EDITORIAL
New ‘Governmentality’: The Indian Style
Sanjay K. Roy
Abstract: This paper unravels the nature of ‘governmentality’ or the
technology of power which is in operation under the current regime.
The paper revisits the theoretical tradition in social sciences to analyse
the present statecraft and illustrates the theoretical principles thus
drawn, drawing from realpolitik to argue that the current Indian
governmentality presents a rare mix of neoliberalism, elements of
globalisation and cultivation of all forms of premodern beliefs and
traditions as a means to the reproduction of a capitalist production
system and a Kakistocracy.
Keywords: Statecraft, social contract, general will, neoliberalism,
consumerism, Hindutva, amoral social order, Kakistocracy.
1
From the social contract theory of modern times (Hobbes, Locke, and
Rousseau)1 to the postmodern era of Michel Foucault, there has been a
long journey in the social science understanding of the evolution of the
State-Citizen relationship. The evolution is ongoing in the recent phase of
globalised, all-encompassing, and aggressive capitalism, as well as cultural
and trade imperialism. In social contract theory, the State in a democratic
setup is conceived as the sovereign supra-body created as an expression of
the ‘general will’ by the citizens, which is supposed to look after the well-
being of all citizens, following the principles of equality and without
discrimination. The spirit of social contract theory found only partial, and at
times distorted, expression in modern capitalist democracies, where the
State is ideally taken to be accountable and subordinated to the ‘general
will’ of the citizens.
The modern democracies thrived globally by (1) subordinating all citizens
and State institutions and the top leaders and government officials to a set
of universal principles, a set of well-articulated written provisions,
(2) granting some fundamental (civil) rights to the citizens, and (3) putting in
place an autonomous institutional arrangement (such as independence of
the judiciary, free system of knowledge production and dissemination,
(4) some arrangement for the common citizens to scrutinise the functioning
of the public intuitions and the power elite.
The Marxist theoretical tradition recognised both virtues and unacceptable
vices in modern democratic-capitalist States. On the positive side, the modern
democratic States offered some limited rights, most importantly, the right to
freedom of speech and the right to organisation and protest, and some
decency in public life, some accountability of those in power and some free
space in the public sphere for the collective critical voices to flourish. Marx
called upon the intelligentsia and the working classes to take advantage of
this ‘democratic’ space to organise themselves against the capitalist system.
On the negative side, Marx and Engles defined State as the ‘executive
committee of the bourgeoisie’ (German Ideology, 1968); a superstructural
instrument, an arrangement of power donned by the bourgeoisie or their
representatives to reproduce the free-market capitalism by facilitating the
exploitative production relations and unhindered extraction of ‘surplus labour’
and ‘surplus value’, by suppressing the protest movements organised by
the exploited classes, by morally, culturally and ideologically legitimising the
unjust system with the help of carefully crafted false consciousnesses of
different forms.2 The Marxist scholars after Marx, particularly Gramsci,
Althusser and Habermas, updated the Marxist thesis on the capitalist state
to capture the developments in governmentality in the 20th Century. Gramsci
explained how capitalism in the 1920s and 1930s operated more through
the elements of superstructure like culture, education, and social institutions
to control the thought process and the behaviour of the people, and thus
generate consent in favour of the capitalist economic and political order
(read, bourgeois democracies of the 20th-century West). Gramsci also argued
that, besides ideological indoctrination, the capitalist State undertakes some
welfare programmes to meet some basic material needs of the subaltern
classes to instil a ‘happy feel’ in the population.3
Taking cues from Gramsci, Althusser emphasised that modern capitalist
states combine the Repressive State Apparatuses (the militia, police, court, and prison) and the Ideological State Apparatuses (traditions, education,
family, socialisation, consumerism, and moral order) to reproduce the
exploitative and unjust capitalist production system. Proposing the thesis of
‘Marxist Structuralism’, Althusser argued that there is a grand entanglement
between the elements of the superstructure and base, and the whole
arrangement has been harmonised to reproduce the capitalist production
system uninterrupted.4 Marriage, reproduction of children, orienting them
