Shikha Mukerjee | Of bulldozers, bail & bad faith in Leviathan State

Told off by the Supreme Court about following the rules on bulldozing built structures that encroach on public land or flout the rules of municipalities and municipal corporations, the response of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath is a classic instance of delinquency. “Bulldozer chalane ke liye himmat chahiye”. One needs courage to use bulldozers, he said. In other words, the law is not important, the power to use violence is all that matters.

Not happy to be challenged politically following the rap on his knuckles, Mr Adityanath lashed out: “Those who bow before rioters and mafia — how would they use bulldozers?” In doing so he attempted to defend his actions by returning to his familiar attack of accusing the Samajwadi Party and its leader Akhilesh Yadav of harbouring criminals and trouble makers.

To Mr Adityanath, being held responsible by the Supreme Court for the misdemeanours of his government was irrelevant; he was heedless that the petitioners who pleaded that rule of law ought to be maintained by the Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Haryana governments were not necessarily rioters or the mafia. By turning the issue into a political confrontation, the BJP leader justified the violations that the Supreme Court had found troubling.

This chest-thumping toxic articulation of authority is a form of intimidation by the government, much like punishments meted out by kangaroo courts. Not only does it violate the rights of citizens, it is a breach of the law.

Bulldozer government destroys the check on power that the elected executive must exercise to do its job in good faith.

Bad faith or delinquency, it seems, is gaining the upper hand, as more and more acts of different governments provoke the judiciary to respond in terms that are shocking in a democracy that takes pride in remaining a democracy for over seven decades. The Supreme Court called out Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami over the appointment of a director of the Rajaji Tiger Reserve; it reportedly observed: “The chief minister cannot take a decision like this… We are not in the feudal era when raja jaise bole waisa karein” (the king must be obeyed).

Every time the Supreme Court reminds an “agency” of the Union government that bail, not jail, is the rule of law, it is a warning that might is right is becoming normalised, and extended incarceration is possible merely because the ruling regime thinks that an individual should remain incarcerated.

The problem is that judicial rulings have to be implemented. When a government justifies its use of bulldozers or insists that jail, not bail, should be the norm regardless of what the Supreme Court says, then democracy is certainly in danger.

The BJP can be put in the dock for choosing leaders who appear to have very little faith in the rule of law and a constitutional structure of governance where the functions of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary are reasonably clearly separated. If Mr Adityanath is held to be the inventor of bulldozer justice, then Mr Dhami is the example of a new feudatory order and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the role model because he crafted the cult of a leader who had the “courage” to get things done, like the sudden announcement of demonetisation and the shock of a sudden shutdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since 2014, the idea that a majority of seats in the legislature is a licence to sweep aside the Opposition and critics has become normalised. The ease with which public perception believes that, with power concentrated in the hands of the elected executive and is being used to manipulate decision-making by independent and autonomous institutions, not excluding the judiciary, underscores that “government” means unchecked power.

Blaming it all on the BJP for turning out delinquent leaders and making things nasty for the common man is wrong. There has been a growing decline of public confidence in all institutions, be it the government in power which is perceived as manipulating, the legislature which is perceived as a rubber stamp by the ruling majority party and even the judiciary which is suspected of being partisan to those in power, is bad for democracy.

The public outrage over the rape and murder of the trainee doctor in Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital is a case in point. The public demonstrating on the streets for the past one month believes that certainly not the ruling Trinamul Congress nor for that matter any other political party or institution can be trusted to uncover the facts, identify the culprits and deliver justice to the victim. It all boils down to perceptions.

The lynching of Aryan Mishra, a Class 12 student in Haryana, is just one more tragedy that seems to have provoked no outrage. Lynching by cow vigilantes have become the second order preference for collective protests against government failure to maintain law and order. When perceptions define the magnitude of crime, then there is a danger of different crimes becoming temporarily the focus of citizens’ attention and other crimes being downgraded as a lower order of wrongdoing.

This widespread belief that all political parties are equally bad, once they are in power, distorts the way choices are made by voters have when elections come around. When rule-based governance is perceived as the exception, then governments become merely a façade and power is in the hands of a parallel “system” where deals are made and the illegalities are managed. The only remedy for an aggrieved citizen is to go to court. Because the perception has grown that the lower courts do not deliver justice through impartial application of the law, the Supreme Court has become the last and desperate resort.

There is a danger in this desperation. It distorts the balance between the different institutions for maintaining the order of things within the State. A popular judiciary is as much of a hazard as is an over-the-top populist government to democracy. There is a difference between mafia raj and elected rajas and chief ministers who believe that it takes courage to use bulldozers and reasonably sane elected government that will act in good faith. Political parties can dream of running a Leviathan State; that should not deter the voter from thinking and acting differently.