The Country likes to know: Where is the State heading for?

Bhaskar Majumder

One or two questions I may pose to the people and the state remaining within the safety net of the state and safety lap of the people. I believe I will not be charged with any unwelcome connotations for my past records in academia that I tried my best to contribute – this is not for self-defence but to make my position clear that I do not stand between the ambitious state and the innocent people of Bharat that is India – India for the state and Bharat for the people.

Many divergences and dualities are being floated of late often in a binary division that include (i) English hegemony vs. Hindi homogenization, (ii) Majority vs. Minority, (iii) JNU vs. Others, (iv) J & K vs. Rest of India, (v) Kerala vs. Centre and all that. All cannot be clubbed for their nature is both similar and different. So what I intend to do is to follow Gurudev (Ravindranath Tagore) to pose some questions – actually posing questions means I am responsible to ponder over to try to arrive at some tentative answer and disseminate. I have the right to question means I have the duty to answer.

I have reasons to believe that in political turmoil, economy understood as the size of population participating in economic activities, does not matter much. After all, all economic answers are political questions. The political questions are not only readable policy questions but also questions embedded in how those questions are looked at by the polity in a dominant-subordinated relation. My understanding is, not only the human relations since the time of slavery were embedded in domination-subordination, but in an apparent faceless economic regime like capitalism, the relation of domination-subordination persists. The question is about the nature of the state.

In slavery, the state was obviously not a reflection of an agreement of people that included the slaves for the slaves were commodities. In capitalism that portrays democracy, the state is an agreement – Parliamentary democracy reinforces it. So, politically speaking, though I am not a political scientist and not a politician, Parliament stands supreme for the people in a Parliamentary democracy as India is. If the state is an agreement of people/nation post-1648 and if Parliament of India is supreme post-1947, then the following questions seem relevant before they are answered.

‘’WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC..... ‘’ was the pledge in OUR Constitution of India. There is no question if we are bound by it – every citizen of India is. It may be a different question if the Aam Aadmi understands the connotations of each of the term ‘’ SOVEREIGN’’, ‘’SOCIALIST’’, ‘’SECULAR’’, ‘’DEMOCRATIC’’, ‘’REPUBLIC’’. The innocent people should not be accused if they do not. It is the duty of the minority to make the majority understand the meaning of each of these terms penned judiciously in the Constitution of India.

Let there be no elasticity of imagination that this majority-minority is religion-based or vote-bank based. The learned minority is also often opinionated, often argumentative, and often in narcissism. Most of the majority do not have any idea why the state of Kerala, for example, reached the Apex Court to argue on the Constitutional validity of CAB-converted CAA passed in the esteemed Parliament of India, 2019. Most of them do not know why the state of Punjab has declined to implement CAA or NPR and all that. Most of them do not know why the state of West Bengal is always agonized – this time with CAA. Most of them in fact do not understand the Centre-State relations that were a big issue during the late 1970s with Sarkaria Commission to look into this. Aam Janta are not bothered about Committees and Commissions, with due respect to the members of these actual and would-be members of these Committees and Commissions. Common people understand their engagement in ‘’Roti-Roji’’ and they are committed to their duties as they perceive it. The fact remains, however, that often they do not see the next day.

Though the state of India has many institutions like RBI, CBI, ED, RAW, NITI AYOG, PMO and all that to take care of the people, it seems overburdened of late for the reasons, one, peoples’ activism and two, state overstretched itself. As a state beneficiary, I may request the state of which I am a part, to focus on issues where sovereignty is in danger. The questions on ‘’Secular’’ may be left to the space outside the domain of the state. Whether or not the state asks for, the people at different corners of the country that is Bharat will celebrate 26th January as the Republic Day! I have my personal experience since childhood to have a national flag (small in size but meaning is the same) in hand and celebrate the day (without much understanding, of course). The tradition has remained uninterrupted – so, the question of natural nationalism is intact.

So, where is my central question? It is around the state-Constitution-Parliament cobweb where the states like ‘’Punjabo-Sindhu-Gujarato-Maratha-Draviro-Utkalo-Bango’’ (quoted from National Anthem penned by Gurudev)are involved. Most of the innocent people do not know the time duration to sing this National Anthem, but they will sing to the best of their pronunciation. Whatever is forced is not real. People are not anti-national for they do not know what the basic requirements to be national are.  But then I did not decompose the question and then its probable answer.

If the issue stands on the axis of Parliament-Apex Court and no one is authorized to make comments on the rationality-implementability of CAA unless and until the final verdict is delivered by the Apex Court, I stop here. But it seems, there are intra-elite players who are continuing to make comments – so, I think I may be a marginal one to add in the milieu. I am not going to ask if the Parliament can be dragged to the Apex Court for my incompetence to address that question. However, what question I may be allowed to raise is people’s perception, their sit-in demonstration at every corner of urban India. It does not make much sense if that is identified as ‘’Urban Naxal’’ for most of the people I talked to had/have no idea of what a Naxal is. Many of them live in cities neutral to their choice for it became their second location post-marriage. The problem is, women (and children) are on the streets because of the CAA. Just now I got the information through electronic media that the police took away the ‘’free lunch’’ of these protestors in Lucknow. God knows, if the same personnel will feed in silence! After all, police belongs not only to the state but also to the people of which the protestors are a tiny part.

Nobody waits for my advice. But after my intensive participation in society, I have reasons to advice the state to wait and watch rather than being aggressive. After all, the firmament is the same – for the state and the nation.                                 

Bhaskar Majumder, Professor of Economics, G. B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad - 211019

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Jan 23, 2020