to meet the labour (manual and technical) demands, loading them with
capitalist values and ethics – the activities performed at the social-cultural
level - are designed to reproduce the capitalist production system. Habermas
argued that the modern capitalist States of the West have monopolised the
production of information and communication systems, effectively ending
the place for free debates and communication and thus succeeded in colonising
the public sphere. Through ‘distorted communication’, the modern capitalist
State controls the process of ‘self-formation’, thereby controlling the thought
process and behavioural patterns of citizens while turning them into active
agents of the system. The critical consciousness of the people is therefore
blunted before crystallisation into large-scale protest movements for social
transformation.5
Unravelling the technology of power or ‘governmentality’ of the ‘demonic’
modern States Michel Foucault argued that the States now combine the
strategies of (1) the ‘city-citizen game’ of ancient city states, (2) the ‘pastoral
power’ of the hegemonic monarchies of medieval times and (2) the ‘bio-
power’ of the welfare governance of the neo-liberal democracies to subjugate
and govern its ‘population’. In the first strategy, the State segregates the
weaker and vulnerable sections, disenfranchises them and coerces them to
serve the privileged. In the second strategy, although it operates in the name
of ‘democracy’, the State power is centralised into a few hands, if not in
one hand, as found in dictatorships of Nazi and Stalinist variants. It
disempowers the common people to subjugate them. In the third strategy,
namely, ‘bio-power’, the modern democratic states of the post-World War
II period control their ‘populations’ by creating, through their welfare
programmes and policies, a general feeling that they care for them. Foucault
also argued that the modern State plays an active part in controlling the
self-formation process by monopolising the knowledge production industry
while orchestrating the power-knowledge symbiosis. Besides, Foucault
argues, the modern States have fine-tuned and operationalised a comprehensive ‘surveillance regime’ as a part of the strategy of ‘discipline
and punish’ the ‘erring’ voices within their populations.6
The social scientists thus provide us with vivid critical insights into the
technology of power of modern democracies, which follow different shades
of neo-liberalism to reproduce capitalist social formations. The ‘active
agents’ among the social scientists are aware of these critical insights, and
they work out new strategies of disciplining the ‘critical voices’ and the
potentially ‘dangerous’ oppressed, disenfranchised working masses. The
unjust, exploitative modern capitalist ‘democratic’ States thus find ways
and means to withstand the challenges posed by the ‘destabilising’ forces
and survive. It is against this conceptual backdrop that we can have a look
at the presently followed ‘governmentality’ of the Indian State.
2
Ideologically, the present incarnation of the Indian statecraft combines an
aggressive free-market economy of the neo-liberal brand (although there is
nothing ‘liberal’ here), and some elements of globalisation with religious
‘Hindutva Nationalism’. This is a clear departure from the Nehruvian
governmentality, which combined a strong social sector with a socialist
flavour, ‘pluralism and diversity’, tolerance and minimal governance, in which,
excepting the Emergency period of 1975-77, the critical mind and freedom
of speech had a place. The form of governmentality which is in vogue,
particularly since 2014, demonstrates an unprecedented entanglement
between the ruling elite and the corporate elite, which even C. Wright Mills
could not anticipate in his Power Elite.7 In India, at present, the ruling elite
takes all its business decisions, makes industrial policies, health policy,
education policy, information policy, land policy, media policy, labour laws
with the sole intention of creating more and more free space for the corporate
elite while the latter returns the favour by donating a part of the profit to the
ruling parties legally (through electoral bonds) and illegally (the unaccounted
money) and by controlling and using the media (the news channels, the
newspapers, journals, other forms of mass media) to generate public opinion
in favour of the ruling elite. The corporate giants dictate foreign policy and
international relations to expand their business empire to the ‘friendly’
countries near and far. The opening up of health, education, aviation, transport,
mines, oil, forest resources and almost all other fields to the corporate capital within India reinforces the Marxist understanding of the State being the
‘executive committee of the bourgeoisie’. The doubters of the Marxist
formulation of the base-superstructure relationship must stop yelling.
