The modern thinking Indian

In April, there was wide-spread international condemnation when a legislation catering to the Shia sect in Afghanistan was passed. This legislation tilted the gender balance very strongly towards men, something not uncommon in Islamic countries. However, since Afghanistan was a place where troops from many nations were fighting the Taliban, and many of these troops were losing their lives, there was more outrage. How could a country have such a law if the Government of the country was dependent on foreign aid and foreign support. At that time, the President of Afghanistan, Karzai, shook off the criticism by claiming that he had not read the legislation clearly before signing it, and he would take steps to revert. However, seems like nothing really happened after that (link to article):

Afghanistan has enacted a new legislation empowering men of Shia sect of Islam to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, a media report said on Saturday. The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work, The Guardian reported.
According to the report, the new law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some Shias, who make up around 20 per cent of the population. Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday's election, which is likely to be close, a poll indicated.

Given that the President is now contesting for re-election as the President of Afghanistan, and Shia votes will also be important, it is doubtful whether this legislation will be so easily reversed; would be so ironic that a state supported by the West enshrines a massive gender bias.

Labels: Afghanistan, Gender Bias, Islamic, Law, Man, Woman

The military forces in India have almost a separate life with a separate code of honor and law; their life is much more controlled than the lives of ordinary civilians. As a result, they have a separate process for justice, with a separate legal system that governs them. This includes offences they commit that are normally treated as criminal offences for the normal citizens of the country such as rape, murder, theft, etc; instead, these were normally handled through the military process of court-martials where military designated justices handle these offences. This would make sense if the crime was committed at a military owned location, or at the border of the country. However, in the past, it was argued that if a soldier was on leave and then committed a crime, even this was under the jurisdiction of military justice. This was because even under casual leave, the soldier was still under the jurisdiction of the army. However, a judge of the Madras High Court has ruled that such offences can also be handled in the civilian court system (link to article):

The Madras High Court Bench in Madurai has held that the armed forces personnel accused of committing murder, rape and other such crimes could be tried in a criminal court and not necessarily through court martial.
Justice A Selvam in his order yesterday said both the criminal court as well as the Army courts enjoyed concurrent jurisdiction to try criminal offences. Justice Selvam agreed that a soldier on casual leave could be considered to be in active service. However, he said that neither Army act nor the code of criminal procedure prevented a criminal court from conducting trial against servicemen.

This makes a lot of sense, since if a crime is committed under the laws of the country, it should be handled by the constitutionally valid legal system of the country.

Labels: Army, Crime, India, Judgment, Judicial, Law, Legal, Military

We are typically more sympathetic to the concerns and feelings of differently abled people (or who used to be called as handicapped people), and one expects that Government departments, who act as enablers for providing support and services to the citizenry of this country, would also act the same way for differently abled citizens. However, it is no surprise that Government departments are as unconcerned to these special citizens as they are towards normal citizens. But now, citizens have a weapon to get what they want, and that is using the power of RTI. The RTI Act enables citizens to get information on many aspects of the workings of the Government, and this includes the status of any item pending with the Government, and so it was in this particular case when the citizen used RTI to get the required action (link to article):

For almost a year, Rudrakshi Pandya, a differently-abled was pushed around when she demanded her right to a family pension after her father, a retired headmaster of a city-based school, died few years ago. Rudrakshi, was entitled by the government for a pension, under Gujarat civil services (pension) rules as she was unable to fend for herself. Interestingly, pension department had all the requisite documents, including Rudrakshi's medical certificate and even the clearance from the district education office.
It was here that Rudrakshi's mentor, Falguni Mehta, filed an RTI application under Section 7(1) of the RTI Act, which pertains to information being provided within 48 hours of the application with the pensions department. Mehta wanted to know reasons why Rudrakshi's pension was delayed, officers responsible for the delay, the grounds on which pensions for the differently-abled were rejected since 1980 and what punitive actions would be taken if the officers were found guilty. The case finally came up for hearing before state information commission. State chief information commissioner RN Das ruled in Rudrakshi's favour and directed pensions department to provide information within 48 hours.

One wishes that cases like not come up, since they show the bureaucracy in pretty bad light; however, this is also another depiction of the power of the RTI Act in getting the concerned Government departments to act. Also, recent punishments against officials for denying or delaying information should also act as a warning to Government officials in this regard.

