One of the factors that impacted Modi’s 2014 mandate was his image as a reformer who promised to slay crony capitalism, weed out corruption and policy paralysis. Underlining this image, what emerged was his highly centralized style of working that centered in most of the discussions in the policy circle. Although the decisive mandate in 2019 symbolizes the acceptance of the man by the political capital, trepidation still prevails among the Indian polity. This relates to the safeguarding of institutional autonomy or encroachment into institutional spaces.
An analysis of Modi’s past performance in governance explains the uneasy relationship that has persisted between the state and the institutions. The controversies surrounding the RBI, Election Commission (EC), judiciary (SC) among others, indicates the “flailing nature” of our institutions. In other words, the crisis or confrontation that has erupted between the government and the institutions has laid bare the crisis of credibility. These events and the systemic infirmities they point to makes one wonder about the health of India’s elite institutions.
The Reserve Bank of India
The Reserve bank of India established in accordance with the provision of the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, has evolved over the years and is provisioned to function with institutional autonomy. However it was during demonetisation in 2016 that truly undermined and jeopardized RBI’s autonomy. A close look at media reports highlights not only that the RBI advise during the exercise was ignored, but it was informed pretty much the same time as the public and then had to scramble for months to do damage control. With demonetisation becoming a clearly failed policy, as it becomes explicit with the return of the devalued currencies into the circulation, it clearly shows that the government had not taken stock of RBI’s warning that the move was “dangerous” for India. Also, the fact that the Government of India still unilaterally decided to implement such an invasive monetary policy decision seriously undermined RBI’s credibility as an autonomous institution.
Election Commission
The Election Commission of India is a formidable institution, which has led the nation in electoral efficiency since 1950. But, it was during the 2019 elections that the body came under the scanner for breaching the Model Code of Conduct, particularly those by the ruling party. The concern over EC’s credibility was so enormous that it got expressed through a letter, penned by a group of retired bureaucrats and diplomats who condemned EC’s “weak-kneed conduct” and stated that the institution was “suffering from a crisis of credibility.” Another egregious move by the EC includes defending the existence of electoral bonds. These bonds create a mechanism for private actors to fund political parties through a banking system rather than cash, but without the actor or the political party having to disclose a single rupee. While the commission noted in 2017 that the monetary instrument proposed by the government would make funding of political parties more opaque, but they changed their stance before the 2019 election. According to the EC counsel, the EC stands opposed to only the anonymity clause of the bonds and not the bonds themselves. These measures by the EC simply imply that serious questions about the Commission’s Independence are not without cause.
The Supreme Court
The third example of an elite institution facing a credibility crisis at this scale includes the Supreme Court whose internal fissures have played out in a spectacularly public fashion. The Supreme Court has historically enjoyed widespread popular support, especially compared to highly uneven lower judiciary. However, there have been various structural malaises that have gone unaddressed. The accumulation of power in the hands of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) is a case in point. In early 2018, four of the top five judges of India’s Supreme Court did something completely unprecedented. They did a press conference where they questioned the leadership of the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra, particularly with regard to abuse of power in the allocation of politically sensitive cases.
Another notable example involves the case of the Prasad Educational Trust, a matter that the CJI had been overseeing. According to the CBI, the Trust had retained a retired Orissa high court judge to “fix” the outcome of the SC’s decision. When an NGO implored the apex court to set up a special investigation team (SIT), Justice J Chelameswar ordered the establishment of the five-judge Constitution Bench to consider its plea. But, in a dramatic development, the CJI set up a five-judge bench headed by him and overturned Chelameswar’s order, stating that the CJI had the sole prerogative of setting up a bench and allocating matters. Mishra took this case, despite the fact that he had been personally involved in the Prasad case, a case that required an independent investigation.
In Conclusion
The larger point here is that the structure, functioning and architecture of institutions such as RBI, SC among others are fundamentally different from those of the democratically elected governments. The meta lessons from the trials of India’s elite institutions expose the stark divergence between the rule of law in practice and on paper. On this account, both in paper and practice, the institutions are designed to be autonomous and devoid of any political influence. The harsh truth is that politicians are often swayed by power and tempted by the prospect of control. It is there necessary that institutions and its constituents are freed from any form of temptation and function on an independent basis, otherwise there persists the risk of facilitating greater institutional decay.
India Outbound
June 7, 2019
source https://indiaoutbound.org/modi-2-0-the-fate-of-institutional-autonomy-in-india/
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