India is a functional anarchy. The truth: It is no longer functional.
Diagnosis: The system is suffering a multiple organ failure. The symptoms:
Everywhere from the street center, the unlit narrow streets to the Assembly or
Parliament we are reveling in utter disregard to law. As a polity we create by
default or design a huge chaotic, system defying field by our natural and
instinctive disrespect for law.
Candle-light protest against rape and roses for traffic violators, is too
symbolic and too little. Let’s examine the tragedy that India Circa 2013: Rape
– Most foul – it is now just not rape. It is gang rape, rape of minor, rape
followed by unimaginable and indescribable acts; an insensitive police system
that is willing to bribe the complainant than prosecute the accused. Even the
thought is nauseating. Protestors against gory crimes carrying placards
demanding the ‘Rule of Law’ are seen as a nuisance. The streets of our
democracy are quarantined from protestors. Our judicial administrators have
long ago declared that when a choice is to be made between “public inconvenience”
(read smooth flow of traffic) and a liberal interpretation of “protest by the
collective as part of social bargaining”, the former is to be preferred!!
The investigating agencies of crime are lethargic, politicalised, corrupt,
insensitive and thus the fence that is dining on the crop it is designed to
protect. The premier agency is politicalised at its bone marrow, while the
judiciary looks at is product with unpredictable moods: Sometimes with the
microscope and sometimes through its blindfold eyes. Take the instance of how
the CBI was at the door step of a political ally who after periodic threats of
Talaq uttered the word thrice to the central coalition. Take the case of
another son in jail after being branded persona non grata.
At the threshold of a fresh quinquennial outing at the hustings look at the
choices we have : the Ms ( Maya, Mamta, Modi or Manmohan!!) The nation is now
called upon to choose between a party rejected a decade ago and with nothing to
suggest any change or progress on its come-back assay on the one hand and on
the other the blundering, plundering ruling party whose repute is in shatters.
In the derailment of the system, the Rule of Law has been a major casualty .
The citizen is the primordial contributor. He looks for a hidden price tag
everywhere and anywhere. From using the prohibited cancer stick on the main
road to not using the mandatory helmet, he enjoys, enjoys breaking every
law/regulation. He defies a one-way traffic signal for convenience, the traffic
signal for urgency and at every testing doorstep willing to wink at legal
requirements. The lack of order is a corollary to our collective disrespect to
law. We break the law and defend ourselves that the law is unjust. We bribe and
blame the man who takes the amount!! We give ‘dowry’ and fault the ‘groom’ who
takes it. The resultant ‘Double-Speak’ could only lead us to the ‘Animal Farm’
we find ourselves in.
Look at the Legislature: can one recall a single value based debate over the
last one and half decades (including the Nirbhaya Bill)? Conjure up a picture
of an Assembly in session and you have memories of legislators rushing to the
well, staging walk outs threatening one another, pulling mikes, scant respect
for a watching citizenry and total disregard to people needs. They, they are
our law makers. Yatha Raaja Thata Praja.
The Executive: We have Ministers who face serious charges continuing in the
cabinet. Files praying for attention and sanction for prosecuting high level
officers from the bureaucracy. A Union Minister is forced to resign for his
alleged involvement in the 2G scam. Come down a minor scale of latitude and see
the latitude the local Home Minister enjoys!! What is sauce for the goose is
cyanide for the gander!! The common man thus knows that he lives in an
extremely maneuverable system. Some people are above the law and it takes a few
factors to be propelled into that layer. Criminal Creamy layer!!
The Judiciary is crumbling under the burden of self importance. In an
increasingly unpredictable interpretative and discretionary mode, it often
suffers credibility in whispered voices. When justice differs with the foot of
the Chancellor, the common man is more than just bewildered by the semantics.
Take the two major CBI cases in the state: one where the fulcrum is a dead
person and another on a come-back trail. Two conflicting judicial verdicts. You
can indulge in legalistic hair splitting till the cows come home only at the
cost of serious dents to the veracity of the system.
In the midst of such lawlessness and defiance to law the hapless, helpless
citizen who once sang, now echoes in parody: jana gana mangla dayaka jaya he;
bharata bhagya vidhata ; jaya he jaya he jaya he……..
L. Ravichander.