Labels: Benefits, Governance, India, Information, Law, Policy, RTI

There is a universal phrase that 'justice delayed is justice denied'. But the fact remains that in India, the pace of the judicial system is extremely slow; typical cases can take more than a decade to move through the judicial system and this is just for the first judgment. With the appeal system allowing many cases to approach the Supreme Court, the multi-layered appeal courts can mean cases can go beyond the lifetime of many of the litigants of cases.
There are numerous cases (and many of them highly significant) where the process of the cases show the slow speed - the case involving the corruption of Sukh Ram, the Mumbai Bomb blasts case (of 1993), the case involving the person who was blown up by a grenade in a love triangle case, the Jessica Lal case, and numerous other cases. Even in cases where a quick judgment is need, such as when the case involves actions by speakers or governors in constitutional cases, the judgments have come long after the need for the case has evaporated, setting a precedent, but not helping the particular case.
An example that shows starkly the increasing load on the judiciary is the number of cases piled up at the Supreme Court (link to article):

In a blow to the concept of "speedy justice", the Supreme Court has for the first time in a decade run up a backlog of more than 50,000 cases. The unholy mark was crossed by the end of March 2009 when the number of pending cases stood at 50,163. The pendency has steadily crept northwards since 2006, when it stood at 34,649. In January 2007, it had become 39,780 with the pendency jumping up by more than 5,000 cases. Justice K G Balakrishnan took over as the Chief Justice of India at this time and tried to put in place mechanisms to arrest the trend of spiralling pendency.
A similar trend was seen at the level of high courts and trial courts. The 21 high courts, working with a strength of 635 judges as against a sanctioned strength of 886, reported a pendency of 38.7 lakh cases as of January 1, 2009, against 37.4 lakh cases on January 1, 2008. Trial courts, having a judge strength of 13,556 against a sanctioned strength of 16,685, were burdened with an additional pendency of nearly 10 lakh cases by January 2009, when the pendency figure was 2.64 crore. It stood at 2.54 crore cases in January 2008.

This huge backlog of cases has lead to a situation where people get locked up for long times, where a person would spend only a bit of time in jail after sentencing (since they have been in jail for long periods as an undertrial), people prefer to settle cases their own way rather than depending on a judgment, make compromises rather than spend the 10 years or more, and so on.
There are no easy solutions, with a backlog of vacancies only increasing the problem. We applaud when there are special fast track courts, or when somebody sets up evening courts, but those are just patches, not a solution.

Labels: Governance, India, Judicial, Law, Responsibility

Drinking and driving is a universal problem, with different countries having different ways of checking / controlling this habit. A sizable percentage of accidents are known to happen after drinking and driving, and countries have different levels of enforcement about this habit. So, for example, if you take the case of countries such as Singapore or the US, drinking and driving is not cool. You can get into severe problems if detected. It is not unknown to have to spend a night in the slammer and have points deducted from the driving license if caught drinking and driving.
The same rules apply in India, and in the recent past, the Mumbai Police has been enforcing some of these rules to a stronger degree; they have actually got magistrates to jail some of the offenders and got licenses suspended for a period of time. However, this is just Mumbai. Other parts of the country have very little policing of drunk driving (or other road related laws), and there does not seem to be much effort ongoing in that direction either. In a lot of cases, people go outside to bars or restaurants to drink, and then drive home from there even if they have had too much to drink. There is very little custom of arranging for a non-drinking person to drive one home, or to take a taxi to go home.
Now, a High Court has jumped into the gap and made suggestions regarding setting up of safe drinking and driving options (link to article):

The Delhi High Court wants strict checking of drunk customers heading home, just outside the bar/pubs in the capital, in order to prevent instances of drunken driving, leading to mishaps. After going through a report by excise department and traffic police that said almost 90% of customers frequenting bars drive home themselves, Justice J R Midha on Monday asked the Delhi Police to get cracking on drunk drivers.
"When your own report gives such a figure, it is the duty of police to enforce checks and it is in larger public interest to introduce a condition in pubs/bars serving alcohol shall have replacement drivers and shall serve liquor to a customer (self driven) only after the guest pays to book a replacement driver,'' it observed, asking the police to get cracking. On its part the police protested, arguing that both the concepts replacement drivers and checking at pubs could not be implemented instantly as these are policy decisions. Appearing for the police, counsel Mukta Gupta said, "Unless backed by a judicial order, cops can't be posted at each and every pub or bar. We are prosecuting drunk drivers and the accident rate has therefore come down."

Drunk driving cannot be cured only through enforcement (although enforcement would play a big part); the way to move ahead is to accept that people will go out and drink. A campaign that encourages the safety measures along with providing alternatives such as taxis and safe drivers would go a long way in ensuring that the deaths and injuries due to drunk driving reduce.

