The Battle on the Street

A statecraft reflection on protest, legitimacy, institutional integrity, Indocracy and national resilience

A widening cycle of street protest is exposing a deeper crisis of governance in democracies. The immediate triggers differ: inflation, unemployment, corruption, inequality, contested elections, identity, real or perceived injustice, restrictions on freedom, insensitive policing, institutional arrogance, judicial distrust and accumulated anger. The scale, composition and legitimacy of individual movements also differ. It would therefore be intellectually reckless either to romanticise all protest or to denounce it indiscriminately.

Recent protest waves across Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America underline the breadth of the phenomenon. The Carnegie Endowment Global Protest Tracker had cited in Sept 2026 anti-government protests across 57 countries. India has the highest and yet we must compliment our much maligned police, who work in difficult ecosystem, of managing the situation far better than the most. Episodes in France and elsewhere have also demonstrated how quickly demonstrations can spill into attacks on public spaces, heritage buildings and commercial property. Yet visible disorder is often the final manifestation of problems that began much earlier inside institutions.

Democratic resilience ultimately depends upon institutions capable of correcting political and governmental failure: credible elections; impartial courts; professional policing; an efficient civil service; deliberative legislatures; democratic political parties; independent media; and a public sphere capable of reasoned disagreement. Citizens tolerate imperfection because they retain some confidence in the capacity of these institutions to correct themselves. When that confidence collapses, grievance migrates from institutions to the street.

When grievance migrates from institutions to the street, the street can become not merely a site of protest but a psychological battlespace.

Once this threshold is crossed, there is no guarantee that the result will be orderly, progressive or even controllable. Some protest movements can correct abuses. Others can be captured by opportunists, extremists, criminal actors or foreign interests. Some can permanently scar a state or society. Hence every serious discourse on mass protest must be driven by sagacity rather than romanticism, fear or partisan convenience.

From Institutional Failure to the Psychological Battlespace

I have repeatedly argued that the strength of a state cannot be measured merely by the size of its economy, sophistication of its weapon systems or wealth of sections of its elite. It must also be assessed by the confidence ordinary citizens repose in the integrity, capacity and fairness of their institutions. My argument has never been that democratic elections are unimportant. It is that electoral popularity without competence, personal integrity, merit, resilience and commitment to the public good is an inadequate foundation for serious statecraft.

Post-independence India, given its deep civilisational roots and humanist orientation, was expected by many to evolve a model of governance that could combine democratic legitimacy with a higher ethic of public responsibility. A powerful India rooted in humane values could contribute not only to its own prosperity but also to greater stability in the international order. India has indeed amazed the world by sustaining democracy amid extreme diversity and adversity, and Indians abroad have excelled in business, science, academia and public life. Yet internally, substantial deficits in human development, institutional capacity and trust remain. A change of political regime by itself has not resolved these contradictions.

When substantial sections of citizens hit the streets rather than seek institutional redress, it is a warning that institutions have forfeited at least some measure of trust. But it is not always only about bad governance. Powerful vested interests can stoke communal, ethnic and identity sentiments; elites can exploit anger; and covert actors can seek to convert grievance into regime destabilisation. Equally, it is too easy for governments to explain away all public discontent as the handiwork of opaque deep states. Without governance failures, poor strategy or arrogant and brutal responses, external or internal manipulators would have much less combustible material to exploit.

To dismiss genuine public grievance as a manufactured foreign conspiracy is bad statecraft. To assume that genuine grievance cannot be internally or externally weaponised is equally bad statecraft.

Why the Street Can Become a Battlespace

Contemporary strategic contests penetrate societies through information, perception, technology, finance, institutions, social networks and psychological vulnerabilities. A smartphone can influence political behaviour faster than many traditional instruments of state power. An incident becomes an image. The image acquires a narrative. The narrative generates outrage. Outrage creates digital solidarity. Digital solidarity moves onto the street. Mishandling by authorities produces new images, which can appear to validate the original narrative and multiply anger.

This is not conventional warfare. Nor should every protest be labelled warfare. But when organised actors deliberately amplify divisions, manipulate grievances, provoke disproportionate responses, attack confidence in institutions or psychologically exhaust society, the boundary separating political agitation from irregular psychological warfare becomes dangerously blurred. The contest is then no longer merely over a policy or even an election. It can become a struggle over legitimacy, perception, cohesion and ultimately the levers of state power.

History repeatedly demonstrates that regimes do not collapse only because they are militarily weak. They can collapse because they cease to command belief. The transformations across Eastern Europe in 1989 revealed the brittleness of systems that retained coercive machinery while political legitimacy had eroded. Later upheavals elsewhere demonstrated the other side of the proposition: removing a government and constructing better governance are entirely different achievements.

Street power can change rulers. It cannot automatically create competent institutions. Changing rulers without improving institutions merely changes the beneficiaries of dysfunction.

Performance of Indian Democracy on Key Institutional Parameters

The people of India have displayed extraordinary patience and consideration. Younger citizens may sometimes lack historical perspective, but their frustration cannot simply be dismissed. If Indian democracy is evaluated through the condition of its corrective institutions, the causes of contemporary anxiety become easier to identify.

