A bruised legislature in a new building

Young people willing to make parliament the site of their protest are not just angry with the government, they seem to have lost faith in the legislature as a whole. It's important to examine why.

For people trying to make sense of the December 13th breach in the Indian parliament, focussing on the security aspect, while important, has not answered the fundamental question — why? A few have moved beyond security and focussed on the grievances expressed by the young people behind the incident. As per The Hindu, the Delhi police have not yet found any links between the accused and any terror group or political party (though the accused have all been arrested under the stringent Indian anti terror law, the UAPA). They reportedly told the police that they were upset with unemployment and rising prices. This is certainly plausible. Youth unemployment in India hovers around a staggering 24% and is among the highest in the world. And for graduates under 25, a report by the Azim Premji University estimates that this number rises to 42%. And yet, this doesn’t explain why, in a country a few months away from a general election, a group felt so disenfranchised that risking their freedom to protest inside parliament felt like the only option. Their very choice of inspiration, Bhagat Singh, a 20th century revolutionary fighting the policies of the colonial government in India, speaks to a high level of alienation from, and lack of belief in, the current electoral system. The question we must then ask is why has the political discourse in India failed to capture and channel this anger with policy into electoral politics?

In this respect, the last decade is interesting. Going by electoral results alone, it is possible to make the argument that despite a few losses here and there, the BJP’s electoral juggernaut remains largely intact. And yet, it has also been a time where the same BJP led government has been forced to walk back on fairly significant policy initiatives.

To understand this apparent contradiction it is important to begin with examining the deliberate weakening of the legislature itself over the last decade. Tarunabh Khaitan, analysing institutional erosion in the first BJP term offers several examples, including the rush to tenuously classify bills as “money bills” and thereby bypass the Rajya Sabha altogether, and the use of processes like the guillotine which allows the speaker to put bills to the vote without allowing discussion. The BJP government has from the outset also disregarded lawmaking conventions (like select committees) designed to bring in closer legislative scrutiny of bills prior to passing them into laws. As per PRS, the percentage of bills sent to select committees was significantly lower in the BJP’s first term than in the preceding decade, and has almost become non existent in this ongoing second term. Where possible, this government has sought to bypass legislature altogether and has preferred to operate through ordinances, and opposition strategies like walk outs and boycotts of parliament have only reinforced the overall impression of helplessness.

None of this is unprecedented in India, but usually, when one democratic institution is weakened in this manner, other institutions have held firm. The judiciary for example triggered the Emergency itself by holding firm on its disqualification of Indira Gandhi for electoral malpractice. But the last decade has also seen a gradual decline in the public expectation that the courts will step in to check the executive. And from upholding the classification of Aadhar as a money bill, to the delays in hearing campaign finance challenges, to the verdict on Babri, it is difficult to argue that the Indian judiciary has offered any meaningful check to the executive.

With the simultaneous weakening of two major institutions — the legislature and the judiciary — resistance to policy, both small and large, has shifted to the ground, and this has been more successful. Early in 2016, the central government issued a notification that would restrict workers from making withdrawals of their own savings from provident funds until retirement age. Almost immediately, a large crowd of mostly female garment factory workers collected in Bangalore to protest. The labour unions took the matter up and ultimately, the restrictions were rolled back. Similar collective action in 2017, by a very different socio-economic class of citizens ensured the withdrawal of the FDRI Bill. In the BJP’s second term, this method of protestors bypassing political opposition and engaging directly with the government through on ground protest has taken centre stage and successfully challenged legislation at the very heart of the government’s ideology. In 2019 and 2020, widespread protests ensured a pause in the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens. Beginning in the end of 2020 and continuing into 2021, the country saw the largest and longest farmer agitation the world, which ended only with the repeal of the three farm laws that were set to significantly privatise Indian agriculture.

These protests were diverse, but they shared certain commonalities - first, they were highly specific in nature with very specific demands, usually the repeal of a law or policy.  Second, they largely shunned formal association with political parties, though many opposition leaders offered their support, relying instead on alternative forms of organisation including labour and farmer unions, student unions, religious and community leaders and civil society. Finally, the spill over effect of these massive on-ground protests into the electoral sphere has been minimal.

What this means is that protests in the Narendra Modi years, unlike in the Indira Gandhi years, do not develop momentum and evolve into larger electoral movements seeking to unseat the government. Instead they play the role an opposition otherwise would - offering policy specific challenges to a government, and disbanding when those demands are addressed. It is clear the ruling government also sees them as such. There were far more negotiations with the farmer union leaders on the farm laws than there was discussion in parliament where the legislation was rushed through both houses. And unlike during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency where all of the opposition was jailed first, Narendra Modi’s government has focussed its political arrests on civil society, journalists and Muslim student leaders.

Since December 13th, 141 opposition members of the Indian parliament have been suspended from the winter session for “unruly behaviour” for demanding the home minister address parliament. And apart from a few analysts, this mass suspension of the opposition from a parliamentary session where key legislation on criminal law and telecommunications censorship are to be tabled, hasn’t triggered outrage. This does not necessarily mean the government has mass support for its actions. It merely speaks to the fact that the legislature isn’t seen by many as the key site of resistance to government policy anymore.

This is worrying. While politics certainly is more than electoral politics and should include every means by which the residents of a country engage with their government, the mainstreaming of on ground protest and the sidelining of the electoral process speaks to a loss of institutional credibility that goes beyond a single government. Young people willing to make parliament the site of their protest are not just angry with the government, they seem to have lost faith in parliament as a whole.

For people with access to alternative institutions like labour unions, or religious community leaders or caste justice based organisations, this loss of faith has not been catastrophic, as these institutions have stepped into the void. They have channeled this anger into policy specific on ground demonstrations. But for young people like those involved in the December 13  incident, without access to organised movements like the labour union movement or caste based justice movements, their protests have been tragic.

The last weeks of this year should leave us with significant questions in our mind that will have ramifications beyond 2024. In a vibrant democracy, on ground protests feed into and form the basis for electoral action. Civil society, the judiciary, parliament and the electoral process work together to hold governments accountable. In authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, on ground protests erupt sporadically, are suppressed brutally and on occasion win concessions when the intensity of the protest means it cannot be suppressed. It is clear that the Narendra Modi government is far more comfortable dealing with the latter. But the preservation of Indian democracy requires us to slowly find a way to connect on ground anger with the electoral process again. For the opposition, it means making people who have lost faith in our democratic institutions believe that they can and must be repaired, not cast aside.