Labels: Court, Drinking, Driving, Drunk, Education, Law, Penalty, Punishment, Traffic, Transport

The RTI Act has had a major effect on the availability of information, it turned around the concept that information was something that would not be easily available and could be used by the bureaucracy as a way of wielding power. Under the RTI Act, any citizen could ask for information, and they would need to be provided this information (except for a exclusions dealing with security, commercial secrets, and some privacy issues - of course, there is an ongoing dispute where both the President and the courts believe that RTI is not something that applies to their actions and are still pushing back). The process was as simple as filling a form, depositing a fee of Rs. 10, and filing this with the required department.
However, as with any Act, there are ways to make the process more complicated, and this is especially true in the case of Indian citizens living abroad. The actual process of payment of the Rs. 10 fee was always a big problem, with no clear definition of whom to make the actual payment to. So, even though the process was such that one could file the fee in the local currency, there were different rules for different states - as an example, in Uttar Pradesh, the process was to apply and paste treasury stamp for getting copy of State Information Commission's order. Now the nodal agency for RTI, the Central Information Commission has proposed modifying the rules to make it easier for NRI's to use the RTI Act (link to article):

In order to ease RTI application process from abroad, the Central Information Commission has framed new rules enabling NRIs to pay application fees and information costs at the Indian embassies and missions abroad. NRIs will also be able to avail audio-video conference facilities in case of first and second appeals. There will be an easy-to-follow procedure for paying fee against the information in Indian Embassies and audio-video conferencing facility in case of first and second appeals," Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said.
As per the new procedure envisaged, Habibullah said "Embassies may accept only the fee and information cost and provide e-receipts to applicants who can then directly file their RTIs to public authorities in India by email along with proof of payment."
The CIC said, "I will soon meet concerned officials at the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Personnel and Training other stake holders for this."

If these rules are properly implemented, it will make it much easier for NRI's to be able to use the RTI Act without too much effort; currently the effort involved, especially when dealing with local state governments and courts in non-metros makes it much more difficult to properly utilize the power provided by the RTI Act.

Labels: CIC, Citizen, Information, Law, NRI, RTI

Protests have been seen as a sign of legitimate dissent, about raising the voice of ordinary people against some action; in many cases, a protest is about having a good outlet for the frustrations of people. However, it is also true that protests have been hijacked by people with vested interests, and in many cases by lumpen elements. So, for every scene of people walking peacefully with placards, you have scenes of youth rampaging, burning vehicles, disturbing the lives and economic well-being of city-dwellers (think about the daily wage earner or streetside vendor who loses out on the daily income on the day that a protest shuts down all other activity).
As we have seen in the past, the Government, of whom it is expected that they ensure law and order on the street, does not intervene in many cases. In some cases, the protests have been called by the ruling party, or by other elements (which the Government does not really want to put down). Consider the case of the Gurjar agitation of last year in Delhi; in broad daylight, the media could see that the agitators were blocking major roads and burning vehicles, and the police had no interest in actually preventing them from doing such things.
In the past, the Supreme Court (and other courts) has actually levied fines on political parties who have sponsored such violent agitations, but not consistently, and of course, there has been very little other prosecution of the people involved in such violence. However, the Supreme Court has now come out with clear guidelines on how to identify the people involved in such violence (link to article):

In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court on Thursday put in place stringent guidelines to deal with violent agitations that mandate the police to videograph each and every protest to bring to book mischief mongers who take advantage of a crowd and destroy public and private properties. The Bench, while putting the suggestions of the two committees as guidelines, said its directions would operate till Parliament or assemblies enacted suitable laws replacing the apex court's directions for prevention of vandalism of the kind seen during the Gujjar agitation in 2007.
The new guidelines include a provision that says those seen indulging in violence in video footage would be presumed to be the offenders and the onus would shift on them to show that they are innocent. Focusing on compensating the people whose properties were damaged by the protestors, the apex court said not only should the violent protestors pay the cost of damaged property, but they be also saddled with exemplary cost.

This was also a subtle reminder to the authorities that it is their duty to enforce law and order, which includes both preventing people from breaking the law, and prosecuting those who do break the law. One has to wait and see how the actual enforcement of the law proceeds.

Labels: Agitations, Court, India, Judicial, Law, Police, Politics, Punishment, Responsibility, Security, Violence

Over a period of history, the concept of rights of a woman in marriage have been evolving; from earlier times where many cultures considered the woman to be a property of the husband in the marriage, most societies now legally consider the rights of both men and women in a marriage to be the same (of course, in realistic terms, this may not be always true, with many cultures believing men to be the superior, and having more rights). However, it is also true that many Islamic countries have a conflict between the rights of men and women in a marriage - there are a number of clerics who believe that woman do not have the same rights (with the Taliban-run Afghanistan being a society where the rights of woman were definitely much lower than that of men).
Inter-linked in all this is the concept of sexual relations in marriage, and what are the duties / obligations of each partner in a marriage. Policies have slowly evolved that the concept of force has been recognized as not valid; if a partner forces the other partner to submit to a sexual relationship by force, then it is now recognized as rape. However, recent events in Afghanistan changed this entire understanding.
Recently, a law was passed in Afghanistan for the minority Shia population that legalized rape within the marriage, allowing the husband to force the demand for sexual relationship within the marriage. The passage of this law outraged people all over, with women's rights groups in Afghanistan protesting the passage of the law; more significantly, western backers of the Karzai Government were outraged and gave public statements demanding withdrawal of the law. All this pressure has finally resulted in a statement by the Afghan President that the law will be revised and brought into conformance with the Afghan constitution and with the Sharia (link to article):

