THIS is the way democracy ends, it seems—with a few scattered whimpers. And this is one of the most unsettling aspects of a deeply disturbing week in India: the sheer ease with which 28 years of accumulated rights, habits and traditions have been swept away. On June 25th India had a lively, if lopsided, multi-party system and a free, if occasionally bullied, press. On June 26th hundreds of politicians from all parties except the dogmatically pro-Gandhi Communists had been jailed along with hundreds of still unidentified others and the press had been gagged. Each day then brought a new decree and a tighter clampdown: the suspension of habeas corpus and other constitutionally protected rights; rules for press censorship which made hostages of foreign correspondents working in India and puppets or mutes of local journalists; a modification of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act to remove a prisoner's right to hear the charges against him; more and more arrests, until the government spokesman stopped counting at over 1,000; and then on Tuesday a packet of economic goodies designed to win back hearts, minds and bellies and to sustain the claim that the whole emergency operation had been aimed at something more than keeping Mrs Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister, in power.

This claim sounds as spurious today as it did a week ago. The reforms themselves are an attractive something-for-everyone assortment (if familiar enough after decades of promises): for poor and landless farmers, a moratorium on debts and a ban on bonded labour; for the lower middle classes, a raising of the tax threshold; for the moderate left, a ceiling on urban property-holding. But neither this hastily assembled cure-all nor the continuing warnings of "conspiracies" and "sabotage" have altered the picture of a newly vulnerable leader striking out to preserve her own position at all costs.

For the moment she has undoubtedly succeeded. The censorship may have kept some outbursts of protest secret from the enterprising foreign correspondents in Delhi (one of whom, the Washington Post man, was expelled this week). But open defiance of the new regime seems to have been limited to a series of "incidents" in the two leading centres of opposition, Bihar and Gujarat states, and a demonstration by a few hundred Hindu militants in Delhi which was quickly beaten back by lathi-charging police. One Delhi newspaper slipped into print an obituary for Mr D. E. Mocracy and F. Reedom; others published classic tributes to freedom by the poet Tagore and Mrs Gandhi's own father (all such literary quotations were immediately banned).

When the crisis could come

There were several acts of individual courage: the eminent lawyer who had argued Mrs Gandhi's case before the Allahabad high court, where she was found guilty of electoral malpractices last month, and was expected to do so again before the supreme court, resigned his brief. And the two most prominent of last week's prisoners, 72-year-old Jayaprakash Narayan and 78-year-old Morarji Desai, were rumoured to have gone on hunger strike. Mr Narayan has since been in and out of a Delhi hospital, reportedly suffering from a heart attack. If he were to die, and the news leaked out to his devoted following in Bihar, Mrs Gandhi's direst predictions of a nation-shaking agitation might well be fulfilled. But short of such an inflammatory misadventure, the shocked silence of India's first week as a police state could continue for weeks or even months.

The pressures that could break Mrs Gandhi's iron rule could come from many directions but the ones she probably fears most are from within her own Congress party. After the supreme court's stand-in judge granted Mrs Gandhi only a "conditional" stay on her recent conviction, rumblings were reported in the party, including a move to replace Mrs Gandhi by her agricultural minister, Jagjivan Ram. This is likely to have been a key factor in her decision to crack down. A number of dissident Congressmen have since been jailed or expelled from the party. Some 75 of Mrs Gandhi's party colleagues made a public declaration of support for her emergency measures but there has been nothing like the effusive outpourings which followed her original court conviction. Mrs Gandhi is now said to be operating through an emergency committee of the cabinet which includes Mr Ram. His only public remarks since the emergency decree have consisted of an anodyne report about the food situation. The clear impression is that Mrs Gandhi's colleagues, like so many other Indians, are biding their time.

If the heritage fails

The other vital sectors for Mrs Gandhi are the civil service, the police and the army. All three services have a reputation for being apolitical and loyal, though all three have been affected by the corruption which pervades much of Indian life. The civil service and the police, in particular, were already overstretched before the emergency imposed so many new burdens. The additional strains could produce not only a breakdown of services in many parts of the country but also a breakdown of morale. Actual disobedience to orders comes hard in India, with its tradition of a loyal and impartial civil service going back 100 years. But a prolonged emergency is likely to bring about an erosion of loyalty like that which occurred during a similar emergency under the British in the 1940s. And once that erosion passed a certain point, the battle would be lost.

The parallels with India's own struggles against the British (when today's antagonists, Indira Nehru Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai were on the same side) suggest that it may take anything from three to six months for dissidents to make contact, go underground and organise a serious resistance movement. But Mrs Gandhi's sights are probably fixed on an earlier deadline, two months from now. Provided that she intends to remain within the bounds of the constitution (which she has done so far) she will then have to present her emergency decree to parliament for approval, or allow it to lapse. This need not pose any problem so long as her own party majority holds together.

The much more dangerous turning point—also expected in two months' time—will be the supreme court's verdict on her appeal against her Allahabad conviction for election offences. If the supreme court rules in Mrs Gandhi's favour (and it would take extraordinary courage for the most independent of judges to do otherwise at the moment) then India has a chance of getting at least some of its liberties back. This would be the ideal opportunity for Mrs Gandhi to lift the emergency, proclaim an amnesty and eventually to hold an election in the normal way. The trouble is that the insecurity and hunger for power that made Mrs Gandhi resort to force last week are not susceptible to cure at a stroke of the supreme court. Her comment on Wednesday about too much liberty suggests she no longer wants to turn back.

The prospects are even more menacing if the supreme court upholds Mrs Gandhi's conviction. There is little reason to suppose, after the events of the past week, that she will swallow her defeat and stand down. But there is every reason to expect that if she does attempt to cling to office a significant number of Congressmen, civil servants and even soldiers will regard this as the last straw. The battle lines will then be drawn for India's bloodiest upheaval since 1947. Only Mrs Gandhi can prevent it.