The task for citizens assessing good governance in the country these days is to figure out what actually distinguishes the normal from the abnormal in governance. Yesterday’s normal of disrupting Parliament is today denounced as abnormal and the abnormality around concealing information from the public by government before the year 2014 is now claimed to be normal in 2016 and to be in the nation’s interest. The strategy of ‘offence as the form of defence’ adopted by the governments of yester years leading to emergency was abnormal and offensive in a democracy but the same strategy of naming, shaming, demonising and attacking of opponents by the government of the day is hailed as good and strong governance. What would get categorised under scams or blunders of a UPA in government is today sanctified as a sign of patriotism and daringness. A display of arrogance, secrecy, the abuse of State machinery, interference in judicial processes and in educational institutions by government, and the use of violence against those not subscribing to the Hindutva ideology by its non-State actors are now proclaimed as the new normal in India’s governance.
Unfortunately, the ‘normal’ in governance practices cannot be decided by those in government unlike the agenda to communalise Indian history by rewriting the school text books or declaring Christmas Day as Good Governance Day. The good governance practices are to be judged based on universal principles which are sufficiently highlighted in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. Similarly, the behaviour of our political leaders gets categorised as per universally accepted findings and categorisations in psychology. If leading professors of psychiatry from the prestigious Havard Medical School can express their grave concern about the mental stability of Donald Trump, the President of U.S. elect, then it is high time for citizens in India to question the psychological stability of their political leaders who gloat and run around town with claims such as ‘maine desh keliye sab kuchchodddiya’ and ‘yeh bi maine kaha tha’ or ‘who bhi maine karke dikhaya’. The paranoia of a leader in government who believes that NGOs and political opponents are conspiring to get rid of him cannot be considered a sign of a mentally stable leadership. It is this abnormal in governance which declares jingoism, discrimination and vengeance to be the ‘new normal’ in governance and goes on to label all those who do not subscribe to such thought as being abnormal and anti-national.
The normalcy in governance processes and policies needs to be judged with a background of universal principles, international laws, the Indian Constitution and clinical assessment reports from independent competent authorities and not by government sponsored news channels, hired concept marketing houses and a coterie of jaundiced academic experts and film stars. The mere fact that governance ideas appear novel and are generated by self-proclaimed intellectuals and ‘arthashastra’ experts in government need not necessarily qualify them as being normal. We may also find such novel thinking and high flying ideas in psychiatric patients. But ultimately, with an understanding in voters that voting once in five years and being political ignorance is ‘the normal’ in a democracy, the present abnormal governance practices tend to get tom-tommed as parivartan. The abnormal governance gets sold to us as the normal. This is why the public standing in long queues at odd hours of the day to withdraw their own hard earned money from banks is hailed as a step towards clean governance.
In such abnormal times, the rationalization by some loyalists to the government that those opposed to governance policies such as demonetisation is about a ‘normal human tendency to resist change’ may be disastrous for democracy. To put our trust in politicians swearing allegiance to a divisive ideology of an organisation and obsessed with political power and money is like entrusting a drug addict or an alcoholic with the care of our home. In abnormal thinking the deviant situation is understood as ‘acche din’ and disruption of normalcy is comprehended as ‘vikas’. The country is in a situation whereby normal citizens are made to appear as abnormal. This is why violation of human rights like murdering citizens in possession of beef gets seen as patriotism and efforts towards an ‘opposition mukth Bharat’ in a democracy is considered as nationalism; vandalising movie houses and art festivals is nowadays considered as social reconstruction; those upholding secular values get diagnosed as ‘sickular’ and speaking in defence of the poor and oppressed gets laughed away by the government as hypocrisy.
http://www.heraldgoa.in/Review/Voice-Of-Opinion/When-the-abnormal-is-a-new-normal/109782.html
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