Political Anomie

Political norms have led to the anomic nature of political practice. In the current scenario, politics by manipulation and coercion has become the norm which has acquired an overriding force over democratic and constitutional norms. The frequent use of such ways has been intensified particularly during the last few years. Capturing power or forming the government through manipulation and coercion has been distressingly evident in major states in India. However, it is necessary to show the association and dissociation between the two ways that are deployed to achieve the desired goal. There is a distinction between the two terms, which is, however, not precise as there could be an overlap between the two.

Coercion involves the political intention of forcing an agent to do something that they do not want to do or what they do not consider to be right. This is true of those who have the capacity to feel guilt and who resist to be converted into a mercenary who is hired to attack norm-based politics by attacking those who have been marked as supporters of the norms of decent politics. Manipulation, on the contrary, seeks to induce both the manipulator and the manipulated to use each other rather secretively without being noticed by others. Although manipulation adopts the secretive mode, it eventually fails to escape the critical attention of those who show some degree of concern for the democratic and constitutional road map that politics is expected to follow. A sense of desperation is found in both acts as a form of internal coercion, as both these parties are becoming restive in achieving their particular goal.