Empowered with the money received from the corporate houses, and the
backing of the administration, the ruling political parties at the Centre and in
States take all possible steps to denigrate the democratic values and practices
enshrined in the sacred Constitution of India. The individuals with criminal
records, tainted for fraud and corrupt practices, find easy entry into party
leadership and power. Driven only by self-interest, these corrupt leaders
find politics as their happy ‘hunting ground’ for making fortunes. They do
not care for ‘value-based politics’ or for a minimal definition of politics
which demands politicians to rise above self-interest and work for the service
of the people and the nation. The money the parties in power receive from
the corporate houses is used to purchase the elected members to different
Constitutional bodies to capture power, bypassing the loopholes in the anti-
defection laws. The money is used to bribe voters during election times and
to maintain an army of the lumpen to rig votes or to manipulate the entire
electoral process. The top political leaders and ministers resort to various
corrupt practices. Yet, they manage to cling to power through a manipulated
voting system, maintaining a support base with inexplicable organisational
skills. Scam after scam happens, video clippings (of political leaders and
ministers taking bribes) appear in public, common people commit suicide
(as in the aftermath of the Sarda scam in West Bengal), 26000 school
teachers and employees lose jobs because of the recruitment fraud, yet the
investigating agencies and the judiciary do not identify the culprits and punish
them. Such is the plight of the ’democratic’ governmentality in India at
present!
The power of the ruling elite to make ideological penetration into all kinds of
public institutions and constitutional bodies is immense. The constitution of
the collegium, which is empowered to appoint judges to the apex court, and
the manipulation of the justice delivery system by bribing the judges with
the promise of positions and favours after their retirement, is highly detrimental
to the sanctity and impartiality of the judiciary, which is a must for any
healthy democratic system. When the appointment of the members of the
collegium (which recommends names for appointing judges to the Supreme
Court) is manipulated, the high court judges with suspicious records are
appointed as the judges of the Supreme Court, violating all established norms and conventions. The political elite with a dictatorial mindset bid adieu to
the independence of the bureaucracy and crowd the constitutional bodies
with bureaucrats of proven loyalty.
In the current technology of power, the State is not the sole instrument of
governance; it is rather a network of forces, a combination of civil society
and political society organisations and institutions that govern. Control over
the knowledge production and knowledge dissemination system is an integral
part of modern statecraft. The beholder of the Hindutva ideology at the
seat of power has perfected the technology of knowledge production and
dissemination by (1) filling all the social science research institutions, the
University Grants Commission with BJP-RSS henchmen, (2) reframing the
syllabi of all levels of education, particularly the history syllabus and textbooks
along the Hindutva line, bidding goodbye to objective historiography and
scientific education, (3) activating a surveillance and control regime over
the functioning of the educational institutions with the help of education
policies and administrative measures, (4) penetrating the thought process
of the people through a grand propaganda machinery operated through the
corporate-controlled mass media, print and visual media, and (5) penetrating
down the social and cultural spaces to control the everyday thought process
and activities of the common people. As part of the last-mentioned strategy,
the ruling elite takes utmost care in igniting religious passion and confusing
pre-scientific superstitions and beliefs with post-truth, thereby undermining
the objective, rational, and scientific thought process. This demonic design
of the current ruling elite defies the Nehruvian dream of setting the nation
on a path of scientific spirit, with a view to building a modern nation free of
all forms of superstitions and irrational beliefs.
The reproduction of the world of beliefs and superstitions through the
cultivation of post-science and popularising them as ‘truth’ (like, the epic
hero lord Rama was born in Ayodha, lord Ganesh demonstrates the highest
level of medical science that ancient India had, Puspok Rath is the proof of
the discovery of aeroplanes in ancient India and so on) is a deliberate ploy
to legitimise an unjust regime. Such topics are now written about in the
media, and universities are instructed to conduct seminars on such obnoxious
topics to which the scholars and scientists accord justification.
As a corollary to this, one can see (1) a revival of ‘religious culture’ in the
media and in the everyday life of the people across castes and classes, (2) a new wave of construction of temples, and grand celebration of pujas
of the gods and goddesses, even of those deities which were not so popular
until recent times (like grand celebration of Ganesh chaturdoshi in Bengal,
reading of Hanuman Chalisha), and (3) consolidation of ‘identity politics’,
with State patronage, from the sides of the dominant and the subordinate
communities and classes. The proliferation of identity politics helps the
dominant national parties in vote mobilisation, as the parties can use the
voters organised in the name of caste, religion or language as ‘vote banks’
or ‘pocket societies’ by incorporating the leaders of these groups into the
party fold (the Dalits and Muslims in Bihar, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh,
the Jaths and Sikhs in Haryana and Panjab, the Rajbanshis, the Matuas and
the Muslims in West Bengal are a case in point). The most damaging of all
instances of identity politics is a conscious reproduction of Hindu and Muslim
identities, consolidated by the Hindutva party at the Centre and some
fundamentalist Islamic groups. With the proliferation of identity politics, a
reincarnation of the British policy of ‘divide and rule’, the unity and movement
of the working classes have suffered in a big way, and the dream of
establishing a secular democracy has taken a back seat. Apart from the
State administration and the political leaders, the lumpen vigilant groups
have been formed to foment communal passion through interference in
everyday life activities like community-based dress and food habits, rituals,
marriage, cow trade and so on. The Hindutva ideologues use Ayurveda to
popularise the consumption of cow urine as a panacea for all ailments,
campaign against the trading and slaughtering of cows (the cheap source
of protein), prescribe early marriage as a means to prevent rape, and set a
three-child norm for Hindu couples as a strategy to counter the ‘fast-growing’
Muslims in the war of demography.
