After Four Years

Assessing the rule of a government led by any party has to be done on normative grounds that entail values of human dignity as well as institutional dignity. On the other hand, the assessment of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) rule or that of any other ruling party on pragmatic grounds has to be left to the concerned parties, a process that is a ­routine in the final year of their reign. Hence, the value-based normative assessment of the present government’s performance should not be confined just to five years, but arguably for a longer ­period as long as we need the institution of the state to stabilise the value of human dignity as well as the very dignity of the state. We cannot, of course, take an anarchist position that says no state or its institutions can achieve the moral well-being or dignity of the people.

Why has it become a historical necessity to raise the question of the dignity of the state, particularly in the specific context of a government’s term in office? This is because during the last four years of the BJP’s rule at the centre, the very dignity of the government has come under the scanner on account of it being seriously threatened by the parallel authority that gau rakshaks, trolls on social media, and the moral and cultural police have been exercising over certain sections of Indian society.