In the present decade, we have seen an unprecedented amount of writing on the decay of institutions worldwide – whether it is the media or the courts or the legislatures. – from New Delhi to the Washington, from Brussels to Westminster. Commentators and critics lament the hollowing out of institutions that had been presumed to be bedrocks of constitutional democracy especially after World War II. The inability of these structures to stem the tide of illiberal, personalized, cult-based governments has evinced some surprise, even introspection, in the promoters of liberal democracy.

Newspaper columns, essays, editorials and even some books are filled with historical analysis of institutions – their origins, their structures, their functions and their present decay. Most of this is quite convincing and seemingly accurate. But they only present a part of the story. A lot of commentary presumes institutions as stand-alone setups that function above the dynamic of everyday politics. For example, the Election Commission of India was assumed to be an ‘apolitical’ for long time. Now, the liberal intelligentsia in India find that adjective to be false.

Similarly, prominent commentators have time and time again cast the personal shortcomings of some institutional leaders as exceptions. For example, the former Chief Justice of India Deepak Mishra was seen as an aberration who would be repaired over by his successor, Justice Ranjan Gogoi. Many editorials who praised him while he was CJI in waiting now have much to complain about him. Moreover, suddenly the Supreme Court of India looks like a palace of intrigue.

On the other hand, the former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan was a darling of the liberals as much for his policy decisions as his comments on socio-political issues. RBI, it seemed during his tenure, could do no wrong. His successor Urjit Patel, who was initially seen as a timid bureaucrat, suddenly found himself being praised for standing upto the incumbent government. His successor Shaktikanta Das has had no such turn in fortune.

It would seem from these example and those from around the world that the persons leading the institutions are just as important as the artifice of the institutions themselves. That is certainly true. However, the political dynamics and ideological contests that surround institutions are just as important, and often ignored by commentators. Do institutions matter? Yes, they do. But people that lead them and their ideas matter just as much.

Take the example of the ECI. The lament of its ‘decay’ from a strong force of impartiality to its shortcomings in the present sometimes conveniently forgets the political struggle that created its strength – under the leadership of T. N. Sheshan, the support of Supreme Court and popular belief in ECI’s newly acquired powers to ensure free and fair elections. It did not stop there, there was a change in the lexicon of Indian electoral democracy – Model Code of Conduct, which had to be adhered to no matter what. What we have failed to appreciate while this became the norm is that it was not an event, but a dynamic process that brought us to a place where out expectations from ECI had changed – it was and continues to be a struggle to keep the elections free and fair. ECI does not exist outside the realm of everyday politics. Its officers are not objective robots but subjective bureaucrats. It is not an independent, autonomous body but an inter-dependent, constrained institution that depends as much on the courts and popular support as it does on the some of the very people it is supposed to keep in check – the powerful leaders in government.

Similarly, the Supreme Court of India is a case in point. It would appear from commentary that the SC has suddenly taken a turn towards decay. Presumably, it was a fine institution earlier. What this ignores is that the roots of today’s decay lie precisely in the fineness of the court in the preceding period. This was underlined by an unprecedented power-grab by the court – to appoint its own members, justified by the inability of Indian politicians to be sensible and popular resentment against them. While the ‘collegium’ temporarily solved some problems, it created a facade of independent judiciary without oversight by the people’s representatives. Today, the same independence that was applauded and institutionalized has created a situation where a sitting judge can be a judge in his own case without the slightest bit of irony. Not just that, it has created a situation where the political executive can exploit these gaps and shortcomings to its advantage while preaching the rhetoric of judicial independence when suitable.

The example of RBI is even more baffling. While a major headliner in the limited reaches of the financial press, the RBI Governor wasn’t a figure of media commentary until Raghuram Rajan became the Governor. And suddenly the person holding the post has become a thing of daily news. However, the previous ignorance and the recent stardom of the RBI fails to capture the institution of India’s central bank in its entirety. While 1991 liberalization is seen as a major step in opening India to global trade, its role in changing RBI’s functions is only mentioned in passing. Moreover, the changed financial market landscape in which RBI functions today means that its institutional dynamic with the government with the central governments is vastly different from what it was two or three decades ago. At the same time, the ideological bent of Indian economists and financial commentators has changed – the institutional expectation from RBI is therefore not the same. At the same time, the role of political executive has been made more prominent via the monetary policy committee (MPC) – away from the singular role of the Governor in monetary policy. But that is not all that RBI does. In a globalized and digitized financial landscape, there is a struggle between government and the RBI for jurisdiction over emerging arenas. This makes the RBI board and the RBI Act important structures – both of which remained outside common public discourse until recently.

These examples should suggest that institutions are neither autonomous nor independent. Neither should we want them to be. They are dependent – on their leaders, on other institutions, on people, on ideas, on precedents, on political dynamics and on many other things. To narrow them down to just their leaders or just their independence is both disingenuous and naive. They reflect a tenuous social contract that emerges after every small struggle for power and for ideas – one that happens at all times and that is shaped by a variety of potent forces that make the adjectives ‘autonomous’ and ‘independent’ seem childish and hollow.