There\u2019s a growing backlash against Narendra Modi\u2019s autocratic tendencies and the plutocrat donors who fund his party <\/p>\n
Narendra Modi, India\u2019s Hindu nationalist prime minister, has probably never read Lord Hailsham. But maybe he should. The former lord chancellor\u2019s 1976 BBC lecture<\/a> contains perhaps the most penetrating assessment of parliamentary democracy, of which India is its largest version. Lord Hailsham\u2019s argument<\/a> carries a constitutional lesson at an opportune moment for Mr Modi. The Conservative peer warned that Britain risked becoming an \u201celective dictatorship<\/a>\u201d. A government\u2019s parliamentary majority is merely tempered by political realities and MPs\u2019 consciences. \u201cOnly a revolution, bloody or peacefully contrived, can put an end to the situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr Modi swept to victory in elections in 2019<\/a>. The once\u2011mighty 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<\/a> for jokes that they have not made. Mr Modi has an autocratic style. He takes decisions without forewarning and expects them to be rubber\u2011stamped by a pliant legislature. Last summer, Mr Modi enacted major farm laws that threaten the livelihoods of two-thirds of India\u2019s 1.3 billion people without discussion<\/a>, during the Covid lockdown of parliament. What followed was arguably the largest general strike<\/a> in history and weeks of unrest<\/a>. 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\u2019s Republic Day.<\/p>\n