This damning audit of India’s parliamentary law-making from 2014–2026 across the 16th to 18th Lok Sabhas exposes a relentless executive assault on democratic norms. Drawing from official Bulletins, PRS data, PIB releases, and law reports, it reveals roughly 390–410 bills rammed through both Houses, with at least seven major non-fiscal laws cynically certified as money bills—concentrated in 2016–2019 when the government lacked Rajya Sabha majority—to sideline the Upper House. Deliberation has collapsed: committee referrals plummeted from 71% to 16%, over 90% of bills passed without recorded votes, four-fifths of the Union budget guillotined, and shameful records of seven to eight bills bulldozed in a single sitting while the Opposition was suspended or boycotting. Four major legislative retreats were forced extra-parliamentarily under street and electoral pressure, while a churn regime of hasty laws—led by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code with six frantic amendments, five via ordinance—sees statutes perpetually patched by executive fiat. This is no healthy democracy but a clear strategy of procedural fungibility: the bypass tool shifts with parliamentary numbers, yet the core preference for rubber-stamp ratification remains unchanged—findings that align with damning verdicts from V-Dem, Freedom House, EIU, RSF, and CIVICUS. Since 2024, partial corrections have come only from vigilant voters and mass protests, not from the broken institutions meant to prevent such executive aggrandizement within a hollow electoral shell. The fight to reclaim Parliament is urgent.
Category Archives: Activities
Our current activities concentrate on the case of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL), India. While exploring and investigating this particular case, we have found that India’s crony ruling party, gangsters, banksters as well as religious gurus and institutions are involved in the same. Therefore, to break such collusion, we have decided to deploy an “all out attack” on the existing paradigm of neoliberal market economy as well as market fundamentalism. ***DISCLAIMER: We have collected all the data from available sources on the internet as given on the official portals of media houses, websites and institutions and organizations. We are not first-hand reporters and hence, we are not liable for any inadvertent error or value-loaded statements made on those portals. All propositions have to be viewed as descriptive assertions on the given point of concern.***
The Ballot You Could Not Read: SIR and DHFL CoC
In this essay, Once in a Blue Moon Academia draws a structural parallel between two opaque state-orchestrated processes — the 2020–21 RBI-appointed Committee of Creditors (CoC) resolution of DHFL, which extinguished over ₹4,100 crore of elderly depositors’ savings through an unverifiable electronic ballot they could neither download nor retain, and the 2025–26 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that deleted nearly 91 lakh names in West Bengal ahead of the Assembly elections. Both exemplify “managed consent”: the meticulous preservation of democratic and procedural rituals while systematically withdrawing verifiability, accessibility, and meaningful agency. Invoking Mīmāṃsā pramāṇas (anupalabdhi and arthāpatti) alongside statutory adverse inference, the essay demonstrates how the sustained withholding of records — despite official claims of transparency — itself constitutes proof of the postulated theft. Dedicated to the UN Special Rapporteurs behind Communication AL IND 8/2026, it frames these as twin installations of a singular “government of registers” that renders citizens legible while keeping the State’s decisive mechanisms illegible, urging the lawful opening of black boxes and the simple demand: show the records.
A Solidarity Statement for Sonam Wangchuk, Satyagrahi of the Anthropocene
On the 17th day of his indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, Sonam Wangchuk continues his non-violent resistance for justice, dialogue, and ecological protection of Ladakh. Echoing Jatin Das’s 1929 martyrdom and G.D. Agarwal’s sacrifice for the Ganga, Wangchuk’s ātmaśakti exposes the Indian state’s moral deafness and hypocrisy in the face of genuine satyagraha. Invoking Tagore’s fiery Bhairava hymn — “sarva kharvatāre dahe tava krodhadāha” — this post calls for solidarity with a man who has become the moral centre of a republic that has abandoned its conscience.
Godiwood Stripped: An Exposé of BJP-Hindutva Propaganda Films (Review Series— Part I)
This review series (Part-I) examines a growing cycle of Hindi cinema—from PM Narendra Modi (2019) to Dhurandhar 2 (2026)—that have widely been characterized as aligned with BJP/Hindutva Islamophobic messaging, spanning hagiographic biopics, Partition and Kashmir “history” dramas, and jingoistic war thrillers. Drawing on MouthShut, Times of India, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes reviews by OBMA members alongside box office data and social media reception, each entry is read as trading historical nuance and artistic craft for majoritarian narrative-building, victimhood framing, and militarism. The pattern across titles is uneven: a handful (Uri, The Kashmir Files, Dhurandhar 2) found commercial success through polarized mobilization, while most (PM Narendra Modi, Tejas, Emergency, Udaipur Files, Operation Valentine, The Taj Story, Main Atal Hoon) underperformed financially and drew sharply negative critical notices despite inflated partisan audience scores. The series argues that this divergence between critical consensus and box office fate exposes the limits of state-aligned cinema as propaganda, with Part II promising further entries (The Kerala Story, Article 370, Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, and others).
