Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes | Wars, pollution, exam scandals – no one did it, it happens

Sonam Wangchuk's insistence on a resignation is not simply about one minister or one examination. It is a defence of the proposition that democratic politics requires a grammatical subject. Before institutions can be repaired, we must acknowledge who specifically broke them

Yesterday, within minutes, I encountered two statements that seemed to capture the core pathology of contemporary politics: The return of malfeasance or evil without agents. Sonam Wangchuk, on the 15th day of his fast, was outlining the core of his thinking behind asking for the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan: It was to fix accountability and agency for an exam fiasco that affects hundreds of thousands of lives. In a completely different context, I encountered this reflection by one of the sharpest contemporary philosophers, Raymond Geuss in an essay, “Without Causes,” published in New Left Review. The essay discusses an interview Hillary Clinton gave on Gaza. There is one striking line in the essay, “When Clinton must refer to conditions on the (Gaza) Strip her sentences break down and suddenly lack a grammatical subject: ‘Reconstruction frozen. Investment absent. Civilians trapped in dependency and despair, with reportedly up to 1,000 killed since the ceasefire’. We are not told who killed them.”

The two examples illustrate the same phenomenon. Across an astonishing range of policy challenges, from war to pollution, exam scandals to crumbling cities, we encounter seemingly causeless phenomena; sentences without subjects. At the international level our Prime Minister sets the tone. “This is not an era of war,” he intones with sagacity, without ever naming who the actors are who start the wars. You might think this is diplomatic finesse. But it turns out to be a full-blooded technique of ruling. If there are no agents behind the action, no one needs to be held accountable. Your success is not stopping the war, condemning aggression, or upholding the law. Your success is that you can immobilise the need for responsibility altogether without appearing immoral.

Now, just think how useful this strategy is domestically. Sentences without grammatical subjects or in the passive voice can easily make passive citizens. Exam leak. Happens. Cities Flooding. Happens. Himalayas crumbling. Happens. Stampedes. Happen. Air Pollution. Happens. Just as we know this is not an era of war, but we don’t name who starts it, we also know this is not an era of crumbling cities, polluted air and rivers, disenfranchisement and corruption, and any other evil you can mention. But no one makes it happen.

The beauty of the passive voice is that the government can join the citizens in a common language and a common objective. These days, it has become the norm for government ministers, civil servants, or recently retired decision-makers to write about their departments with impressive expertise. They will outline lofty goals, even share citizens’ concerns. But the one thing missing in all that writing is the fixing of accountability. You will read hundreds of op-eds on air pollution, including by policymakers. But no one will name or shame, as it were. For example, no one will pointedly say who decided to relax pollution norms for coal-fired power plants and why. Who makes the decisions to give clearances to build roads and buildings in ecologically sensitive zones? I was recently at a meeting where there was eloquent holding forth on “ease of doing business, especially for MSMEs”. But not one policymaker could actually name and explain why particular regulations were put in place or even who put them. If you ask a pointed question, all policy, all events, all decisions suddenly become anonymised through invoking “The Bureaucracy” or “The System” or “The Court” or “Norms.” As if policy is made by abstractions, if even made at all.

Now you might demur and say, “Isn’t this an age of personalised politics, not events without subjects? Don’t we attribute all evils to leaders, Vladimir Putin or Narendra Modi, or Donald Trump?” But the cult of personality is one more way in which accountability gets evaded; it’s like holding God responsible. When God is responsible, no one is. The personality is meant to disguise the myriad of actions that go into the making of catastrophes. Yes, the person at the top has to shoulder the blame for setting the norms. But that is also a convenient alibi for not fixing individual responsibility. “Modi” and “Trump” become a vast impersonal force that governs everything, so we can stop interrogating actual chains of decisions.

Now, speaking in euphemisms, without a subject, allows a certain civility. Perhaps in the international sphere, it allows for diplomacy. A culture of individual naming and shaming can also be misused and be cruel. There might be some truth to these concerns. But at the present conjuncture, this really has become a technology for creating a passive world in which everything, from genocide to environmental destruction, happens. Even well-meaning critiques of policy fall into this trap. The crisis of public policy in India is not the crisis of ideas. Most things that require attention are not rocket science. It is the crisis of accountability: Who will name who actually takes decisions and hold them responsible? Everyone has this knowledge, but we choose to anonymise it. Perhaps this is being done with mass participation: It suits all of us not to blame any specific agents, since that also absolves us of any responsibility. It gives us a kind of freedom. It allows us to defer to power without appearing to do so.

Perhaps this is why Wangchuk‘s demand is important. His insistence on a resignation is not simply about one minister or one examination. It is a defence of the proposition that democratic politics requires a grammatical subject. Before institutions can be repaired, we must acknowledge who specifically broke them. If you want to stop war, you have to name and shame those who start them.

Raymond Geuss may be onto something profound. In his telling, it is not that Hillary Clinton was denying the truth. What she was making disappear was the subject of the sentence. The artful form of modern governance is to acknowledge the truth and yet evade responsibility. Once a society loses the habit of asking, “Who did this?”, it also loses the capacity to ask: “Who should answer for it?” There is no democracy without a grammatical subject.

The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express