Modi the gladiator

All through Badal Sarkar’s 1965 theatre masterpiece Evam Indrajit, the lead character and his three comrades in ennui, Amol, Kamol, and Bimol, term films, cricket and politics as the three points of convergence in India. That observation was much in evidence last week. The drama of a Jodhpur court convicting the reigning superstar Salman Khan in a 20-year-old case of hunting the protected black buck and his brief incarceration until being bailed held us all in thrall. At the end of the week the high ritual of that supreme religion of ours, cricket, called the Indian Premier League begin with due pomp and circumstance.

The ever-with-us politics was in top gear last week with the Bharat Bandh in protest of the recent Supreme Court orders on procedural matters relating to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act as the leading event.  Parliament being adjourned sine die without conducting any business in the second half of the Budget session and fire-and-brimstone speeches in the Karnataka electoral campaign were just routine. The 38th anniversary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was reduced to a mere footnote to such frenzied events.

The media and the pundits are gripped by election fever, not of the state kind due next month but the general election. No development is too small, no detail too trivial and no nuance too subtle to be parsed ad nauseam. Apparently, all of India is holding its collective breath for the outcome of the contest due a year hence.

That suits Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP and its president Amit Shah just fine. They seem to be in perpetual election mode. Observing the BJP anniversary, Mr Modi said that while the Opposition — read the Congress — spreads lies upon lies, the BJP keeps winning elections after election.  The second part of the statement is certainly true. Since 2014, the BJP has wrested power — largely from the Congress — in 11 states either by itself or in alliance and lost it in one. It is in power in 19 of the 29 states (not 21, as believed by many including the data mavens; it is out of power in all the five southern states, Odisha, West Bengal, Mizoram, Sikkim and Punjab).

Let us defer development for a bit. But what about the day job of governing? Mr Modi is the first state chief minister to have been the prime minister for nearly four years. He has naturally turned to his proven experience of Gujarat, which had only a nominal Opposition in its unicameral legislature. With a clutch of trusted ministers and administrators, he could govern unhindered.

That has not quite worked at the Centre. Even though the BJP has a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha, it needs the allies’ support in the Rajya Sabha. After early unease, the allies have now turned more recalcitrant. The Telugu Desam Party has actually walked out and tabled a no confidence motion. The Opposition has shown that its power to disrupt is vastly greater than its numbers in Parliament.  Governing India is orders-of-magnitude more difficult than governing Gujarat, Mr Modi would have to concede in a moment of candour.

On the eve of Mr Modi’s becoming the BJP standard-bearer in 2013, I had observed that “India has far too many problems — fixing the economy, containing and reversing the Naxal threat, cleansing and systematising decision-making, channelising the aspirations of the youth into productive ways, among others — which cry for immediate attention, and not some pie-in-the-sky solutions. These are the challenges that all leaders, including Mr Modi, must face squarely and prove that their rise could be irresistible” (“Forward March”, India Abroad, June 21, 2013).

Six years hence, that situation has not changed much. What has changed, however, is the mode of politicking. It is no longer confined to legislative debates — there are precious few, anyway — or electioneering through public meetings and discourse. Now it is everywhere, from courtrooms to river banks, examination centres to cricket fields. It has become a spectator sport, confined not just to card-carrying politicians. Self-anointed godmen, fading film stars, myopic community chieftains, convicts of serious crimes, all play at being leaders.

The 2014 general election had a semblance of being fought on issues, for some stated alternative agenda, however vague they may have been. In four short years, elections are about who shouts the loudest and who uses the most devastating ploys to cut opponents to shreds. Winning elections is the sole end. It is no longer a means to greater ends, such as societies with higher civilisational values.

Evam Indrajit ends with an apt elegy:

“There’s no hope/Of fulfilment/By the holy shrine/At journey’s end. Forget the questions/Forget the grief,/And have faith in the road — The endless road.”

Gladiators, mostly slaves but some volunteers as well, engaged in armed combats, often fatal, with other gladiators or slaves, criminals and wild animals in ancient Rome. Citizens avidly watched these “entertainments,” much as we enjoy IPL games.

Is the world’s largest democracy in danger of turning into a Roman circus?

The writer is an economist