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee: A Political Profile
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (1901–1953) was a Bengali barrister and politician who rose rapidly through alleged paternal influence to become the youngest Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. Entering politics as a Congress candidate in 1929, he shifted to the Hindu Mahasabha in 1939, served as Finance Minister in Bengal’s coalition government, explicitly offered cooperation to the British Governor to suppress the 1942 Quit India Movement, and advocated the communal (in the negative sense of the term as in South-East Asia) partition of Bengal in 1947. As Nehru’s Minister of Industry and Supply (1947–1950), he resigned over the Liaquat–Nehru Pact and, with RSS backing, founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951. He opposed the Hindu Code Bill’s reforms on women’s rights and Article 370’s special status for Jammu and Kashmir, while his Mahasabha-linked relief efforts during the 1943–44 Bengal Famine drew criticism for communal and caste bias. Detained in Kashmir in 1953 during an agitation against the permit system, he died in custody on 23 June, 1953, amid unresolved medical and inquiry controversies. His documented record reflects a consistent prioritization of upper-caste Hindu majoritarian politics over secular pluralist consensus.
Damn the Dams!
This paper critically examines the political ecology of mega dams and hydroelectric power through historical, scientific, and activist lenses, exposing the profound environmental, geological, and social costs that often eclipse their touted benefits. From Lenin’s GOELRO electrification drive and Nehru’s “temples of modern India” to the suppressed warnings of scientists Meghnad Saha and Kapil Bhattacharya, the analysis reveals how hydraulic nationalism has repeatedly silenced ecological knowledge, leading to reservoir-induced seismicity (as in Koyna), catastrophic siltation, landslides, and dam failures. Drawing on cases like the Tehri Dam, Farakka Barrage, Vaiont, and Banqiao disasters, alongside Gandhian resistance by Sundarlal Bahuguna, Baba Amte, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and cultural critiques in Tagore’s Muktadhara and Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the author argues for a fundamental reevaluation prioritizing river integrity, democratic consent, and geological realism over technocratic hubris. In an era of climate change, the paper calls for letting rivers flow as essential to ecological justice and human survival.
The Aeroplane’s Gaze: Mountain, Market and Martyrs
In this climate horror narrative with a positional paper disrupting the narrative flow, the author weaves personal flights over a rapidly thawing Himalaya with a critique of the “Three Ms”—Mountaineering, Market, and Martyrs—to expose how post-1990 commercialization has transformed high-altitude climbing into a neoliberal experience economy that commodifies risk, normalizes preventable deaths, and externalizes massive ecological waste onto fragile ecosystems. Drawing on observed glacial retreat, shrinking snowlines, data from Everest expeditions (e.g., 2019’s 877 summits and 11 deaths; 2025 permit hikes and ongoing congestion), the Chhanda Gayen case study, and corporate sponsorship spectacles, the analysis reveals how market logic—sunk-cost pressures, sponsorship demands for novelty, and regulatory filters—produces economic fatalism and “regulatory martyrdom” while generating symbolic capital from sacrifice and legacy trash (tens of tons of plastic, human waste, and gear). Framed by Tagorean imagery, Kalidasa’s metaphors, and Heideggerian reflections, the work culminates in a call to dismantle these structures, positioning the author’s embodied witness—flying through turbulent “intentioned” clouds—as a reversal from being-towards-death to death-towards-being, urging emancipation through corporeal awareness amid capitalism’s atmospheric and terrestrial violence.
