'Hitchiker's guide to democratic palsy'

Book review of Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope

It is a truth generally known in India that success comes to most Indians not because of the state, but despite the state. Most Indians simply cannot rely on their governments  — local, state or Union  — to lift them or at least push them some of the way towards the fulfilment of their aspirations or even many basic needs. At best, the Indian state offers indifference and at worst, existential pain to most of its citizens. These hapless folks, trapped in the jaws of government “process” or bad decisions, look forward with anxiety or outrage to loss of cash or even their dreams, or at the very extreme end, their lives. The point is that the title and theme of this book will leave most Indians unsurprised. 

To base a book on this truth, therefore, is a brave choice. 

M Rajshekhar succeeds spectacularly in making this choice work. The author identifies four characteristics of the political system that I, with my admitt­edly limited experience, have not seen articulated elsewhere. For this and other insights, Despite the State should be read not only by journalists, NGO workers, politicians and policy makers, but by us participants in the Indian democratic system that the current administration seeks to undermine. 

This book is a product of a reporting project, titled Ear to the Ground. For nearly three years, Rajshekhar travelled and lived across Mizoram, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Gujarat and Punjab, and wrote a series of articles that appeared in Scroll about his findings. Rajshekhar’s biographical note says the series of articles won “the Ramnath Goenka Exc­ell­ence in Journalism award (2015), the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award (2016), and two more Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism (2015 and 2016)”. 

The book is a distillate of that project, if you like. Each chapter is devoted to the failings of one state, whether it is rampant lawlessness, fiefdom-style functioning, majoritarianism, messianic populism, or mismanagement. Rajshekhar sought to live in “six representative states” to understand how a seemingly tolerant country, or at least a majority of its people, “found majoritarianism alluring”, and, in so doing, “did not mind the heightened vulnerability of minority communities as long as economic growth was delivered”. 

What he found should frighten us all into action. Mizoram: Unable to functi­on for lack of funds and misappropri­ation of existing funds. Punjab: Run like the family firm of the Badals, with their fingers in every pie. Gujarat: Lost to majoritarianism. Odisha: A state that squandered its good fortune. Tamil Nadu: Messianic populism and misgov­er­nance. And I will simply share the title of the chapter on Bihar: 

“The Absent State”. 

Among other insights, the book links the myriad failures of Indian government and its lusty loot of its citizens to the imminent threats to Indian democracy that we have been seeing. Rajshekhar writes, “[S]tate after state had let its people down… The resulting disillusionment with democracy pushed people towards a ‘strong’ leader who promised achche din, good days.” This being the case, the reader is led to conclude that despite the official narrative, Narendra Modi was not the posi­tive choice for most voters; desperation caused by their sinking fortunes drove them to what I call his mirages. 

Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope

Author: M Rajshekhar

Publisher: Context

Pages: 300; Price: Rs 499

What is unmistakeable in this writing is an overwhelming love of India and compassion for its subjects, a passi­on for truth, and the hope that unders­tanding why Indian governance and democracy is so spectacularly faulty will help us common people to fix them. All these are great qualities in a journali­st or writer, and Rajshekhar has them. Why else would he travel and live in six differ­ent states to map the cracks and crevi­ces in Indian democracy and govern­ance? 

Though it is a mighty river of facts about India’s failings in serving its peo­ple, the book is not an impassioned manifesto. Rajshekhar’s writing is even-toned, a murmur, not a scream, it is reportage. He is also quite the storyteller, with an eye for the lambent anecdote or snippet that illustrates a larger truth; in other words, a decoder. His text flows smoothly and snappily, and despite its grim subject, keeps the reader hooked. 

The sheer sweep of the book is impressive. We are given a masterful tour into nightmare after nightmare exacerbated by bad governance. Groundwater depletion and environmental problems in general? Check. Agricultural crises? Check. Healthcare horrors faced by the poor? Check. Cronyism? Check. The state’s patchwork of services? Check. The hollowing out of public institutions. The sapping of public life. Rising inequality. Communalism and majoritarianism. Casteism. More recently, demonet­isation, which, in Rajshekhar’s words, “dealt a bigger blow to incomes, investments and livelihoods in the informal economy than to black money”.  Rajshekhar, who is evidently no stranger to a well-turned phrase, puts it well; his book is “a hitchhiker’s guide to democratic palsy”. 

Rajshekhar’s book is a patient mapping and thorough analysis of the Indian system’s horrific flaws, and it raises a critical question in the reader’s mind. It is this: Why, despite suffering so much under the Indian state’s range of iniquities ranging from indifference, incompetence to predation, do the long-suffering Indian poor not take to the streets in peaceful protest, and question the government? To his credit, Rajshek­h­ar attempts to furnish us with an ans­wer, and it is a sound one. I won’t offer spoilers. Moreover, this book, which is a mighty Kumbh Mela of Indi­an democr­acy’s problems, also yields, at its end, a beautifully, lyrically written concluding chapter on possible solutions. 

The author gives us reasons and research, case studies and anecdotes, to map out in exquisite detail what we Indians feel in our bones and cannot articulate. But while we inevitably see a partial picture, this book is an ambitious look at a much broader frame. Despite the State  deserves to be translated into every Indian language. It is one of the standout books of 2020.