The Guardian view on India’s farming revolt: a bitter harvest | Editorial
There’s a growing backlash against Narendra Modi’s autocratic tendencies and the plutocrat donors who fund his party
Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, has probably never read Lord Hailsham. But maybe he should. The former lord chancellor’s 1976 BBC lecture contains perhaps the most penetrating assessment of parliamentary democracy, of which India is its largest version. Lord Hailsham’s argument carries a constitutional lesson at an opportune moment for Mr Modi. The Conservative peer warned that Britain risked becoming an “elective dictatorship”. A government’s parliamentary majority is merely tempered by political realities and MPs’ consciences. “Only a revolution, bloody or peacefully contrived, can put an end to the situation,” he said.
Mr Modi swept to victory in elections in 2019. The once‑mighty Congress party almost disappeared. No rival party gained enough seats to have its chief named leader of the opposition. The judiciary has been cowed by Mr Modi. It is no laughing matter when Indian Muslim comedians are jailed for jokes that they have not made. Mr Modi has an autocratic style. He takes decisions without forewarning and expects them to be rubber‑stamped by a pliant legislature. Last summer, Mr Modi enacted major farm laws that threaten the livelihoods of two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people without discussion, during the Covid lockdown of parliament. What followed was arguably the largest general strike in history and weeks of unrest. Unless there is a climbdown, farmers will bring the capital to a halt this week, when Mr Modi hopes to be taking the military salute on the country’s Republic Day.
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