How BJP is wavering the pillars of democracy and inching towards a totalitarian regime
Democracy is a wonderful concept as a way of life. Everyone is equal and everyone has a say in deciding what’s best for everyone. However, it’s a very difficult concept to hold on to. It needs to be respected and protected. On the other hand, power is a very infectious beast. Since the beginning of mankind, people have wrestled for power — for control over other people’s lives and for control over the vast natural resources planet earth has to offer. But time and again, people, in their quest for absolute power, have quashed the ideals of democracy establishing a totalitarian state in the process. Because democracy allows common people to determine who should have power, logically monarchies should make up for most successful totalitarian regimes. But truly successful totalitarian regimes have been the ones who have successfully found loopholes in the democratic institutions and plugged them with their autocratic measures. An autocracy within the garb of democracy.
Hitler didn’t just, one fine day, start prosecuting and exterminating the Jews. He leveraged the Reichstag fire incident to impose emergency and suspend civil liberties which allowed him to do what he wanted to do, without parliamentary approval. Regardless of all the controversy around who did 9–11, the United States government did leverage the incident to usher in the Patriot Act which also allowed them to do mass surveillance of their citizens under the hood of national security. It basically means that in past people have tweaked the policies which do not seem threatening at the time but had enormous impact on civil liberties in future.
The ruling party in India — Bharatiya Junta Party (BJP) has also been showing signs of slowly but deliberately moving towards a totalitarian regime since coming to power in 2014. Sure they have invested a lot of focus and money in several development initiatives but what good is development if it comes with a rider? Conditions attached. A rider which threatens our democracy and shatters its very institutions. Don’t believe BJP is doing that? Below are some of their actions which are hard to justify otherwise:
Finance Bill 2017
One of the scariest legislation of recent times has been the finance bill and further amendments to the bill, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and passed by Lok Sabha on March 22nd. First of all, the Government designated this as a money bill. The Government has the power to designate certain taxation-related bills as Money Bills which do not need to be passed by the Rajya Sabha and only seeks their recommendations which the Lok Sabha has no obligation to accept. The Modi Govt did this so they could weave draconian amendments in the Finance Bill and also propose last-minute further amendments which basically no one can oppose since they already enjoy a clear majority in Lok Sabha. Let’s look at what’s so draconian in the amendments proposed by FM Jaitley and how they can affect our lives:
a. No reason required by Income Tax Authorities to raid anyone’s home
Have a look at Clause 50 on Page 18 of the bill. Earlier, Section 132 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, made it mandatory for tax authorities to have “reasons to believe” that the person in question had undisclosed assets, and/or was unwilling to disclose information the IT department needed, which gave them the reason to hold a raid. But now, as you can see, the income tax officers don’t need to furnish any “reason” to neither the person in question nor to the Appellate Tribunal. What this essentially means is that the Government can now raid anyone’s house without any reason. This gives Government a lot of power to purge their political opponents. This is a very standard technique to bypass the foundations of democracy.
One of the pillars of democracy is a multi-party system which provides the citizens an option to choose from multiple people. But if you diminish the other parties to such a low fragment that they don’t matter anymore and you’re the only option left for people to vote. Technically, there’s nothing wrong in it. If you’re doing a good work which the citizens appreciate and hence only want to vote for you successively, perfect. But if you are discrediting your political opponents by slandering with income tax raids, it’s not cool.
This is exactly what President Erdogan has been doing in Turkey since the failed coup attempt against him in July 2016. More than 100,000 people have been suspended from Government jobs and more than 41000 people have been arrested just based on suspicion about their role in the coup. This includes police officers, civil servants, school teachers, health officials, Ministry of Justice officers, all detained “legally”. Not just that, Turkish Assembly recently passed a legislation that will further boost President Erdogan’s powers.
