<p>The farmers protest on the Delhi–Haryana border has been on for over a month and is making a record of sorts as the largest protest in the world during the pandemic. Much has been said about the right and the wrong of the protest. There is one aspect that needs more scrutiny.</p>.<p>Let us take the issue of Minimum Support Price (MSP). Everyone and his uncle in the ruling party has promised the farmers that MSP will not be removed. But no one seems to trust them. More crucially, the farmers don’t trust Prime Minister Modi and his words. This is a huge problem. How do people petition the government when they don’t trust its head?</p>.<p>One answer may be that our democracy has been hollowed out, it is an empty shell, but we still go through some rituals of democracy. Another way of looking at it is that this is a real challenge from democratic forces to a cynical and authoritarian regime that mocks at people’s power. The answer may be ‘blowing in the wind’, as the ‘Prophet of Protest’ Bob Dylan said.</p>.<p>In a parliamentary democracy, citizens vote for their representatives and elect them to office because they ‘trust’ him/her to do some good for them. The Social Contract theorists – Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the original philosophers of Constitutionalism, of representative government and of a nascent democratic state -- postulated that individuals came together and parted with a portion of their sovereignty to create a ruler primarily to ensure their life, property and liberty.</p>.<p>This primordial act was based on implicit trust that the ruler would abide by his part of the contract. Today, this expression of trust takes place through elections, where people vote for their representatives. Vote is the ultimate mode of transferring trust. Vote is to politics what money is to economics.</p>.<p>Talking about money, we all accept some colourful pieces of paper on which certain numbers are written as valid currency of commerce because it says the Governor of the Reserve Bank promises to pay the bearer the sum written on that note. We accept that solemn promise without a question. Money is the purest form of trust. And we have a Prime Minister who violated that trust without a thought on November 8, 2016, when with four hours’ notice, he demonetised all the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes then in circulation and threw the country into chaos and caused untold misery to people. That was the beginning of the mistrust.</p>.<p>It was a reckless violation of trust, and it resulted in the deaths of over 100 people who could do nothing with their old currency, nor could they get new currency in time. Peoples’ faith in the system was rudely shaken as they no longer trusted the currency in hand. Societies are built on and revolve around trust. And if that trust is broken, it hollows out human interaction.</p>.<p>Similar was our experience when we faced a 70-day national lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister first announced a one-day ‘Janata Curfew’ with three days’ notice and then suddenly imposed a 21-day lockdown with only four hours’ notice. The 21 days became an excruciating 70 days, with the whole country grinding to a halt. While the lockdown may have been necessary, it could have been tempered with an ‘impact study’ after 21 days or even after a month. There was no assessment of how the economy was hurting, and no course-correction. Millions of people lost jobs and livelihoods, and the poorest of the poor – the migrant workers – had to walk hundreds of miles back to their homes, with many dying on the way of hunger and thirst. An uncaring State had broken the basic ‘trust’ to ensure their life. </p>.<p>The Prime Minister has often announced a policy or a law first and then thought out the reasons for it. This was clearly evident with demonetisation. As he went along, the Prime Minister gave a new rationale and justification every day for that act. The government and the RBI issued 74 notifications related to demonetisation in a period of 50 days.</p>.<p>How can people react to such a reckless ruler and his rules? What recourse do they have if they are not sure what he is up to the next day, and more so if they cannot trust his word? The parliamentary mechanism provides for a ‘no-trust vote’ wherein the Opposition parties, with or without having a sufficient number of votes, may attempt to unseat a ruling party. But then, what if there is no Parliament?</p>.<p>With Parliament in abeyance, the people have no option but to march on to the streets to oppose laws that they consider harmful. This is when the street becomes more powerful than Parliament, a phenomenon that was so vividly evident at the height of JP’s movement against Indira Gandhi’s rule.</p>.<p>The government is most likely to reject their demand because they will rightly contend that they have come to power with about 37% of the polled votes. That would still leave 63% of the people who did not vote for them.</p>.<p>The ruling party should always remember that there is a large part of the population that did not vote for it and do not trust it. It is incumbent on it to take those who did not vote for it along by persuading them that there is a greater good in the legislation it has passed. Demonising the Opposition, criminalising dissent and calling protesters terrorists and anti-nationals is undemocratic. Doing so shows up an unbridled authoritarianism that brooks no dissent, questioning, or criticism</p>.<p><span class="italic"><em>(The writer, a former Cabinet Secretariat official, is Visiting Fellow at ORF, New Delhi)</em></span></p>