Elections and Transfer of Power

Indian elections have long been accompanied by money and muscle power, opaque political funding, criminalisation, misinformation, identity arithmetic and recurring allegations of institutional manipulation. Electoral competition remains indispensable, but peaceful transfer of power has not automatically produced a corresponding improvement in the quality of governance. Dynastic cliques coexist with newer concentrations of political power, while serious reform of political finance remains elusive. Elections too often determine who controls the system without transforming the system itself.

Judiciary and Rule of Law

My criticism of the Indian judiciary has been particularly severe because justice constitutes the final peaceful refuge of a citizen against arbitrary power. Delays, massive backlogs, cost, unequal access, prolonged undertrial detention, capacity constraints, and concern over independence and accountability undermine confidence in timely and impartial justice. There are exceptional judges, but isolated excellence cannot substitute for institutional credibility.

In my writings, including “Hollow Courts: Silent Killers of National Vigour?”, “Cash Bags On Doorsteps of Judiciary: A Symptom of the Highest Stage of Societal Cancer”, and “When Grace Is Not Enough: Why Must Judiciary Search Its Soul”, I have linked weakening judicial credibility to wider societal and national-security vulnerability. I have argued that corruption can act as a societal cancer; that a fair and dynamic judiciary shapes the psyche of society by reinforcing confidence in justice; and that popular distrust towards the judiciary, including perceptions of deference to money and political power, must be addressed rather than dismissed. The judiciary must work consciously to recover public respect and perform its nation-building function.

When confidence in justice declines, confidence in peaceful constitutional redress declines with it.

Police and Citizen Security

India has genuinely brave, courageous and upright police officers. Yet citizens commonly encounter an institution burdened by political pressure, corruption, inadequate training, weak investigation, custodial abuse, understaffing and poor accountability. In my own assessment, the deeper problem is institutional rather than simply individual. Honest officers can be hounded or marginalised, while pliability can become professionally safer. A police organisation whose incentives punish integrity cannot provide the psychological security that a democracy requires.

Civil Service and Governance

The civil service continues to contain talented individuals, but the larger architecture remains excessively colonial, procedural and entitlement-driven. Information reproduction has too often been confused with professional competence, while seniority, political loyalty and safe conformity can outweigh specialised contribution. Politicisation, frequent transfers, risk aversion, inadequate expertise and weak outcome accountability damage administrative impartiality and efficiency. Upright civil servants can face harassment rather than institutional protection. Independent India cannot indefinitely rely upon a governance architecture originally designed for imperial control and expect transformational outcomes.

Legislatures and Lawmaking

A genuinely bipartisan legislative culture remains weak. Partisanship, disruptions, rigid party discipline, inadequate scrutiny and executive dominance diminish legislatures as forums for considered lawmaking. When legislatures cease to deliberate seriously, political conflict migrates elsewhere, including television studios, social media and ultimately the street.

Political Parties

Internal democracy in political parties is feeble. Centralised leadership, opaque financing, dynastic entitlement, constrained dissent and non-transparent candidate selection weaken parties as aggregators of public interests. My criticism applies across partisan lines. The principal opposition cannot strengthen democracy merely by demanding regime change while failing to offer credible remedies for the corruption, caste mobilisation and institutional weaknesses associated with its own periods in office. Conversely, the present ruling dispensation cannot claim institutional virtue while political finance remains opaque, institutions are accused of politicisation and crony capitalism remains a serious public concern. Democracy cannot be repaired by substituting one personality cult, clique or oligarchy for another.

Media and Public Debate

Indian mainstream media, in my assessment, is experiencing an acute credibility crisis. Political and commercial pressures, sensationalism, misinformation and digital echo chambers have weakened its role as an independent mirror of society. Public debate has simultaneously deteriorated into toxic partisan squabbling, often centred on historical accusation and competing claims of patriotism rather than alternative visions of governance. Caste, identity, trolling and ideological echo chambers increasingly make reasoned disagreement difficult. A democracy cannot remain healthy when its public sphere rewards emotional fury more than reasoned intellect.

Governance and National Security Are No Longer Separate

My writings on corruption, judiciary, governance and irregular warfare increasingly lead towards one conclusion: institutional integrity is the strategic armour of national security. A hostile power need not manufacture every vulnerability inside an adversary. Corruption, injustice, unemployment, cronyism, ethnic or sectarian fault lines, institutional arrogance and political polarisation can provide ready-made vulnerabilities.

The strategic target need not be territory. It can be public trust. Destroy the trust and every official explanation becomes suspect, every rumour plausible, every mistake a conspiracy and every institutional failure further evidence of deliberate oppression. This is why corruption is not merely an ethical or administrative problem. In an era of globalisation and covert contestation, it can become a grave national-security vulnerability.

A corrupt official, judge, senior politician or journalist damages the country far beyond whatever financial gain may be involved. The deeper loss is credibility. A compromised police force or judiciary can do something worse still: destroy the citizen’s confidence in peaceful redress. My criticism of the Government of the day arises from this concern. Despite invocation of Raj Dharma, I believe governance has too often been allowed to become an instrument of private enrichment and selective empowerment rather than national transformation. When lawful avenues of redress lose credibility, the street acquires a legitimacy of its own and the psychological battlespace expands.

