Aditya Sinha: Modi, the baap of all babus

AAP MLA Alka Lamba celebrates the judgment of Delhi High Court with party leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal at his residence in New Delhi on Friday. Pic/PTI

The Delhi High Court's judgment that the Election Commission's disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party legislators was bad in law is yet another example of this government's trampling of governance and democracy. Aside from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah's pathological hatred for Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP (though the raison d'etre for this hatred seems misplaced, given Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's recent political resurgence); or Modi's disdain of Parliamentary discussion, evidenced in the way the Budget was approved without debate; or Modi's contempt for Constitutionally mandated consultative mechanisms like the Cabinet or the Reserve Bank of India in his decision-making; the trampling referred to here is of the bureaucracy.

Two days before Chief Election Commissioner AK Joti retired, the EC on January 23 recommended to the President that the 20 AAP MLAs be disqualified, following a three-year-long saga in which the MLAs were accused of each holding an "office of profit" of Parliamentary Secretary. The Delhi HC court struck down the appointments of the MLAs in September 2016, after which the AAP said there was no need for further EC hearing, since the so-called "office of profit" no longer applied. The EC nonetheless charged ahead, without hearing AAP's side of the story - it claimed it gave AAP adequate opportunity to explain itself, even though AAP argued there was no need to continue - and ultimately made its recommendation against the peoples' representatives to the President.

Joti is a former Gujarat chief secretary from when Modi was chief minister. He is a former bureaucrat who has never attempted the façade of neutrality as Chief Election Commissioner - his de-linking of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly election last December was so illogical (he said Gujarat was still undergoing flood relief work, a lie disproved widely in the state) that he came to be seen as the worst CEC in Indian history, worse than even Navin Chawla (who famously used to interrupt EC meetings to go to the bathroom, from where he would telephone the Congress party to take its advice). His haste to disqualify Modi's most hated opponents before he retired earned him from the AAP the sobriquet of "letterbox of the PMO".

The irony is that whenever you meet a BJP supporter, the one thing that he (or she) cries loudest about, after four years of achhe din, is that their Great Leader does not get the support of the bureaucracy. Their narrative is of a hard-working, honest politician who sacrifices even his sleep for the benefit of the nation. They have been saying this about Modi since June 2014; they have said the same thing for the past one year about UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath. (Incidentally, when Kejriwal stays up late, then he is accused of mistreating the bureaucrats.) When I was in Mumbai last month, a film financier who is a BJP supporter moaned about how the bureaucracy was the biggest stumbling block to Modi's dreams and plans being implemented. Last week on Twitter, a journalist whined about how Yogi was hardworking and insomniac, but he was let down by the bureaucrats around him. These are merely two instances of a much-repeated narrative.

It is total nonsense. One, the political executive selects his circle of bureaucrats and ought to take responsibility for whatever they do or don't do; so no point in blaming the bureaucrats, as handy as it might be. Two, the bureaucracy is collectively crazy for Modi. Perhaps it is part of a larger societal shift rightwards; for instance, from its judgments the higher judiciary appears to be more conservative than ever before. The rightward shift of the bureaucracy started in the AB Vajpayee era, and went further during the Manmohan Singh era (like the former Comptroller and Auditor General, Vinod Rai, who made astounding claims of the notional loss in the telecom scandal that now stand debunked). When Modi took over, he couldn't have inherited a more willing or pliant bureaucracy.

Yet Modi's followers repeatedly make the bureaucracy its straw man nowadays. It is convenient, since the bureaucracy will not take on the BJP or Congress in a public spat. (AAP is another matter.) It likely believes BJP propaganda about an obstructive bureaucracy, each imagining himself to be the exception to the rule.

This blaming of bureaucrats says more about Modi than it does about governance's steel frame. He had promised much, but other than the insanity of demonetisation, the chaos of GST, and the Orwellian insistence on Aadhaar, he hasn't delivered much. Rural distress is widespread, youngsters are not getting jobs, and people are more insecure about the future. These aren't things bureaucrats can solve; these require political solution and leadership. Blaming the babus makes as much sense as suggesting a countrywide revolution in pakoda stalls.

Aditya Sinha's new book will be out in May. He tweets @autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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