The world is becoming more authoritarian during the pandemic!
As the world tries to grapple with the pandemic, many heads of governments across the world have been busy making themselves more powerful. In the garb of dealing with the crises, many governments have taken away powers from the local units of governments, curbed many freedoms including freedom of speech as we will see in the latter part of the article.
We will look at India and Hungary where some drastic measures have been taken during this pandemic which will have a long-lasting impact on the governance of the two countries.
India boasts of a three-tier government with a distribution of powers at all levels. The responsibilities of the state and central governments are clearly defined in the constitution. The powers of the local bodies are defined separately in the 73rd and 74th amendments to the constitution. In the garb of the crises, the power of the local levels of governments has been undermined. All the major decisions are being made at the topmost level.
MPLAD (Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme) funds were suspended for two years which could have been a great weapon against the pandemic as the local MP knows best where the funds are most needed in an area. A one size fits all approach cannot be applied to a subcontinent sized country like India.
India in recent times has been going more and more inwards regarding its economic policy. The pandemic has provided a rationale to the government to further this policy. Pertinent to mention here that India has had a long tryst with such policies which led to a near recession-like situation in the 1990s. This was when India had to finally open up to foreign investments and reduce the red tape involved in setting up new businesses. The growth rate shot up as a result of this and it pulled a huge number of people out of poverty.
The present government seems to not have learned from the mistakes of the previous governments in pushing the “vocal for local” agenda with too much ferocity.
As Sadanand Dhume says in one of his articles, “Bluntly put, the rhetoric of self-reliance could easily slide into the familiar territory of closed-mindedness, cronyism, and mediocrity”.
Labour Laws have recently been changed in many states like UP, MP, etc. Working hours have been increased, minimum wages decreased to the bare minimum, and many safety norms have done away with. The employers are no more obliged to even provide the workers with basic amenities.
The government of Madhya Pradesh recently exempted 11 kinds of industries from the Madhya Pradesh Industrial Relations Act that contains provisions relating to the recognition of trade unions by employers. This will further decrease the bargaining power of the workers. All this without any consultation with the experts or the stakeholders. The industries have suffered a great deal due to the lockdown. Agreed. But the workers have suffered a lot more. Dilution of labor laws in the garb of incentivizing Industries is a bad idea.
Now, we turn our attention to Hungary where the situation is much grimmer.
Hungary was one of the many countries which gained independence from communist rule after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990. Prime Minister Viktor Orban came to power in 2010 riding an anti-left wave and has been since been on a mission of sorts to weaken the democratic institutions of the country. And COVID-19 pandemic gave him a brilliant opportunity to consolidate his control on the state. He issued a decree which will essentially let him rule without any hurdle of parliament. After gaining full control of the government, he went on to issue many other decrees which were not exactly empowering the democratic structure.
A decree has been passed which empowers the law enforcement agencies to jail the journalists who report news that is deemed “fake” by the government. The powers of the local municipalities have been reduced significantly because most of them were ruled by opposition parties. Even transgender rights have been drastically encroached upon during this period. Details of important trade deals have been classified. One of these includes a multi-billion trade deal with China which was already under the scanner.
Any government has a natural tendency to consolidate their hold on power but in normal times, we have many checks and balances.
But these are not normal times and the people in power are making full use of the crisis for their benefit. We need to vigilant against measures that could be more lasting than the pandemic itself.
-Amish Bhat