# Afghan law appears to let a man to have sex with his wife even when she says "no"
# Karzai tells CNN he, others unaware of the provision due to the amount of legislation
Karzai told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he and others were unaware of the provision in the legislation, which he said "has so many articles." Karzai signed the measure into law last month. "Now I have instructed, in consultation with clergy of the country, that the law be revised and any article that is not in keeping with the Afghan constitution and Islamic Sharia must be removed from this law," Karzai said.
The bill languished in the country's parliament for a year-and-a-half before it was recently pushed through in what one legislator called a "chaotic" vote. Women from various parts of Afghanistan marched in the capital Wednesday to protest the law, which has also been criticized by human-rights groups and Western leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama.

For now, the measure has been beaten back, but measures to lift women's rights will take time, and many reverses before they can take root, especially in a backward society such as in Afghanistan.

Labels: Afghanistan, Law, Review, Rights, Women

In earlier cases such as the case dealing with Quattrochi and Bofors, or the murder case against Shibu Soren, it was pretty evident that the Congress Government at the Center was quite familiar with the idea of not treating everybody as equal before the law. If a person was needed by the Government or was close to it, it was pretty evident that the case would be weakened, or allowed to die a slow death by not fighting it as strongly as the Government would fight a case where the person facing the case was opposed to the Government. And this is not something that Governments shirk from doing, earlier Governments and State Governments also do the same thing, but they rollback when faced with pressure from the media or from the courts.
However, in the above cases and in many other cases, it was like the Government was willing to brazen out the outcry and continue with its actions; and in cases, you will see how they have succeeded. In the Bofors case, all the outcry eventually fizzled out, in the Shibu Soren case, the case was so badly weakened that the High Court let him go.
And now you have this case about the disproportionate assets of Mulayam Singh and his family. The case seems to have followed the graph of the closeness of the politician to the Congress Government. When Mulayam was distant from the Congress, the CBI followed the case as per a complaint from a Congress worker. However, when the Congress needed Mulayam to provide critical support at the time of the nuclear deal, it was pretty clear that the CBI case would start to weaken, and so it happened; the Government suddenly decided that it has re-evaluated the case and has decided not to proceed. However, the Supreme Court is not amused, and has castigated the Government and the CBI on its flip-flop:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up CBI for "acting at the behest" of the Centre in the disproportionate assets case against former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. "You (CBI) are acting at the behest of Central Government and the Law Ministry. You are not acting on your own," a Bench comprising Justice Altmas Kabir and Justice Cyriac Joseph said.
Amid allegations of Centre trying to bail out the former UP CM, the investigating agency replaced Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium with Parasaran to represent it. The decision to replace Subramanium with Parasaran had also surprised the Bench which made it clear that it will not allow any last minute changes in counsel. However, the investigating agency during the hearing on January 6 was criticised by the Bench which had said it would not like the agency to become an instrument of the government.

This is perfect; however, when the Government of the day is not interested, then even the Supreme Court cannot ensure that the investigation is carried out properly and as per law. As a result, it becomes more difficult for other parties to believe the intentions of the Government and hurts the overall judicial and law environment in the country. It may soon come to pass that the CBI is made more distant from the control of the Government.

Labels: Congress, Corruption, Court, Governance, Investigation, Law, Politics

The prevalence of dowry in today's society is an open fact; most people see it in operation either in their own marriage, or in the marriage of their family members; or you see it on operation in the case of acquaintances. So as an example, I have seen dowry in operation in the case of a family friend where her in-laws insisted on a car as a part of the marriage (and even specified the type of car that was requested). They had accepted that this was a price to be paid for getting their daughter married (and one should fault them equally for being so desperate to get their daughter married). Of course, in all cases of dowry, the boy's side is always evaluating the value they can get for their boy and have no qualms in demanding the same.
A lot of this dowry expectation is now baked into society, and there do no seem to be any easy solutions (people giving dowry expect that this is the price they need to pay to get their daughter married, and those demanding dowry do not care that such expectations are illegal in law). To make the scale more even, the Government of India has introduced a number of laws that seek to even the scales, and empower women. However, in trying to even the scale, the laws give a lot of power to women, and in some cases, there has been misuse. There have been many reported cases where the threat of usage of such laws (and consequent police action) is used as a level to force settlements; it has been pointed out in court cases and by many pro-male organizations. And when the Chief Justice of India points this out, you can be sure that this is a deep matter of concern:

Dealing a blow to women's rights activists who have been stringently defending the Section 498A provision of the Indian Penal Code, Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan on Saturday said that in some cases this section — that deals with matrimonial cruelty — was being `grossly misused'. Elaborating on false cases being filed in recent times, the CJI said that relatives not involved with a matrimonial dispute were unfairly implicated. "In some cases, 498A is grossly misused,'' he said. Balakrishnan was speaking at a seminar, `Marriage laws -- issues and challenges', organised by the National Commission for Women.
The IPC section allows for immediate arrest of the husband and in-laws by the police on the basis of a woman's complaint and has been controversial.

