Karthik Basanta

From being the poster boy of the party in the 2024 general election to the most glorious fall guy, no one in the recent past has seen such a smooth rise to the top, enjoyed vice-like control over the state and a dramatic and almost vertical drop to anonymity and infamy. Though his name has seen the largest attempts of mutilation, we will use a decent name ‘Karthik’ to represent that cyclonic political phenomenon he led in the last 8/9 years.

This essay is not to discuss him or his deeds but to discuss how smoothly the coup happened, how it was allowed to turn to this size, how it fell and the possibility of its recurrence.

 

What exactly was this phenomenon?

 

Many articles have been written on him. People like those blind men are trying to define him by only touching one side of the phenomenon. Their analysis is personal, superficial and mostly anecdotal because no one is privy to the actual game which was getting played out behind a lot of smokescreens and staged mock fights to befool the voters. The gullible voters were made to witness a binary duel, but unbeknownst to them the actual game may be much more complex. No one can absolve themselves of their active and passive contributions in making this phenomenon happen. Was he alone in this phenomenon or he was the face of a grand strategic collaboration that didn’t work this time?

 

The palace's secret is now buried deep underground in a time capsule.

 

It didn’t happen overnight taking everyone by surprise. By 2016-17 the rising concentration of power of the CM’s office was felt. Words like ‘3rd Floor desires’ ‘PS desires’ started making rounds in hushed tones. Slowly and progressively that floor led by the PS created its battery of loyal and trusted bureaucrats who grew in power by depowering the elected members, secretaries of other departments and other department heads. Decisions were taken by a few individuals and dictates were issued. Budgets were placed overnight without following due processes and industries were hollered to make good of the deficit by coughing out from their CSR funds; advertisements flooded all available space in the media on the day of the announcement of another new scheme. ‘Mo’ became the prefix to every government scheme designed to dole out financial assistance from birth to death. The number of such schemes were numbing, and the citizens felt as confused as a child in a pastry shop with largesse raining everywhere.

 

The infallible Oracle had his fingers on the pulse of the people, and there was no need to listen to the elected representatives to know the feelings of the people on the ground. A few strategists in the war-room to unleash a fusillade of schemes advertisements and communication material is all that was needed to run the government. That war room had perfected the right recipe for winning the hearts and votes of the citizens turning itself into an invincible election-winning machine. Thus, paling its opposition into irrelevance and leaving no scope for internal dissent and dissatisfaction.

 

The state saw a dramatically different picture when it was reeling under the COVID-19 pandemic. Media carried pictures of the PS of the CM (2000 batch) making rounds of the temporary healthcare facilities put up by the state on an emergency basis. The old-school bureaucrats shockingly saw an interesting picture. The PS was making sweeping hand movements to point in different directions and ordering instructions and the Chief Secretary of the State (1986 batch) and his other senior colleagues were seen walking just a few steps behind him taking notes. In the pecking order of bureaucracy such body languages are taught and religiously followed as some religious conventions. People know how to manage their public behaviour according to their ranks.

 

The state got the message that who is the chosen one.

 

As power was getting more and more concentrated, the pace of implementation of projects, implementation and handover was happening overnight. The optics it created were blindingly bigger. Many accepted it as a fact that development in a democratic set-up is slow and this military-style mission mode delivery model is the only way to go – indirectly legitimising it.

 

Consistent electoral success gave rise to a new model where there was a God, his Son – the Prophet, his Apostles and their pastors.

 

It gave them the conviction that the traditional elected representative-led consultative democracy model could be dispensed with because the bedazzled voters are lapping up the doles and would vote for them anyway. This model reduced the voters to the level of beneficiaries whose only job is to push the right button in the EVM, elected representatives were positioned as pastors to spread the good word and the assembly building was reduced to the status of a landmark or an address.

 

The moot point here is not that such a thing happened but the ease with which it occurred.

 

Not a single word of protest, a semblance of resistance or question in murmur was heard in the public forum. The administration, legislators from the ruling party and the opposition reeling under the scrouge of COVID didn’t realise that this would turn into a mushroom cloud by the end of the pandemic in 2022. By then the press, bureaucracy and the system at the centre which could have put such a takeover to some check, threw all rules and conventions out of the window to legitimise it. No one resisted because the ones who could have done so were all enjoying their party on the gravy train. Were we that helpless or didn’t want to topple the applecart loaded with honey does not need any research as the answer is too obvious.

 

This system went ahead unopposed and unquestioned bypassing every check and balance in the rule book of administration and governance and by 2024 only God and the voters were the last hope to stop this juggernaut.

 

People voted and the message could not have been louder. Many felt that they threw the baby with the bathwater. They didn’t like the person who they perceived as the one who held their dear CM hostage and ruled the state in proxy by turning him into a helpless puppet. The party which had supported this model at the centre in the past chose to oppose it this time thus reaping all the electoral dividends.

 

Many may absolve themselves by calling in ‘Waqt ka taqaza’ or ‘Political expediency’, but there is blood in everyone’s hand.

 

Did it happen for the first time in a democratic country?

 

No, we know about the huge power enjoyed by the offices of the PM presently and many CMs of various states in the past. Governance happens in India through the PM-CM-DM model. Then what was unique in this case?

 

What was different was the complete physical absence of the CM from the scene, non-interaction with the senior bureaucrats and police officials and even the ministers and the legislators. The PS stood at the gate to the CM’s residence blocking everyone and communication, thus moving the CM to a shadow or a vignette and planting himself not only on the poster but on the centre stage of the election campaign, this was unprecedented, and this level of delegation filled everyone with anxiety and rattled everyone. The latent anxiety was if the decisions taken were of the CM’s or his.

 

People didn’t like this model of democracy where their participation was limited to standing in the choir to sing peans and pressing buttons and having no role in the consultative processes. Did the administrators like this model of administration? The answer is again no, because most of them were rendered powerless and the powers to decide were concentrated with a small group of favourites. Did the people’s representatives like it? No, because the voters realised their irrelevance, powerlessness and helplessness.

 

Then, can this dreadful cancerous model recur?

 

This experience shows that all the checks and balances and safeguards in the rulebook to draw the perimeter and boundaries of the power of the players can be breached when a grand collaboration of multiple interests converges in a particular situation. What are the new safeguards, are we talking about it? Someone has said, those who don’t remember their history, are condemned to repeat it. Do we remember the mistakes made in our recent history? Are we vigilant enough not to let it return? Will only our remaining vigilant help or do we need much more than that? These are the uncomfortable questions that are not even raised and need to be answered soon.

 

"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" is a line from the poem Ode to the West Wind. The line ends the poem on an optimistic note, suggesting that spring is not far off even during the winter months. But looking at the recent past when such a thing not only happened but happened with considerable ease and the current trend at other places, I am not hazarding my optimism.

 

Rather, I am tempted to quip “If Karthik could come, can Basanta be far behind?” The worrying point is how different will Basanta look from Karthik? And can we spot the similarities?