After 75 years, India's democracy, elections and representation not safe

The wilful denial of power to women in general and SC women in particular is the measure of discrimination and denial of rights to citizens in India

Old habits, paternalism and the patriarchal order live on. Neither time nor education seems to change the inheritance of patriarchy. Even after 75 years of Independence, there is a wilful violation and deliberate encouragement to those who are determined to deny the basic foundational value of equal rights for all citizens.

There are signs of a deeper crisis that is spreading rapidly across India as it enters the 25 years of its Amrit Kaal (whatever that may signify) following the celebration of 75 years of Independence as the Amrit Mahotsav, a strange coinage that seems to signify much, but lacks the substance to make it feel real. There is a rot that has gnawed away the fundamentals of a rule-based constitutional democracy, where orders are obeyed in letter and spirit and the mandate of the people reflected in the choice of a representative is respected, without exception.

Incidents in Madhya Pradesh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power, reveal the nature of the problem and the crisis of governance. As examples, the two incidents could be dismissed as trivial lapses, or they could be examined as reflections of the underlying disorder and the growing power of the disorderly.

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It is astonishing that two male experienced civil servants, since Zilla Parishad CEOs are required to be government servants of Deputy Commissioner rank, scrambled to cover up two reported incidents in Sundrel in Dhar and Gaisabad in Damoh. The two CEOs tacitly consented to making women non-persons. And in one place, the administration, which is responsible for upholding the rule-based order, chose to honour the forces of disorder.

In both places, recently elected women from reserved constituencies for the Scheduled Castes were excluded, while their husbands stepped in and took the oaths of office and secrecy. Operating in a time warp, where the Constitution of India does not exist, guaranteeing equality under Article 14 and prohibiting discrimination under Article 15, "the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them", the two CEOs tacitly consented to making women non-persons.

These two powerful men tried to explain their consent to the disgraceful exhibition of patriarchal power by describing what happened as a "procedural lapse" and claimed immunity from blame and failure to uphold the Constitution and implement the rules by shifting the onus to the women. The Dhar CEO was clueless about how women's right to equality had been trampled on his watch. He is reported as saying, "If any winning candidate raises an objection or lodges a complaint of a violation of her rights, especially by male members of her family, appropriate action will be taken."

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The Sundrel gram panchayat secretary absolved himself by claiming that none of the men "were ready to accept the women as panchs." His excuse was the men felt it went against their "family custom." To cap it, the CEO said that "training sessions for the winning candidates" would be organised to inform and educate them about their rights.

In Sundrel gram panchayat in Dhar, BJP leader Radheshyam Kasrawadiya administered the oaths of office and secrecy. The CEO covered up by declaring questions would be asked about how a politician had officiated.

It is difficult to choose between horror and foreboding as a reaction to the Madhya Pradesh incidents because India is now 75 years old as an Independent country and 72 years old as Republic. It is not a fledgling democracy. It is not a new Republic.

It is, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared on Sunday, a "model" that the world acknowledges of a strong and fully functional federal government. It is also an achiever, as Modi informed chief ministers of the states who attended the meeting of the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog, as he asked them to highlight the successes of the state during his Presidency of the G20, an intergovernmental forum of 19 countries and the European Union, comprising 27 countries.

What will India showcase to the world? The inability of its political class to uproot the cruelly discriminatory patriarchal-caste order or the erosion of a rule-based order? Madhya Pradesh is not the exception; it reflects the new reality, where the government and its institutions back off as politicians of ruling regimes exercise powers in violation of the rules.

Will India continue to seriously object to every international evaluation of its flaws as a democracy? Will it challenge every international evaluation of its failure to protect, leave alone respect, human rights?

Deeper than reservation and at the core of the rule-based order is the principle of separation of powers to create a system of checks and balances, wherein the legislature, the executive and the judiciary are separate and independent. The institutional structure underlying this order is the vacuum-sealed separation of the political class, like the BJP leader who administered the oaths of office and secrecy, from the executive apparatus, like the CEO of the Zilla Parishad.

The wilful denial of power to women in general and scheduled caste women in particular, by making them non-persons, as the incidents in Madhya Pradesh reveal, is the measure of discrimination and denial of rights to citizens in India 75 years after 1947. In Madhya Pradesh, the women were elected from constituencies reserved for them. The reservation policy for women at the panchayat level was brought in through a Constitutional Amendment in 1992. The reservation of electoral constituencies for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, to ensure that there was a modicum of representation of the most backward and socially discriminated, is one of the foundational values of the Constitution.

The laws do not make India an ugly place to live in. It is the failure of the political class and the governments they run that makes it a cruel, violent, corrupt, immoral, unjust and unequal, intolerant and irrational country.

Warped thinking and values have grown instead of being permanently deleted, like the precedence of family custom over rights. It is perhaps inevitable in a democracy that is more and more autocratic in its ways, where the institutions of debate like Parliament are held hostage by the majority and the opposition, regardless of its numerical strength, is more and more marginalised, almost a dummy. The deification of India as Bharat Mata, once an exquisite watercolour painting and now a garish mass-produced icon, reflects the direction in which the idea of India has changed, from a country where the mind, if not quite free, was nevertheless free enough to strive to be free to a country that seems to be propelling itself into fragmenting its unity in diversity by building "narrow domestic walls."

Read alongside Rabindranath Tagore, who gave voice to the genius of India, the current agenda of the ruling regime reflected in its message to citizens to celebrate Independence by flying the flag and thinking – One Nation, One Emotion, One Identity – is a stark contrast, almost a brutal erasure of rich legacy of the freedom movement and efforts to replace it with a rootless, concocted narrative of victimhood and assertion, of the rights of the majority and the composite idea of Hindutva.

(Shikha Mukerjee is a journalist based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.