Bangladesh and Sri Lanka: Warnings Rather Than Templates

The experiences of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka deserve attention in this framework. I had publicly warned, before their later political upheavals, about the vulnerability of both systems. In a 2023 interview with Blitz in Dhaka, I stated that Sheikh Hasina faced the prospect of being toppled. Similarly, in an interview with APN Hindi news channel, I predicted that the Rajapaksa family would have to go. I cite these predictions not as retrospective proof of the precise causes of subsequent events, but because the analysis behind them was rooted in a broader proposition: political systems can appear coercively secure while becoming progressively brittle through accumulated grievance, arrogance, economic distress, declining institutional legitimacy and alienation.

Bangladesh, in my assessment, also illustrates why simplistic explanations are dangerous. Sheikh Hasina committed serious political errors and became increasingly arrogant. Yet I have argued that the subsequent regime change, efforts to discredit the liberation legacy, and desecration of the statue of the country’s founding leader pointed to forces extending beyond ordinary democratic protest. I have interpreted the episode as involving radicalised elements and opaque anti-India interests. These are my assessments and should be tested against evidence, but the strategic principle remains valid irrespective of the final attribution: genuine domestic grievance and organised manipulation can coexist.

Likewise, Sri Lanka demonstrated how accumulated governance and economic failures can rapidly erode the authority of an entrenched political family. But Ranil Wickremsinghe, despite not being an elected Head of the Govt brought Sri Lanka back  on track.

 Regime change, however, does not by itself guarantee reconstruction. Both cases reinforce a larger warning: rulers often recognise the visible uprising much later than the invisible erosion of legitimacy that made the uprising possible.

A Regime Can Tame a Crowd and Yet the Nation Can Lose

A government that suppresses public anger without addressing its causes may purchase temporary stability while accumulating deeper instability. An opposition that exploits legitimate grievances merely to capture power performs no great service either. This is where conventional discourse on democracy becomes inadequate.

I therefore disagree profoundly with the approach of India’s Leader of Opposition. In my assessment, his language towards the Prime Minister has too often lacked the civility and dignity expected in a democracy. More importantly, regime change cannot become an end in itself. Any opposition aspiring to govern must address corruption, misrule, institutional subversion, casteism, opaque finance and the structural weaknesses of political parties rather than assuming personal or dynastic entitlement to office. Equally, the ruling party cannot invoke the failings of its opponents to excuse its own institutional shortcomings. India requires transformation of the ecosystem, not merely rotation of political beneficiaries.

The Limits of Coercive Power

Every viable state requires credible police, intelligence and security capabilities. But state capacity must never be confused with coercive capacity. A state commands enduring credibility more through trust than fear. Political leadership must understand this distinction and use coercive instruments with restraint, especially when advised by officials whose loyalty may shift effortlessly with changes of political dispensation.

Police can disperse crowds, but they cannot manufacture legitimacy. Intelligence services can expose manipulation, but they cannot cure alienation. Courts can punish illegality, but only if citizens retain faith in their impartiality. Governments can influence information ecosystems, but no government can permanently compel a population to trust what it no longer believes.

The strongest state is one that uses the least coercion because its institutions command the greatest voluntary compliance.

My suggestion to the Government of India is therefore direct: avoid excessive reliance upon coercion. Excessive coercion can expose panic and weakness. I believe the present government, which came to power with a powerful promise to transform India, has become trapped by compromised networks and advisers and has failed to adhere sufficiently to the traditions of Raj Dharma and strategic statecraft that our civilisational texts demand.

A New Anatomy of Destabilisation

The contemporary pathway towards political instability can be understood as a chain: governance failure -> grievance -> institutional distrust -> psychological alienation -> digital amplification -> street mobilisation -> political exploitation -> possible external manipulation -> state overreaction -> deeper delegitimisation -> systemic instability.

Not every society traverses the entire chain, and the presence of one stage does not establish the next. External manipulation in particular must not be presumed merely because a protest exists. Yet the sequence illustrates how the political street can intersect with the dynamics of irregular warfare. The decisive terrain is increasingly psychological: confidence, perception, legitimacy and social cohesion.

India Must Avoid Both Denial and Romanticism

In my recent essay “Current Protests: An Opportunity for India to Explore a New Paradigm of Statecraft”, I described contemporary unease, institutional distrust and recourse to street mobilisation as reflections of deeper governance contradictions. I also acknowledged possibilities of opportunistic and external exploitation without allowing them to become excuses for ignoring genuine alienation and governance failure.

India must therefore neither romanticise street agitation nor demonise it. Young people can possess genuine grievances while remaining vulnerable to manipulation. Government cannot respond to every criticism by discovering a foreign conspiracy. Opposition acquires no monopoly over righteousness or patriotism merely because it opposes government. Police cannot indefinitely compensate for deficits of governance. Nor can protesters acquire immunity from law by claiming moral superiority.

The real danger arises when everybody begins to see everybody else as the enemy of the nation. Government sees conspiracy. Opposition sees opportunity. Activists see repression. Security agencies see destabilisation. Citizens see injustice. Digital ecosystems reward fury. Somewhere amid this noise, the long-term interest of the nation can disappear from the moral and intellectual radar.

That is not merely political failure. It is failure of statecraft.

