Listen to this article:

Let’s dig up a pit; a pit big enough to bury the cliché – of the people, by the people, for the people. Democracy, nay, mother of democracy, now thrives in the rulers’ diktats and policing muscles. Democracy has become the legitimising guise of tyranny, not the soul of governance doctrine. Democracy is used as a subject of prime-ministerial boast on foreign tours, not for celebration of constitutional rights on the streets of the national capital.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs a plane that costs Rs 8,400 crore, a car worth Rs 12 crore and a security cover that gobbles up Rs 1.6 crore daily. But the common citizens can’t get down at the metro station of their choice! All the metro stations around Jantar Mantar are closed because the police brass fears large gatherings of protesters will scar the emperor’s shining image. Jantar Mantar, the only designated protest site in the nation’s capital, is rendered unreachable by multi-layer barricading. For every little girl or boy moving in with a placard in hand, a hundred policemen are waiting to pounce. He, or she, is bundled into the waiting bus within minutes, as if the police are intoxicated by the lust for erasure of any democratic expression. The nervous sidekicks of the emperor sitting in the air-conditioned chambers must not find any trace of dissent anywhere in the country.

October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, filled protesters with heightened sense of freedom and energy. Civil society had given a call for protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar this Gandhi Jayanti. They repeatedly petitioned the Delhi Police for permission at Jantar Mantar, the so-called designated site.

That was a perfectly legitimate demand. But the police follow the emperor’s diktat, not the rulebook.

It created an impregnable fortress around Jantar Mantar, throwing students, activists and politicians into hundreds of waiting buses. Parliamentarian and professor Manoj Jha was aghast as he was dumped into an empty bus that drove away in a jiffy, not giving him a good few minutes to explain reasons for his presence there. Activist Yogendra Yadav met the same fate. The police had to........

© The Wire