Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came in with the slogan “minimum government, maximum governance”, has become the government itself.
“They might well have come to regard prime ministerial dominance as normal and, therefore, as acceptable. They might have been taken in by the media’s preoccupation with the leader, his close circle, his family and his friends. They might even be over-impressed by the fact that the new Prime Minister had led them to victory and that they therefore owed their jobs to him. It is quite possible that they might be overawed by the sheer scale of the Prime Minister’s department. Ministers in such a government would be not so much the Prime Minister’s colleagues as his employees, even his courtiers—in which case the Prime Minister really would be a sort of president. An administration of this character is conceivable, but it seems unlikely, and, even if an administration did start out on that basis, it would be unlikely to remain on that basis for long.”
—Anthony King, The British Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2007).
THE EMINENT BRITISH PROFESSOR OF Government had observed thus while making an assessment about a specific aspect of politics in the United Kingdom, particularly the impact and sway that different Prime Ministers had on the governments they led, especially on fellow Ministers in their governments. While doing so, King also points to a phenomenon he terms “theatre of celebrity”, which involves premeditated creation of a celebrity personality, which in turn is employed to enforce dominance on fellow politicians as well as the larger polity. King’s argument that such an administration is “unlikely to remain on that basis for long” does not make any reference to a specific time frame. In other words, there is no quantification in terms of years or decades.
This story is from the January 20, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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This story is from the January 20, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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