The Indian voter has done it again. She threw out Indira Gandhi after the Emergency, she brought back Mrs Gandhi after the Janata experiment collapsed and now she has administered a resounding slap on the face of Hindutva which is a political caricature of the tolerant faith of Hinduism.

The five assembly election results in which the BJP drew a blank have come as a balm to those who believe in a core idea of India: plural, secular and inclusive. Post-2014, this has been under attack as minorities and Dalits have come under attack for seeking a bare minimum — retaining their identity and finding a place in the sun.

After a campaign led by Yogi Adityanath, the foremost standard bearer of saffron, the voter has punished the rulers’ inability to create jobs and relieve farmers’ distress while focusing on gau raksha. If you agitate to build the Ram temple while caring little about achieving a semblance of Ram rajya (good governance), then you will be punished.

In the US a key issue in mid-term elections is getting the voter out to vote. In the India of high turnouts, it is the voter who with humility, power and glory keeps voting in minor revolutions.

But even as liberal opinion rejoices, there is a need to remember the truism that “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. The focus has to quickly shift to where things can go wrong, and what are the inherent weaknesses in the present situation. Foremost comes the need to protect against liberal dole-outs.

The promise of loan waiver made to farmers has to be kept but the focus has to immediately shift to working on a long-term policy to ensure that farmers get a sustainable price for their produce.The key is to look beyond procurement which is unable to reach farmers everywhere during key crop marketing seasons.

A new agricultural policy has to be built on the foundation of creating a modern supply chain for the farm-to-fork journey.

Marketing restrictions, domestic and foreign, have to go and warehouses for non-perishables and cold chains for the growing urban demand for fresh perishable produce have to become a part of the landscape.

Much has been made of the Telangana policy of paying farmers to sow the seeds of a good harvest by making the right investments. This does not cover the landless cultivator. It is far better to have microfinance organisations and small finance banks (they grew out of microfinance) provide farmers with pre- and post-harvesting finance. Remember the duo has a recovery rate of 98 per cent, give or take a demonetisation or two. Satellite and drone imagery have to be used to make prompt insurance payment to farmers whose crops have been damaged by flood or drought. Plus, state support has to be slowly phased out for water-guzzling crops like rice and sugarcane. With the use of weather forecast and land productivity data, it should be possible to incentivise selected farmers to let their land lie fallow so that the incidence of bumper crop gluts (the current bane) is reduced.

Destruction of institutions

If the BJP came to grief because it had no clue on to how to address farm distress, then the biggest systemic challenge is to have a game plan to arrest the destructions of institutions.

Rulers who don’t deliver can be thrown out only once in five years but the basic rights of all can only be addressed round the year by independent institutions. It is worth remembering that the CBI may have been virtually destroyed by the BJP government but it is under Congress rule that it became a ‘caged parrot’ in the first place. The institution that has most recently and dramatically had its autonomy challenged is the country’s central bank. The latest governor has stepped in under the most inauspicious circumstances but hopefully he will grow in his position, realising the responsibility that the system, both Indian and global, bestows on his chair. At least three former civil servants have as governors fought valiantly to safeguard the RBI’s right and duty.

The global financial system has created a space for national monetary authorities which have to have minds of their own and have to engage in creative combat with the political leadership of the day on issues that matter.

If the political leadership of the day acts like the queen of hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , who keeps ordering “off with his head”, then he/she will eventually come to grief. But the historical duty of institutions, civil society and professionals (journalists are part of this tribe) is to stand up and be counted when the need arises.

The writer is a senior journalist.

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Published on December 19, 2018