A republic in crisis: Holding a mirror up to power

Prabhakar leaves nothing to the imagination in his scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, for its failures on various fronts. Written in lucid language, often punctuated with anecdotes, the essays carry the anger, frustration and disappointment of a common citizen at the turn of events since 2014.

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THE book The Crooked Timber of New India: Essays on a Republic in Crisis, published by Speaking Tiger Books, is a collection of essays touching upon the various facets of the crises we are facing as a republic. The nearly 300 pages carry 22 essays written between 2020 and 2022, with updated postscripts written in 2023. Most of the essays are amended versions of his vlog, Midweek Matters, while a few are freshly written.

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While it is majorly a commentary on the post-2014 era, since the time we are believed to have discovered the 'New India', he does not spare the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government as well. 

One of the criticism of UPA government is its complicity in turning the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) more draconian in 2008 and 2012, allowing the Modi government to unleash it on people who were perceived to be political threats to their grand narrative of sab changa si (everything is fine; known in bhakt-speak as Amrit Kaal), and making it even more draconian in 2019.

The real face of Bharatiya Janata Party

One of the essays looks into two Modis— one before and around the 2014 elections and another post that. In his Independence Day speech in 2014, the old Modi called himself "Pradhan Sevak", gave credit to all the previous prime ministers, Central and state governments for what has been achieved thus far as a nation. He promised to take the Opposition along and work shoulder-to-shoulder with them. He spoke about consensus. 

The 'transformation' from that old Modi into the one who sends Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Income Tax Department's  (IT) teams for raids on Opposition party members, one who expunges debates on him from Lok Sabha records, one who disqualifies Opposition party leaders for whimsical reasons, one who blames the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru at the drop of a hat and one who finally became an I-me-myself Prime Minister, covers a long distance. However, for people who have been following him since 2002, this may hardly be a transformation.

Critique of the ruling dispensation's expository speeches in public 

The rising concern over the 'population explosion' is a myth Prabhakar demolishes with finesse. Taking examples of the Vijaya Dasami address (2021) of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS)  Sarsanghchalak, the Prime Minister's address to the nation on August 15, 2019, and repeated diatribes of chief ministers of Assam and Uttar Pradesh, apart from BJP office bearers and members of Parliament (MPs), where they univocally express concerns about the population explosion, looking at the data from National Family Health Survey (NFHS), Prabhakar establishes that the total fertility rate has been steadily declining for all communities. It is now at an ideal replacement-level fertility for a country.

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Why is this a problem for them? Making it clear that the discussions around population explosion are targeted at Muslims, Prabhakar says, "What is needed is fear, apprehension, insecurity among communities, a feeling that 'our' poverty is because of  'them'. 'Our' unemployment is because of 'their' numbers. Such policy consolidates 'us' against 'them'. When it is paid in Assam, it will be paid in UP."

Analysing the Prime Minister and his government's work 

One essay is dedicated to the personality cult and narcissism of Prime Minister Modi. With a well-oiled propaganda machine of the BJP behind him, promoted and parroted by even Union ministers and supported by the mainstream media, PM Modi has an image of a superhuman— one who fights jet lag with ease, works 18 hour a day, 17 real-life stories of Bal Narendra comic book with 'the authenticity seal from the office of the (then) Chief Minister', one who is on first-name terms with Barack, Donald, Emmanuel, Ben and so on. There are many such stories to prove his point.

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Prabhakar debunks several other Sangh narratives, like the ones of tensions between Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose and between Mahatma Gandhi and Bose. He also addresses their claims about people's reluctance to take up jobs which are considered 'menial' as the reason for unemployment in India, thus squandering the demographic dividend of the country. 

He also takes on the attack on his alma mater Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and its tradition of free thought and debate. He laments the lack of vision and commitment to education and investments in our universities resulting in even our best ones not counted globally.

The poverty of data on government programmes and activities, data privacy, privatisation of public sector companies, killing of Father Stan Swamy, farm laws and the hijab row are some of the other topics Prabhakar discusses in the book. 

He dedicates a few essays to the pandemic, its effect on different sections of the population and on the government's lack of accountability.

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Discussing the Oxfam inequality report, he briefly summarises Thomas Piketty's book Capital and Ideology. He cites Piketty, "Inequality is neither economic, nor technological; it is ideological and political." 

After explaining the inequality in the Indian context with numbers from the Oxfam inequality report, Prabhakar says, "New India is indifferent to these inequalities. Economic inequality is not a part of its political discourse. Old India's political discourse, on the other hand, foregrounded it, grappled with it. 

"No doubt it was ineffective, it fumbled and was probably incompetent. It even failed, as every other country in the world failed. But old India tried. Its political discourse never justified inequality." 

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Looking at the polarisation 'Modi–Shah' (Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah) duo has inflicted on the body politic of India, Prabhakar concludes, "[T]he political strength of the present ruling dispensation does not emanate from its performance record on any of the parameters that should matter. 

"Its political strength rests solidly on its emotive, divisive agenda that plays on the explicit and implicit prejudice of the majority community. Its shortcomings are overlooked because it is able to deliver on that intoxicating hate agenda."

As a political observer, he does a great job in analysing what has gone wrong with our republic. 

Maybe it is time that he looks deeply at the republic as an economist, to tell us what went wrong in the economy.