By – Amar Yumnam
The biggest challenge of the Indian democracy today is the fast decline of public trust on the government. This has been very strongly manifested by what had happened on June 20, 2026 thanks to the youths questioning of the Indian government, particularly relating to the decline of the educational institutions and the unprecedented use of violence inflicted on the protesting youths by the state forces in a dubious way. This distrust of the government was further deepened by the absence of both the Prime Minister and the Home Minister from Parliament; the question naturally arose if they had committed errors of judgement in dealing with the protesting youths. In an even more stark way, the protest of the students and youth on genuine causes was throughout the country including the case of a girl stopping a police vehicle for forty minutes at a time of heavy rains forcing the later to free the students who were picked up for protest.
The importance of trust in any polity seems to be irrationally sidelined and emboldened by personal interests of the politicians in power. Now the distrust on the government has been extended to once considered to be arguably the best institution for a genuine democracy – the Election Commission of India.
My losing sleep gets deeper with the fact that the distrust of the government is both wide and deep in the case of my home province – Manipur. In fact, the people feel that it is as good as non-existent. Nevertheless, it is unavoidable that they represent the province and should see to it that they put the issues of the province with the conviction and commitment to overcome any weakness of the Federal Government to appreciate. Last week, the Chief Minister was in Delhi to hold meetings and discussions on the burning and unending issue of Manipur relating to the National Register of Citizens 1951 consequent on continued social killings. But I was shocked to see him with the Union Minister of Parliamentary affairs the very next day in photographs published in all the local dailies. There are certain issues here. First, there is no harm in his meeting with friends in Delhi while being there. But meeting with the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs can in no case have anything to do with the burning issues of Manipur. Thus, the photograph need not be put out in the public as if Manipur is being discussed. Secondly, if the meeting were because of the necessity of canvassing in Dehi to really achieve the objective for fruitful discussion of Manipur issues, it immediately implies the decline of the federal quality in the Indian democracy coupled by his poverty of capability level to carry the discussions along his lines.
It is important to note in the minds of the BJP ministers that the authoritarian attitude and action cannot continue for long. It is the trust of the people which is of utmost importance. They need to read or reread what TRUST is all about. They should remember the warning Erich Fromm said in1944: “Every discovery which has been made and will be made has a long history in which the truth contained in it finds a less and less veiled and distorted expression and approaches more and more adequate formulations. The development of scientific thought is not one in which old statements are discarded as false and replaced by new and correct ones; it is rather a process of continuous reinterpretation of older statements, by which their true kernel is freed from distorting elements . . . the way of scientific progress is constructive reinterpretation of basic visions.” Winning the Elections should not be taken as Trust could be taken for granted. Never forget the diversity of the country. “When people trust each other, transaction costs are reduced, organizations run better, the need for formal regulation reduces, governments provide services more efficiently, policy promises become more credible, and financial systems develop better.” The people of Manipur do not have trust on the present government and it is an act which gives the convenient atmosphere for the few Ministers to exploit any situation without drawing the attention of the people. But democracy ultimately depends on “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trust or, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.”
The experienced of Manipur of the last three years should teach all: “Yet the fact that democracy requires mechanisms that help produce a decent political life in the absence of less than complete trust does not mean that democracy can do without trust. In almost trivial ways, without trust the most basic activities of everyday life would become impossible. Why should we not expect some fundamental relationships between this fact and the ways we govern ourselves?”
