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THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 03 JUNE 2019 (Depths of field, defined and blurred (The Hindu))

Depths of field, defined and blurred (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2 : Polity
Prelims level : 2019 lok sabha election
Mains level : Political anarchy behind the 2019 lok sabha election

Context

When the forensics of the 2019 Lok Sabha election are done in the future, strange things may emerge from the examination.
While some answers might be surprising, the questions themselves might be quite different from those many are asking today.
Given a chunk of hindsight time and a thicker sandwich of context around this moment, some of our current assumptions and head-scratchings might look extremely droll to people conducting the review.
On a more serious note, the exhumation of the bones of Election 2019 might well be conducted after far more seismic historic events have occurred:
A trade war between China and the U.S. that debilitated the world economy for years to come; or an armed conflict between the U.S./Israel and Iran with major knock-on effects that turn India into just another nation-state billiard ball, cannoning out of control.

Impending catastrophes

Leave aside an economic meltdown or missile-apocalypse, there could also be an understanding that no Indian political party was equipped to handle the ecological-disaster meteor hurtling towards the country, that none of them even saw it coming, and it was Modi 2.0 which was in charge when it struck.
Today, we are already in the midst of a catastrophic air-pollution crisis and heading swiftly towards a major water-crisis;
We could well be looking at a food crisis of almost 1943 proportions, where our harvests are adequate but our skewed distribution systems lead to quasi-famine situations.
If ignored or mis-handled and this regime has a terrific record of doing both this could leave future historians looking at a huge renting of the fabric of the nation, a huge transformation, but not of the sort the Sangh Parivar imagines in its fevered dreams.

What could a granular political archaeology yield in the future?

2019 might be seen as the first serious beginning of a north-south division of the country, the moment where the south begins to understand that they want no part of the Hindutva agenda.
That it is of no advantage for advanced, educated people of different religions who are confident in their own secularism.
The Hindu majority of whom are confident in their own kinds of Hindu practice, to be sucked down by the horribly feudal, backward notions of nation and society being offered by the zealots in control of the central north.
These recently executed elections might throw up yet another irony of abusive labelling: posterity might see the Sangh Parivar and its vassal parties and media as the real Tukde-Tukde gang, the ones who turned the Union of India into a brittle biscuit.

The health of the nation

There would also have to be an examination of the changing character and role of the Indian Deep State at this moment.
If we define the phrase ‘Deep State’ to mean a covert nexus between industrial corporations and the security services, with their self-defined mission being to keep the country at a working status quo tilted conservatively.
Then what was this Deep State’s reaction to the second victory of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combination?
To what extent did they participate?
Was there any concern that the country would be radicalised beyond their control?
Was there any recognition that the attempted suppression and de-legitimisation of nearly 200 million Indians might have cataclysmic effects that were not in the Deep State’s own long-term interests?

Key questions arising

Our future historians have as an instrument one of those animated infographic maps of South Asia, with the countries differentiated by patterns indicating different elements that make up the ‘health’ of each nation: clear separation between state and religion, between state and military; operational democracy at all levels of society, democracy that is constant and not just noduled around elections.
The rule of law and order; effective public health systems; unassailable human rights; freedom of expression and a free media under a diverse ownership; a properly competitive business environment with checks and balances; a cross-institutional understanding of environmental problems and robust programmes to deal with those challenges; and, most importantly, reliable indicators for food security and poverty levels.
In such a map, will 2019 be the point when the patterns of our favourite failed state, Pakistan, and India begin to merge with increasing speed?
Will people say that this was the tipping point where the Pakistanisation of India gathered full pace?
When the moral gangrene infecting the so-called ‘severed limb’ was invited back into the main body?
As the years slide by on this map, do the colours indicating military conflict and, simultaneously, the shifting of massive refugee populations begin to sweep and bleed into each other?
Does the Bay of Bengal rise at the same time and start biting into the Sunderbans? Does the desert start to spread across the forehead of the subcontinent?

On a longer graph

If the terms of reference are somewhat different, could the historians ask very different questions?
For instance, might they be able to see a continuity of the graph of liberalisation in the 25 or 30 years following 1991 where succeeding governments ignored the immediate needs of the majority of India’s population and paid the price?
Instead of being the moment of great victory for the Hindutva project, could 2019 be the tipping point where the diverse, slowly simmering protest movements gathered critical mass and within a few years toppled the old order and all the old parties completely?
Equally, could the period of 1991-2014 be seen as a time of a thinly maintained peace, followed by a period of extreme upheaval for the next 25 years, with 2019 being merely a minor punctuation point, a blip of no great consequence?

Way forward

In photographic terms, when examining our own time and the current moment, we have no choice but to deal with a very short depth of field, a lot of the past and everything in the future is out of focus, beyond and before the ‘today’ which is most sharply defined.
Looking back at points of history the depth of field is greater, with a lot more things rendered sharply.
Perhaps this is a good analogy to remember, both for those bathing themselves in triumphant celebrations today as well as for those who are morose and disheartened and prematurely mourning the death of our precious Republic.
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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) In the context of physical geography, which of the following correctly describes the term 'Ablation'?
(a) Gradual compression and compaction of snowfall by the weight of further snowfall on top of it.
(b) Slow downward progression of rock and soil on a low grade slope.
(c) Natural loss of ice from the glacier by melting and evaporation.
(d) Lifting of fine soil particles into the upper atmosphere by wind and drifting horizontally across the surface.