'A dirty joke': Full weight of poor governance on ordinary folks in Mother of Democracy

By Rosamma Thomas*

On March 11, Dainik Bhaskar journalist Tushar Rai posted a video on social media site X of a couple from Agra in Uttar Pradesh emptying a plastic packet filled with documents – they were at the police station at Kheragarh, and they were attempting to draw the attention of the police to their plight – their young daughter had been raped, their son, a witness, had been murdered, and the men responsible for the crime were also attempting to implicate another son in a false case.

The police were allegedly unwilling to act in the matter, and the poor couple’s actions betrayed the rage of the oppressed and helpless. This reporter attempted to reach the Uttar Pradesh home department to understand what action was being taken in this matter, but the person answering the phone requested that she drop an email with all particulars of the case.

Supreme Court advocate Colin Gonsalves must have felt that rage and helplessness too, as he wrote an open letter on the SC’s refusal to take up a plea seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the September 2022 murder of young hotel receptionist Ankita Bhandari in Uttarakhand, allegedly after she refused to serve as a prostitute to politically connected guests at the hotel where she worked.

Earlier this month, a friend in New Delhi described the plight of her elderly domestic help – the woman’s son and daughter-in-law had fled their residence in Rohini and not breathed a word to anyone at all, including their mother. They had been repaying a loan they had taken in installments, but when they attempted to find out what sum remained to be paid, they were told that all they returned thus far was only the interest!

In August 2024, The Hindu’s reporter in Ahmedabad described the chaos and exploitation of moneylenders in Gujarat, who were pushing people to suicide. Since January 2023, Gujarat police has been in “special drive” mode against those lending money at exorbitant rates of interest, driving people to suicide. In just the first week of the launch, 31 accused were arrested in Surat alone.

By October 2024, Mahesh Langa, the Hindu reporter, was arrested on an alleged GST fraud matter; in February 2025, his bail plea was rejected, and the journalist’s lawyer stated in court that documents recovered from his home related to Gujarat Maritime Board and Adani Limited.

The suffering in the Mother of Democracy is not confined to humans within national boundaries – it encompasses animals too, even those belonging to other nations. A forum of organizations with an interest in wildlife conservation in South Africa has written to the environment ministry of South Africa to investigate the export of a large number of wild animals to Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, otherwise known as Vantara, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently posed for cameras with a range of animals.

The first handcuffed migrants who were returned from the US gained some media attention, but that has since waned. At least four flights arrived from the US, carrying back Indians not wanted there. That is about 300 of the over two lakh unauthorized Indians in US, according to 2022 data from the US Department of Homeland Security.

Of India’s vast jobless, 83% are youth; wages of those employed have declined or remained stagnant, even as inflation climbs and the rupee’s value slides drastically.

These days, “Mother of Democracy” is a dirty joke.

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*Freelance journalist

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