The trust deficit

Transparency and consultation are vital to governance

From protests against laws redefining citizenship and agri-marketing to suspicions over the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine and leaks about internal differences over economic policy, the National Democratic Alliance government appears to be suffering from a severe case of hubris. That this accumulation of protests against the government began less than a year after it won the biggest mandate in the Lok Sabha since 1984 is no coincidence. The implacable and strident tone of the farmer protests after nine rounds of talks, multiple concessions, and a Supreme Court-mandated committee are good examples of the current dissonance between the governed and the government.

Despite the progressive intent of the laws, the roughshod manner in which they were passed has detracted from their merits. Appearing first as Ordinances, the government leveraged its brute majority in Parliament to rush through the Bills in a monsoon session, truncated by Covid-19 with the minimum of debate. Later, when farmers hunkered down on Delhi’s borders, the government claimed that it had held extensive pre-legislative discussions with farm lobbies and then wielded the security agencies against key protestors. Now, the agriculture ministry has admitted in reply to an application under the Right to Information Act that it has no record of such consultations. Examples such as this do not encourage trust in the government. The upshot has been that, despite assurances that the minimum support price would remain and that the laws amended to remove the administrative restraints on contractual appeals in court, the farmers are disinclined to take the government at its word.

This trust deficit had earlier manifested itself in late 2019 in nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, of which Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh became a potent symbol. Assurances that Muslims would not necessarily lose their citizenship carried little weight, given the history of anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions by the ruling party and its multiple state and non-state affiliates since 2014. Both protests have demonstrated that the absence of a meaningful opposition party does not preclude the citizenry from mobilising on its own initiative when it perceives its interests are at stake. In the case of the Covid-19 vaccine drive, the relatively poor turnout in several states points to distrust over the approval granted to Bharat Biotech’s candidate Covaxin because Phase III clinical trials had not been completed.

The fact that this vaccine is administered after the recipient signs a consent form is unlikely to instil confidence in a large majority of the population that is ill-equipped to comprehend the risks embedded in clinical trials. Now, it transpires from the minutes of the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) meetings, which were released by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation last week, that the SEC initially expressed reservations about Covaxin but approved it just two days later without explanation. No government representative has sought to clarify matters. The trust deficit appears to be manifesting itself within government too. Recent media leaks regarding the NITI Aayog and finance ministry expressing reservations over the airport monopoly granted to the Adani group is remarkable for a regime that has transparently and aggressively sought to control the media narrative. The Modi government may still be popular but these events suggest that a non-political opposition can be as powerful as a political one. At the root of the problem of trust deficit is the perception that the government is giving in to lobbying by certain business houses. That’s something it has to shake off — fast.