<p>The farmers protest on the Delhi–Haryana border has been on for over a month and is making a record of sorts as the largest protest in the world during the pandemic. Much has been said about the right and the wrong of the protest. There is one aspect that needs more scrutiny.</p>.<p>Let us take the issue of Minimum Support Price (MSP). Everyone and his uncle in the ruling party has promised the farmers that MSP will not be removed. But no one seems to trust them. More crucially, the farmers don’t trust Prime Minister Modi and his words. This is a huge problem. How do people petition the government when they don’t trust its head?</p>.<p>One answer may be that our democracy has been hollowed out, it is an empty shell, but we still go through some rituals of democracy. Another way of looking at it is that this is a real challenge from democratic forces to a cynical and authoritarian regime that mocks at people’s power. The answer may be ‘blowing in the wind’, as the ‘Prophet of Protest’ Bob Dylan said.</p>.<p>In a parliamentary democracy, citizens vote for their representatives and elect them to office because they ‘trust’ him/her to do some good for them. The Social Contract theorists – Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the original philosophers of Constitutionalism, of representative government and of a nascent democratic state -- postulated that individuals came together and parted with a portion of their sovereignty to create a ruler primarily to ensure their life, property and liberty.</p>.<p>This primordial act was based on implicit trust that the ruler would abide by his part of the contract. Today, this expression of trust takes place through elections, where people vote for their representatives. Vote is the ultimate mode of transferring trust. Vote is to politics what money is to economics.</p>.<p>Talking about money, we all accept some colourful pieces of paper on which certain numbers are written as valid currency of commerce because it says the Governor of the Reserve Bank promises to pay the bearer the sum written on that note. We accept that solemn promise without a question. Money is the purest form of trust. And we have a Prime Minister who violated that trust without a thought on November 8, 2016, when with four hours’ notice, he demonetised all the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes then in circulation and threw the country into chaos and caused untold misery to people. That was the beginning of the mistrust.</p>.<p>It was a reckless violation of trust, and it resulted in the deaths of over 100 people who could do nothing with their old currency, nor could they get new currency in time. Peoples’ faith in the system was rudely shaken as they no longer trusted the currency in hand. Societies are built on and revolve around trust. And if that trust is broken, it hollows out human interaction.</p>.<p>Similar was our experience when we faced a 70-day national lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister first announced a one-day ‘Janata Curfew’ with three days’ notice and then suddenly imposed a 21-day lockdown with only four hours’ notice. The 21 days became an excruciating 70 days, with the whole country grinding to a halt. While the lockdown may have been necessary, it could have been tempered with an ‘impact study’ after 21 days or even after a month. There was no assessment of how the economy was hurting, and no course-correction. Millions of people lost jobs and livelihoods, and the poorest of the poor – the migrant workers – had to walk hundreds of miles back to their homes, with many dying on the way of hunger and thirst. An uncaring State had broken the basic ‘trust’ to ensure their life. </p>.<p>The Prime Minister has often announced a policy or a law first and then thought out the reasons for it. This was clearly evident with demonetisation. As he went along, the Prime Minister gave a new rationale and justification every day for that act. The government and the RBI issued 74 notifications related to demonetisation in a period of 50 days.</p>.<p>How can people react to such a reckless ruler and his rules? What recourse do they have if they are not sure what he is up to the next day, and more so if they cannot trust his word? The parliamentary mechanism provides for a ‘no-trust vote’ wherein the Opposition parties, with or without having a sufficient number of votes, may attempt to unseat a ruling party. But then, what if there is no Parliament?</p>.<p>With Parliament in abeyance, the people have no option but to march on to the streets to oppose laws that they consider harmful. This is when the street becomes more powerful than Parliament, a phenomenon that was so vividly evident at the height of JP’s movement against Indira Gandhi’s rule.</p>.<p>The government is most likely to reject their demand because they will rightly contend that they have come to power with about 37% of the polled votes. That would still leave 63% of the people who did not vote for them.</p>.<p>The ruling party should always remember that there is a large part of the population that did not vote for it and do not trust it. It is incumbent on it to take those who did not vote for it along by persuading them that there is a greater good in the legislation it has passed. Demonising the Opposition, criminalising dissent and calling protesters terrorists and anti-nationals is undemocratic. Doing so shows up an unbridled authoritarianism that brooks no dissent, questioning, or criticism</p>.<p><span class="italic"><em>(The writer, a former Cabinet Secretariat official, is Visiting Fellow at ORF, New Delhi)</em></span></p>