I write from my perspective to put forward precisely such an alternative perspective, notwithstanding the likelihood that powerful bureaucratic and policing establishments aligned with whichever dispensation is in office may reject it. I persist with a bipartisan critique because I consider integrity and patriotism inseparable from serious statecraft, even when such independence carries a personal cost.

Integrity in Statecraft Alone Can Defeat Irregular War

All is not lost. Governments can learn; conscience keepers can awaken; institutions can recover; and citizens can place nation above partisan or personal gain. Every protest does not lead to regime change, and every regime change does not lead to progress and stability.

No external role in a particular mobilisation should be asserted without evidence. At the same time, a country whose rule of law is genuine, whose institutions command trust and whose grievances receive fair redress is far harder for any foreign or covert actor to manipulate. A state cannot defeat conspiracy by counter-conspiracy, nor defend legality through illegality. Attempts to do so merely reproduce the vulnerability they claim to combat.

The best strategy to defeat irregular warfare by opaque global forces and their covert proxies is integrity of institutions.

Good governance is the bedrock of national security. Justice counters and prevents subversion. Institutional integrity is strategic deterrence. Public trust is national power.

The ruling dispensation should therefore pursue a strategic solution to corruption rather than permit opacity in political funding or institutional arrangements to deepen public suspicion. A civilisation cannot secure itself through institutions that its own citizens cease to trust.

Indocracy: From Electoral Democracy to Sagely and Scientific Statecraft

This is why I have been emphasising the need for Indocratic statecraft: governance driven by sagely integrity as reflected in India’s civilisational traditions, yet informed by sound evidence, scientific reasoning and the strongest institutional principles developed by modern constitutional democracy. Indocracy is not a rejection of democracy. It is an attempt to address what periodic elections alone cannot resolve.

Democracy asks who should rule and provides mechanisms for peaceful replacement. Indocracy additionally emphasises  how power should be exercised, for what purpose, through what quality of institutions, and by leaders of what character. It seeks selection and election of people who are not merely popular, privileged by birth or successful at identity mobilisation, but meritorious, ethical, resilient and committed to comprehensive public and national good.

The ideal is neither an imported institutional shell nor nostalgic civilisational rhetoric. It is a fusion of ethical statecraft with evidence-based modern governance. Raj Dharma supplies the moral responsibility of power; science supplies disciplined inquiry; constitutional democracy supplies rights and peaceful accountability; and institutional integrity supplies continuity beyond personalities.

Democracy cannot be reduced into simply choosing rulers and letting them enjoy it as their private entitlement. Responsible governance is their sacred responsibility. 

Statecraft is continuous deployment of intellect, integrity and courage towards sustained optimisation of strengths of society and state with people at the centre. 

Indocracy therefore links governance with the quality of human existence. As institutional integrity improves, trust can deepen; as trust deepens, societal harmony can improve; and as the quality of harmony improves, human existence can become more elevated. This does not demand uniformity. It demands the capacity to hold disagreement within a sustainable threshold of justice, dignity and shared belonging for all citizens. 

Conclusion: The Imperative of a Wiser State

The present global turmoil should neither frighten governments into repression nor seduce protesters into believing that destruction itself constitutes transformation. Deft policing may be necessary in moments of disorder, but it is only a precondition for institutional learning, never the end of the problem. Every genuine protest reflects some reality of the society from which it emerges, even when the interpretation placed upon that reality is contested or manipulated.

Wise statecraft listens before it orders. Understands before it suppresses. Corrects before coercion.

The ultimate defence against irregular warfare does not lie in bigger police forces or more intrusive surveillance. It lies in building a society that is extraordinarily difficult to subvert because its people believe that its institutions are fundamentally fair. Governance failure manufactures vulnerabilities. Justice removes them.

The answer to the revolt of the street is therefore neither a stronger fist nor a louder street. It is a wiser state. And perhaps that is the fundamental challenge of Indocracy: to advance beyond democracy as a periodic mechanism for choosing rulers towards statecraft as a continuous endeavour to enhance institutional integrity, societal harmony and the quality of human existence.

That is not idealism. In an age of irregular warfare, it may increasingly become an imperative of national survival.

CURRENT PROTESTS: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIA TO EXPLORE A NEW PARADIGM OF STATECRAFT

 

PERSPECTIVE

The current political unease in New Delhi, manifest in rising public discontent, sharpening confrontation between the Government and the Opposition, declining confidence in institutions and credibility of the ruling dispensation amidst growing recourse to street mobilization are visible symptoms of deeper underlying governance crises and institutional contradictions. 

Govt of the day has every reason to suspect that global deep states may be working in collusion with an opportunist and yet not so ethical opposition, alongside a wide range of subversive elements who have perennially entrenched themselves in this country, to destabilize the ruling dispensation. Yet these must not distract us from the deeper underlying issues like serious alienation and discontent among masses, brazenly oppressive and criminal ways of working of several enforcement institutions and governance failure on multiple fronts. Sadly, even Modi Govt relied upon same malignant and rogue cartels that were doing brisk business of corruption and subversion under the previous dispensation. 

