<Chapter 1> Democracy and vigilantism: The spread of Gau Rakshaks in India

This chapter explores the changing character of Indian democracy by analysing the emergence of vigilantism in recent decades in India. To elaborate the author’s claim, this chapter reviews and examines the four cases of vigilantism: (a) Maoist movements, (b) the Ranvir Sena, (c) the Salwa Judam, and (d) the Gau Rakshaks classified based on four ideal types. While the ‘state deficit’ - the inability of state to solve socio-economic problems-bred and enabled the rise of Maoist movements and the Ranvir Sena, the new tendency accounts for the emergence of vigilantism through the Salwa Judam and Gau Rakshaks, in which we can see a consistent pattern of state support. In effect, this chapter attempts to underline the strong difference between the vigilantism bred by state deficit and the new vigilantism that draws on state support and complicity. Gau Rakshaks represent a new strategy for oppressing Muslim minorities that constitutes an infringement of constitutional liberalism, symbolizing a crisis in Indian democracy itself

Dismantling Democracy: The 2019 Indian General Election and the Formation of the 'BJP system

Democratic institutions are being subverted and the very idea itself is being dismantled in many countries around the world. India, which boasts 70 years of democratic practice, is no exception. In particular, the increasing oppression of religious minorities such as Muslims by the emergence of vigilante groups like cow protection groups (Gau Rakshaks) represents a new and significant strategy of the current Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government. Under the ‘two-sword strategy’ that combines economic development with Hindu supremacy’s hardliner approach, Hindu majoritarian ideology is rapidly creating an exclusivist and aggressive Hindu identity. This article analyses this new trend by using the 2019 general election survey data and proposes that there appears to be the emergence and consolidation of a new party system in India, which I refer to as the ‘BJP system’. The idea of ‘politics of obedience’, which characterises the ‘BJP system’, moreover, is starkly different from that of the ‘politics of consensus’, which earlier characterised the Congress Party’s one-party dominant rule, that is, the ‘Congress system’. This article analyses the emergence of the ‘politics of obedience’ and debates the future of democracy in India and the world

National trends in the outcomes of subarachnoid haemorrhage and the prognostic influence of stroke centre capability in Japan: retrospective cohort study

Objectives To examine the national, 6-year trends in in-hospital clinical outcomes of patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) who underwent clipping or coiling and the prognostic influence of temporal trends in the Comprehensive Stroke Center (CSC) capabilities on patient outcomes in Japan.Design Retrospective study.Setting Six hundred and thirty-one primary care institutions in Japan.Participants Forty-five thousand and eleven patients with SAH who were urgently hospitalised, identified using the J-ASPECT Diagnosis Procedure Combination database.Primary and secondary outcome measures Annual number of patients with SAH who remained untreated, or who received clipping or coiling, in-hospital mortality and poor functional outcomes (modified Rankin Scale: 3–6) at discharge. Each CSC was assessed using a validated scoring system (CSC score: 1–25 points).Results In the overall cohort, in-hospital mortality decreased (year for trend, OR (95% CI): 0.97 (0.96 to 0.99)), while the proportion of poor functional outcomes remained unchanged (1.00 (0.98 to 1.02)). The proportion of patients who underwent clipping gradually decreased from 46.6% to 38.5%, while that of those who received coiling and those left untreated gradually increased from 16.9% to 22.6% and 35.4% to 38%, respectively. In-hospital mortality of coiled (0.94 (0.89 to 0.98)) and untreated (0.93 (0.90 to 0.96)) patients decreased, whereas that of clipped patients remained stable. CSC score improvement was associated with increased use of coiling (per 1-point increase, 1.14 (1.08 to 1.20)) but not with short-term patient outcomes regardless of treatment modality.Conclusions The 6-year trends indicated lower in-hospital mortality for patients with SAH (attributable to better outcomes), increased use of coiling and multidisciplinary care for untreated patients. Further increasing CSC capabilities may improve overall outcomes, mainly by increasing the use of coiling. Additional studies are necessary to determine the effect of confounders such as aneurysm complexity on outcomes of clipped patients in the modern endovascular era