Democracy or Orwellian animal rule?
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Has George Orwell's animal rule reached India? Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is an animal kingdom story that describes how democracy can be overthrown through democratic systems. After Napoleon, the leader of the pigs, takes power through elections, he systematically eliminates opposition party leaders and parties. The way he chose to maintain power was not to win elections by implementing popular rule. Democracy is an obstacle on the journey to dictatorship; therefore, his strategy is to confine opposition leaders and eliminate the opposition itself. Only if there is a strong opposition do we need to fear elections. Thus, with the opposition neutralised, he makes authoritarian rule a reality while maintaining the facade of democracy. This is almost the same strategy that the BJP is trying to implement in India. The latest example of this is the events that took place around Punjab on Sunday. The mass induction of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs to the BJP is not an isolated incident. Raghav Chadha, the leader of the defectors, announced that he and some other AAP MPs had merged with the BJP “as provided in the Constitution”. Thus even those MPs who opposed the BJP’s divisive politics and became MPs cite the Constitution to embrace the same party! With this defection, in which seven of the ten AAP Rajya Sabha MPs joined the BJP, the NDA’s Rajya Sabha strength will increase to 145. The target is a two-thirds majority in the upper house of Parliament.
Six of the seven who defected are Rajya Sabha MPs from Punjab. It is believed that the BJP also has the aim of splitting the AAP there, establishing a foothold in Punjab, and eliminating the AAP in Punjab and Delhi. The BJP's murder of democracy 'Operation Lotus', has been tried and tested. Many have pointed out that the government is even using investigative agencies for this. After Ashok Mittal was appointed as the deputy leader of the AAP in the Rajya Sabha, the ED raided his institutions. He has now also joined the BJP. Independent investigations have revealed that the list of those who escaped the hunt of the agencies after defecting is not small. It has been found that the investigation of 23 out of 25 prominent opposition leaders who joined the BJP after being subjected to agency hunts after 2014 has been stopped. This ‘washing machine’ strategy using government agencies is the very methodology of ‘Operation Lotus’. The practice of procuring MPs and MLAs wholesale, without any regard for the elected people or the parties that send representatives to the Rajya Sabha on the basis of popular consent, has reached such a scale that it even bypasses the anti-defection law.
The BJP in its attempt to seize power in Punjab, where it has no roots, through abuse of power and horse-trading, is trying something else in Gujarat, where it has been in power for years: another version of the strategy of eliminating democratic opposition. This was seen in the local body elections held yesterday. There was no contest in many seats (43 municipal seats, 385 municipal council seats, 51 district panchayat seats, and 251 taluk panchayat seats). The vast majority of those who won unopposed are BJP members. There are allegations that threats and bribes were used to dissuade opposition candidates from the contest. A Congress candidate from Ahmedabad has alleged that the BJP offered her Rs 30 lakh to withdraw from the contest. There is also an allegation that Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel discouraged her from contesting against the ruling party. The argument put forward by the Prime Minister and others through the ‘double engine’ theory is that centralised rule by a single party is magnificent. Democracy is when citizens decide the rulers. But the new voter list update and verification indicate that the rulers have reached a stage where they are deciding on the citizens. We are seeing those whom the people elected, and those whom they rejected, switching sides – just as the centralisation of power and misrule mentioned in ‘Animal Farm’ are unfolding.