The various laws that were supposed to empower women, even though trying to balance the scales, do not maintain the old adage of all people being equal before the law, and that everyone is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Unless the law allows for a better investigation and penalties for misuse, misuse will continue.

Labels: Discrimination, Dowry, Investigation, Judicial, Law, Police, Reform, Responsibility, Review, Welfare, Women

In India, there are very few things most people dread higher than a sudden arrest by a police officer. And instances of policemen hauling away people to jail happen often enough (if you read newspapers, you will find enough stories of people being arrested and led to jail for being accused of various crimes). These powers of the police, typically without restraints or responsibility, have led to rampant misuse. The power of arrest is also used as a way to force people to take certain actions - so, for example, if they want to arrest a criminal, the police has in many cases arrested family members in order to force the accused to surrender; another case is the dowry and women laws, where the threat of police action forces settlements (and is in many cases used by women when they want to get settlements in their favor or harass their family members).
So, now there is a recent amendment to the law governing the power of police to arrest for crime where there is a sentence below 7 years (this includes a number of crimes such as outraging a women's modesty, the 498A, robbery, kidnapping, assaulting the President, and all offences where the applicable punishment is less than 7 years). What does this amendment actually do ? It prevents the police in normal cases from arresting the accused unless the crime was committed in front of a police officer, or if the police believe that the accused being out of prison could affect investigations. In all other cases, the accused will be presented with a notice to be present, and only if the person does not present himself / herself, then the arrest will happen:

Seven years or less is the maximum penalty for a host of offences, including attempt to commit culpable homicide, robbery, attempt to suicide, kidnapping, voluntarily causing grievous hurt, cheating, outraging a woman's modesty and death caused by negligence. The radical change in the CrPC has, however, drawn flak from a number of Bar associations across the country. Lawyers -- who also observed strike in various courts after the bill was passed in Parliament -- argue that the amendment (in Section 41) doing away with mandatory arrest provisions would remove fear from the minds of criminals who would misuse the provisions under the garb of personal liberty.
The law further says that a police officer arresting a person will have to bear his identification badge or tag. Besides, a memorandum of arrest shall be prepared, witnessed and countersigned. The person arrested shall be told that he has the right to inform a relative or friend.

Overall, this would be a good thing. It will remove the current ability of the police, when corrupt, to harass innocents. However, it is true that those who are powerful or wilful offenders will gain to some extent. And a resourceful police force can still utilize some of the discretionary authority they have under this amended law to decide whether a person should be immediately arrested or not.

Labels: Law, Parliament, Police, Policy, Punishment

In India, the police derive their powers from laws enacted during the British time. These laws were meant to enforce the power of the state (and the rulers), and this sentiment drives the power and role of the police. Throughout India, if citizens are polled over the role of the police, you will find it hard to find people who have positive views. This is also my personal view; my interaction with and observations of the police have convinced me that they are generally inclined to enforce the law and protect the rule of law (and there are many honest and great police officers as well), but they also see the law and the threat of force as a way to get benefits for themselves and their masters (who certainly are not the citizens of this country). Further, as every small trader / streetside vendor / other small businessman would volunteer, if you do not keep the local policemen happy, then things will be tough:

AHMEDABAD: Supreme Court has asked additional director-general of police Rajan Priyadarshi to pay Rs 8 lakh towards compensation to the person he assaulted blinding him in one eye, during a demonstration in 1987.
The incident took place on February 1, 1987, when Priyadarshi and then inspector RJ Yadav resorted to lathicharge during a protest demonstration. In this, a Congress leader, who has recently joined BJP, Dr Prafull Thaker was injured and lost his right eye. He moved the court seeking compensation for the injury.

This must be a shock to the police officer, since the police assume that the right to use any amount of force during suppressing a protest is their given right (all the way from the brutal attack on Lala Lajpat Rai during the rule of the British), and the fact that a court could force them to pay compensation was unheard of. In the more advanced nations, powers given to the police are with responsibility and they can be prosecuted for excesses.

