In Tamil Nadu, one of the country’s most industrialised states, there are 10 to 15 hours of power cut a day, workers stand idle, small units are closing down daily by the dozens and business is slow. The rupee is sliding, India is downgraded by many countries as an investment risk and the stock market tumbles. The government allows the best airline, Kingfisher, to go nearly bankrupt, bled dry by extravagant airport charges, huge fuel taxes, while it keeps pouring thousands of crores into Air India.

India is the laughing stock of South Asia: Pakistan sends its terrorists, New Delhi cries murder, but the next moment the pretty Pakistani foreign minister comes and the Indian media goes gaga. China plays the Indian government like a violin. Maoists have a field day, kidnapping officials at random, knowing that ransoms will be paid.

Indians today live in a country where mullahs can preach secession, while Hindu gurus revered by millions of Hindus are the target of ridicule, media attacks and police assaults.

Even the army, India’s last non-politicised, casteless barrier is not safe: since Sonia Gandhi has come to power, it has been targeted, first by attempting to make a census of its Muslim soldiers, then by trying to remove AFSPA, which would be as good as giving away Kashmir to Pakistan, and lastly by the concerted attack on General VK Singh, the man who dared to expose the total disinterest of the Indian government on the army’s preparedness and the rot in defence procurement.

Here we have a government that is racked by scandal after scandal which would have brought down any government in the world. But this government has no shame: it does not care if it brings down the country with it, as long as its ministers can keep their perks and loot the country for another two years. What it is good at, however, is surviving, using lie, deceit, all that with a smile on its face.

For, democracy in India has been hijacked to the point that a government that is basically in minority, which is openly flouting all values of decency and honesty, which has lost the trust of the people, is able to continue damaging India’s fabric, taking advantage of the fact that the majority of Indians, who are Hindus, do not riot and descend in the streets when they are unhappy. The instruments of power have also never been so perverted in India: the CBI blatantly and shamelessly quashed all injunctions against Ottavio Quattrrochi and even allowed him to get away with billions of rupees which he had stolen from India. Yet, without batting an eyelid, and with the Indian media turning a blind eye, it goes ruthlessly after Narendra Modi, chief minister of the most efficiently run state, the most corruption free. Her governors shamelessly hijack democracy by twisting the laws.

It is a fact that Sonia brought discipline, order and cohesion into the Congress party. But the amount of power, that she, a non-Indian, a simple elected MP, like hundreds of others, possesses, is frightening. She is the ultimate arbiter and nothing of importance is decided without her caveat. Because of her immense power, India has now entered an area of semi-dictatorship, where hundreds of thousands of phones are tapped, emails are read, letters opened, gurus arrested, journalists scared to speak aloud…

The going down of India because of the selfishness and petty interests of its politicians, including the BJP, which is terribly disunited and refuses to acknowledge that Modi is its only eligible PM candidate, is a tragedy for the few of us who have dared over the years to defend India in our respective countries, by saying that India, and not China, should be the natural choice of investment for western countries, for it is democratic, liberal, pro-western and friendly people. We have also clamored that the West should realise that India is of an immense strategic geopolitical importance — at the cross roads of many civilisations, a buffer of freedom against the Chinese hegemonic tendencies and an example of integration in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.Cry O my Beloved India, look at what Thy children are doing to Thee…

Follow Francois Gautier on Twitter@fgautier26