Dr Nishant A.Irudayadason
Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.

Against the background of a general crisis of authority, of all authorities, the collapse of the authority of the government would be catastrophic: it would bring down the ultimate bulwark against the chaos and savagery that threaten our societies. We must twist our necks to the idea that all the disasters that humanity has faced in the past can no longer be repeated. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, much of the Western intelligentsia had rallied to the theory of the end of history through the planetary and definitive triumph of capitalism and the market. The majority of Western elites have made it a religion on which the world of today was built. And when we look at the world today, we see how crazy it was.

We had the financial crisis of 2008 that could happen again, we had incidents of terror attacks that could come back, we had the explosion of violence that was unthinkable, we have pandemic, because of which we ended up believing ourselves being permanently safe. We thought such pandemic couldn’t happen to us anymore after the Spanish flu, so we weren’t prepared for it. If we continue to believe that what has happened to all human societies can no longer happen, we will pay a very high price for it. And what happens to all human societies is that when their unease is too great, their divisions too deep, they instinctively seek to restore their unity in violence. It is the story of the scapegoat of misfortune, of unanimous persecution, of the mimetic violence so well described by René Girard of which the twentieth confirmed to us that it was not the preserve of primitive societies.
As part of the crisis of authority, what unfolds before us is recourse to authoritarianism. The remedy, however, is not in authoritarianism. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that authority is decreed. Authority is not something that is imposed, it is something that is required, it is the legitimacy of the command recognized to the one who exercises it by those over whom it is exercised. The real authority is not that of a leader who lets people die for nothing to the point of provoking peaceful people to resort to violence. The real authority is that of a leader who acquires his prestige through generosity and dedication. Authoritarianism endangers authority. We can feel it very well when we touch the limits as in the management of the present-day health crisis. When we say that the government has legitimacy, we know that legitimacy is fragile and maintaining it is in the art of governing.
Sadly, today our government is not omnipotent, it is impotent. It is everywhere, but it is not strong anywhere. Bureaucratic drift is always a sign of a weak country that hides behind the heap of laws, regulations, procedures, offices, counters the failure of the will and the inability of governments to take responsibility. One of the things we pay for is the rise of criminal responsibility instead of political responsibility, which leads governments and civil servants to think only of covering themselves with the criminal risk that weighs on them when they make decisions. This is a destructive trend that must be reversed.
Most of the measures that have been taken in the management of the health crisis were both absurd and incomprehensible, thanks to policy paralysis and the lack of sense of priority. Voluntary organizations, charitable institutions and local communities have a role to play but we must not confuse what falls under the government and the responsibility of those who govern us. If we want to talk about the chimera of Indian sovereignty that would make India an equivalent to that of an authoritarian state, then something in the current evolution of the country and the aspirations of the people has eluded us.