The somewhat unforgiving methods of governance adopted by the BJP have led to a lot of consternation amongst some Indians, who have been protesting that India’s liberal ethos is getting diminished.
Much of this protest, in my view, arises from not being able to understand a very large trend that began with the economic reforms of 1991, namely, the transition of India from being a soft state to a slightly harder one.
The term soft state was coined by the 1974 Nobel prize winning Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, in his magisterial work on Asia in 1967 called ‘The Asian Drama’. He had got it spot on. India had put the liberal cart before the economic horse.
The economy was underdeveloped but the laws were all from the developed West. This gales us back economically but politically we were admired by the West. The East thought we were idiots.
Until now the discussion of this movement, from soft to hard, has all been about a strongman leader, namely Narendra Modi. But he is not the actual reason. The underlying causes are different, and there are two.
One is the conflict between the hybrid constitutional arrangements that we have. These have a liberal impulse but an illiberal method informed by the colonial Government of India Act of 1935.
Market-friendly economy
The other is slow movement towards a market-friendly economy that gives preference to capital over labour, or machines over people. This has created its own pressures.
Specifically, the articles of the Constitution that guarantee our rights which were put into the new Constitution are simultaneously neutralised by other articles that abridge them. In that sense the Constitution is very inconsistent internally because it’s basically process oriented.
One large example of this is the power of judicial review which is inconsistent with the idea of parliamentary sovereignty. So even if parliaments pass bad laws, the judiciary can overturn them as it did in the case of the National Judicial Appointments Commission on the invented but good doctrine of ‘basic structure of the Constitution’.
Simultaneously, in India good governance is very difficult for yet another reason. Constitutionally, it is dependent on parliamentary majorities. But when the party in power has a simple majority, it tries to abridge our rights, and vice versa. You only have to compare UPA and NDA2. Actually this has been the pattern since the first amendment in 1951.
The inherent contradictions in our governance systems are apparent in the federal arrangements also. The Constitution has overlapping jurisdictions and the Supreme Court described us in 1962 as a ‘unitary government with federal features’, whatever that means.
There’s another problem: the larger the population, the softer the state must be to accommodate all, or as many, points of view as possible. But how do you govern effectively if the state is too soft and can’t deliver what the people want and need?
Hardness and softness are also linked inextricably with the economic arrangements in a good democracy. And here there is another paradox: the more liberal we become economically, the less liberal we will be in terms of rights. The process involves a lot of friction, of the “democracy is in danger” type.
I don’t mean things like freedom of speech etc. which are non-negotiable. I am referring to the more practical aspects like collective bargaining and contract enforcement. These are a must for a market-friendly economy but they also require a hard state, even in excellent democracies.
What we have been witnessing in India since 1992 is exactly this: market-friendly economic reforms that are taking India away from Myrdal’s soft state. Some people think that’s a good thing. Others think it’s a bad thing.
Growing paradoxes
The irony is that many of those who think it’s a bad thing are also the main beneficiaries of a harder state because while complaining about it, they want all the good things it brings with it.
Which brings up the key question that I asked a prominent right wing intellectual a few years ago at his book launch: how much coercion is acceptable? He avoided the question. But the problem remains. Who can coerce citizens, how, how much and on whose behalf? Contract enforcement by courts and tougher policing are both examples. We complain about the latter and welcome the former. In short, just as Indian society is in transition — LGBTQ+ rights, for example — so is the Indian state. No one has any clear idea where to go and how to get there. It’s what the French call tatonnement, or trial and error. We can only hope for the best. But given our innate tolerance and democratic values I think it will all turn out well.