Opinion Our corroding republic

A high economic growth rate and spectacles of state power,usually in the form of buildings that intimidate and impress citizens,have in the past been correlated with social dysfunction leading to disastrous consequences. Think of France in the early 1900s. Monsieur Eiffel had built his tower — an expression of the power of the French Republic inspiring awe among spectators; the Paris exhibition was a great success; verily Paris was the centre of the world! Think of India today with its 9 per cent growth rate,with its fawning visitors (the presidents of the US and France,the prime minister of Britain,the Supreme Leader of China among others),the immense concrete structures for the Commonwealth Games — the analogy is not exact,but methinks there is a parallel. And all the time,there was something rotten in the State of France as there is in the State of India. The Dreyfus scandal tore apart French society and left it weak and unready to respond to the German guns of August 1914. But for the help of its allies,France would have collapsed as it did in 1940. The current set of scandals: IPL,Adarsh,Commonwealth Games,illegal mining,sweetheart deals in land,the colossal spectrum scam,the bitter correspondence among judges,the nauseating and titillating telephone tapping affair (can we call it l’affaire Radia as a tribute to l’affaire Dreyfus?) — all put together are tearing our society apart. And it could leave us with wounds from which we may not be able to recover. I for one,do not think the disease is limited to politicians who we like to deride all the time. The failure is collective. Judges seem to have strange lapses of memory; army generals are stealing from the widows of their own soldiers; journalists are cringing in shame; our investigating agencies are mocking all of us by going after horses that have bolted long ago from the stable; our business leaders are tarnished in more ways than one; our politicians are determined to pursue venal short-term interests even at the cost of sapping the foundations of our state. We are all ghoulishly enjoying the prospect of fresh and exciting headlines each day little realising that our Republic is in peril. In the spring of 1914,even as France hurtled into World War I,the entire focus of the French public was on the shenanigans of a minister who was torn between an angry wife and a petulant mistress. The parallel is ominous.

Think France again. In the 1780s,the French newspapers extensively covered the “Affair of the Queen’s Necklace”. In contemporary parlance,Jeanne de la Motte would have been referred to as a lobbyist. She “lobbies” on behalf of a cardinal; she hires a certain Nicole who has a striking resemblance to Queen Marie Antoinette; she successfully steals a diamond necklace worth two million livres. Historians are now pretty much agreed that neither the king,Louis XVI,nor his queen,Marie Antoinette,were central to the scandal or were beneficiaries of the frauds. But as the venerable Wikipedia reports,the scandal (or scam to use a modern word!) “led to a huge decline in the Queen’s popularity¿¿.was important in discrediting the Bourbon monarchy in the eyes of the French people years before the French Revolution”. And I hate to say it — today’s India resembles the France of the 1780s somewhat. And our numerous scandals which grow like a multi-headed hydra even as one head or the other is cut off,is having an impact orders of magnitude greater than the affair of the necklace. The middle classes,who are generally in favour of stability lost faith in the French monarchy. The fall of the Bastille followed almost as an inexorable consequence.

If we are to save ourselves from the consequences of our self-inflicted indulgence in masochism,we need humility (admission of transgressions for instance),speedy resolution of issues (so that the cancers do not grow),sobriety (an understanding that fixing one’s political or business opponents is less important than saving the edifice of the nation) — and if we collectively cannot summon up these qualities from our inner recesses,then I am afraid we are living in the Last Days of the First Republic of India. One shudders at the future prospects of anarchy that such an eventuality can lead to.

The writer divides his time between Mumbai,Lonavala and Bangalore jerry.rao@expressindia.com