“If people protest, you slap cases,” Bombay high court admonished the prosecution.“All citizens are being made slaves of the Indian government… They cannot stage protests, they cannot agitate – what is all this?” Justice Madhav Jamdar asked. Earlier this July, he quashed the externment of activist Sayeed Ahmed Waheed Chaudhury.Going through the bunch of first information reports against Ahmed Chaudhuri, the judge asked whether shouting slogans like “BJP government murdabad” and “Amit Shah murdabad” is treason. “Can’t citizens raise such slogans? It’s a right of the citizen if he chooses so.” Justice Jamdar reminded the police that they were public servants and “not servants of the PM or CM.”Justice Jamdar was only stating a well accepted constitutional and legal position. High courts, the Supreme Court and eminent jurists have been repeatedly emphasising that Article 19 of the constitution gives the right to free speech – which includes the right to criticise the actions of the state.Listen to what Justice D.Y. Chandrachud emphasised when he was the Chief Justice of India. Right to question the government, he had reiterated, is an inherent right. He did not give any room for misinterpretation of this right.Prime minister Narendra Modi himself, in his happier days in 2015, had said that questioning government is a citizen’s right and vital for democracy. Inaugurating the tenth annual convention of the Right to Information Act, he said, “People should have a right to question the government. This will increase their faith in democracy.”But this was when his supporters believed that Modi had a solution for every problem and whatever he touches becomes gold. In two years, things changed. The Central Information Commission and Right to Information were rendered toothless. A revision of the rules gave him powers to fix the salary of the information commissioner and other commissioners, and also the powers to change their tenure.Simultaneously, all other statutory watchdog panels such as the University Grants Commission, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Comptroller and Auditor General were made dormant. Meanwhile, the enforcement arms of the government were undergoing massive changes. The Enforcement Directorate, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the National Investigation Agency and narcotics control agencies – which were always essentially under the government’s direct control – became fierce tools to harass and punish opposition leaders in the hands of Modi and Amit Shah.§Intolerance to criticism by citizens, minimising of people’s and parliament debates on government policies, arbitrary announcements of public policies without prior consultations and their hasty endorsement, have become the preferred items in the authoritarians’ playbook.Here is the most disturbing truth: since 2019, no one from the ruling hierarchy – Narendra Modi, Amit Shah or their minions — have denied the regime’s well-defined authoritarian blueprint. The last assertion by the PM was in 2015. Since then, there has been a meaningful silence. On the other hand, its focus has been on citizens duties. Forget rights.Also read: Narendra Modi Says Focus on Duties and Forget Rights, But He’s Let India Down on All 11 DutiesIn fact, each of this government’s initiatives – like One Nation, One Election, delimitation to proportionately reduce the opposition-dominated South’s representation in parliament, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls which ends up removing non-BJP voters en mass from the lists and wrests a two-third majority for the ruling party by way of defections and regime changes, and now Amit Shah’s demographic panel – are aimed at establishing a perpetual domination of the ruling duo.Consider the manner in which Shah suddenly introduces bills without any prior discussions or consultations. The 2019 Jammu and Kashmir laws were a case in point. Thus began systematic efforts to reduce the role of parliament. The question hour, its most vital functioning, is being reduced to what the MPs say is a ‘one-way street’ which helps dodge queries and evade replies.Lumping questions together and stonewalling them are now accepted practices under this regime. Thus parliaments’s accountability, a vital function, is being undermined. Now most bills have the same fate as the J&K laws of 2019 – minimum time is given before introduction, avoiding parliamentary panels.Every action of this government is aimed at either consolidating the regime’s dictatorial hold or enhancing electoral support of the Modi-Shah government. Even the National Democratic Alliance-ruled states, including Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Meghalaya, have raised concerns over provisions in the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill which proposes a structural overhaul of higher education. Compare how the Modi regime pushed its National Education Policy and the first National Policy on Education based on the Kothari commission’s recommendations. The Kothari panel gave 23 recommendations including a model of 10+2+3 education – which have served India well. Modi’s NEP appeared to have been prepared without any serious in-depth study. Last heard, it proposed a 5+3+3+4 school curriculum.The government has been changing its own NEP as per emerging pulls and pressures from the various RSS outfits in an ever-changing process. The confusion over teaching of languages was settled recently when the CBSE, after a series of protests, said the Class 10 batch will remain under the existing two-language system and will not be covered by the new policy. Syllabus changes and saffronisation of textbooks have been a continuous process under this government. Any RSS leader could come up with more changes in content to suit the demand from the hardliners. Incidentally, way back in 1980s, the Kothari commission had proposed that the government spend at least 6% of GDP on education till FY 2025-26. Far from meeting the target, the Modi-Shah government spent only 4.1 to 4.6% that year.The Modi-Shah regime has the distinction of having maximum tinkering with the centre-state relations. This is being done without recommendations from commissions like the Sarkaria panel and were affected in fits and starts. The Sarkaria panel was set up in 1983. All its recommendations were aimed at improving federalism. A few of these did not find favour with the then government because of practical difficulties.The only exception of a panel’s words having been heeded was the Kovind panel on One Nation One Election. That had a predictable outcome. It was filled with regime’s known supporters as members. The formation of the panel was also a constitutional requirement.But largely going against the Sarkaria recommendations, each of Modi decisions have been aimed at two purposes: to harass the opposition state governments and tighten dictatorial control.Another vital difference has been that while the Sarkaraia commission had emphasised strengthening centre-state relations, Modi-Shah used their orders in bits and pieces to harass opposition-ruled states. In other words, states now need to spend their funds to give publicity to Modi propaganda. Moreover, while doing so, the states have to scrap their own similar existing schemes which often were being implemented with a local flavour and with more efficiency.Many central schemes were imposed on states with the condition that subtle prefixes like NaMo and PM be retained even though states have to bear a bulk of the financial burden. Central allocations in union budgets are guided by the finance commission. Thus, harassment of opposition states is done by special allocations and the dispersal of special funds. Another favoured method is squeezing the allocated funds in drops.§Two years ago, the Supreme Court had reaffirmed the citizen’s right to free speech, stating that people cannot be prosecuted for criticising government actions or extending good wishes to citizens of another country, such as Pakistan on their independence day. The division bench, comprising Justices Abhay Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan, underlined the fundamental right to free speech under Article 19 of the Indian Constitution.Justice A.P. Shah, who headed the 20th Law Commission, asserted that citizens have the right to question the government on its actions. This is the hallmark of democracy. For this, people need to get all information about government decisions and policies. He regretted the recent trend of making claims and taking policy decisions without adequate information. Since 2019, this writer could not a find a categorical statement by Modi or his man Friday, Shah, on the citizen’s right to make public criticism of government’s various actions. This is deeply disturbing. It is such a stoic silence that it has prompted the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, and jurists, to repeatedly re-iterate the citizens’ constitutional right to criticise the government’s actions. In an age of fractured mandates, personality cults and transactional alliances, P. Raman brings clarity to India’s shifting political equations. With Realpolitik, the veteran journalist peers beneath the slogans and spin to reveal the power plays, spectacle, crises and insecurities driving India’s politics.