All round subversion of every key institution, from the highest echelons of judiciary to media to civil service as well as inner democracy within political parties have been unmistakable reality of reality of our democracy. Only the intensity and degree have varied. Under this Government, these have scaled new heights. The objective has been concentration of power in few hands for selective enrichment of few crony capitalists by complete decimation of rule of law in the country. Every sane, impartial and patriotic voice in the country has been crushed through crude forgery, criminality and brazen decimation of integrity of institutions. Our entire democracy appears to have been perverted into a vulgar contest for power between a personality cult driven ruling dispensation and dynastic entitlement based principal opposition party. Nation, people and civilization, as well as their long-term destiny have been pushed beyond the margins of fringes of political-governance priorities.

The Govt of the day, or its principal advisors appear in panic mode. Police authorities have been less than decent and polite or even efficacious towards protestors. Yet they have been far more humane in dealing with protestors compared to autocracies under authoritarian regimes and even more established and powerful democracies in some instances. Reactions to police handling of protestors have been mixed. In some cases, they have been extremely patient and considerate and applied minimal force besides taking care of food and water of all detainees. But many cops have acted with a degree of unacceptable level of unprovoked violence. 

Sadly, the focus of opposition appears more on exploiting the situation rather than offering any credible commitment to transform our political system. Leader of opposition and his sister can be seen pushing around and elbowing on duty junior cops and even their own supporters, This is the biggest irony of our democracy. It suggests that our entire political space has been cartelized. Dynastic entitlement to leadership roles could be the most perverse assault on democracy. But the alternative has been sustained intimidation of citizens and at times brazen brutality. 

It is also true that a wide range of disparate forces have come together to oppose the Government at this point of time. The ruling dispensation shall struggle to not merely survive but may not emerge unscathed from the ongoing turbulence. There are reasons to believe that despite it’s electoral promise in 2014 to abolish corruption and act tough on the corrupt, this Government has ensured exoneration of all corruption  accused of previous regime. Rather it has normalised corruption and ensured perpetuation of a morally weak opposition that could be easily scared by enforcement agencies. But every political tactics has a shelf life. The entire phenomenon appears to have badly boomeranged. Unless the Prime Minister of India demonstrates bold statesmanship, rather than relying upon his self-seeking advisors. we appear to be staring in face of a genuine and sustained turmoil that is certain to dent image of the Govt. This is nothing but a form of diffused, irregular but non-volent warfare where Govt appears to be on morally weak footing.

Legitimacy of the ongoing agitations cannot entirely be dismissed. Subversion and manipulation of institutions and allegations of corruption against most incumbents of the Government are far too credible. Unrestrained police excesses shall only complicate challenges and lead to further alienation of the people against the regime. I have been expressing my pain and anguish at sustained and serious poverty of statecraft in Indian politics and this is one moment when I wish both the Govt and the opposition rise beyond their partisan power games that seems to have pushed India under the yoke of an internal colonisation 

THE CRISIS FACING INDIA IS NOT MERELY POLITICAL BUT ALSO  INSTITUTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL AND CIVILISATIONAL

I have for some time believed that democracy, in the form in which it has evolved and the ways in which it is being practised, has already crossed the limits of its effectiveness. This is not only in India but perhaps across substantial parts of the world. The challenges in India are far more formidable on account of our massive population, deficient governance institutions, colonial legacy, trauma of sustained foreign rule, genocidal partition of the nation and hostility of major global powers amidst sustained terrorist attacks over decades and deeper radicalization to fracture our national cohesion. Yet this is no argument for abandoning democracy. On the contrary, it is an argument for refining and evolving democracy by transforming entire governance capacities and overall institutional edifice alongside simultaneous transformation of societal-politcal-governance ecosystem. This calls for bold statesmanly leadership that we have failed to produce despite enormous potential and promises shown by the current Prime Minister of the country who has ultimately disappointed beyond all words.

Ironically the focus of Indian democracy appears to have been perverted. Governance and security of the nation have not been completely eliminated from agenda of political parties. But these appear much lower on priority. Our democracy rather appears a mechanism for periodic transfer of power through electoral process among key competing political groups. There seems a tacit arrangement among different sets of political elites that they shall have equal opportunity to capture institutions, distribute patronage, advance sectional interests and thereafter claim democratic legitimacy through elections. 

The consequences of the phenomenon are dangerous not only for people of the country but for the world at large. If world’s largest democracy and the oldest humanist civilization forfeits its moral authority and loses a strong global voice, the larger global geopolitical equilibrium shall change to disadvantage of entire humanity. Sub-optimal performance of India on all parameters of governance and national power indicate a serious underlying disorder, which none of the political and intellectual elite appear to be in a position to address or even willing to engage. There is need for serious introspection and honest discourse in this direction.

When Democracy fails to optimally deliver on governance, its procedures lose their strength and purpose.

Dissent Is Also A Feedback

Recent public mobilisations must be viewed in this larger context. The demonstrations associated with Jantar Mantar included demands for electoral accountability and systemic reform. Though I personally believe that India needs a much larger discourse on large -scale subversion of institutions and fracture of society by all political parties in name of caste and identity, rather than simple removal of a Chief Election Commissioner. On 12 October 2026, Delhi Police announced that Jantar Mantar had been de-notified as a designated protest venue and identified Ramlila Ground, Burari Ground and CBD Ground in East Delhi as alternative venues. This may be a good police tactics but shows defensive psyche of the Govt. 

