Not everyone in politics starts out cynically. Some do. This holds true for the kind of politics that has benefits in terms of holding power — financial, controlling other people's lives or both. In the subcontinent, dictators and wannabe dictators come in all sizes, big and small, from the local to the president-style Prime Minister in-waiting. They are all connected in a complex pyramid of power. What binds them together, across apparently different ideologies, is the notion that certain individuals are more important than people. It takes an immense amount of narcissism to think that most people are ignorant and worthless. That 'people' can be tactically utilized, but they should never be empowered. For then they could question power hierarchies that maintain this relationship of the powerful individuals lording over the people, sometimes even in the form of the most benevolent despot.
The people variously are a 'bag of potatoes, 'disunited, non-martial Hindus', 'ignorant and superstitious masses' and other things that are irritating to the 'enlightened' narcissist.The government is not a bicycle, a neutral piece of machinery that can be driven by anyone towards any end. The deep state controls the breaks. Unelected bureaucrats, big business, planners, think tanks, academicians, military and security men, mediawallahs, contractors, acolytes and pimps in collusion with narcissistic individuals with some network among the people form the deep state. While they swear by their Constitution, they decide when to ignore its humane sections. In jails, great care is taken to see to it that inmates don't have anything like a wire or pieces of cloth or things by which they could commit suicide. At the same time, deaths by torture in jail or in police custody, 'encounters' are ordered and implemented. It is the deep state's interest that binds these two apparently contradictory things. This real sovereign decides the time and place of illegality.But the people are hardly passive victims.
When a genuine broad-based democratic challenge appears and gains critical mass, the deep state uses its greatest weapon — that of co-option of individuals who come to represent people's resistance. The goings-on in the inner chambers of the deep state has a seductive charm to it. Even those who view such things cynically also crumble. Trappings of power make them want to suspend their commitment to people and believe in the special value of unbridled power — that there really is no alternative, but this. This isn't simple co-option, but seduction at a visceral level. They want to fit-in, relax, feel important and maintain a pretense of dissent. Yet, not everyone can be co-opted. There have been good souls.
Their commitment to the people sustains human liberty when monuments crumble.The magnitude of difference between the characteristics of an at-least nominally democratic constitutional state and the deep state, is a measure of transparency and democratic functioning. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is yet another expression of people's unending hope for dignity and rights. Whether the AAP is up to that challenge is another matter. It too has some characters that are stuck waist-deep in the existing power establishment. Whether they will chose to rise or sink into seduction, only time will tell. AAP also has some very good souls. One thing is clear. The deep state is not entirely confident about AAP which is already too big to ignore. It hasn't found a way to fully co-opt it. It is still too much of a wild card.
The author is a brain scientist at MIT