Labels: Compensation, Court, Law, Police, Punishment, Violence

The drama over Raj Thackeray is reaching a new high. Raj Thackeray, once he split from the Shiv Sena had to make a separate image for himself. So, one of the ways to do this was to try to appeal to the parochial nature of people; blame outsiders for whatever is the economic poor condition and try to inflame their sentiments. He has managed to be somewhat successful in this quest, inflaming sentiments and overall leading to a situation where immigrants from North India have been attacked inside Mumbai and other parts of the state of Maharashtra. In the past, this led to panic and the temporary stoppage of many industrial units with many of their workers running away.
And how does the Chief Minister handle this whole situation. The Shiv Sena has long been a thorn in the side of the Congress in Maharashtra, with their more pro-Marathi position and higher propensity to appeal to populist sentiment. The Congress cannot afford take such positions, since it needs to appeal to all sections of people, and cannot afford to antagonize the voters of North Indian origin. And of course, taking a more extremist position in Maharashtra would expose them to a backlash elsewhere; and their chief Sonia Gandhi would be targeted for such positioning; so if you get a person all ready to be more extremist than the Shiv Sena, you can imagine the scenario of a Congress Chief Minister salivating over the prospect of the Sena's divided vote.
What this has resulted in is the Congress treating Raj Thackeray with kid gloves; they come out with empty soundbeats about 'The law will take its own course', 'We will protect everyone and not let violence happen', and so on. And yet, they allow the lumpen elements of the MNS to attack and do violence in broad daylight, they do token arrest of Raj Thackeray, keep him in absolute comfort and let him out by the next day (first time, they let him out within a few hours, and the next time overnight). The police officers claim that they have nothing against Raj Thackeray. And they can see the campaign working, the Shiv Sena is now unsure of how to behave and is trying to take credit for the campaign of the MNS. Read this report of the treatment of Raj:

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) leader Raj Thackeray need not worry about being arrested during Diwali, at least in the case filed by the Kalyan railway police. A Kalyan sessions court on Friday extended its interim protection to Thackeray till the next date of hearing, which falls on November 11. Sessions judge K K Tantrapale, however, emphasised that one of the conditions for the interim protection was that Thackeray will have to refrain from giving provocative and inflammatory speeches.
The judge questioned whether the state would be able to ensure the smooth functioning of the court if Thackeray was ordered to remain present in court. ‘Is the state machinery ready to provide adequate bandobast in the court premises,’ the judge asked the prosecutor. The judge further told the prosecutor that on Tuesday MNS activists had managed to forcibly enter the court premises and shouted slogans and created a commotion. Salian assured the court that the police would put in place adequate security.

This whole situation has seen a woeful lack of an attempt by the State Government to try and prevent the violence, and the whole atmosphere of intimidation that is equally bad. Even after large scale condemnation by various parties (including allies of the Congress), there does not seem to be any clear attempt to show Raj Thackeray the violations of law that he has committed. Instead, after seeing the repeated
statements of Raj (followed by direct action of his partymen), I am reminded of the way that the militants expelled most of the pandits from the Kashmir Valley. It is like a 2 step process, where Raj does not directly state violence, but leaves nothing else to be desired, and then his partymen carry out the actual violence.

Labels: Community, Discrimination, Empowerment, Law, Morality, Politics, Protest, Punishment, Security, Separatist

The Nano project was a dream for Ratan Tata, and he was wooed by many states eager to get this prestigious project to their state. Besides the prestige, the project was also expected to generate jobs (the main project plus ancillaries are expected to be big business). Of course, there was the expectation that land needed to be sought for this purpose. And therein lies the problem. When a project needs a major amount of land, the land acquisition is a problem, and given the increase in industrialization in the country, we will continue to face more problems. Land fragmentation is so high that to get the required amount of contiguous land for a factory or a major project means negotiating with a large number of farmers. And this is where the state steps in - the state, in situations where it is a question of industrialization, can actually acquire land at the market rate from farmers for 'public purpose'. There has been doubt in the past about whether acquiring land for a private company is a public purpose, and a recent Supreme Court judgment has sanctioned this - the court makes clear that public purpose need not mean that land only needs to be used for a Government need, but any project that generates employment and is beneficial for the local economy can be termed as a 'public purpose' project.
For the romantics who worry about a loss of village life, about the loss of land from farmers, and so on; one should ask them to live in villages for some time, especially with fragmented holdings; then they will realize that a village life is not so romantic. The known path for economic prosperity is where an economy moves up the path of industrialization, away from an agricultural focus and more into manufacturing and services where the value added is much greater. This is not meant to say that farmers land should be acquired just like that. Acquiring land for a project needs careful study; I believe Gujarat has a policy whereby there is an evaluation whether waste land can be used for this purpose, and only after that, is land taken from farmers. Farmers and others (landless laborers, sharecroppers, etc who are not compensated for land acquisition) affected by land acquisition all need to get a stake in the project, whether that be through granting them a mechanism like shares in the project, making sure that locals get enough jobs, etc.
Education is also an important part of the whole acquisition ball game. Typically, political parties don't take it very kindly when their policies are opposed by another political party. One way to avoid this is through educating villagers about how this will be beneficial to the local economy and to them (you can only do this if there are actual benefits).
Onto the current case. This is a mystery; you have a Communist Government trying to enforce a industrial project, and you have an opposition maverick politician using the acknowledged Communist methods of protest - use propaganda, rally people, block the local economic movement by blocking the main road artery, and so on. She succeeded to such an extent that the West Bengal Chief Minister could not even question the locus standi if Mamta Banerjee ? Nobody even attempted to ask as to how the Trinamool Congress claimed to be a representative of the local farmers and others. Mamta quite clearly sees this as a way of depicting the CPM as anti-poor and anti-farmer and try to rally the rural votebank behind her. In the short run, this has caused a crisis of confidence in West Bengal's ability to attract businesses:

