Over the last two weeks, what we have witnessed in Delhi is a rupture in the establishment’s attempt at checks and balances wrought by the violence of unchecked power. Wherever you look—whether it is the executive, the judiciary, the legislature or the media—all four pillars of our constitutional framework have failed us. We have seen lawyers go on a mad rampage in the very courts of law. We have seen the police, controlled by the government of the day, watching it all as mute spectators. High-ranked ministers have made incomprehensible and provocative remarks. A university has been made vulnerable by those who should have nurtured it. We have seen the media dangerously fuelling the “nationalist” debate and fanning its flames, even doctoring images to suit their agenda. The political commentator Fareed Zakaria once wrote that merely holding elections was not the essence of a liberal democracy. The real test, he said, lay in the internal machinery of checks and balances, of the intricate systems of rule of law, judicial review, separation of powers, the freedom of speech and accountability mechanisms. All those are currently at their breaking point.