There are days when I truly wonder whether governance in India has become a kind of elaborate stage performance in which the audience is expected to clap on cue even as the scenery collapses and the drunk actor passes out behind the curtains. Because what we now have is not a state that deliberates, consults, weighs evidence, or even considers feasibility. What we have is a state that announces. And once the announcement is made, the rest of us have to rearrange our lives around the consequences.
It is remarkable how predictable this pattern has become. Every major decision arrives suddenly, wrapped in patriotic theatre, delivered in an authoritative tone that brooks no dissent, and then left to ordinary Indians to absorb, improvise, and survive. And in every case, the people who had no say in the decision are the ones forced to carry the burden of its fallout.
DEMONETISATION
Demonetisation remains the purest expression of this style of governance. It was inflicted overnight, as if the entire country were a blackboard on which the government could erase and redraw currency at will. People died in bank queues, small businesses collapsed, GDP growth faltered (Dr Manmohan Singh predicted it rather accurately, if you care to remember), and the informal economy took a blow that it still has not fully recovered from. And then, in the absurd cherry atop this tragic sundae, it emerged that the new notes did not fit the country’s ATMs. Machines had to be recalibrated manually, one by one, while citizens stood outside wondering whether their own money would ever return to their hands. It was cruelty wrapped in incompetence, sold as reform.
COVID LOCKDOWN
Then came the Covid lockdown, announced with just hours’ notice, as though a nation of 1.3 billion could be frozen by fiat. Migrant workers were stranded without food or wages, walking hundreds of kilometres home in blistering heat. People collapsed on railway tracks from exhaustion and hunger. The virus was real. The suffering that followed was not inevitable (Rahul Gandhi had called this out even when the government was in the business-as-usual mode pre-lockdown). It was designed by a government that prioritised optics over planning.
GST ROLLOUT
GST was presented as a grand simplification but implemented as a rolling labyrinth. Small traders bore the brunt of portal failures, confusing slabs, erratic notifications, and impossible filing schedules. For the corner shopkeeper and the small manufacturer, it was less a reform and more a recurring administrative nightmare (You will remember Rahul Gandhi calling it Gabbar Singh Tax because of its extortionist nature). Complexity became the new normal, and predictability became a luxury available only to those who could afford accountants.
AGNIVEER
The Agnipath scheme demonstrated the same arrogance. Generations of young people, especially in rural India, had trained for stable military careers that sustained entire families. Suddenly, they were told their futures were now four-year contracts with no pension. Protests erupted across the country. Veterans raised alarms about readiness and morale (Once again, it was Rahul Gandhi who cautioned against messing with this part of the armed forces). But the government, enamoured with its newest slogan, pressed ahead without listening to any of the people whose lives would be reshaped.
FARM LAWS
The Farm Laws were drafted without transparency, rammed through Parliament without debate, and defended with stubbornness that would have been admirable if it were not so destructive. Farmers camped for over a year on Delhi’s borders, living in harsh conditions, until the laws were finally withdrawn. Consultation came not before the law but in the form of mass protest (And guess who stood by the farmers then? Rahul Gandhi). The government listened only when compelled.
ARTICLE 370 AND LADAKH
The abrogation of Article 370 was executed through secrecy, detentions, and a communications blackout. Ladakh, carved out as a Union Territory and promised development, soon realised that centralisation had displaced local autonomy. Ladakhis today demand statehood and constitutional protections including Sixth Schedule safeguards. When decisions are taken about people without their involvement (Rahul Gandhi rightly said about this particular unilateral abrogation that “This nation is made by its people, not plots of land”), they eventually find their way to the streets.
CAA
The Citizenship Amendment Act introduced religion into citizenship qualification, a move fundamentally incompatible with the secular promise of the Constitution. In a country where millions lack formal documentation, the burden of proof fell sharply on the poor. A law that should have been designed with maximal sensitivity was introduced with maximal disregard. It goes without saying that Rahul Gandhi was once again, on the right side of history.
ETHANOL BLENDING
Even the ethanol blending policy, seemingly technical and benign, was altered in ways that created uncertainty in farming patterns, food security, price stability, and engine performance. Again, a sweeping decision imposed from above, with the consequences handed to farmers and consumers to sort out. Who highlighted it? Yep, the Indian National Congress.
