Inroads we must not allow

I was 18 years old when India got freedom. I am in my 94th year now. I remember August 15, 1947, vividly. My brother, Edgar, a year and a half younger, and I set off together by public bus in the evening for a chakkar around the city. The bus was crowded with those with a similar purpose. The main public buildings of South Mumbai were all lighted. There was merriment all around. We returned home for dinner and recounted our experience to our mother and paternal grandmother with whom we lived, along with our two younger siblings. They had mini-Tricolours in their hands and kept waving them from the balcony of our Byculla home that abutted Dr Ambedkar Road. They had thoughtfully bought a couple of flags for us. We joined them at the balcony after dinner. The then PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, affectionately called Panditji, had delivered his powerful ‘At the midnight hour’ speech at the midnight of August 14-15. We kept listening to it throughout the evening. It was a speech delivered from the heart. It brought tears to our eyes!

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A change that I dread is the transformation of our vibrant democracy into a single-party rule.

The country has come a long way since then. The people, too, have changed. A change that I dread is the steady transformation of a vibrant democracy that I grew up in, into a single-party dispensation, on the lines of Russia and China, or even worse, Hitler’s Germany. Both left-wing and right-wing extremes are fatal for democracy.

The slow but perceptible inroads of one dominant party into the entrails of established and highly respected institutions, like the Army, the media and the judiciary, is a thought that should worry every thinking Indian. These institutions guaranteed that checks and balances to prevent the misuse of power were in place. Alas, these checks and balances are eroding.

Attempts to interfere with the higher judicial appointments were made earlier also, but now it is much more scientifically achieved. For instance, minority candidates for High Court judgeship may pass the scrutiny of the SC Collegium, but 80 per cent get shot down in the Law Ministry. Outright rejection is avoided but delays are adopted as a means to ensure that their seniority is affected. They must not rise to be the Chief! It is a much clever way of achieving objectives.

The media’s role in a democracy is to hold power to account. If government advertisements are the main source of income for the media and ‘inside’ information is routinely leaked to government-leaning journalists, the process of capturing the media is well on its way to success. One great fortress of democracy has been successfully penetrated.

Inroads into the armed forces, particularly the Army, are more difficult to negotiate. The previous governments kept appointments and transfers in the forces sacrosanct. They did not interfere beyond a point since the defence forces do not interact with the civilian population which provide the voter base required to rule. But far-left and far-right governments are wont to do so in the pursuit of ideological moorings. It is a dangerous move. The Army’s ethos does not lend itself to political manoeuvrings. It has always resisted such interference. The Civil Services had capitulated ages ago at the time of the didactic rule of Indira Gandhi who did not hide her preference for a ‘committed bureaucracy’. The misuse of the power of postings and transfers did the trick. That was not difficult because ambition is a major factor in human behaviour and a dozen officers were always ready to sell their soul.

A divided country is a sitting duck for a determined enemy. The security climate in the country is a cause for concern. No amount of manpower and weaponry can substitute unity and understanding between various religious and caste configurations. This is a truth that the regime in power must learn to digest.

There is much that has been achieved over the past 75 years. The process was started in 1947 with Nehru mandating the State’s role in building the commanding heights of the economy. Indira took the socialist agenda further by nationalising private banks. I am not an economist, but I read the statistics put out by the government and commentators. I prefer to go by the opinions of neutral experts, like Raghuram Rajan and Ruchir Sharma, on matters that touch the economy, which is where the final count of a nation’s progress rests. Every government that has ruled has tried hard according to its ideology. Periods of trial and error have ensued. The people are patient and trusting. They have accepted what came their way.

This attitude may now be changing. Strides made in primary education, though tentative, are visible and have created a new generation of more enlightened youth influenced by social media and television. They are ready to question and decide for themselves.

When I left the city in 1985 for Delhi, then Ahmedabad, and finally Chandigarh, in a new role of fighting terrorism, the police lines (there are nearly a dozen in Mumbai) were crowded with children, many needing supervision. When I returned to Mumbai in 1994, I saw a marked change in attitudes. The policemen were all educated and well versed in gadgetry. Even their wives were educated, the size of families restricted to two, sometimes even to one. This alone gave me a good insight into the changes that were occurring in India.

Discarding the boastful propaganda of the country’s politicians, we can conclude that many changes in attitudes have taken place over these 75 years. Most of these changes are for the better. The changes that have induced confidence, independent thinking and establishment of raw truth in the minds of youth will show up in the years to come as true progress.