The state power has come handy for these groups owing allegiance to BJP and even as charges and counter-charges would be argued out in courts, the Modi Government has little comfort just on the eve of a critical session of Parliament with great expectations for a Budget on February 29, designed to give a decisive push for economic reforms and growth out of current slump.

A partisan warfare has been ignited by a series of incidents in the wake of rough handling of events in the Central University of Hyderabad University leading to the suicide of a brilliant student Rohith Vemula, reportedly a Dalit.

Hardly had the nation-wide stir on this episode died down, the arrest of JNU student Kanhaiya Kumar, on a charge of sedition in questionable circumstances, has touched off grave concerns of arbitrary use of power at the Centre seen as violative of fundamental rights of citizens. The ugly scenes of beating of protestors and media personnel in court premises and silently watched by the police, do not speak well for orderly governance.

Country-wide protests by students and teachers and wider sections of public have followed throwing into bold relief issues of academic freedom as also as to where India is headed under a strong Government which came into power two years ago with promises of not only corruption-free governance but also transparency and accountability.

Far too many unsavoury events had begun to occur in recent months, beginning with an atmosphere of “intolerance' pervading educational and cultural institutions, with highly agitated scholars and liberals returning their Sahitya Akademy and other awards in protest.

The flipside to this has been the spread abroad of a degree of disenchantment with New Delhi, seemingly at variance with a glorious image of India created by the charismatic Prime Minister in his travels across the world and inviting leading investors to participate in the most liberal environment that the country was offering.

Notwithstanding such disillusionment abroad over the two year record of his Government falling behind earlier expectations, the Prime Minister has recently injected considerable energy to make the third budget of his Government this year a transformative exercise.

But the current wave of internal disquiet over the authoritarian ways of Government to enforce conformity of objectives, as reflected in recent interventions in centres of learning and liberal thought that Universities represent, cannot be ignored for long. It does not make for a healthy start of the budget session or smooth conduct of business.

The political scene is thus vitiated for the Modi Government to embark on major structural reforms and its challenges will also be compounded by the global slowdown – leaving alone the succour from the low oil prices taking care of a good part of Government’s budgetary outgoes.

The Prime Minister himself has lately been getting to grips with the reality of distressed farmers and other sizeable disaffected sections in a situation where market prices for the consumer continue to reign high and jobs are yet to be generated. But he prefers to remain silent over the intense political ferment in the country though he remains fully charged with electioneering through the year.

His silence is taken as approval of the actions of the Home and Human Resource Development Ministries which set off the recent University incidents in the first place. The Minister for HRD Ms. Smriti Irani, in particular, feels emboldened to act as she likes in furtherance of saffronisation of educational institutions and even bring a certain measure of compulsion for the Central Universities to follow the dictates of Government.

Accordingly, she had called a meeting of all the Vice-Chancellors to pass “unanimously” resolutions, one of which directs all Central Universities to hoist the National Flag atop 200 and odd feet polls, whatever the costs, as a standing symbol of nationalism superseding all else in what may be considered as centres of free thinking, debate and resolution functioning within the ambit of our constitution.

Such a logic presumably would hold good for every public institution, funded by Government or not. In any case, this helps to make a claim that whatever is done by Government had been to promote nationalism against subversive elements in institutions of learning. It is another matter whether ‘nationalism’ is trotted out to crush dissent with groups of Government supporters ready to take the law into their own hands as it happened in the JNU fall-out.

But there is no doubt that the image of India both as a bulwark of democracy with guaranteed freedoms for all its citizens and as a multi-cultural nation has been sullied as never before in so short a time after Mr Narendra Modi’s ascent to power, notwithstanding the high expectations he himself generated by his spectacular leadership qualities which were on display over large parts of the world.

That the deadlock in Rajya Sabha over GST and other key legislation has not been overcome before the start of the budget session with a spirit of accommodation between Government and the opposition, the Congress in this case, is not lost sight of abroad and India’s credit rating is also linked up with Government’s ability to push through the promised reforms.

All growth projections for India in 2016 and 2017 by international institutions are on the assumption of implementation of structural reforms. While currently India is regarded as a “sweet spot” amid slowdown everywhere, the country is no exception to slower activity in emerging economies, but still it may be robust to be growing above 7 per cent, the fastest among all countries. (IPA Service)