The modern thinking Indian

So Bharti Yadav has finally deposed in court. This has been a long struggle, and shows what the faith of a determined mother can do. The facts of the case are known to a lot of people, but a short recap should refresh matters for those who have not been following the case.

As per the prosecution, Nitish Katara had been very close to Bharti Yadav, the daughter of Ghaziabad's strongman, D. P. Yadav. This was not liked by his sons, and they eventually abducted the hapless Nitish from a marriage and killed him in 2002 in Ghaziabad. The issue around Bharti is that she was also there in the wedding and had stated that she last saw Nitish with her brothers. And given how good our police and prosecution is, this key witness was allowed to leave the country and go off to London. Ever since then, the case has been ongoing, but the absence of a key prosecution witness has prevented the case from reaching a logical conclusion.

For long, the mother of the victim, Neelam Katara has been fighting valiantly to keep the case alive and bring Bharti back to India for deposing in the case. For some interval in between, there was a move to drop her as a witness, but due to the doggedness of Neelam Katara, the focus has remained on getting her back to the country to depose. Bharti has tried various strategies to prevent her appearance, from her family feigning a lack of knowledge of her whereabouts to the external affairs ministry dragging their feet about making attempts to get her back.

It is only due to the efforts of the mother, and a very active judiciary that has been prodding the Government to take action against Bharti, including declaring her a proclaimed offender. And I would tend to believe that she is coming back only because she would have been declared a proclaimed offender; also, with her visa due to expire, and passport being revoked, she would have anyhow been deported back to India and been arrested. Coming here on her terms would have been a better deal.

To get Bharti declared as a proclaimed offender may seem like a very strange thing, given that she would have been affected by the murder of someone with whom she was close, she would also been under tremendous pressure from her family, and after all, she is not accused of any crime.

This is actually only half-true; in most modern judicial systems, helping in the passing of justice is seen as one of the primary responsibilities of a citizen. Evading this by either falsely giving evidence or trying to prevent giving evidence seems like actually helping in preventing justice from happening, and can actually be punished.

Now that she is here in India, we need to actually see whether she will take the side of justice, but it is equally likely that she would have buckled into pressure from her family and decided not to be truthful. If that being the case, then the prosecution has a responsibility to this society to not treat her lightly and ensure that they get the truth out of her. It can be argued that after all it was because of his proximity to her that a young guy had to lose his life.

This case also highlights a concern that comes out time and time again in various cases. The movement in this case is either because of the efforts by an individual (the victim's mother) or because the courts have pushed the case, something that we expect the prosecution and the police (with their almost infinite powers) to do but mostly never see. I wonder when this will change for the better.

Labels: India, Law, Nitish Katara

Looks like members of the Indian parliament have nothing better to do. There was actually news reports that in parliament, the issue of the performance of the Indian cricket team was discussed. This is incredible. What a waste of national money. To keep parliament in session takes almost a small army of workers and enough budget to help A LOT of needy families.
So in the time when member of the Indian parliament could have been discussion as to why China is ahead of India in terms of attracting funds from its diaspora and from others, as to why farmers are committing suicide, etc, they are actually spending time discussing cricket. We would laught if it was not such a serious issue.
Cricket is a game controlled by the BCCI, which is not affliated to the government. Even though cricket is a game loved by a huge percentage of the nation's citizens, it is not the only game. If they needed to have a discussion, they could discuss as to why it is a national shame that India, the world's second most populous country, cannot build good infrastructure and a good set of administrators who can make sure that we consistently produce world-beaters in various sports. While on the subject of cricket, this was a perfect occasion to bring other issues in the discussion such as why the favourite of a particular region was discriminated against, and so on. Incredible. I will not debate the merits or demerits of Saurav Ganguly's current abilities, but for a member of the Indian parliament to plead his case in the middle of the Indian parliament is downright outrageous.

Labels: Cricket, Parliament, Waste

For all those who claim that caste based discrimination has gone away from Indian villages, or that women have a much better status, here is yet another case that demonstrates how difficult it is reconcile these theories with facts. Read the full article here.
The case revolves around a 15 year old dalit girl, allegedly raped by a Rajput youth in Madhya Pradesh. The girl refused to drop the complaint inspite of pressure, and subsequently, before she and her family could go to a safe place, in the night, the accused poured kerosene on her as she was sleeping and condemned her to a fiery death.
The case is barbarous enough, but what makes it even more bad is the happenings after the alleged rape. The rapist is not in custody and is able to threaten the girl and her family. The village supports the guy, with some people claiming that the barbarous act was just a regrettable incident (implying that all should be forgiven), committed in the heat of youth. Further, after the girl got burnt, inspite of upper caste families having vehicles, not one vehicle could be quickly obtained to get the girl to hospital.
Hopefully, given that the girl in her dying declaration has named the boy as her killer (which is a valid legal statement), and with the facts of the case being as they are, the killer would be sentenced to the punishment that he deserves. But, this kind of situation exists in a large number of Indian villages, what can be done to prevent this kind of caste based anti-women attitudes. There are no quick-fix solutions. A long term education policy that empowers all the weaker sections, along with an unrelenting attitude to punish such wrong-doing speedily is the only solution.

