The state lives in a post-truth era. Here misinformation abounds, and scientific evidence is often supplanted by alternative facts, pseudoscience, fake news, and conspiracy theories.
The key issue is democracy is based on trust, whereas dictatorship is based on terror. If you systematically destroy trust in institutions, destroy trust in the media, in the academia, in the courts and so forth…the only thing that still can work is a dictatorship,” said historian Yuval Noah Harari. Little did he know that even in a democratic system terror and erasure of trust can be effectively used as has been shown by a regional Indian political party called Trinamool Congress. The party applied these tricks within the structure of the Indian democracy without any effective road block from the national democratic institutions.
The state of West Bengal is arguably the most argumentative democracy in India. There, all issues are debated ad infinitum, in course of that often enough such issues get solved by force. Even in talk shows conducted inside TV studios. In such an atmosphere of loud display of arguments, a critical factor in democracy, one can say that the state has no respect for democracy only at the cost of one’s own life and limb. The truth is a very rare and costly and precious sub kind of information, feels Yuval. The more so in the state of West Bengal. In fact the state lives in a post-truth era. Here misinformation abounds, and scientific evidence is often supplanted by alternative facts, pseudoscience, fake news, and conspiracy theories. The heinous murder of a PG-trainee doctor and the care that had gone in planting alternative facts, evidently to save the perpetrators, brought to light the extent of post-truth that has taken shape in the state.
That terror as a tool can be used even in a democratic system was evident when in August 2012, just a year after she came to power, Mamata Banerjee had cautioned media. She said, as the Hindu reported, that media in West Bengal was spreading canards against her government, and cautioned it against being a “nuisance” or transgressing its limits. She said that the police would register cases against “those who are spreading lies.” In the same breath she had claimed that “no government in the world” had ushered in so much development as her administration did since it came to power in 2011. This was a masterful combination of falsehoods and threat. Yuval thought only dictators use these tools. He did not know of the rich democratic culture in the eastern state of India.
Mamata Banerjee has shown how a gullible, poverty stricken population can be manipulated with judicious mixture of freebies and fear. Well aware of an average Bengali’s blind faith in media the Trinamool leader used media as a tool to lure the average voter. Given the near complete deindustrialisation of the state, the state government realised its capacity to arm-twist the state media, dependent as media houses were on the advertisement support from the government. Her ability to force media to bow down before her was in full view when a well known media baron in Kolkata had to quit his family publications handing over the reins to his brother. The stance of his media house during the West Bengal assembly election 2016 had infuriated the ruling party. Since then the West Bengal media realised when to bow and how much. The gullible people of West Bengal could thus consume news suiting the political masters of the state. Yuval will be shocked to study how this could be done within a reasonably strong democratic system of India.
Taming the flow of information took some time, around five years, but managing at least two of the three pillars of democracy—legislature and administration—was a cakewalk for the new leader. Administration was accustomed to following the party wish learnt during the 34-year-long Left Front rule. It quickly offered the same servility to the newly elected government. The extent of police and administrative servility was seen when the Sharada chit fund broke out within two years of Mamata Banerjee coming to power. The SIT created by the state managed to stall CBI investigation, ordered by other states which were affected by the chit fund scam and also prevented from ED investigating money laundering cases. The method seems to have been used in the most recent RG Kar hospital case. Clearly, few in West Bengal or elsewhere have any faith in the state administration yet the state government continues its run unhindered.
Two other pillars—legislature and judiciary—are also toothless. The anti-defection law does not operate in the state since the Legislative Assembly Speaker has the final say. Any opposition member defecting to the ruling party continues as MLA without bother. Assembly did not see questions or discussions on important ministries like Home, Health etc. CAG reports are hardly ever placed. Judges in the Calcutta High Court attempted to enforce the rule of law but the long pending list of cases in the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal in India, helped the state to frustrate such judgments. In addition, judges who dared to impose the rule of law have often been subjected to abuse without any protection from judicial rights. All the pillars that safeguard democracy have thus crumbled in the state of West Bengal.
Historians like Harari will not even know how a strong democratic system, arguably among the best in the world, could be systematically destroyed since the intelligentsia and the academia in West Bengal are well aware of the fate of the media baron and would not dare to expose the ruling power. Nobody will ever know, at least admit officially, that something is rotten in the state of West Bengal. The key issue, Mr Harari, is how to control—information, institutions and interested stakeholders—through bribe, terror and allurements. It is not necessary to officially call it dictatorship.
* Sugato Hazra is founder of Poliminds Consult, a content agency for aspiring and practising politicians.