Many are sceptical of Modi’s methods, especially with the rising incidences of communal strife, and economic measures like demonetisation and GST. But still it would too far-fetched to compare his rule to the dictatorial declaration of emergency by Indira Gandhi.
India is a thriving democracy with a dynamic Constitution. But it has an inbuilt system where in the central government can declare a state of emergency in the entire country or certain parts. Under an emergency, citizens are deprived certain Fundamental Rights, states are administered by the centre and the authorities become more empowered. Basically, it turns a democracy into distractor-like state temporarily. It has been done to ensure that there is maintenance of national security and law and order.
But this power has been misused once before, when India faced a dark phase. Indira Gandhi faced backlash for her measures in Punjab. She was fast losing her popularity amidst charges of corruption. Even the Supreme Court has found her guilty of malpractice. It was then that she misused the law of emergency to save her government.
It was indeed a tragic phase. Political leaders and journalists were arrested. Anyone who dared to speak the truth was kept quiet with coercion. Her son Sanjay Gandhi used medieval methods to implement policies of family planning and poverty elimination. Many people lost their lives and livelihood.
Last week, many in our country paid tributes to the martyrs as they marked the anniversary of Emergency. But some who compared Modi’s regime to the same may have been wrong by a large measure.
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Poverty, employment, health and social figures point that Modi has done more than any other previous regime. His methods may be unorthodox, and his regime may have some vestiges of fundamentalist tendencies, but it cannot be denied that development has penetrated deeper into the masses than ever before. India has also been placed in its rightful position among world powers. And this could never be said about the dictatorial methods of Indira Gandhi or how she made a plaything of the law and the Constitution.
Let the masses decide the future at the next general election in 2019, but one thing is for certain. Dark days like the 1975 Emergency have lesser chances of throwing a shadow over modern India.
