The politicization of the Indian society is becoming total day by day as the influence of Western culture and its institutions, which came to India with the colonial powers, wanes with time. The Indian subcontinent is retreating back to its tribal roots under successive regimes.
The ruling BJP government both at the Federal level as well as in states they control are the ones predominantly attacking peoples’ lifestyles. For example, around 19 states in India have now instituted a ban on eating and selling beef. Many states like Maharashtra, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh are now agitating to ban the use of a loudspeaker in mosques for prayer calls. As if this was not enough, the home minister Amit Shah himself has started to push the “Hindi as a national language” agenda by remarking that,
Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages.
The Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar recently demanded a complete ban on alcohol use nationwide. In my past article I have already discussed the controversy of banning the wearing of Hijab in the state of Karnataka.
These shows that the Indian society and polity are increasingly becoming totalitarian. A handful of people sitting in positions of power are trying to impose their personal views and preferences on the 1.4 billion population of India using the centralized powers of the state. What people eat, drink, wear, or how they do prayers, and which language they speak are matters of personal choice. Government and its officials are not in charge of peoples’ personal lives. Government’s job is not to tell people how they should live, but then the very concept of freedom is missing in an average Indian mind.
This politicization of Indian society doesn’t bode well for the future of the Indian nation state. The Indian democracy is creating a lot of discord and stress among its population, which is an expected outcome of democracy. As Frank Karsten in his book Beyond Democracy said,
democracy, in contrast to popular belief, does not lead to freedom, civilization, prosperity, peace, and the rule of law, but the opposite: to loss of freedom, social conflict, runaway government spending, a lower standard of living and the subversion of individual rights.
Pitting Hindus against Muslim, or North Indians against the South Indians, or Bihari against Marathi, or a non-vegetarian against vegetarian etc., will only destroy the Indian nation state in the long run. Food, clothes, prayers, or language are part of peoples’ identities and attacking those identities means attacking their very existence. There will be a blowback which will kill India.
Meanwhile, as this politicization of society is going at full speed, the economy is dead and buried underground. The recent work force participation rate numbers from CMIE says that,
To make matters worse during India’s job creation problem, another issue that the economy is dealing with right now is that a growing number of people are no longer even looking for work.
Frustrated due to the lack of jobs, millions of Indians, especially women, are exiting the labour force entirely, as per new data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt, a private research firm in Mumbai.
Between 2017 and 2022, the overall labour participation rate dropped from 46 per cent to 40 per cent. Among women, the data is even starker. About 21 million disappeared from the workforce, leaving only 9 per cent of the eligible population employed or looking for positions.
Now, more than half of the 900 million Indians of legal working age — roughly the population of the US and Russia combined — don’t want a job.
Recent RBI report says that the Indian economy will only be able to recover Covid lockdown related losses in year 2035!
Politicians who are implementing these policies for their short term personal gains forget that they are killing the very goose which is giving them golden eggs. They are destroying their own livelihood. Without this Indian nation state they will lose their only source of parasitical existence. Those people who are voting for these politicians without thinking about the long term consequences of their actions are also sinking the very ship in which they are sailing. But, that is the fate of low IQ people who cannot think reasonably and are driven by their animal instincts. Bringing sanity to such people is impossible. As the story of Mahabharata shows, Indians will not stop until they destroy India.