The vulnerabilities and uncertainties manifest in the form of a lack of economic
and social security, inflicted on the masses by the market economy and the
State combine, create a space for ‘religious’ and other forms of ‘false’
consciousness to thrive. In line with the Marxist thesis on religion, the ‘opium
of the masses’, we observe, more distinctly than ever before, that the people
in distress fall back upon supernatural beliefs and primordial identities as a
falsely conceived escape route from the precarities of everyday life. For
the people who suffer from ‘hopelessness’ or ‘culture of precarities’ apart
from religion and tradition, drugs and sex could also serve as places of
relief from the pains of real life. Those whose lives are economically
relatively stable find escape in consumerism, and those who live in poverty ive with the unrealised fantasy of consumerism, the new religion of globalised
market societies. It is thus easy for the vulnerable masses to fall prey to the
technology of new governmentality and ideological indoctrination. This
explains why the underclasses participate in party programmes, in religious
activities and even in communal and other forms of inter-community violence
with great enthusiasm; it explains why, despite being the direct victims of
the present governmentality, the ‘lumpen’ classes (in the Marxist sense)
function as the private army of the leaders and political parties for doing all
the unlawful, undemocratic and amoral activities.
These are all a part of the use of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA, to
use Althusser’s phraseology) used for the ideological integration of the masses
into the fold of Hindutva-nationalism and neo-liberalism. However, a few
more strategies that the ruling elite put to use with precision as a part of
sustaining and consolidating its hegemony over the masses are:
-
Integration of a section of high officials in the bureaucracy, the media
influencers, and judges into its fold by distributing undue favours,
positions and promotions while in service or after retirement.
-
Integration of the masses with the help of ‘bio-power’ (to use
Foucauldian terminology), which combines a whole range of populist
welfare programmes, like subsidies for housing for the poor, free
ration, free gas connection, pension for the low-income widows and
senior citizens, 100-day work for the poor, and extension of some
superficial relief in the name of welfare programmes, and so on.
However, such populist welfare schemes appear without substance,
given the fact that India is the home of 234 million people who live in
acute poverty (ranked number one in the world), and it ranks 111
among the 125 countries in the world in terms of Global Hunger
Index (GHI, published in October 2024). In Alkil Gupta’s terms,
poverty and hunger are the worst forms of structural violence.8 The
pro-rich bias of the market economy is evident in the fact that the
wealthiest 10 per cent of Indians control 72.5 per cent of the nation’s
total wealth, and Mukesh Ambani is ranked among the top 10 richest
men in the world.
-
Following the laws of the city-citizen game, which was at play in the
ancient Greek and Roman cities, where the citizens or the property
owners living in cities monopolised the decision-making process and the administration, disenfranchised the non-citizen nonowner slaves
living outside the cities, and used the latter’s labour to ensure good
life to the citizens, the present day ruling elite identify some groups of
population, such as Muslims, Christians, the ‘intruders’ (the
ghusbaithiya) from the neighbouring countries, disenfranchise them,
put them under the threat of scrapping their citizenship and deportation,
when the responsibility of checking infiltration lies exclusively on the
central government, and subject them to atrocities and violence of
different forms.
-
Following the thesis of Robert Michels9, one can argue that whatever
the form of government (socialist, authoritarian or democratic), the
actual power is centralised in a few hands, a carefully selected
oligarchy. This is similar to what Michel Foucault called pastoral power
or the absolutely centralised power, as was evident in the monarchies
of the medieval era. Although India has been widely recognised as a
stable democracy, the actual power in the present governmentality is
centralised in the hands of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, a
couple of corporate elites and the head of the RSS. In this new
incarnation of oligarchic rule, all the Constitutional bodies are attuned
to legitimise their will.