I am not suggesting outrightly that this is exactly what BJP’s intentions are. But why propose such a dangerous-to-civil-liberties amendment in the first place. At the very least, it frightens ordinary honest tax-paying citizens who do not have the time or patience for a lengthy governmental investigation for something they didn’t do in the first place. And what’s the logical explanation for this amendment if there is one? Why do I discard the possibility of malicious intent?
b. Political Funding made more opaque
What you heard on news channels is BJP’s absolute resolve to tackle undocumented funding to political parties. They carried on with the narrative and proposed to lower cash limit for donations (Yes, because cash is evil and only cash is evil. Cash is the only way to store/transfer black money or embezzle funds!)from Rs. 20k to Rs. 2000 and proposed the concept of “Electoral bonds” which will ensure the donations will flow through the banking system and hence will be “documented”. To the general public, these look fairly logical and great suggestions to make political funding more transparent. But look at the proposed amendments to the bill: Currently, a company may contribute up to 7.5% of the average of its net profits in the last three financial years, to political parties. The company is required to disclose the amount of contributions made to political parties in its profit and loss account, along with the name of the political parties to which such contribution was made. The amendments to the Finance Bill, 2017 propose to remove: (i) the limit of 7.5% of net profit of the last three financial years, for contributions that a company may make to political parties, (ii) the requirement of a company to disclose the name of the political parties to which a contribution has been made.
So yes, if I am a man with money who wants to influence policy decisions by funding the ruling party, now I am not paying in cash and going through a proper banking system. But what good will that do if I can still manage to keep it secret, albeit more easily now. I can fund them through my company where I have no obligation to disclose the name of the party at all. Also, lowering the cash donation limit from 20k to 2k looks like a sinister joke given that now there is no limit on cashless donations. I can donate as much as I want and no one needs to know.
Now, why would a party and a government which is using its might to tackle an issue that few administrations acknowledge, much less legislate on, propose and amendment like this? How is this making political funding more transparent? It doesn’t make any sense. And barely months ago, PM Modi said people had a right to know the sources of their funding.
On top of it, FM Jaitley has thrown it open to other parties to suggest a cleaner and more transparent alternative. Taking the moral high ground that it’s easier to comment on problems but difficult giving suggestions. And this is the sad state of affairs of this country that the opposition is so weak and stupid that they’re not able to come up with one smart solution. I’m just kidding, we all know none of them wants to. No one, not even the BJP wants to.
c. Trying to oversell Aadhar Card to us
As per the latest amendments, if you don’t link your Aadhar card with your PAN card, your PAN card will be invalid, starting July 2017. So basically having an Aadhar card is mandatory for paying taxes. Government is also planning to launch Aadhaar Pay — an Aadhaar-based payment app on April 14. After that, a merchant will ask you to enter your Aadhaar number into his/her device, and then for your biometrics — typically a fingerprint, which will serve as your ‘password’, resulting in money transfer from your Aadhaar-linked bank account.
Now something which the Government is making so important in our lives, especially our financial lives should be secure, right? Think of Aadhaar as your user id and your fingerprints/retina scan as password. We all know Aadhaar numbers can be leaked — millions of people names and Aadhaar numbers have been published on dozens of government portals. But at least the password must be a secret. That’s how most logins works, that’s how debit and credit cards work. How are you or UIDAI going to keep your biometrics i,e your fingerprint/retina scans secret? Also all ‘passwords’ should be replaceable. If your credit card gets stolen, you can block it and get a new card. If your Aadhaar number and fingerprint are leaked, you can’t change it, you can’t block it.
But what the most uncomfortable thing about making Aadhar Card so important is that it stores my biometric scans which will leave a digital footprint whenever I use my it for financial transactions. These biometric scans are stored in a central biometrics database. This in itself is not an issue. But the problem here is that the rules in the Aadhaar Act are very bleak.
