Surrender of the Institutions

Public institutions such as the courts and media, guardians of our civil liberties, have faced unprecedented obstruction and bullying

- Neera Chandhoke

ON NOVEMBER 15, 1948, India’s Constituent Assembly rejected an amendment proposed by K.T. Shah (Bihar, General) to Article 1. It read that ‘India shall be a Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States’. He was told that the Constitution is but a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the state. “It was somewhat new to me,” responded K.T. Shah “to hear that a Constitution is a mechanism…and that any desire to include in it any aspiration of the people might be regarded as somewhat out of place”.

But the incorporation of aspirations is not enough. Citizens have to be protected against the fatal tendency of all governments to wield awesome power. The Constitution, thereby, institutionalised power, established procedures to regulate its exercise, set up checks and balances, and granted fundamental rights. Between the citizen and the government stand a system of mediations—processes, procedures, practices and institutions.

How have these mediations fared over the last decade? Consider the 2018 Global Democracy Index published in January 2019 by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The index ranks 167 countries on 60 criteria that fall under five categories: electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties. India is placed in the 41st position. It is a ‘flawed’ democracy.

The report offers a damning indictment of institutional mediations that watch over vulnerable citizens. Take civil society. During the 10 years the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ruled the country (2004-2014), civil society organisations played a major role in ensuring access to social goods: the right to work, information, primary education and food. CSOs resisted, protested, advocated and enabled entitlements to social goods.