The constitutional institutions and bodies in India are being destroyed one by one. This process is far more dangerous and insidious than at the time of former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s emergency. At least she had some DNA of democracy in her since she and her family participated in the freedom struggle. 

However, there is no such compulsion being shown by the present dispensation. They are obviously guided by political exigencies and calculations and with a brute majority in parliament are becoming autocratic.  

But what is frightening is that hundreds and thousands of civil servants who are not bound by political exigencies are blindly following their diktats.  This is the major cause of worry for the future of democracy in India.

In thousands and thousands of fluttering hearts of these bureaucrats isn’t there a drop of ‘karuna’ (compassion) and conscience?  What has happened to our collective consciousness of good?  And where have we brought our country to from the great heights of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru?

My father went to jail during the 1942 Quit India movement. He was doing his Ph.D. in Hindi literature at Allahabad University and left a very lucrative career of university professorship by getting into the freedom movement. He was the only member of his family who studied beyond high school. He came from a zamindari background and his family were landlords in Rampur Tehsil in Bijnor district. My grandfather was a clerk in the government treasury in Bulandshar and after my father was jailed my grandfather did not speak with his son for almost two years – partly because of fear of losing his government job and partly because he felt that my father had ruined his career.  

There were hundreds and thousands of young students like my father who were inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and felt the need to follow their conscience and inner voice.

Where has the inner voice of our civil servants gone?  Have they become so corrupt that all the semblance of what is right and wrong is totally blanked out from their mind?

Thus the staff of Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax (IT), and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raid people who are perceived as enemies of the state though the real reason is that they oppose autocratic leadership. Why do these bureaucrats not question these orders or are they completely blinded by the thirst for power, money, and cozy postings?

The cancer of corruption has seeped so deeply in Indian society that we have become totally insensitive to the greater good and everything is a number game now. Who has the biggest car, the greatest wealth, power, etc.? Number game helps to desensitize us and even if there is a feeling of guilt it is swept under the carpet of numbers!  

When I was a student in the US in the 1970s one of the last interviews (before leaving the US), I saw on TV was that of the famous journalist Bill Moyers interviewing President Jimmy Carter. Bill Moyers asked Jimmy Carter how he got Menachem Begin (Israeli Prime Minister) and Anwar Sadat (Egyptian President) to sign the Camp David accord in 1979.  This accord led to the cessation of military activists in the Middle East and won for Sadat and Begin the 1979 Noble Peace Prize.  

Carter gave a very insightful answer. He said that on the last date of the meeting when it became evident that the talks have been a failure, he organized the farewell dinner for Sadat and Begin without their aides. After dinner, the three of them (without their aides) sat in front of the fireside and started talking about their grandchildren and what type of world would they like to leave for them. The next morning, the accord was signed.

Carter said that all the officials of both sides were continuously talking about numbers; square miles of territory lost, no. of troops to be deployed, etc., etc. The human touch in all these negotiations was completely missing. When the three leaders talked about their grandchildren the human touch came and the accord was signed the next day.

It is the inner voice or the human touch which is missing in most of the bureaucrats who raid the activists on false charges and put them in jail. Quite a number of innocent people are harassed because these bureaucrats want to please their political masters and do not want to get into trouble. Somehow Gandhiji’s individual satyagraha idea does not get into their mental frame.  

It is therefore necessary that during the training of these bureaucrats they should be taught ethics of work and to differentiate between what is right and wrong.  In fact such training should start from school because when children are of impressionable age they should be taught continuously about ethics and how to be a good human being.

(The writer is Director, Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI),  Phaltan, Maharashtra.  The views are personal)