Nihar Nalini Sarangi

Two swindlers once told a vain king they could weave a cloth so fine that it was invisible to anyone unfit for his post or hopelessly stupid. The king saw nothing on the loom. His ministers saw nothing. But each, terrified of being called unfit, praised the colours, the texture, the splendour. And so the king walked through his capital in a grand procession, wearing nothing, while the crowd, afraid to be called fools, cheered. Andersen wrote this for children. India is living it as a nation.

Every democracy rests on an unwritten promise: if one institution fails, another will catch the fall. The legislature checks the executive, the judiciary checks both, the press informs the citizen, and the citizen votes. The uncomfortable question India now asks itself is what happens when each pillar is only partly doing its job at the same moment. The Legislature: from debate to arithmetic. Parliament was meant to be the nation’s argument with itself.

Every democracy keeps a favourite phrase for the moment its referees stop being watched. In India today it is “respect the institution.” It is a sound principle and a dangerous alibi, and this week it met its test. The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected at least fourteen times in ten months to decisions on the Special Intensive Revision that they said were taken without their knowledge.