Dismantling Democracy Brick by Brick
Lok Sabha on Wednesday took up discussion on the Waqf Board Amendment Bill (Image credit Sansad TV)
By MANISH ANAND
Voter-roll revisions, post-election governance and a legislature increasingly aligned with executive priorities raise questions about the state of Indian democracy
New Delhi, September 23, 2026 — Democracy now in India appears meaning an instrument to win elections and thereafter unleashing the full might of the state on the people. An outrageous scale of deletions of voters in states where the Election Commission of India either carried out or is undertaking the special intensive revision comes as a reckoning for the Indian democracy. The governance, at the Centre and states, further presents a case of the people forgotten after elections. Parliament and state legislatures seem more sanguine with executive agenda than voicing the people.
From arguments held at the Supreme Court one gets to know that chemists and pharmacists are charging over 2000 percent profits for cancer drugs, right under the nose of the government.
A chance raid at a farmhouse cracked open a syndicate that had been selling fake cancer or chemotherapy drug across the country in premier hospitals. Those who lost their dear ones to cancer may wonder if their losses were due to fake drugs. They may also wonder: is there any governance in this country?
The Election Commission of India is now in the eye of the storm for an alleged extraordinary scale of authoritarian way in conducting the SIR. Chief Election Commission of the ECI, Gyanesh Kumar, who had his last job at the Ministry of Home Affairs as a Secretary, is facing scrutiny for his motif in carrying the SIR with an anti-voter zeal.
On his Gujarat tour, Kumar justified the SIR, arguing that there had been no appeals against deletions of voters. That his argument was nothing, but a bogus grandstanding revealed from West Bengal where over two million deleted voters had filed appeals against the EC for removing their names.
Clearly adopting anti-people measures, notices have been issued to the people in crores and they are made to stand in the queue at camps where facilities are too inadequate to deal with the turnouts. That massive surge of the people, real and living, jostling at such camps against notices issued to them should be a verdict on implosion of democratic principles at the ECI.
The people travel like cattle long distance destinations in buses as the railways fail to provide confirmed tickets. The promise to provide confirmed ticket by 2019 was made on the floor of parliament, which lapsed by seven years now.
In place, the Railway Board unveils branded trains with premium pricing. Since the day the Narendra Modi-government trashed the practice of separate Rail Budget, the Railways’ accountability for the people has gone for a toss.
States slap police cases against dissents too often. Higher judiciary is already over-burdened, while commoners feel inhibited to knock their doors. Millions spend their life in jails even while trials in their cases are yet to reach the doorsteps of the judiciary.
Democracy is designed to work with checks and balances through institutions. That premise seems abstract. Democracy for all practical purposes seems shredded to election for an executive. Brick by brick, the high wall of democracy now faces an assault. Worrisome is the fact that the trend may become irreversible.
(This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author’s own.)
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