A government has both the right and obligation to maintain public order. But the instruments of policing cannot become substitutes for political engagement and judgment. Simultaneously, a number of protestors have been arrested in a manner that appears legally and ethically questionable.

POLICE CAN REGULATE PROTEST; BUT THEY CANNOT RESOLVE THE CONDITIONS THAT GENERATE MASS DISCONTENT.

A mature state must possess the confidence to treat public discontent as feedback. This does not mean accepting every allegation made by protesters. Nor does it mean overlooking manipulation by political opportunists, vested interests, external actors or other forces seeking to exploit instability. Such possibilities are inherent in politics and geopolitics.

But precisely herein lies the distinction between administration and statecraft.

Statecraft requires the ability to distinguish genuine grievance from manufactured outrage, legitimate dissent from organised subversion, and political opposition from threats to national security. It must possess sufficient intellectual balance to accommodate the first while effectively snuff out the second.

In my conception of Indocracy, I have repeatedly stated that challenges and setbacks can serve as instruments of institutional learning. A dynamic science of statecraft must continuously evolve and adapt.

A strong state does not merely control discontent. It learns from it to get better. 

But more importantly, state is not merely ruling political dispensation alone. A ruling dispensation loses credibility and respect when it subverts key institutions to favour/enrich its cronies at the cost of the nation. It permanently weakens a nation and civilisation when it undertakes large-scale de-institutionalisation of state for consolidation of its own grip over state power. It sends a wrong signal and inflicts serious damage when it targets/crushes incumbents in key institutions through criminality and fraud over the latter’s most selfless services to the nation. It appears to attack sovereignty and long term security of the nation and barter national pride when it does so for the purpose of appeasing its own clandestine external and internal associates. 

THE PROBLEM IS LARGER THAN THE SIMPLE FAILURES OF THE GOVERNMENT

It would nevertheless be too simplistic to place the entire responsibility for India's predicament upon the present Government alone. 

Our difficulties run much deeper. Institutional subversion has built a momentum of its own over the last five to six decades.

Substantial parts of India's political space increasingly appear vulnerable to cartelisation by organised political, economic and sectional interests. Political competition consequently risks becoming less a contest among alternative visions of national advancement and more a struggle among competing caucuses for control of the state.

This distinction is fundamental.

Politics should be a contest over how best to govern a nation. It must not degenerate into a contest over who acquires the privileges of governing for enrichment of it’s own set of associates at the cost of comprehensive progress of the nation.

State power is not an entitlement. It is not the property of a political dynasty, party, or cartels within bureaucracy, corporation, security establishment or ideological group. Its sole legitimacy flows from its capacity to serve the society while protecting and advancing the long-term interests of the nation as a whole.

Power without purpose degenerates into privilege. Privilege without accountability eventually corrodes the state and mauls an entire civilisation. 

NEITHER THE PRESENT NOR THE PREVIOUS DISPENSATION APPEAR INSPIRING

The mounting criticism of the present dispensation must not induce amnesia about the failures preceding 2014. Public concerns over corruption, policy paralysis, patronage, dynastic entitlement and privileged access to the state significantly contributed to the political rejection of that order.

India cannot return to that model and call it a renewal or progress. But equally, no government can derive indefinite legitimacy merely from the failures of its predecessors.

The present dispensation came to power carrying expectations of cleaner governance, stronger national security, patriotic purpose and decisive leadership. These expectations must ultimately be judged against performance and institutional outcomes.

Individual leaders may enjoy reputations for personal integrity. That is important. But personal financial integrity and institutional integrity cum efficacy are two different propositions.

An honest individual operating within a compromised institutional ecosystem cannot indefinitely produce honest outcomes.

Hence India's challenge is not merely to find good rulers. It is to construct institutions in which good people can excel, ordinary people are compelled to perform, and dishonest people find criminality, manipulation and corruption increasingly difficult.

I find it shocking the manner in which rival political formations have been peddling parasitism to grab power. They don’t realise that they are injecting a poison of mass paralysis in our society that will crush energy, enterprise and innovation from our society and permanently weaken us in a competitive world. 

Not a single political party in India has transparent funding. Bureaucracy is more about entitlement and loyalty rather than professional competence and productivity. Without patronage, our corporate class just cannot survive leave aside competing globally. 

Both the Government and the opposition have been claiming good intentions. But both have demonstrated extreme poverty of good statecraft or genuine commitment and capacity to optimise good of the nation.

CORRUPTION IS NOT MERELY A MORAL FAILURE

India must similarly abandon the narrow conception of corruption as bribery or theft of public money.

Systemic corruption has far more serious consequences. It not only distorts political funding, appointments, procurement, regulation, policing and criminal justice but cripples a nation and permanently perverts health, education and psyche of it’s people. It can undermine fair economic competition and preserve mediocrity while obstructing excellence. At sufficiently advanced levels it can create vulnerabilities even within institutions connected with national security.

Corruption, when institutionalised, ceases to be merely an economic offence. It becomes a strategic vulnerability for the nation. 

National security therefore does not commence at the territorial frontier. It commences with the integrity of institutions and conducts within society. 