-
The edifice of power has quickly adapted to take advantage of the
digital age by accumulating personal data and using the big data thus
generated to establish a grand surveillance regime. With the help of
Aadhar card, PAN card, EPIC, digitised ration card, digitised land
data, property information, digitised banking, insurance and all kinds
of online purchases, the communications through the media and with
the help of malware, the State is now able to monitor and pre-empt
the movements of the population, their activities and even their thought
process. The access to personal data helps the state to enforce a
mechanism of surveillance-control-discipline and punish along the
lines apprehended by Michel Foucault. The fraudsters use the
personal data to rob the common people of their savings, the
professional agencies use the data to help political parties frame the
line of their electoral campaign, the international trading companies
use the data to predict and control consumer behaviour, and the State
uses the data to discipline and punish its own citizens. The common
Indians are now an integral part of a surveillance capitalist regime, and for them, it is impossible to escape this all-around surveillance
and sanction. The State can now control digital platforms to monitor
communication and penalise individuals who circulate critical notes
and anti-government content. Digitisation of financial transactions
with direct State initiatives is also a ploy to help the corporate elite
for two reasons: (a) it helps the corporate elite to spread consumerism
and bind people of all classes with capitalism by producing waves of
fantasies around unfulfilled consumption desires, and (b) by making
common people pay ‘processing fees’ on digital transactions.
-
The ‘democratic State’ now uses the Repressive State Apparatus
(RSA, in Althusser’s phraseology) or force and violence at free will
to silence the working class and the critical voices, the artists, writers,
the civil rights activists, and the top leaders of the opposition parties,
through legal and administrative measures and by misusing the State
investigative agencies.
To supplement the peaceful and cultural modes of integration of the masses
into the order, the present Indian governmentality uses force and even
violence against its ‘erring’ and ‘unruly’ citizens. Illustrating the use of RSA
as a means to silence the creative-critical voices further we can cite (1) the
killing of free-thinking individuals, the writers and social activists, namely,
Narendra Dabholkar (2013), M. M. Kulburgi (2015), Govind Pansare (2015),
and Gauri Lankesh (2017) allegedly by the criminals of a right-wing Hindutva
group Sanatan Sanstha, (2) the arrest of several top writers and five activists,
namely, Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha
and Rona Wilson in August 2018 on charges of instigating the Dalits for
violence and for having Maoist links in Bhima Koregaon incidence10 of 1st
January 2018, under the non-bailable sections of the UAPA, and (3) the
recent government act of banning 25 books on Kashmir, written by prominent
writers of the country.
The last two examples of State repression need some elaboration. In the
aftermath of the Bhima Koregaon violence of 1st January 2018, those who
were arrested from the non-Dalit groups, who actually instigated the violence,
were protected by the State administration. On the other hand, on 22 April
2018, a 19-year-old Dalit witness had her house burnt down and was found
dead in a well. On 25 January 2020, the National Investigating Agency
(NIA), an agency of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, took over the charge of investigation. In its ten-thousand-page charge sheet, the NIA
identified some Dalit intellectuals and social activists as the ‘conspirators’.
In its charge-sheet, the NIA named Jesuit priest Stan Swami to a long list of
intellectuals, who were already detained under non-bailable UAPA clauses,
for conspiring with the Dalit and Muslim groups to ‘bring down the
government at the Centre’. Prominent writer and Dalit activist Teltumbde
(70) was arrested on 14 April 2020 on NIA charges of having links with the
extreme-left Maoist rebels and conspiring against the government, including
‘plotting the assassination’ of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
However, a report by Arsenal Consulting, a digital forensics firm based in
Massachusetts, exposed that incriminating evidence against Rona Wilson
was placed on his laptop by a yet-to-be-identified attacker using malware
while his laptop was compromised for over 22 months.11
Banning of books is another form of suppression of critical voices; such
actions of the State could be considered as an attack on the freedom of
speech guaranteed in the Indian Constitution. Writing in Times of India, 7
August 2025, Naseer Gani in an article titled “J&K bans circulation of 25
‘secessionist’ and ‘radical’ books” reports that the Home Department through
an order circulated on 5 August 2025 under section 98 of the Bharatiya
Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, banned 25 books on Kashmir by prominent
Indian and foreign writers from selling owning in Jammu and Kashmir
labelling them as ‘false narratives and secessionist literature’ which
‘endanger India’s sovereignty and integrity by potentially radicalising the
youth’ and on the apprehension that dissemination of such literature could
‘deeply impact the psyche of the youth’; by promoting ‘a culture of grievance,
victimhood and terrorist heroism’. Prominent among the list of banned
books are Arundhati Roy’s Azadi, Tariq Ali and others’ Kashmir: The Case
of Freedom, Christopher Snedden’s Independent Kashmir and Imam
Hassan al-Banna’s Mujahid Ki Azan.12
Interestingly, the law cited in the ban order was passed by the BJP
government in 2023, and the report on which the ban was executed was
prepared by Manoj Sinha, the lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir,
who was appointed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the
prime minister, Narendra Modi. Sinha was previously a minister in Modi’s
BJP government.
