One Delhi day of 'police state'

On Saturday, GoI showcased administrative strength, and revealed political weakness - politics not confined to jousts between parties, but in its more expansive form of how an administration engages with its citizenry. In turning various parts of India's capital city into veritable containment zones, the state let slip its inability to handle critique and unwillingness to confront unscripted tough questions. The argument of 'doing whatever was needed' to maintain law and order does not stick. Conflating extraordinary precautions with a clampdown, followed by the police going on a pick up-and-detain spree, makes for neither good governance nor good optics. Both give off malodorous whiffs of something India is not: a banana republic. The administration's disregard for Supreme Court's Oct 9 order to GoI regarding not restricting metro and train services is baffling. Which makes the court's contempt notice to the government and police officials on Sunday particularly reassuring. The violent detention of Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas by police on the same day also exposes GoI's peculiar insensitivity to handling disagreement.

While it's easy to lay the blame at the protesters' door - 'if there were no protests, life would have carried on merrily' - neither state nor government is an RWA uncle who finds Article 19(1)(b) of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees all citizens the right to assemble peaceably, to be an impediment in the way of social order. Denouncing a gathering to protest that has not been given permission to protest exposes its own logical absurdity. In the process, Saturday's proceedings, ironically, have been amplified. With Jantar Mantar, the city's designated spot for such gatherings, out of bounds, protesters were practically - and, in many cases, literally - pushed out to other parts of Delhi. With deployment of 1-2 companies of CAPF and Delhi Police, along with BSF at the borders, to 'handle' protesters, the administration simultaneously displayed panic, and reduced the inherent asymmetry between the state and its discontents.

Inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on mobility, and freedom to express or communicate political or other views that are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. On Saturday, Delhi fulfilled these criteria through administrative high-handedness and ham-handedness. One hopes that such a condition in non-Emergency, democratic India is confined to that single day.