My formulation of Indocracy places the integrity and efficiency of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary alongside human development, technological innovation, economic advancement, containment of corruption and management of security and geopolitical challenges. They are interconnected elements of national power and not isolated enclaves of a moral edifice.

A state cannot remain strategically strong for long if its institutions become internally weak. Both the ruling dispensation and the opposition offer no solution in this direction.

THE OPPOSITION MUST OFFER MORE THAN AN ALTERNATIVE GOVERNMENT

The Opposition has both the right and responsibility to subject the Government to scrutiny. No democratic government should fear legitimate scrutiny.

But scrutiny is not strategy. Protest is not policy. And opposition to a government is not automatically an alternative philosophy of governance.

Recent protest organisers themselves demanded what they described as systemic electoral reform. At the same time, reporting on their press conference noted that supporting data was not provided there for their allegation concerning the removal of approximately 13 crore names from electoral rolls. Besides focus only on Election Commission amidst so many failures and anti people activities by the ruling dispensation and its favoured incumbents within bureaucracy and judiciary.

Serious assertions require credible evidence. Equally, widespread erosion of public confidence deserves serious institutional answers.

The greater question before the Opposition, however, is different. Where is the comprehensive blueprint for judicial reform, police reform, electoral reform, political-finance reform, civil-service transformation, local governance, education, healthcare, technological advancement and national security?

India does not merely need an Opposition capable of defeating a government. It requires an alternative capable of transforming governance. This is squarely missing.

Otherwise, genuine public grievances become instruments for electoral mobilisation. Power changes hands, beneficiaries of corruption change, rhetoric changes, but weak and subverts institutional architecture survive crippling our optimal progress.

Regime Change in 2014 failed to eradicate woes of corruption and mismanagement of preceding era. There is no hope on the horizon for a national transformation even amidst intense protests in Delhi. 

A HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CONGRESS

The Indian National Congress confronts, in this context, an important historical choice.

It can liberate itself from perceptions of dynastic entitlement and reinvent itself through internal democracy, merit, intellectual openness, institutional reform, economic dynamism, national cohesion and credible national-security thinking. The manner in which the Congress scion was seen physically pushing and pulling a sitting Chief Minister or junior dynast sum up internal power equations within this party. It thrives on architecture of  inherited entitlement and authority alongside caste equations and coalitional arithmetic. It is seeking to exploit anti-incumbency rather than offering any hope for transformational progress. 

A strong India requires an effective Government. But a strong India also requires a credible Opposition.

Weak opposition eventually weakens government because absence of serious competition destroys incentive for self-correction within a political system.

India needs competition among ideas and institutions, not merely competition among personalities, which we confront today. 

Picture is clear in this direction. Large sections of people who dislike this Govt still dread return of Vadranomics and Chidambarnomics and persistence of organised corruption and crony capitalism. The change promised by opposition shall only be change in faces and not a change in substance of governance. 

A CIVILISATION CANNOT PERPETUALLY FRAGMENT ITSELF

India cannot indefinitely organise its political life around ever finer divisions of caste, religion, region and inherited grievance.

Historical inequities must be corrected. Discrimination must be resisted. Vulnerable communities require protection. But every citizen deserves dignity, justice and equitable opportunity. An institutional ecosystem in this direction must be backed by bold leadership driven initiatives.

But correcting disadvantage is not the same as perpetuating identity as the primary currency of political mobilisation.

A civilisation cannot endlessly subdivide itself and simultaneously aspire to greatness.

The challenge is not to erase India's diversity. Such an objective would be neither desirable nor possible. The challenge is to create a common civic identity that is sufficiently powerful to transcend these divisions without suppressing them.

Diversity requires protection. Nationhood requires cohesion. There is no contradiction between the two when the statecraft is driven by sagacity.

A GLOBAL CRISIS OF STATECRAFT

India's predicament must also be placed within a wider global context.

On October 08, 2026, I addressed marine scientists, academics and entrepreneurs representing whole of Indo-Asia and Australia in Indonesia’s Hang Tuah University at Surabaya on a topic captioned; “Maritime Innovations and Strategic Statecraft”.  I called for a paradigm shift in the idea of statecraft both domestically and globally. I maintained that it was high time that developing nations, especially the larger ones, demonstrated their capacity and commitment through practice and not preaching, to gain a stronger economic, technological and security space in global community. If these states were able to optimize their comprehensive national capacities, they could collectively contain the disadvantages arising out of the power asymmetry vis a vis larger powers like China and the United States. Progress in this direction called for building entire ecosystem of collaboration, competition and innovation by a process of cross domain and inter-geographical collaboration and knowledge sharing in the realm technology, education, governance and security. That alone can lend greater stability to the current global order and protect resilience of integrated supply chains in a hyper connected world.

Humanity has achieved astonishing technological progress. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum science, autonomous systems, space technology and instantaneous global communications are transforming human possibilities. Yet innovation in governance and statecraft has not kept pace.

Humanity has become extraordinarily sophisticated in its instruments and surprisingly deficient in governing their consequences.

There appears to be an intellectual sclerosis in the realm of statecraft.

While Western countries retain formidable advantages in wealth, science, technology, educational institutions and governance infrastructure, Chinese challenge is admirable. Historical processes including colonial expansion contributed to the accumulation of Western power. Yet contemporary Western societies themselves confront challenges of polarisation, institutional distrust and concentration of influence.

