What is common between Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal? One doesn’t know about the hitherto secret ambitions of Fadnavis, but there is little doubt that Nitish Kumar and Arvind Kejriwal both hope to dislodge Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2019. But Fadnavis does share a trait with the other two: trying to run a government by diktat and fiat to pander to their populist support bases. All three are making a mockery of democracy with active support from their supporters. This is surely not the democracy that the likes of Dr Ambedkar envisaged when they drafted the Constitution.
The most recent display of this Tughlaq style democracy is the second round of the Odd-Even scheme in Delhi. There is not an iota of evidence to suggest that pollution levels in Delhi had come down when the Kejriwal government implemented it between January 1 and January 15, 2016. In fact, many credible studies indicated that pollution levels had actually gone up. When confronted with this, Kejriwal and his cheerleaders in the media asserted that the Odd Even scheme had resulted in decreased traffic congestion and was thus deemed a success. There are close to 25 lakh cars in Delhi. Nobody seems to mind that Kejriwal is taking away the freedom of movement of more than a million people every day by banning odd and even number plate cars on alternate days. It has been more than a year since his government came to power. There has been no visible move to improve public transport. But point out these basic facts and you can have an army of Arvind acolytes sniping at you. God forbid if the transport minister of Delhi Gopal Rai carries out his sinister threat to make Odd Even a permanent feature.
The other Tughlaqi firman did not get as much media attention as it should have. Nitish Kumar decreed that Bihar would henceforth be a dry state and not a single drop of alcohol would be sold in the state. The ostensible reason for this is noble: alcoholism destroys too many families and is a scourge that must be vigorously tackled. But every available evidence from across the world suggests that Prohibition simply doesn’t work. It is simple economics that if there is a demand for a product or service-legal or illegal-there will be people willing to take all sorts of risks to supply that. Anyone who has visited Gujarat, the other major state where Prohibition is still in force, knows the reality. Worse, Nitish Kumar risks plunging Bihar into a law and order nightmare as mafia gangs fight turf wars to control the “Bootleg” market. Even more astonishing, pundits who scream liberty and human rights day in and day out seem OK with draconian provisions of the new diktat that decrees even the death penalty and life terms in some cases. How does that square with our idea of a democracy?
The third Tughlaqi firman is no less absurd. But it has received widespread attention because the liberal elite of India detest the BJP and it is a BJP chief minister with roots in the Sangh Parivar who has done this. We are talking about beef ban. Not only is a blanket ban on beef consumption undemocratic and stupid, it is already leading to terrible consequences. Maharashtra is reeling under an unprecedented drought and shortage of water. People don’t have enough water to drink. How are they to provide water for their cattle? The new law makes the slaughter of any cattle a criminal offence. So there are heartrending tales from the state about the pathetic condition of cattle. Ironically, the beef ban law was imposed to protect them reinforce our reverence for the holy cow.
Only three examples have been cited here. Something similar is happening across India, with the judiciary too jumping on to the populist bandwagon. When the High Court ordered that IPL matches must be shifted out of Maharashtra because “farmers were desperately short of water” is a classic case of Capitalism by diktat. Are we a modern democracy or a banana republic?