SIR
The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls has been another exercise in careless disruption. In Bihar, ADR found over five lakh duplicate voters still on the rolls after the so-called cleanup. In West Bengal, tens of thousands of genuine voters faced deletion because the documentation demands were unrealistic for the poor. Electoral integrity was supposedly the goal, yet disenfranchisement became the predictable outcome. Rahul Gandhi, as LOP, made an important speech on this issue.
DGCA FDTL
And then we come to the aviation meltdown, which revealed something almost existential about how this government understands regulation. DGCA tightened pilot fatigue norms by increasing weekly rest from 36 to 48 hours, restricting night landings, and adjusting circadian classifications. On paper this aligned with international standards. In reality it collided with India’s chronic shortage of employable, current, type-rated pilots.
Globally, a short-haul aircraft typically requires 10 to 14 pilots to maintain a safe, stable roster. In India, many carriers routinely operate with 6 to 8, and sometimes even fewer once medical unfitness, training cycles, leave rosters, and recurrent checks are accounted for. DGCA knew this. Airlines knew this. Everyone in the ecosystem knew this. And yet the regulator implemented the new rules as if India enjoyed the crew depth of the Gulf majors or the planning discipline of European carriers.
And the aviation minister, having already sold off the profitable airports and having no airline to run and therefore no operational responsibilities left to distract him, essentially had one job to ensure the safety and stability of civil aviation through competent oversight and proper consultation. Instead, what we got was regulatory theatre.
The predictable happened. Airlines buckled instantly. Hundreds of flights were cancelled. Passengers slept on terminal floors. The minister issued statements. DGCA quietly rolled back parts of its own rules within days of enforcing them.
This is what happens when a sector that depends on physiology, data, planning, and human factors is governed by announcements instead of analysis. Fatigue science demanded consultation. Operational safety demanded modelling. Common sense demanded realism. Instead, we got bravado followed by collapse followed by denial.
For a ministry that no longer runs an airline, no longer owns airports, and no longer manages ground operations, it was a simple, singular responsibility. And still they failed at the one job left to do.
The broader culture
One can trace this pattern everywhere.
A data protection bill that dilutes citizen safeguards.
Environmental norms weakened despite expert opposition.
Criminal law overhauls passed with minimal deliberation.
Electoral bonds that were so opaque the Supreme Court struck them down.
GPS tracking of vehicles for automatic toll collection announced before quietly burying it.
Phone manufacturers told secretly to install backdoors before rolling back the directive.
The through-line is unmistakable. Consultation is ornamental. Expertise is inconvenient. Stakeholders are irrelevant. And the citizen is always the shock absorber of the state.
And finally
So, has this regime ever taken any stakeholders into account before doing anything?
The honest answer is that it behaves exactly like every loud, hyper-nationalist, chest-thumping Right-wing project anywhere in the world. It keeps declaring its undying love for the country while never recognising the most basic truth that a country is not a flag, not a map, not a slogan, and certainly not a leader. A country is people. Actual people. The ones standing in queues, losing wages, filling forms, stranded in airports, walking home because the government forgot they exist between the announcement and the applause.
And here lies the tragicomedy. Those who shout the loudest about loving the motherland seem unaware that the motherland is not some abstract mother floating in the sky. She is made of 1.4 billion living, breathing citizens who must endure every impulsive decision taken in her name. Loving the nation while ignoring its people is like claiming to love your home while setting fire to every room and insisting the flames are devotion.
Which brings us to the real punchline. The loudest patriots have never paused to ask what the nation actually is. They love the flag, the slogan, the map, the leader. They do not love the citizen. They do not even see the citizen. Yet they claim patriotism as if it were their private property.
This is why Nehru’s question from the freedom struggle still stings. Standing before a crowd, he asked,
People shouted the usual answers about rivers and mountains. Nehru cut through the noise and reminded them that Bharat Mata is not the rocks or the rivers, but the millions of ordinary people who live on that land, and that if you claim to love the country, you must love its people first.
And that remains the blind spot of today’s muscular nationalism. It loves the motherland in theory and hates the children in practice. It wraps itself in the tricolour but cannot bear the sight of the citizen. It salutes the soil but scorns the people who stand upon it. It roars about Bharat Mata while forgetting that Bharat Mata is standing right next to them in a queue, on a platform, in an airport, in a field, in a slum, quietly enduring the consequences of every impulsive decision taken in her name.
A country is not performative devotion.
A country is its people.
And any government, ideology, or self-proclaimed patriot that cannot grasp this simple fact has no business claiming to love the nation at all.
