India celebrates its 76th Republic Day on 26th January 2025. The founding fathers of the Indian Republic envisioned a governance framework where state institutions operated autonomously, free from political interference, to uphold democracy, justice, and the rule of law. They emphasised the principle of separation of powers, ensuring that the legislature, executive, and judiciary functioned independently, each serving as a check on the others to prevent the concentration of power.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and other framers of the Constitution recognised that only through autonomous institutions could public trust in governance be sustained. Judging by the similarity in names, India seems to have borrowed the structure and functionality in governance from its former colonial master, the United Kingdom.
The UK has a robust framework of autonomous state institutions that have been designed to maintain impartiality and operate independently to serve the public interest. Institutions such as the Bank of England, the Electoral Commission, and the National Crime Agency (NCA) exemplify British commitment to the rule of law, transparency, and accountability.
Similarly, India has made autonomous state institutions like the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Election Commission of India (ECI), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), National Investigative Agency (NIA), Enforcement Directorate (ED), and Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
However, unlike the UK, India’s track record in maintaining the separation of powers and a transparent accountability mechanism is quite poor and successive governments in India have destroyed the autonomy of its state institutions using political and systemic pressures.
Bulldozer Injustice and Encounter Killings
The capitulation of the local administration, led by DMs/Collectors, to political pressures is deeply concerning. While they represent the state government and head the district administration, they are duty-bound to uphold the Constitution and laws impartially.
Unfortunately, India’s bureaucracy often obeys political masters, even at the cost of legality and ethics. For example, under the local administration in different states of India, a new phenomenon has emerged called ‘bulldozer (in)justice’. Homes of political opponents, criminals, and religious minorities were bulldozed as a kind of “instant justice” and retribution.
However, according to the Supreme Court of India, the illegal demolition of an accused person’s property constitutes a violation of his/her fundamental, constitutional, and legal rights. Emphasising the doctrine of separation of powers, the apex court reiterated that only the judiciary holds the authority to determine guilt and assess whether state actions overstep constitutional limits. It declared that state government officials cannot unilaterally exercise judicial functions, nor can property demolition be imposed as punishment without due trial. Such actions by the executive encroach on the judiciary’s exclusive domain, undermines the rule of law and the foundational principles of justice.
Another grave loophole in our polity is the troubling rise in extrajudicial killings. Recent police “encounters” in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu highlight a pattern of vigilante justice where alleged criminals are summarily executed without trial. These killings, celebrated as acts of “zero tolerance” on crime, bypass due process, effectively criminalising the police while promoting a culture of impunity. The political establishment, rather than censuring such acts, often applauds them, using inflated encounter statistics to showcase a tough-on-crime stance. Public indifference to these violations is driven by the perception that accused individuals, often implicated in heinous crimes, deserve such treatment. However, this normalisation of lawlessness erodes the justice system and sounds the death kneel for our state institutions.
The ED ‘Washing Machine’
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in India is a specialised agency under the Ministry of Finance responsible for investigating and enforcing laws related to economic crimes, particularly money laundering and foreign exchange violations.
Critics argue that the ED has become a tool of intimidation, silencing dissent and opposition voices. ED investigations overwhelmingly target opposition leaders, often on questionable grounds, while sparing individuals who align with the ruling party, thus damaging its credibility and impartiality. According to an Opposition MP, “The BJP has become a washing machine which washes away the sins of the tainted by merely joining hands with the party. As much as 95% of the investigations against politicians by these agencies are targeted against Opposition parties to silence them and destabilise democratic principles and constitutional morality of the nation. This clearly shows the strategy of BJP to actively use agencies in leaving the members of Opposition parties with no option but to defect. This has undermined the credibility of India’s public institutions to the extent that they are not being taken seriously. The ED has become popular in Maharashtra not as the Enforcement Directorate but rather as the ‘extortion department’ of the BJP.”
‘Crawl or we will come and get you’
It is not just the DM, the police or the ED that is infected with this disease of bending over backwards for the politicians in government, every state institution in our country is accused of compromising its constitutionally granted autonomy. Be it SEBI, CBI, NIA or ECI, there are scores of instances reported in the media, where it is very apparent that the institution/agency has done something to benefit those in power or strengthen their political agenda.
This erosion of autonomy has severely undermined public trust in these institutions, which were envisioned as impartial guardians of democracy. Their perceived partisanship not only damages their credibility but also weakens the checks and balances essential for a healthy constitutional democracy.
Addressing prominent editors and journalists convened at the Press Club of India to voice their concerns over the CBI raids on NDTV, veteran journalist and founder of NDTV, Pranoy Roy said, “So their basic idea is crawl or we’ll come and get you. Stand up, they’ll never come for you. Mark my words. And my second point is – in this whole thing, our fight and our criticism, frankly, is not against the CBI or the ED or the income tax. It’s against politicians who are manipulating and want to eviscerate these institutions of our country. They want to disembowel them. We are not fighting them. The poor guys, they have families. But we are fighting. We know the politicians. They tell us, off the record, why they have to do this. And you’ll get these politicians making all kinds of claims and using these little forces, these institutions, and ruining and destroying our country.”
If those at the helm of these state institutions don’t stop ‘crawling’, all of us will lose our freedom and that is ruinous for our beloved nation.