kind of reports that used to filter in during manual voting process about booth capturing and forced voting and voters being intimidated and prevented from voting along with poll officials everyone sat in their comfort zones.

However what one conveniently overlooked was the point that there was a method in the madness, in the story that the Bharatiya Janata Party had worked up a frenzy in synchronization with the voting machine to get a foothold in the political landscape in India and used this foothold to push through their agenda while acting like tough unwed school principals in matters of administration.

Finally someone demonstrated that these machines were not tamper proof and as one engineer politician added anything that is programmed by humans is capable of being surpassed by humans. The general public is now shedding the notion of Democracy being supreme and debating the quality of processes employed in achieving this apex position that the term ‘Democracy’ espouses.

There is a saying ‘ you can fool some people for some time but not all people all the time’, perhaps the game is up and the tide will turn allowing people and parties that seem to have been deliberately elbowed to claw their way back. As some would agree this is one condition that aptly fits into the newly coined term “Democracy backsliding” faced by countries and which has started to gather steam across the world.

Robin Varghese

12th May 2017