China represents a different trajectory. In my published formulation of Indocracy, I have discussed China's integration of economic, military, technological and governance capabilities, while also questioning important features and consequences of its model.

Yet a deficiently and sub-optimally performing India and Indo-Asia threatened larger stability and security of the global order as well as humanity. This causes severe vulnerability to strategic equilibrium within global geopolitical equilibrium.  India must not mechanically imitate others. A civilisation of India's scale must have the confidence to innovate.

INDIA DOES NOT LACK TALENT; IT LACKS AN ECOSYSTEM

Perhaps the greatest paradox is that India does not suffer from any paucity of ideas and spirited doers, leaders and innovators. Our biggest challenge is fragile institutions cartelised by subversive networks. These have been increasingly obstructing rise of a healthy ecosystem where merit or talent can thrive and the same can be harnessed for larger national good.

India has exceptional scientists, technologists, military professionals, entrepreneurs, administrators, doctors, academics and managerial leaders. Indians occupy positions of extraordinary responsibility in global corporations and centres of innovation. Within India too, few institutions of remarkable excellence exist.

Yet these islands of excellence coexist with widespread institutional mediocrity. This contradiction is itself an indictment of our governance architecture.

India's failure is not its inability to produce excellence. It is its inability to convert scattered excellence into systemic national capacity.

Strong states and great civilisations identify talent, protect integrity, reward competence, facilitate collaboration, ensure fair competition, punish criminality and create institutions through which individual capabilities multiply the collective strength of society.

My concept of Indocracy has consistently emphasised precisely this mutually empowering relationship between individual, society and state.

INDIA NEEDS A MORE INTELLIGENT DEMOCRACY

The answer to the present crisis is therefore neither less democracy nor authoritarianism; 

It is a more intelligent, accountable and outcome-oriented institutions of democracy. This is possible. Provided we apply integrated wisdom from human behaviour to global geopolitics and societal psyche. 

While broader goals of every state and society are same. Yet every society and state have their own unique identity. They are at different levels of social, psychological and institutional integrity, cohesion and evolution. Their priorities also vary. Hence, there is need for variation in their institutional structures and procedures. 

India faces a unique domestic and external context. National cohesion and stronger awareness of external threats and challenges are far more critical here than in whole of Europe. 

As a nation, we must rise above factions. Our institutions must rise above personalities. Merit must prevail over pedigree. Collective identity of citizenship must get stronger than sectarian mobilisation. Integrity must replace patronage. Capability must replace dependency. Innovation must displace stagnation. Reform must take precedence over rhetoric. Above everything, statecraft must rise above the mere pursuit of state power. And the leaders  who have the statesmanly courage, commitment and credibility to pursue these objective, alone can offer hope to the nation at this juncture. 

Leaders of integrity are valuable. But robust institutions create more enduring value than great leaders.

Great leaders may initiate transformation. But only great institutions can sustain it.

 

NEED TO GO BEYOND COSMETIC CHANGE

India unquestionably needs change. But we have changed governments before. We have changed leaders. We have changed slogans. We have changed economic policies. Yet we have not sufficiently transformed the deeper architecture of the state that can optimise our national power and quality of governance. The net result is our sub optimal output on all parameters of governance and national security. Our poor statecraft strategy is manifest in expanding power asymmetry with our northern neighbour and our shrinking civilisational space from whole of Indo-Asia to even inside a truncated India. India needs a robust statecraft that resurrect its universal humanist core alongside requisite national power to defend and protect it at home and globally. 

That is the unfinished task.

India cannot police its way to greatness. Government cannot communicate its way out of institutional deficiencies. Opposition cannot protest its way into statesmanship. Business cannot substitute wealth creation with privileged access to political power. Nor can charismatic leaders, however popular or personally honest, substitute themselves for dynamic institutions.

The real contest facing India is therefore no longer simply Government versus Opposition, BJP versus Congress, Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi, or Right versus Left. Those remain legitimate contests of democratic politics.

But the contest of statecraft is larger: stagnation versus transformation; entitlement versus merit; cartelisation versus citizenship; institutional capture versus institutional integrity; dependency versus capability; fragmentation versus civilisational cohesion; politics for power versus statecraft for national advancement.

If Government merely attempts to contain public anger, India will squander this moment. If Opposition merely exploits that anger to capture power, India will squander it again.

But if this moment awakens the country to the necessity of rebuilding institutions, restoring public trust, liberating human potential and reconstructing the relationship between citizen, society and state, the present turbulence could still become an opportunity for national regeneration.

India does not merely need another government. It needs a better state.

It does not merely need another political alternative. It needs an institutional alternative.

And it does not merely need stronger rulers. It needs stronger citizens, stronger institutions and a stronger relationship between:  society and the state; individual and society; and man and nature. This is Indocracy. 

The defining question of our time is therefore not: Who will rule India next?

It is: What kind of India are we building for those who come next?

That is the larger transition from the politics of acquiring power to the science of exercising power for a civilisational purpose.

That is the transition from mere democracy to a more evolved architecture of democratic statecraft.

That is the essence of Indocracy that I have been advocating and explaining for quite sometime.

 

Jitendra Kumar Ojha | Indocracy