West Bengal's worst fear has come true. Ratan Tata announced on Friday that he was leaving Singur, taking with him the Nano car project and the state's dream of an economic revival and leaving it with a tattered image in the investor's eye. The Nano project will also take with it all vendors despite the huge shifting costs, leaving a 1,000-acre black hole in the lush green Singur farmlands where Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had hope to reap a huge political dividend as well.
On Friday, a ''distressed'' chief minister heard Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata's message, loud and clear. He made fervent pleas to Tata to stay back and keep his Rs 1,500 crore investment, even argued with Ratan Tata that his decision wasn't correct but couldn't change the industrialist's mind. The Tata Group chairman said he wasn't the one to blame for things coming to this pass. He squarely blamed Mamata Banerjee for pushing him to take the pullout decision, two years after his tryst with the Nano car factory in West Bengal.

What Ratan Tata says is quite correct. If he is setting up an industry, he would want to do it in an environment which is conducive to business; this is a basic need for having a healthy and prosperous business. The fact that Mamta Banerjee did all sort of things, including tacitly encouraging physical attack on the plant's workers would have terribly shaken Ratan Tata's confidence about the reception his factory is likely to get on an ongoing basis.

Labels: Community, Development, Image, Law, Left, Neighbourhood, Politics, Security

RTI, for all its slowness, and huge backlog, is still proving to be beneficial to common citizens. I had mentioned in a previous post, a phrase that I like to use to for the effects of an RTI application - a lightning torch that exposes sloth and shines the beacon of openness on the red tape present in our Government. This feeling gets reinforced when you read about cases such as this one where a rape victim was running from pillar to post to get her case filed and investigated, and the police was not exactly the picture of cooperation:

Now, Right to Information (RTI) Act has brought justice to a rape victim in Umarpada taluka in south Gujarat. Following a notice by Gujarat Information Commission (GIC) in May, an FIR was finally lodged and action taken against the accused. In its notice, GIC slapped a penalty of Rs 25,000 jointly on two police officers for violating provisions of the Act. This followed an RTI application filed by a 15-year-old rape victim demanding to know why action had not been taken on her complaint.
The girl was raped in February last year but the accused was roaming free and police was refusing to register an FIR. GIC has penalised police sub-inspector and public information officer (PIO) DN Patel and assistant police sub-inspector Chandubhai Chaudhary, the deemed assistant public information officer (APIO) of Mangrol police station in Surat district, Rs 12,500 each.

RTI, in this legal form is a very effective tool. It allows citizens to get information about matters that concern them either personally or affects society, and enables this information not to be hidden unless it can be proved that the information being sought is either for commercial purposes, or affects national security.
There is an ongoing debate about whether the Central Information Commission (CIC), the nodal body appointed to hear RTI cases is actually not working as well as it should; on the other hand, there are numerous cases where RTI ensures that people get beneficial effects. In addition, RTI cells and mobile units that seek to empower people by making them aware of their rights are also on the job.
The writer of this piece still believes that to get rid of corruption, all other instruments that have been tried, whether they be strict laws, exposure, penalties for people caught, etc, all have failed to work; the RTI Act however, by its very nature is meant to get information. This availability of information to the common man is a welcome first step to reduce corruption and inaction in our society.

Labels: Law, Police, Punishment, RTI, Women

We talk about the police force being a help to people, a friendly hand towards the citizens of the country; helping them in getting solutions to their problems, and preventing unfairness and crime in society. By now people reading this must be thinking that either I am totally ignorant, or that this article is leading to something else.
That part is true. This article is leading to something else. The police force of any country is supposed to be all that is written above, but you go and speak to citizens, especially those who are weaker, and you realize the terror they live in. And this is something that many of us would have also observed. It may be the poor financial provision to the men wearing the uniform, it may be inadequate training, it may be lack of control, it may be anything, but the police force almost never evokes respect in people. Thus, you read about brave policemen braving terrorists, working under bad conditions, and you feel sympathy for them; and then you witness the normal working like (and read about the level of corruption) and you realize that honesty may be an aberration.
Besides this article that I will be referencing, I witnessed something a few days that reinforced this feeling. At around 9 PM, I was passing a local marker on foot, and there was this roadside vendor selling fruits, and a hefty policeman standing next to him. I was there for enough time to hear the conversation, and feel miserable about what I could hear and not do anything. Essentially, the policemen was telling the vendor to go and get him a bottle of whiskey from the nearby vend, and you could immediately see how the vendor would not be in a position to refuse.
Now read this article:

