Performative Dissent

Dissent is a democratic guardrail, meant to be used sparingly and to be summoned only when the state veers toward excess or when public interest demands a principled stand. But Congress scion and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has turned it into a reflex and a tiresome ritual. His latest dissenting note at a high-level selection meeting for the Central Information Commission (CIC) is the newest entry in a long catalogue of habitual obstruction.

Gandhi’s latest salvo came during a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to finalise crucial appointments to the CIC, where Home Minister Amit Shah along with Gandhi himself were present. The agenda was to select the next Chief Information Commissioner, filling eight vacancies for Information Commissioners and discussing names for the empty posts of Vigilance Commissioners in the Central Vigilance Commission. The meeting was meant to settle the leadership of the country’s foremost transparency bodies. What emerged from it instead was not consensus but Gandhi’s theatrical antics.

Gandhi reportedly submitted a written dissent note objecting to some of the names proposed by the government. Nothing unusual in that except that not agreeing with anything that the Centre is doing is becoming his default mode. Generally, a dissenting note is expected to be a considered instrument of last resort, not a political crutch. It carries moral weight only when deployed sparingly and backed by rigorous argument. Used too often and too lightly, it becomes indistinguishable from noise. Gandhi, however, seems determined to normalise dissent as routine protest.

The timing of his objections suggests as much. The meeting took place amid an ongoing Lok Sabha debate on electoral reforms, during which Gandhi had already cast aspersions on the appointment process of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners.

Rahul Gandhi does not realize that dissent is meaningful only when articulated with clarity and backed by alternatives, and not when it is routinely tossed into the centre of the table as a symbolic act of defiance. On every major issue, Gandhi’s objections flung at the Modi government rarely rise above generic accusations like ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘crony capitalism’ and ‘threats to democracy.’ These are terms he deploys so promiscuously that they have become slogans rather than arguments. In a political culture already overrun by noise, he is determined to be noisemaker-in-chief.

The irony is that institutions like the CIC and the CVC, which are guardians of transparency and accountability, require precisely the kind of seriousness Gandhi refuses to display. Disagreement over candidates is legitimate, even healthy. But reducing such discussions to an adversarial spectacle cheapens the very bodies he claims to protect.

India requires a vigilant Opposition capable of scrutiny, not an Opposition Leader who confuses influence with noise. The power to dissent is a democratic privilege. To weaponize it casually is to erode its value. Rahul Gandhi should realize that the Indian public well knows the difference between a principled warning and a partisan tantrum.