Covering the same issue in The Guardian (7 August 2025), Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports that Arundhati Roy’s book Azadi includes essays on the
thousands allegedly killed and disappeared in Kashmir by Indian forces in
recent decades, and Independent Kashmir, by the Australian political
scientist Christopher Snedden, explores the Kashmiri fight for independence.
Other titles the government ordered to be banned included Colonizing
Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation by the US-based
academic Hafsa Kanjwal and Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir,
Bosnia, Cyprus and Sri Lanka by Sumantra Bose, a professor at the
London School of Economics.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen records the reaction of one of the writers of one of
the banned books. Expressing frustration at the ban, Angana Chatterji, a
scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the now-
banned Kashmir: The Case for Freedom, said the order ‘underscores the
state’s intent to criminalise scholarship and render it seditious.’ ‘The symbolic
and material impact of this ban stands to be extensive,’ said Chatterji. ‘It
restimulates psychological operations to terrify and isolate Kashmiris, and
silence their pain and resistance.’
She alleged that the decree of censorship was part of a wider agenda by
the Indian government to ‘erase the decades-long history of state violence,
terror, and impunity in Kashmir.’ The order, she added, had ‘signalled that it
fears critique and will not tolerate the free exchange of ideas.’ Instead of
banning books, the State should engage writers in a dialogue that upholds
the spirit of democracy and free debate.
It has been further reported that allegations of attacks on free expression
and press freedom in Jammu and Kashmir have mounted since 2019, when
the Modi-led government unilaterally stripped Kashmir of its decades-long
autonomy and statehood, brought it fully under the control of the central
government and began a widespread crackdown on dissent. In February,
police in Kashmir raided dozens of bookshops and seized more than 650
books, alleging they promoted a ‘banned ideology’.
3
The hegemonic ruling party and the public institutions under its siege, the
Sangh Parivar, which operates through the civil society (in the Gramscian
sense), the giant Corporate Houses with all their money power, control over the archaeology of knowledge and communication system, and the
reserve army of the lumpen together control the present-day art of
governance or governmentality in India. The technology of power prevalent
in present-day India shrewdly combines the ISA and the RSA, the power-
knowledge game, the city-citizen game, and pastoral power and biopower.
Although these strategies were developed in the West, they have been
adapted to India’s unique geopolitical context, taking into account the
country’s local economic, social, and cultural conditions. The result is that
the vision of the leaders of the freedom movement to establish a modern,
Constitutional, and pluralist-federal democracy with conscious, critical,
creative, and patriotic citizens, empowered with agency and citizenship,
stands betrayed. The hope of having a social-cultural order based on reason,
brotherhood, tolerance, and high morality looks bleak. The forces in charge
of present governmentality that question the citizenship of its people, make
their life precarious, inflict violence on the oppositional individuals and groups,
and declare war against the best creative-critical minds, scientists, artists,
and writers, label them as ‘urban naxal’ and hunt them, deserve to be called
‘antinational’.
