Politicians....Organized Criminals ??? (part 3)

Preface 

This is the third and last post of the trilogy, where I have tried to explore the similarity between politics and organized crime in the country. This post goes into the depth of political rot in contemporary times and also explores the few silver linings in these dark clouds.

        With the end of Congress Hegemony in Indian Politics in 1989, it was now the era of coalition and vote bank politics. By this time, there was widespread public disinterest in politics. The middle and upper class were completely alienated from the electoral process. The elections were wide open, with extremely low winning margins and several close candidates for each seat. It essentially meant that to be 'first past the post' in any elections, you don't require support cutting across all communities, like in earlier times. Hence, instead of a 'unity in diversity' campaigns for the entire constituency, the complete electoral emphasis was now on specific targeted audiences, based on caste, religion, ethnicity, region etc. The old imperialist technique of 'Divide and Rule' was perfected by the modern Indian Politicians. These politics led the Indian society in the vicious cycle of mutual hate and self-destruction which continues unabated even today.

Protest Against Mandal Commission

        Ticket distribution on the basis of caste has been going on since the late 1950s.  However regressive caste politics reached new heights with the development of competitive reservation system, for vote bank purposes. Every caste/community started proving themselves backward and demanding reservations, added and abetted by opportunist political leaders. Instead of expanding the overall pie, all efforts went in securing a smaller separate slice for ever increasing sub-divisions. As expected it led to a development of creamy layer in every historically oppressed section of Indian society. The creamy layer kept reaping almost the entire benefit of reservations while the remainder remained untouched as they couldn't even cross the minimum qualifying threshold.

Ram Rath Yatra by L.K Adavani

        The Hindu fundamentalist groups had long been sidelined by secular charismatic leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru. But the continuous vote-bank minority appeasement policies led to dissatisfaction in the majority. On the highly emotional and religious demand of creation of 'Ram Janyabhoomi Temple', the Hindu fundamental groups revived themselves. It finally resulted in BJP forming the first stable non-Congress government in the country. As expected, acquisition of power in the center led to a more moderate and secular approach being adopted. India finally found the long required and very essential (right-winged) political alternative to Congress. However it came at a huge cost on the society. The demolition of Babri Masjid led to several religious riots. The Gujrat riots of 2002, was the second major government-supported riot in the country after the Anti-Sikh riots of 1984.  

Laloo Yadav

        Party sponsored criminals, during elections, had been a very common thing, right from the late 1960's. Later booth capturing, intimidation and sporadic violence during elections, became the norm of the day. But now hard-core criminals started coming into politics. With their muscle and money power, they were able to gather enough critical votes to be the 'first past the post' and hence they were welcomed with open hands in all parties. The thin line between organized crime and politics was blurring very fast. One of the worst sufferers was the state of Bihar. For more than two decades, the state was very similar to a mafia-ruled place. There were even parallel caste armies and proxy civil wars in the state. Things were not much better in the rest of the country either. In eastern India and especially in tribal areas, organized exploitation by the state and police machinery increasingly drove people to violence and Naxalism.

Political Choice

        All the mainstream parties more or less lost their separate identities. Party ideology became a poor joke. People frequently swapped sides with perfect ease between rival parties. Horse trading and power struggle became far too blatant and unapologetic. In a supposedly spiritual country of ours, public morality and even basic ethics were thrown out of the window. Another interesting pattern is the change in the personal relationships between ardent political rivals. It had progressed from once ideological differences to personal differences, to now pure shadow-boxing. On a personal level, everyone in politics helped each other. They even bailed out their opponents at critical times, ensuring that rarely anyone ever got convicted in courts. For all effective purposes, the complete political class was above the law. Although outwardly, the politics appeared to be more dynamic, with no party ever being sure of returning back to power; actually, the system became very stagnant, with no real change being brought about, through any elections.

P V Narsimha Rao

        By the early 90's, Indian economic was in tatters. There was a minority government at the center headed by Narasimha Rao, who had mastered the act of staying in power, by hook or by crook. There was not even a single party then, that had economic liberalization in its agenda. Yet the circumstances forced India to liberalize its economy. Great path-breaking reforms that would have never passed had there been proper discussion or debate on it, in the parliament, were readily passed as  everyone was just busy trying to avoid a second election and get the maximum out of the costly election that they had somehow won.

People's Committee Against Police Atrocities

        Apart from having a very positive impact on the economy, the economic reforms completely changed the scale and scope of corruption, black money and politics in India. The pace of economic reforms and liberalization slackened as soon as the Indian economy stabilized. Certain key sectors were never reformed, and the bottleneck in those critical areas now yielded much higher returns for the bureaucracy and politicians, from the increasingly rich business class. The country moved from 'ineffective socialism' to 'effective crony capitalism'. This crony capitalism led to very harmful effects on the environment and much greater exploitation of the extremely poor (especially tribal) class. As a reaction to it, counter-productive communism and Naxalism spread explosively, to cover approximately one-third the total districts of the country.

        As the scale of corruption scandals grew, so did the task of covering it. Rajiv Gandhi made a mess of covering up the Bofors scam and hence paid dearly. Learning from that, the politicians soon realized the need to bring every investigative agency, especially CBI, under their water-tight control. Very soon they were masters of the game and even the creation of CVC by Supreme Court through the famous 'Vineet Narain case' helped little. CBI soon became one of the most effective tool, in the hands of the government to blackmail its coalition partners and others in the opposition.

Election Commissioner, T N Seshan

        After the demise of Indira Gandhi, the non-political, independent institutions of the country slowly strengthened themselves. In 70's and 80's a number of elections were rigged. Money and muscle power had become predominant in Indian elections, slowly turning India into a banana republic.  One man, Election Commissioner, T.N. Seshan changed it all. He utilized the power and autonomy of the Election Commission, under the constitution, to free the office from all political pressures. His legacy ensured that elections became freer and fairer over the years.

Vinod Rai, The Controler and Auditor
General (CAG) of Ind

        After the Emergency, no government could ever dare to put binding restrictions on the media. With the emergence of TV and the subsequent popularity of the media, it became a very powerful fourth pillar of democracy. The media has never been completely free from political pressures. However the fact that its competitive popularity in most cases, rests on taking an anti-political and anti-establishment stance, has led it towards constant scrutiny and criticism of the politics. Similarly, as the executive kept losing popular support and people power, the judiciary filled in the gap through increasing judicial activism. A lot of important decision were taken and monitored in courts rather than in executive bodies. Historically, the CAG's audit reports were routinely thrown into the dustbins by the politicians. Lately, under Mr. Vinod Rai, the CAG has successfully managed to name and shame politicians. Thus India has, over time, developed and nurtured all the necessary elements of a fully working democracy.

        The advent of modern technology, the internet, social media, the spread of education, the growth of urban middle class and increase in prosperity due to economic reforms has strengthened the civil society of India. IT revolution, growing demand for e-governance and greater public scrutiny through acts like RTI has dented the political power slightly. Even though disturbing similarities do exist between current politicians and organized criminals, the experience of other countries, who have gone through a similar path, suggest a far rosier future for India. India is too diverse a country to make any sweeping statement and hence it remains a matter of speculation whether Indian politics has reached its nadir or not.