The rogues’ gallery of autocratic rulers has been growing for some years now. It is no more an age of much-reviled ‘tinpot’ dictators. Today, we have wolves in sheep’s clothing. The elected autocrats follow a familiar playbook for capturing power and holding on to it. Since the owl of Athena no more spreads her wings as evenings fall, autocratic leaders have grabbed more powers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We gloated over the global expansion of democracy but didn’t pay sufficient attention to the parallel rise of autocracy. We are currently witnessing what Anna Luhrmann and Staffan I. Lindberg call a “third wave of autocratisation.” It is marked by the tyranny of the executive and a growing phenomenon what Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt describe as “capturing the referees”.
The elected autocrats use institutional violence and repression but they also seduce, appeal, exert charisma and draw on myths and digital storytelling. It is very much like what Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie writes about “the danger of a single story.” She says, “power not only spreads a story but also makes its ideas persist. Power can be used for malintent, through controlling “how [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, [and] how many stories are told.”
A democrat invents a very different new role when new situations arise. But an autocrat acts both like a prophet and a guru. After all, he/she lives by the myth of a flawless hero. As a poem by Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar reads, “my empire made me happy because it was an empire and mine…(it was) cruel and the suffering wasn’t my own.”
Federalism was, for long, considered a moat against autocracy, particularly in large and ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse countries. It was seen as a valuable tool for mitigating ethnic conflict and for enabling people with divergent ideologies and aspirations to co-exist in the same polity.
Today, federalism is confronting twin attacks from autocratic rule and the Covid-19 pandemic. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has written how some leaders have used the pandemic to deploy “heavy-handed security responses and emergency measures to crush dissent, criminalise basic freedoms, silence independent reporting and restrict the activities of nongovernmental organisations.”
Federalism, considered the most meaningful constitutional design to prevent authoritarianism, is facing a crisis of faith. It has suffered serious erosion even in well-established federal states like the United States, India and Brazil. Federalism no longer thrills and it has now accumulated a chorus of new sceptics.
Devolution of power is the quintessence of federalism which is intended to empower the state and local governments as also to impede the tyranny of the national government. However, recent experience suggests that the institutional design that most federal states created are not adequate to prevent autocracy at the Centre.
How have federal states fared in dealing with the corona pandemic? Australia’s Lowy Institute has ranked countries handling the Covid-19. The top 10 best performers include only Australia as a federal state. Germany, Canada, India and Brazil hold 55th, 61st, 86th and 98th positions respectively. It appears federal states are outcompeting each other only by degrees of underperformance. The East Asian, South-east Asian and Australasian countries have fared significantly better. Interestingly, some surveys reveal that Canadians distrust both their federal and provincial governments. Brazil and India stand out to be the worst performing federal states.
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has openly attacked federalism as he considers his ministers and bureaucrats to be his vassal. He has frequently flogged state governors for lockdown. He went to the extent of saying, “my army won’t go to the streets to ensure obedience to governors’ decrees.” Its healthcare system has collapsed and as Miguel Nicolelis, professor at Duke University, says, Brazil is facing a “biological Fukushima.”
As far as India is concerned, both democracy and federalism are moving in reverse gear. Federalism is certainly grating and grinding and democracy is fast becoming a festival of hypocrisy.
Even though India is not a textbook federation and under the classic theory of federalism not a federation at all, India was considered a success story. India made a success of its federal polity largely because of its impressive democratic record, the role of its civil society, its institutional strengths and its vibrant political culture.
During the Congress Party rule, federalism remained rather weak. In the words of former Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer, India remained “unitary at the whim of the Union and federal at the pleasure of the Centre.” However, today much of the etiquettes of federalism is in tatters. India had never experienced such systematic destruction of its federal structure. The institutionally weak state and local governments have failed to become the sites of resistance.
Majoritarian politics is predatory in nature. The much touted “cooperative federalism” has turned out to be a predatory federalism. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to market “cooperative federalism” as the distinguishing feature of his style of governance. The BJP government accepted the 14th Finance Commission Report which favoured greater devolution of funds to States. The states’ share in tax collection was raised from 32% to 42%. But the States soon realized that there was a poisonous sting in the tail.
By a sleight of hand, the federal government expropriated a larger share of revenues than prescribed by the 14th Finance Commission and reduced the states’ share. The government said later it had no money to pay the States their share of Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenues. Cooperative federalism was offered to the states in handy package. Smart packaging has a way of causing eyes to glaze over. India’s cooperative federalism is like the “Ikea Kit” where recipients are expected to assemble the furniture without help and if the furniture is faulty or lopsided, it is the fault of the customer.
What India is left with today is federalism in a frilly apron. Indian federalism always had a bias in favour of the Centre. The chain of command—bureaucracy, law enforcement agencies, supervisory bodies and commissions has, for all practical purposes, collapsed. The Modi government has weakened federalism by “capturing the referees.” It has used institutions to its advantage and disabled impartial adjudicators from performing their roles.
The anti-commandeering doctrine authored by the US supreme court saved American federalism despite Trump’s all-round attack on federal institutions. This doctrine prohibits the federal government from commandeering state governments from imposing coercive duties upon state governments. The US federal government can’t force state governments to implement its policies. It can’t appoint or remove state officials or judges.
When Prime Minister Modi imposed a harsh lockdown at a few hours’ notice in March last year, it sought to convey a message that he stood by the principle ‘Dare to be a Daniel! Dare to stand alone!’ However, India’s patchwork response to the pandemic caused immense hardship for the poor migrants and other marginalised sections of society. While cases began to surge last March, India’s health minister Harsh Vardhan claimed that India had entered the endgame” of the pandemic.
Albert Camus says, “plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared.” India was not only not prepared, it allowed huge election rallies and religious gatherings flouting all norms. That was an open invitation to the virus to strike ferociously. As CBS News put it, “surging Covid cases and lack of oxygen make India living hell”.
With India struggling to cope with the second wave of Coronavirus and the hospitals reeling under shortage of beds and medical oxygen, the reputation of the vaccine superpower is in tatters. India is reaping the bitter harvest of the government’s premature triumphalism and lowering the guard.
Today, India looks like what Guillermo O’ Donnell calls a “delegative democracy” marked by low levels of horizontal accountability. Federalism is not to blame. Federalism as an organising principle is neither the problem nor the answer. It should be judged by the parabola of its uses rather than by the curve of its misuses.
And yet, ‘federalism for me, not for thee” is no federalism. Suddenly, Indian federalism looks like a ‘patchwork quilt.’ The federal government under Modi has worked like an invasive, noxious weed that has rendered the states powerless and vulnerable. The pitfalls of pop federalism or comical federalism could be injurious to democracy.