The present Indian governmentality is a peculiar mix of free-market economy,
where the State, instead of representing the ‘general will’, surrender to the
interest and will of a few corporate houses, hoping that a growing neo-
liberal economy will be the panacea of all social ills, a premodern aggressive
religious (Hindutva) nationalism and an exercise in ‘logicalizing the non-
logical’ to borrow Pareto’s phraseology.
n the new governmentality, fraud and corruption are the new normal, and
the top leaders set the standard. We are a part of the politics where the
political leaders amass enormous wealth in no time while the sources of
their income is never disclosed; the top leaders boast of the highest level of
education on fraudulent degrees and the biased court orders exemption for
them and to the university concerned to produce their ‘original’ degrees in
the public; the top leaders seen taking bribes on camera escape probe and
punishment and continue winning elections and holding positions in the
parliament and administration. It is a democracy where the highest probe
agencies produce untrue and biased reports to fix the best critical minds of
the country; we have a judiciary where the top judges are appointed on the
will of the top administrators, where the apex court delivers judgements not
on facts but on beliefs of the people (like lord Rama was born at the site where Babri Masjid stood). It is a democracy where MLAs and MPs, and
the elected members of the local self-government, are bought and sold in
the free market; it is a democracy where politicians have made a mockery
of the ‘rational-legal-moral’ authority and banished all ethical standards from
personal and public life. Indian democracy, under the new governmentality,
is rapidly progressing towards a Kakistocracy, transcending the limits of
logic. One can apprehend, having a careful look at the present statecraft or
governmentality, that we as a nation are moving towards a corrupt, non-
logical, pre-modern social order composed of people bereft of morality,
dignity and a collective dream of progress.
Notes
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An overview of all the theories about the origin of the State can be
found in J. W. Gough, The Social Contract. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1936.
-
For a comprehensive view of the Marxist theory of the State, see Draper,
H. 1977. Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution: State and Bureaucracy.
New York: Monthly Review Press; F. Engels, 2000. Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State. Marx/Engels Internet Archive
(Marxists.org). (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
download/pdf/origin_family.pdf); and K. Marx and F. Engels. 1968. The
German Ideology. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
-
For a brief view of Gramsci’s theory of State and Hegemony, see
Valetiano Ramos, Jr. ‘The Concept of Ideology, Hegemony, and Organic
Intellectuals in Gramsci’s Marxism. Theoretical Review, No. 27, March-
April, 1982. (https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/tr-
gramsci.htm)
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For details, see Louis Althusser. 1971. ‘Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses’. In L. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other
Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press: 121-176.
-
For Jurgen Habermas’s explanation of how the modern state operates
through communication and the public sphere, one can see Habermas
and the Public Sphere. (edited by Graig Calhoun). 1992. Cambridge:
The MIT Press.
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For details on Foucault’s discourses on power, see Michel Foucault.
1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. (edited by
Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller). Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press; Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Foucault,
Michel. 1980. Power Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon. Brighton: Harvester Press;
Foucault, Michel. 1981. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An
Introduction. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The
Subject and Power.” Afterword in Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. London:
Harvester Wheatsheaf.
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The American Sociologist C. Wright Mills explains how the political
elite, corporate elite and the military elite join hands to monopolise power
in the USA, where the common people outside these groups do not
have any access to the decision-making process. C. Wright Mills, 1956.
The Power Elite. United States: Oxford University Press.
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See, Akhil Gupta. ‘Poverty as Biopolitics’. In Akhil Gupta, Red Tape:
Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2012: 3-39.
- Robert Michels argues that whatever might be the form of government,
the actual power in all political systems is controlled by a small coterie
of people. Robert Michels. 2009. Political Parties: A Sociological
Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New
Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
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The Bhima Koregaon riot refers to violence that occurred in the Indian
state of Maharashtra during an annual celebratory gathering on 1
January 2018 at Koregaon Bhima to mark the 200th anniversary of
the Battle of Koregaon Bhima. The violence and stone pelting by a
crowd at the gathering resulted in the death of a 28-year-old youth, and
five others were injured. The day is celebrated every year to mark the
victory of the East India Company’s Bombay Presidency Army, primarily
composed of the Maratha soldiers, over the forces of Maratha Peswa
Baji Rao II in the Battle of Koregaon on 1 January 1818. A victory
pillar (Vijay Sthamb) was erected in Koregaon by the British,
commemorating the dead soldiers. In 1928, B. R. Ambedkar led the first commemoration ceremony here. Since then, on 1 January every
year, Ambedkarites gather at Bhima Koregaon to celebrate their victory
against the upper caste regime of the Maratha Empire, whom they see
as their oppressors. The nationalist Marathis see the incident as an
attack on their national pride.
-
The Washington Post. 10 February 2021. Retrieved 11
February 2021; ‘Evidence planted in Bhima Koregaon accused Rona
Wilson’s computer: US firm.’ The Tribune. 11 February 2021.
Retrieved 11 February 2021.
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See,http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/
123149794.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_
campaign=cppst)