Every government always wants its own stooges in Raj Bhavan

Now that the Governor of Tamilnadu has run out of delaying tactics and finally sworn Vijay in, it may be time to list the takeaways from this election season.

The first one is obvious. There is a long and disgraceful history of Governors trampling on the Constitution to serve the interests of the people at the Centre who appointed them.

 

When we (with some justification) look at the examples of the last decade with shame and anger, we forget that the practice dates back decades. In the 1980s NT Rama Rao was unseated by a pliant Governor under Indira Gandhi’s instructions and a similar fate also befell Farooq Abdullah because of Mrs Gandhi and Arun Nehru.

 

   The only difference between then and now is that the bias is far more blatant. Mamata Banerjee had a running battle with Governor Jagdeep Dhankar who took the unprecedented step of travelling around the country to badmouth the Chief Minister. For his pains Dhankar was rewarded by being made Vice President. (That didn’t last for reasons nobody can convincingly explain.)

 

   Before this assembly election the Centre shifted RN Ravi, a former policeman with no claim to fame except for loyalty to his masters to Bengal, from his post as Governor of Tamilnadu so that it had its hatchet man in place in case the election threw up a complex verdict.

 

   As it turned out it should have kept Ravi in Tamilnadu (where he had constantly fought with the elected government) because the election resulted in a hung assembly and it needed Ravi’s hatchet man skills. Instead it sent Rajendra Arlekar a lifelong RSS man who struggled clumsily to delay Vijay’s swearing in. This delay led to attempts at horse trading because politicians believed that the Governor had been instructed to swear in anyone but Vijay.

 

   Vijay’s accession only became inevitable when the Governor had run out of other options but at least Arlekar managed to delay the Tamilnadu swearing in till the grand Bengal swearing in ceremony, which the PM attended, was over so that his bosses did not have to compete with the spectacle of Vijay and Rahul Gandhi sitting side by side.

 

   All this seems shocking but is not unprecedented. Even in Indira Gandhi’s time there was so much disgust with the behaviour of Governors that there was talk of abolishing the post or of at least changing the method of appointing Governors. Nothing came of it because every government always wants its own stooges in Raj Bhavan.

 

"If the Election Commission can get away with this kind of match tampering this time then what happens when it starts fixing matches so completely that there is no doubt about the outcome?"

   Now the subject has come up again and though the BJP does not want the discussion to proceed any further there is no longer any doubt that a national debate is required. India cannot afford to hand the people’s verdict after each election to henchmen of the Centre who can then twist and mangle it for political purposes.

 

   A second takeaway from the election season, also about a Constitutional post, is the need to restrain the Election Commission. The current Chief Election Commissioner functions in the same way as Governors do: as the government’s man. He is not the first Election Commissioner to be accused of impropriety but it is fair to say that never before in the history of modern India have we had a man who is less respected handling one of the most important jobs in our democracy.

 

   Respect may be a matter of perspective but it is becoming increasingly clear that the SIR exercise was directed at disenfranchising Muslim voters. This exercise and others like it will eventually lead to deep resentments and alienation. Indian democracy works because all of us have a stake in it. Suggest to Muslims that they count for less than Hindus when it comes to choosing governments and you betray everything that India is supposed to be about.

 

   The BJP is fortunate that, according to many calculations, it would have won Bengal even without the SIR deletions. But it is probable that it would not have won this kind of majority without SIR and that several of its victorious candidates (including its new Chief Minister) would have lost.

 

   My concern is less with the election in Bengal than with the precedent this sets. If the Election Commission can get away with this kind of match tampering this time (and let’s face it, the EC has escaped any kind of censure) then what happens when it starts fixing matches so completely that there is no doubt about the outcome?

 

   And yet no obvious solutions present themselves. There is no way, in the present system, of preventing the government from choosing loyalists to run Indian elections. And the Supreme Court seems unwilling to want to get involved on such crucial issues as the SIR deletions.

 

   We are not quite there yet but if these trends continue we are heading for a situation where elections are not conducted fairly and the Governors, the men charged with implementing the electoral verdict, are totally in hock to one party or the other.

 

   Indian democracy has many imperfections but at least it gives voters two opportunities every five years (at assembly and parliamentary elections) to elect politicians of their choice. Given the calibre of many of India’s politicians the only thing that keeps them in some sort of check is the fear of being thrown out. Rig the electoral system and you risk turning India into a banana republic.

 

   All governments know this but they always believe that they don’t need to worry about subverting the Constitution because they will always be in power. That’s what Indira Gandhi believed. And that’s what this government believes.

 

   But nothing lasts forever. Everyone loses eventually. At some stage all the institutional and constitutional damage each government does with the intention of benefiting itself will benefit the next lot of people who come to power. All of the democratic institutions Indira Gandhi subverted ended up helping future governments bypass constitutional safeguards. That will happen again.

 

   Politicians never even entertain the possibility of losing. Look at the recently concluded assembly elections. On the day the results were coming out, the DMK was planning its victory celebrations not realising what lay ahead. Till the very end Mamata Banerjee believed the TMC was headed for a landslide victory.

 

   But the reality is that they do lose. And sadly, the damage they have done to India’s democratic institutions lives on, long after they have been forgotten.