The “Secular” State Paradox: the Erosion of Constitutional Secularism in Contemporary India
Since 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has systematically blurred India’s constitutional separation between the state and religion—a doctrine central to India’s secular democracy since 1950. This article documents seven major constitutional violations spanning religious ceremony participation (Ram Mandir consecration, January 2024; Central Vista Parliament inauguration, May 2023), executive-judicial merger (Ganesha Puja at CJI DY Chandrachud’s residence, September 2024), selective state support for Hindu rituals over Muslim prayer practices (Red Road Yoga Day vs. namaz bans, June 2024), misappropriation of state security apparatus for personal religious acts (Z+ protection for sacred baths), documented abdication of constitutional duty during a national security crisis (Bear Grylls shoot during Pulwama attack, February 2019), and ecological destruction for religious symbolism (Yamuna “beautification” project). Each violation contradicts established constitutional convention (the Rajendra Prasad precedent of 1951), invokes specific legal provisions (Articles 14, 15(1), 25, 36, 44, 48-A, 50, 51-A(h), 60, 75), and collectively demonstrates how the “impunity loop”—where executive overreach faces no judicial reckoning—has eroded India’s foundational secular guarantee. The Central Vista Parliament consecration is particularly egregious: by permanently installing a religious symbol (the Sengol, representing divine-right monarchy) in the Speaker’s chair and framing Parliament as a Hindu “temple,” Modi has transformed the highest legislative chamber itself into a site of state-sponsored Hindu nationalism. Drawing from Supreme Court jurisprudence on basic features (Kesavananda Bharati), Article 32 remedies, separation of powers doctrine, and administrative law, this article argues that these violations constitute not individual transgressions but a systematic architecture of “selective secularism” that transforms Hindu nationalism into state policy while marginalizing minority rights. The article traces the “impunity loop” mechanism—how each violation normalizes the next through institutional passivity (judicial silence), doctrinal innovation (the “24/7 duty” doctrine that abolishes answerability), and intellectual capture (reframing Hindu nationalist practices as “secular culture” while suppressing minority religious expression). The absence of Supreme Court intervention despite clear constitutional grounds, combined with parliament’s majority-government control and investigative agency capture, has created conditions where constitutional limits have become advisory. The article concludes that India’s secular Constitution remains intact on paper while its practice converges toward Hindu nationalist theocracy, raising urgent questions about whether institutional actors can recover their constitutional commitment before the basic feature of secularism is irreversibly eroded.
Bulldozer (In)Justice in India: Encountering Demolition and Dispossession
The article contends that “Bulldozer Justice”—the BJP government’s targeted demolitions of Muslim homes, businesses, and religious sites—represents not mere administrative excess or electoral tactics but the latest manifestation of a coherent seventy-five-year ethnocratic project rooted in the 1949 Babri Masjid occupation. It identifies a persistent structural impunity loop (extra-legal action, state complicity, retroactive judicial or legislative legitimation, and perpetrator reward) driving Hindu majoritarian statecraft, linking the 1949 conspiracy through the Supreme Court’s 2019 verdict to the 2025 Waqf Amendment Act. Drawing on Amnesty International’s documentation of 128 targeted demolitions, Housing and Land Rights Network data showing 738,438 displacements in 2022–23, V-Dem’s classification of India as an “electoral autocracy,” and other reports, the piece maps the phenomenon across its ideological, affective, legal, spatial, gendered, corporate, and legislative dimensions. It highlights the central bovine paradox of India as one of the world’s largest exporters of buffalo meat ($4 billion in 2025) alongside lethal cow-protection vigilantism, exemplified by major corporate donations to the BJP. Framing Bulldozer Justice within manufactured Islamophobia, Hindu victimhood narratives, creeping theocracy, and the mechanics of contemporary majoritarianism, the article characterises the process as democratic demolition — one structure, one statute, and one impunity loop at a time.
NOTA: From Symbolic Dissent to the Horizons of Radical Democracy
India’s NOTA — born from the Supreme Court’s 2013 PUCL judgment — gave voters a secret, counted way to reject all candidates. Over a decade later, even the Court admits it has “hardly made any impact” on criminalisation, dynasticism and money power. The May 2026 state elections (1.09 million NOTA votes across West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry) changed zero outcomes. Its impotence is structural — trapped by FPTP’s winner-takes-all logic, the absence of binding Right to Reject and Right to Recall, hollow decentralisation, and all parties’ addiction to extractive growth amid climate crisis. Globally, it lags far behind Colombia’s voto en blanco or Indonesia’s kotak kosong, which can force fresh elections with new candidates. NOTA is both symptom and seed. Its fulfilment demands proportional representation, constitutionalised Reject/Recall powers, empowered Gram Sabhas, genuine fiscal decentralisation, and a degrowth, cooperative, ecologically grounded economy — the path to a partyless, dialogue-based society of self-governing ecological communes.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 