In a shocking crime, but which no longer seems unlikely, 2 policemen took a person into custody, and then offered to help him get bail if he paid a bribe of Rs. 50,000. View article.
The case is simple, a person, not otherwise seemingly involved in some crime introduced 2 people for a business transaction. The deal went sour, and this guy was also named in a cheating case. The police caught him, and sent him to jail. Cases of cheating were filed against him. So far, this is normally what can happen.
What happened next reveals the need for action to ethically clean and indoctrinate police personnel. The investigating officer promised to help him get bail if he was given Rs. 50,000 by the accused. If not paid, the investigating officer would file many more such cases against the accused He paid the money in one installment of Rs. 25,000, and then contacted the anti-corruption bureau, who caught the corrupt cops as the final installment of Rs. 25,000 was being paid.
This kind of case and variants of it cause dread in the citizens of this country. One can only wonder how many such cases must be happening around the country where a policeman or other babu misuses his authority for personal gain. There is a critical need for police reform, and
make the police force more independent from the network of politicians that it has got under. How are politicians involved in this ? Well, from what I have read, it seems that the whole concept of transfers and postings of officials (including the police) revolves around some sort of payment and gratification system. Once such a thing happens, a policeman who has paid money to reach a specific post will want to recoup his investment. Simple business.
In addition, there is the question of peer pressure. If a policeman sees his colleagues make money and have a good life without much fear of being caught AND prosecuted, then it is more
likely that he will also want to copy this lifestyle. For this reason, it is necessary to make sure that caught offenders are quickly convicted and stripped of their rights to be a beast in uniform.
The Government and the courts should also try to figure out the dual objective of how to ensure that policemen get paid adequately that they do feel opressed financially, and at the same time, there needs to be inculcated the feeling of ensuring that the police folks develop an attitude that even though they represent the majesty of the law, they are in fact custodians of the public.
What can a normal citizen do ? A normal citizen, seeing the state of the police folks, would want nothing better than to not get involved in any proceedings that involve the police. If indeed they face a situation similar to the person in this story, they would most likely pay up quickly so as to get out of the situation quickly. It is a brave citizen who would take the ethically right path of reporting such deviant behaviour. If more citizens act like this, it will scare such bribe takers as they would not be sure in which scenario they could get caught.
The media has a big role to play. The Indian media is seen as sensation hungry and out to get maximum readership/viewership. This can work to the advantage of the country if the media, using their access to more and more stealth ways of finding out such cases of corruption, are able to expose more and more cases. The key to fighting corruption, in addition to the normal method of trying to inculcate a sense of ethics, is to ensure that cases proceed quickly, and that there is so much fear of disclosure that a bribe taker will think twice before trying to take a bribe.

If there was ever an example of how ego can derail good governance, irrespective of hardship to consumers, the bus row between UP and Delhi is a prime example. Without going into the motives of why exactly this situation rose, it would be good to actually consider what is happening.
The situation is simple, buses owned by UP and Delhi Transport corporations (Government owned) that earlier used to move commuters between different cities of UP and Delhi now are blocked from entering each others territory. So, consider the simpest case, a citizen of this country, staying in some part of Delhi works in Noida. Till now, he would come out of his house, maybe walk for a brief while, and then get a bus that will drop him near his office. And now, the bus terminates at the Delhi border, where he has to get down, walk for some distance to find another transport the rest of the way. And this is not for one person, but by now lakhs of people will have been affected.
And why has this not been resolved ? Well apparently the issue of buses plying between the 2 states had been discussed earlier, and some sort of agreement reached. But this agreement collapsed; and the other important reason, ministers of one state rebuffed the other state and vice-versa, and so, there is no agreement and buses are getting impounded. And these are the officials and ministers on whom we depend to make our lives better. One seriously expects them to behave better than crying children.
There is a sneaking feeling that all this is being done to play more politics; there are elections soon in UP, and all such postures are part of partisan politics. This is also linked to whether the Metro goes to Noida and whether Delhi's Sonia Vihar water plant gets enough water. We have sunk so low in our esteem for politicians that if you ask people about the reason for a particular action, all sorts of motives can be ascribed and believed.
Will things improve ? Right now, the commuters are getting badly affected; and the children of schools that are in Noida and whose homes are in Delhi are getting badly affected. In the midst of all this, it is worth noting that these politicians do not do anything to affect their personal / party interests, so private buses are out of all the skirmish and are benefiting greatly from this situation.
Some links that explain the position:

Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Hindu