Powers That The Corona Has Conferred
Jawhar Sircar
New Indian Express, 14th May 2020
It is debatable whether any intervention
earlier than March 21 would have helped combat the depredations of the
coronavirus. To the government, the Parliament session and Madhya Pradesh
obviously mattered. In any case, a janata curfew was observed the very next day
to test the waters before a total lockdown. While people stayed indoors and
came out only at 5 pm as advised, to clap hands and bang pots, officials were
feverishly working behind closed teak doors to finalise the operational details
of how to seal a nation so large, unmanageable and rather restless. Two days
later, the prime minister announced, in his dramatic style, that everything
would remain shut down for the next three weeks to halt the deadly dance of the
virus.
The curtailment
of civil liberties is, of course, an essential ingredient of every battle, but
questions arose immediately about the timing, length, effectiveness, proportion
of penalties, human rights and so on. The next morning and thereafter, these
weighty issues were resolved by long sticks that the police wielded quite
effectively all over the nation, in a synchronised demonstration of state
power. Despite audio-visual clips in social media and top billing in the
mainstream media about ‘police high-handedness’,
citizen-state relations were established unambiguously. What most observers
missed was the smoothness with which the home ministry appropriated all powers
overnight, almost like during the much reviled ‘Emergency’ of 1975-77.
Two laws that
mattered were obviously tilted in favour of the home ministry, which,
incidentally, is headed by the prime minister’s most trusted colleague. A cryptic
colonial law of just one and a half pages called The Epidemic Diseases Act of
1897 was pulled out of some mothballed locker as it empowers the Centre to
check inter-state and international movement of vessels and passengers. Section
2, however, declares that state governments could practically suspend the
operation of normal laws and liberties. The other Act that actually came in
more handy was passed in 2005 during the regime of a more peaceable prime
minister and is meant to tackle exigences like cyclones, floods and
earthquakes.This Disaster Management Act is a rather verbose piece of
literature, rife with good intentions, so typical of a bureaucracy that dreads
making any mistake. But if one looks at it from the angle in which it is used
in its finest hour, the underlying theme is clear—the total centralisation of
power. Under a liberal regime, such megalomanic sections would, of course, be
justified as “enabling provisions”. These were
enough to subordinate the ministries of civil aviation, railways, shipping and
transport and others, transforming them into mere departments under the home
ministry.
Under the 2005
Act, a central secretary can and does tick off state chief ministers and
directs them on what to do in their own localities that babus of Delhi would
not even find on a Google map. One wonders whether bureaucrats could think of
bullying a CM like Narendra Modi in 2001, when he was handling relief
operations after the Bhuj earthquake. Well, Section 6(2)(i) of this Act does
empower the home secretary, surely a very harassed officer, to issue his
regular fatwas but consultations with either states or central ministries
appear to have disappeared or are acts of tokenism.
This is just one
more example of the complete arrogation of all powers that this government has
perfected. Its slogan of “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance”
disappeared somewhere along the way, much before corona hit. The home secretary
is, of course, only the front face of an ever-advancing regime and is surely
acting on behalf of his minister, who remains in the shadows, as the Act has
left him out. In fact, Section 6(3) of this Act empowers the PM to effectively
centralise all decision-making with himself, in his capacity as chairman of the
National Disaster Management Authority. This, he has surely done, even without
invoking this section.
But Acts passed
by Parliament after due consideration also enjoin responsibilities, and so does
this one. Section 11 mandates that a ‘National Plan’ has to be made out, which has not
been done. The health ministry is almost invisible and apparently demoralised,
which is not good. It came in, however, for adverse publicity when its
procurement of life-saving protective equipment for doctors and very critical
testing kits was unduly delayed. This was where the PM could have used his
powers under Section 50(a) of the Act to cut through the bureaucratic tangles.
Besides, if
Donald Trump can appear with an independent expert like Dr Fauci, it appears
odd that updates and briefings in India are mainly by civil servants, however
competent they are. Comments and advisories by senior doctors and scientists
would certainly be more credible than ludicrous statements made by a
paediatrician with no epidemiological exposure who is now a Niti Aayog member.
Besides, the cavalier and insensitive handling of the problem of migrant
labourers may have been exacerbated as public representatives and civil society
are excluded from decision-making.
The jealous
guarding of the Centre’s fiefdom and its constant
self-glorification can only jeopardise very-necessary relations with subjugated
and fund-starved states that are on the front line. The virus does not
discriminate and the much promised ‘cooperative federalism’
would surely have produced better results.
The point is
that bureaucrats will definitely carry out orders, and more effectively so if
the boss is really powerful, but they can never acquire the natural sensory
nerves that grassroots politicians inherit. After all, in an excitable federal
democracy, only hard top-down orders may not suffice.
No comments:
Post a Comment