The Aadhaar Act and Rules don’t limit the information that can be gathered from you by the enrolling agency; it doesn’t limit how Aadhaar can be used by third parties (a process called ‘seeding’) if they haven’t gathered their data from UIDAI; it doesn’t require your consent before third parties use your Aadhaar number to collate records about you (eg, a drug manufacturer buying data from various pharmacies, and creating profiles using Aadhaar). It even allows your biometrics to be shared if it is “in the interest of national security”. AND it doesn’t allow citizens to file a case against private parties or the government for misuse of Aadhaar or identity fraud, or data breach.
So my problem is that Government is overhyping the use of Aadhaar Card, making it instrumental to performing basic tasks like paying taxes, shopping etc. when it’s not even as secure as currently-available alternatives. And on top of that it has massive total surveillance potential with no strong laws to prevent that from happening. Who’s to stop BJP from using the same data to target voters for elections by designing more to-the-point campaigns.
Anomaly in the GDP numbers
Not a lot of people are aware but India changed it’s methodology to calculate GDP in 2014 after PM Modi came into power which even the then sitting Governor of RBI, Dr Raghuram Rajan questioned. Essentially, the new model doesn’t take into account the growth in informal sector accurately, having replaced them with dodgy estimates. Here is a 2015 article detailing the real truth behind India’s stellar GDP numbers since then.
The patchy method to calculate growth in India’s GDP calculations has also allowed the Government to boast that Demonetization had little to no impact on India’s economy, something they had “correctly predicted”. India’s economic growth slowed marginally to 7% in October-December(Q3) from 7.4% in the previous quarter, government data showed on Tuesday, raising eyebrows among experts and economists. The Q3 GDP growth estimate beat analysts’ expectation of 6.4%. Some had even projected the growth to slip below 6%. Why? Because they saw a lot of people losing jobs and consumption declined during that period, as a result of demonetization.
A study by the All India Manufacturers’ Organisation (AIMO) does in fact reveal that micro-small scale industries suffered 35 per cent jobs losses and a 50 per cent dip in revenue due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetization drive. The slowdown in growth could be gauged by the sharp fall in December purchasing managers index to less than 50, which indicates a decline in output, and the contraction in the index for industrial production (IIP) by 0.4%.
But none of this had any effect in the Government’s calculation of the Q3 numbers. And Arun Jaitley was quick to shout that “the data belies the exaggerated claims made by many that the rural and farm sectors were in distress”. But here is what most industry experts think about India’s Q3 growth numbers. Most cast doubts on the legitimacy of the numbers ceding they don’t account for the slowdown in the informal sector.
While the Government has offered no numbers on how much black money has been recovered post the drive, they have already chest-thumped themselves declaring the drive a success, even though all the leading economists question the numbers. Common man doesn’t understand the basics of economics, let alone the complex calculations of GDP numbers. Isn’t it possible that the government is using this predicament to mislead us with lies? They know that the common people will believe any numbers which the Government gives to them. Who cares if the economists disagree. Certainly not the Government.
BJP Propaganda Machinery
A case-in-point is the oh-so-famous “Surgical Strike” by Indian Army on Pakistani militant bases on September 29th. But Covert Ops have always been part of Indian Military operations. In past too, Special Ops Division (SAD) has carried out covert ops in the PoK which is basically what the “surgical strike” means. But never in the history before have I seen the DGMO (Director General of Military Operations) calling for a press conference and talking about a covert op in public.
And soon after, the BJP IT cell was in action. Thousands of tweets with #SurgicalStrike surfaced within minutes and it was branded a great thing to do even before you or I could process what happened. The term “Surgical Strike” became a thing. So much so that later on the demonetization was also being called “surgical strike on black money” although in my opinion it was more like a carpet bomb. Everyone in the country, including the opposition in the beginning, hailed the operation as a perfect retribution for the Uri attack.
But hardly anyone knows that the real impact has been that there have been 286 ceasefire violations by Pakistan within two months of the surgical strike resulting in deaths of 26 people, including 14 security personnel. Even though the above number is as per a BSF official, the Government has gone on record to say that the ceasefire violations from Pakistan have decreased since the surgical strike, another lie in our faces.
