Is this really a democracy?
The right hand of the state closes over the left
This week at Public Seminar, we’re reflecting on how illiberal policies become normalized as necessary to a state’s security—and even popular with its citizens.
As the biggest vote count in history draws to a close, Udeepta Chakravarty points out that while the general elections of postcolonial India may have been mostly “free” and “fair,” worsening encroachments on civil liberties and freedom of expression suggest that the country can only be considered a “partial democracy.”
And Basak Kus applies Pierre Bourdieu’s separation of state functions into a “left hand” (the state’s duty to nurture and provide) and “right hand” (austerity and discipline) to US politics. Since the postwar period, she argues, the paradigm shift of “national security” has expanded the power of the right hand to include “gathering intelligence, safeguarding the ‘homeland’ from perceived ‘terrorist’ threats, and patrolling the borders.” What happens to democracy, she asks, when the right hand becomes so dominant?
The World’s “Largest Democracy”?
Udeepta Chakravarty
So far, the 2024 elections are more unfree and unfair than any other recent election in India. Executive agencies—the police, Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate (ED)—have been regularly used by the government to attack and arrest opposition politicians. The ED, in particular, has been used against opposition politicians accused of corruption. On many occasions, these corruption-accused opposition politicians simply joined the BJP and magically acquired a clean chit.
The Right Hand of the State and the American Left
Basak Kus
The rift within the Democratic base today, between establishment liberals and the progressive Left (which constitutes 12 percent of Democratic electorate), stems not so much from disagreement over the left hand—which both sides support, albeit in varying ways and degrees—but over the excesses of the right hand. Transcending mere budgetary debates and resistant to resolution through standard compromises and amendments, the issue is now entrenched in a moral quagmire.