The mortician model of governance

A mortician's job is to carry out cosmetic enhancements to a deceased's body and to make it presentable before burial. It is different from that of a coroner, whose responsibility is to find out the cause of death.

In India, all governments — state or Central, past or present, majority or coalition — have always modelled themselves on the mortician whenever something goes wrong or an accident takes place. The whole effort is to cover up, dress up the incident, conceal the fault lines so that no one ever finds out the truth of why it happened and who was at fault. The coroner is persona non grata.

As I said, all governments have been doing this, but BJP I and II and Khichdi III have mastered this, and have converted what was once a science into a macabre art.

The Pegasus revelations were painted in the colours of national security and quickly buried. The extortion of the electoral bonds was justified on the grounds of transparency. Demonetisation was a strike against black money, abrogation of Article 370 one against terrorism. (None of these stated outcomes was ever achieved, of course). 

The grotesque illegality of the Ram janambhoomi verdict was hidden under the pious plea of faith and belief. The Hindenburg report was transmuted into a crime of short-selling by the author of the report itself, and the company in the dock was glorified instead as a "national champion"! All this under the gaze of a benevolent judiciary.

The shamelessness and affrontery involved in these exercises is stunning. There have been seven major accidents, numerous derailments and hundreds of deaths in rail mishaps in the last couple of years. Mainly because of lack of funds to roll out KAVACH on a large scale, staff shortages, and inadequate funding of basic safety mechanisms (though tens of thousands of crores are readily available for trains for the elite).

But any responsibility is interred under statistics of the last 50 years and the triumphalism of bullet trains and Vande Bharats, never mind that these cater to just about 1 per cent of the country's population and have not delivered on their promises. The rest of the country still travels cattle class, and occasionally pays for the privilege with more than just cash.

The cascading disasters that are engulfing Delhi are ascribed to a chief minister who has been put in jail without any evidence or trial, and who was in any case emasculated and castrated long before his incarceration.

As all the pillars of administration and governance in the capital collapse one by one, the Central government is busy camouflaging the emerging ugliness with embellishments like Central Vista, new Parliament building, Bharat Mandapam and badly designed tunnels — all of which, incidentally, have sprung leaks, giving the words "bucket list" an entirely new and unintended meaning! Like the mortician masking a brutal scar with mascara.

The flooding of coaching centres in Delhi is morphed into a misuse and violation of building plan rules (which they undoubtedly are). But the larger issue — why the drains were not desilted and why the roads and basements were flooded at all — is skillfully papered over by, among other absurdities, arresting the driver of a car for causing a wave that entered the coaching centre basement!

Examination papers are leaked with uncanny regularity and frequency, UPSC candidates forge certificates and disabilities with gay abandon, heads of institutions are allowed to 'resign' to avoid flak, and the whole sorry episode is dressed up as the fault of individuals and not the system. And, as is the fashion these days, this exoneration receives the supreme imprimatur of the judiciary.

Hundreds have died in floods, landslides and building collapses in Kerala, Uttarakhand, Himachal (each ruled by a different political party) and thousands of crores worth public and private property destroyed.

This happens every year, under the onslaught of unrestricted and unplanned construction, senseless highway building, ramming tunnels through fragile geological terrain, deforestation for mining and quarrying, environmentally disastrous hydel projects, refusal to notify eco-sensitive zones, green belts and no-go areas as recommended by various experts and committees.

But wait! The mortician can revamp and polish this ugly truth too: blame it all on climate change and continue business as usual. Climate change is the best thing that has happened to visionless policy makers — it is like a broad spectrum antibiotic that can be prescribed for any problem. Except that it doesn't work most of the time.

And finally, there is the ultimate gambit of the mortician, the corpus delicti — just make the corpse disappear, and all the evidence with it! It is a stratagem being increasingly employed these days to conceal all wrongdoings, incompetence, and failures.

No Census has been conducted after 2011, household consumption surveys have been brushed under the carpet, credible employment figures are not available — we have only the government's dodgy figures to believe that the patient is still alive.

The Election Commission will not reply to representations by civil society; in fact, it has not even replied to RTI queries on a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms and has been pulled up by the Information Commission; the defence ministry has refused to furnish information in Parliament on the number of vacancies in the armed forces on grounds of national security.

The Madhya Pradesh government has gone a step further: an RTI query on the status of Project Cheetah in Kuno National Park has been trashed on grounds of national security! One could have understood, perhaps, if the question had been about another animal — the crouching dragon on our northern borders — but cheetahs? Really?

It ill suits democratic governments to play the role of an undertaker with facts. Truth has an annoying way of coming out, whether you embalm it, cremate it, or bury it.

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and the author of Disappearing Democracy: Dismantling of a Nation and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com