But it fits all BJP’s nationalization narrative perfectly. Since BJP has come into power, it has projected itself as a nationalist party, almost deliberately. They have had an aggressive stance on Pakistan since day 1. Bilateral relations are at their lowest levels and no clear solution of this conflict seems possible given the current situation. Even yesterday, India rejected US Ambassador to UN, Nikki Haley’s, offer of help to de-escalate tensions with Pakistan. The reason cited was that Pakistan first stops border skirmishes and ends their support of Jihadist organizations operating in the area before we indulge in any peace talks.
While that’s a great rhetoric to serve the nationalist fervor, it is at best a rhetoric. The tensions won’t automatically get solved unless you have a dialogue with them which New Delhi is not willing to. But as long as it keeps up with the desired narrative, who gives a fuck about actually solving the issue.
BJP has effectively used polarizing non-issues like the ones at JNU and Ramjas to keep the country occupied while they quietly slip in their own legislations under the garb of the Finance Bill. Classic case is the Gurmehar Kaur case. She was actually just protesting against the bullying antics of ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad — BJP’s student wing). But ABVP, having been backed against a corner, retaliated with an old video of hers in which she talks about Pakistan. No media coverage, no cry over her video within first 4–5 months of posting it but as soon as it served ABVP and BJP’s purpose, it suddenly was a national issue. Within a matter of days, Deputy Home Secretary Kiran Rijuju found it important enough to quickly tweet and deligitimize her while he hasn’t even acknowledged that over 100 people lost their lives due to effects of demonetization, even after 3 months of demonetization. And this was about the same time FM Jaitley was presenting the Finance Bill. Entire media coverage and hence the entire focus of the nation was on this essentially non-issue, while much much more important issues like the Finance bill were ignored.
Electoral Fraud
AAP, Congress and many other regional parties are claiming that the EVMs used in UP and Punjab had been tampered with. Though the Election Commission has categorically refuted all such claims, there have been two developments of interest. When the EVM was tested ahead of by-polls in Madhya Pradesh, it showed the paper trail attached to it generating a receipt for the BJP when the state chief electoral officer Saleena Singh had pressed the button for the Samajwadi Party candidate. A voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT allows a voter to know if the machine registered a vote for the candidate selected. Secondly, Election Commission is slated to buy new EVMs which will stop working the moment they’re tampered with.
Both these developments do create a sense of doubt about the EVM tampering but are not enough to draw any substantial conclusions. Hence, I listed this point at the last. But if this is indeed true, this will the biggest blow to Indian democracy. Rigging the elections? It is what India’s all-weather ally Putin is accused of doing in the 2014 Russian Presidential elections and the controversial 2014 Crimean Referendum.
All this is not to say that the BJP Government is not working towards creating a better India, they truly are. But their approach to power consolidation is frightening. They’re slowly diluting civil liberties and lying to the common people, while at the same time duping us into hero-worshipping them with false propaganda. At least that’s what some of their actions I listed above suggest.
But what’s even more frightening is that majority of Indians are buying this fake narrative. I traveled for a month in January and met and spoke to various people from all walks of life and they all held on to just one thing— PM Modi is the answer to all our problems. This is a man who’ll change the country. At the same time they were completely ignorant of the facts outside what the Government tells us.
It is completely fine to support a party or an individual. It is also okay to trust them to solve your issues. But what’s not okay is blind-worshipping them. Doesn’t matter if you support BJP or not, you should be aware of what they are doing and how it could affect you, especially if negatively. That’s how you could be true to both the party and the country.
More often then not, people lament saying the system is fucked up and we, the common people, cannot do anything about it. Well, I’ll tell you what you can do. You can ask the right questions. Keep your own Government in check. Do your part. That’s what I am doing here.
