When Chaos Becomes a Governing Strategy: Understanding India’s Crisis of Leadership

 

When Chaos Becomes a Governing Strategy: Understanding India’s Crisis of Leadership

Hindi Version: https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2025/12/blog-post_6.html

Dictatorial systems do not rely on stability. They rely on confusion, crisis, and the illusion that only one leader can save the nation from the very problems their government helps create. The more chaos a government allows or quietly encourages, the easier it becomes to distract the public, weaken institutions, and retain power. India’s recent trajectory reflects this pattern with unsettling clarity. The Indigo fiasco, which experts warned the government about well in advance, erupted exactly as predicted. No meaningful preventive action was taken, and as thousands of passengers were stranded, many fell into deep anxiety and desperation. Yet what makes this more tragic is that most of these citizens voted for the same leadership that oversaw the collapse. Their familiar refrain, “If not Modi, then who?” demonstrates how deeply ingrained political conditioning can supplant critical judgment.

But Indigo is not the only sign of deeper trouble. India has experienced a wave of major infrastructure failures: trains derailing with deadly consequences, bridges collapsing months after construction, airport ceilings falling in moderate weather, roads dissolving after a single monsoon, tunnels cracking, and large public works failing well before their expected lifespan. These are not coincidences or acts of fate. They are the result of a system where contracts are awarded based on political loyalty, not technical competence. Oversight is weak, corruption dilutes budgets, and public safety becomes secondary. Every collapsed structure is more than a physical failure; it is a financial one, representing taxpayer money poured into projects that were never meant to last.

The decline extends to India’s public services. Government schools are being neglected or shut down, leaving families with no option but expensive private education. Public hospitals, once the lifelines for millions, are now understaffed, underfunded, or closed altogether. This is where the government’s strategy becomes clearer: weaken public systems, then introduce schemes that appear to “help” the poor while quietly transferring public funds to private corporations. The Ayushman Bharat health-insurance program, marketed as a generous plan offering ₹5 lakh coverage per family, became one such channel. As later highlighted in the CAG report, the scheme turned into a massive drain on the treasury, with large payouts flowing to private hospitals while many eligible families could not even access care. Government hospitals were simultaneously neglected or shut down, forcing lower- and middle-class families to rely on private clinics and hospitals, where costs have now skyrocketed beyond affordability.

In effect, the government created the crisis and the dependency. By making public healthcare weak or inaccessible, it drove people toward private hospitals then used public money to pay those same hospitals through insurance schemes. This pattern repeats across sectors: public institutions are quietly dismantled, and private corporations receive both the customers and the cash.

This model where essential systems collapse and private entities step in at inflated costs is not accidental. It reflects a governance style in which chaos becomes a political tool. When people are overwhelmed by flight cancellations, failing infrastructure, hospital shortages, rising prices, and unemployment they lose the strength and time to question authority. Instead, they cling to the same leadership that created the instability, hoping for small reliefs rather than demanding structural reform. The government then takes credit for minor fixes while avoiding any accountability for the larger disasters.

Corporate influence deepens this cycle. Policies, regulations, and even the drafting of certain laws increasingly appear shaped by corporate lobbies. When major decisions benefit a handful of powerful business groups instead of the public, the result is predictable: monopolies grow, small businesses die, and citizens pay more for basic services. A country of 1.4 billion begins to resemble a marketplace controlled by a small circle of political and corporate interests. People are not treated as citizens with rights they are treated as consumers with no choice.

In my previous article, I explained how such governance destroys a nation’s financial foundation and weakens its currency. But this article focuses on the governance itself because without responsible leadership, no economic recovery is possible. When institutions crumble, when public services are dismantled, when corruption flourishes, and when policies are written for profit rather than people, a nation cannot thrive. It becomes trapped in a cycle where crises are constant, accountability disappears, and power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few.

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the people. Democracy demands more than voting every five years; it demands questioning, challenging, and refusing to accept failure as normal. India must decide whether it wants leadership that listens or leadership that commands, whether it wants strong institutions or strongmen, whether it wants functioning public services or corporate dependence. The signs are everywhere: in broken bridges, flight chaos, closed hospitals, unaffordable medicine, rising private school fees, and the collapse of essential infrastructure. The real question is whether the country is willing to see them and act.