Matter of Trust

Shantanu Thakur

(thakur.santanu@gmail.com)

The world’s dominant currency note, the dollar, has this statement on its bills: “In God We Trust.” In spite of the currency being legal tender protected by the Federal Bank, the nation-builders thought it wiser to include this universal sense of belief in its currency. This speaks volumes about what they stand for. The Indian rupee is also a promissory note: “I promise to pay the bearer...” In life, trust is important, as is faith. All religions and scriptures underline this. Trust doesn’t necessarily have to depend on legal enforcement. It’s a mutual operating factor that humanity cannot do without.

As much as trust is important in day-to-day life, so is it in our political existence, more so in a democracy. One must have trust in the system, in our leaders, and also in the citizens. The huge election exercise in our country is heavily dependent on trust; apart from constitutional, legal, and administrative safeguards and elaborate procedures. Citizens must have trust in the institutions that are entrusted with the responsibility to honour that trust. The Supreme Court of India, the Indian Parliament, the ECI, and every other entity associated with it are bound together by a bond of trust. But trust in institutions is not just instinctive; it has to be built up and generated; like they say, justice must not simply be done but must seem to have been done. It’s something like the concept of truth, which has solid bedrock in the consciousness. The most vociferously avowed truth sometimes does not carry a ring of truth. That’s why perhaps it is said that the truth will come out. In this era of generative AI and post-truths, truth is being manufactured, produced, and intelligently marketed; we really don’t know the real thing from the not-so-real. Only time-tested, trusted, and fearless institutions can uphold the tenets of truth visibly to a confused citizenry. Hence, there is a need to protect the integrity of institutions. Then again, the integrity of an institution is elementarily tied to the integrity of the individuals who manage it; hence, nurturing individuals of character in all walks of life is important. Our country has had pristine institutions whose essence has been held intact by men of unimpeachable strength and character. Any climate change in this aspect cannot be good for anybody.

In the opening scene of the Shakespearean dark tragedy Macbeth, two victorious generals of Denmark are on their way back from a battle when they are met in the heath by three old, ragged witches who prophesize the future to them. The virus of ambitious evil is immediately stoked in one of the generals, while the other takes it with a pinch of salt. While the one is rapt in the labyrinths of his devious ambition, the other says, “If you can look into the sands of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me who neither beg nor fear your favours, nor your hate.” During our election period, politicians display a lot of interest in astrological permutations and combinations of what the stars have to foretell. This Shakespearean allusion has been brought in here because the Indian democracy cauldron is on the boil again. Personal ambition must not prevail over the larger interests of the people.

Like in the cauldron of the rags, all kinds of ingredients have been poured into it to brew the broth out of which might emerge the good, the bad, or even the ugly; we know not for sure. But if unholy intentions do not lurk in the recesses of the designs of the players, the evil can be kept at a distance. That’s why, again, guardian institutions and a voluntary willingness to obey the unenforceable are necessary. Criminal track records, antisocial behaviour of candidates in the fray, assessment card profiles of political parties, precedents and antecedents—everything is important. Easier said than done, but ignoring these could be defeatist. Law Commissions, the Supreme Court, the ECI, and leading public interest groups have been long insisting on electoral and other structural reforms in the polity, but nothing much has been seen so far. Like in the economy, game-changers are probably overdue. Dipankar Gupta, in his article in the ToI, has referred to a reported comment by the then Finance Minister of France: “Politicians, socialists, or, conservatives, are all alike; it is the voters who are different.” Game changers, therefore, have to be kick-started by people. We need a lot of start-ups in this sector as well.

Ideology is a thing of the past, something like the oft-cited ‘end of history’, at least for professional politicians. Without looking beyond the boundaries of our own state, the faces we see in any party today were seen yesterday in another. It’s like an open-door policy where anyone is welcome anytime, depending on mutual convenience. While democracy may not have adequate regulatory controls on that, this surely puts paid to the idea of ideology in politics; unless, of course, there’s a calculated upheaval begun from the grassroots, which may again seem impractical. But the ever-emerging new horizons of science and changing geopolitics the world over must make us aware and ready to successfully dovetail into a new world order, which is a hard reality today. Traditional stereotype types must change in the political class as well as in the voter class. Trust, clean fair play, and ideological moorings cannot just be belittled without the system paying a heavy price for them. For democracy is never just a game of numbers; it may be so in an electoral exercise, but democracy as a choice of governance is something over and above that. That the freedom struggle under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi had picked up traction was to a great extent because of the ideological underpinnings on the values of freedom for people. It wasn’t just agitation; it was founded on trust and belief. Currency is important for survival; paramount, therefore, is trust in unfettered institutions and systems manned by men of impeccable merit and character. If these very foundations are non-functional, then perhaps looking for better ones need not be a pipe dream.