Denying policemen complimentary tea proved costly for Raju Shukla, who now lies in the emergency ward of Balrampur Hospital. Shukla was brutally assaulted by four cops from the Chowk fire department late on Monday night. Raju, who runs a tea-stall at Koneshwar Crossing in Chowk area, was even branded a thief by the fire personnel and handed over to the Chowk police station. The version of the fire cops though changed in some time and they charged him with assaulting a rickshaw puller.
Talking to TOI, the only breadwinner in the family of five, Raju said, "hum garib admi hain bhaiyya, Koneshwar par chai ka stall chalate hain. Ab yeh log aakar kehte hai ki muft me chai do, to aap hi socho ki agar hum muft me chai batenge to humara ghar kaise chalega." (I am a poor man, running a tea stall at Koneshwar Crossing and these cops demand tea free of cost. If I do so, how will my family survive.) Lying on the hospital bed in pain and unable to even turn on his side, Raju said, "the men from fire department even got my stall removed earlier when I refused them free of cost tea."

The problem now is that the police force has almost zero believability index. Even if the person was at fault (and it is difficult to see how), almost everybody would believe that it was the policemen who were responsible, and the story is very believable. Most people would not expect any action in this case as well, since it involved a poor man, and the police force is typically loath to act against its own.

Labels: Citizen, Corruption, Law, Morality, Police, Punishment

The recent attacks (bomb blasts) in Delhi that killed 10's of people seem to have finally made the Government realize how its hands are being burnt with respect to having an anti-terror law. Over the past many years, most observers have come to the realization that any policy change in India happens only for political reasons, and the same is true with respect to having a much tougher anti-terror law.
When the BJA (NDA) Government was in paper, it had brought in the tough POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) that curtailed many civil liberties and made it easier for the security agencies and the police to keep people in custody whom they believed were important for their investigations. It is also doubtless true that there would have been cases of misuse of this law, and such instances (and many other accusations) would be more true in the case of the Muslim community in India. Consequently, the law was soon proclaimed as against minority interests, helped by the fact that the 'anti-Muslim' BJP was in power. Any party wanting to court the Muslim vote would have to adopt a policy of anti-POTA, something that the Congress party adopted, and they quickly fulfilled this pledge after they came to power.
Fast-forward a few years, and the UPA (Congress) Government is on the mat in terms of internal security; bombs go off as if the terrorists just have to pick a place and they can cause numerous explosions, the security agencies make almost public appeals that they need a stronger law, and the Congress Home Minister (Shivraj Patil) is seen as a very weak and incompetent minister. The Congress seems to have even weathered the continuous bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahemdabad and the many other bombs found in Surat (and many other bomb blasts earlier, including Jaipur); they were criticized and the Gujarat Chief Minister embarrassed the center by getting his police to quickly arrest some of the alleged conspirators.
However, the media by now had taken to savaging the Government's political driven need not to bring in a more enhanced anti-terror law, and it were the Delhi blasts (in open places and prominent locations) that seemed to have currently broken the political will of the Government. The Congress seems to have realized that they are being taken as weak on internal security, and for the first time, the Prime Minister seems to be talking about intelligence failures and other measures:

In the wake of continuing terror attacks in the country, the UPA government has mooted a "tougher-than-Pota" law. Although the recommendation has come from the Administrative Reforms Commission, the timing of its release — when the government is struggling to shake off a "soft on terror" tag its rivals have sought to pin to it and ahead of state polls — is seen to be loaded with significance.
Implementation of the law is not going to be easy because the Congress has not just opposed Pota, it has campaigned for its repeal. It will also have to contend with allies who remain opposed to a special anti-terror law. More crucially, special terror laws have been a fraught issue evoking strong negative vibes from the minority community, which has maintained that these have been used to frame innocents.

It is very much possible that the Government is seeking to dissipate some of the current pressures on it by talking about a law, and will slowly let all this talk slide when the situation seems to come under control, and there are non-bomb related other issues that occupy the attention of the country.
The BJP also uses the refusal of the Central Congress Government to sanction a Gujarat special anti-terrorism law based on similar lines as the current Maharashtra one. The BJP argues that the Congress is doing it for political reasons, and it really does not care about the security of the country, a trap that the Congress wants to avoid as we draw near to elections.

Labels: BJP, Congress, Intelligence, Investigation, Law, Police, Security, Terrorism

India has a variety of problems relating to traffic management, such as overall bad conditions of road, not enough road capacity in cities, a variety of slow-moving and fast moving vehicles on the roads, and so on. One of the worst, observable by almost every person on the road, is the lack of following of traffic rules and laws. People feel that traffic rules are guides that can be followed or not depending on one's wishes, and this attitude is reinforced by a very lax enforcement of traffic laws by policemen who catch drivers violating all rules.
People almost never stop before the zebra crossing, jump red lights with gusto, do not think twice about going the wrong side of the road if they can save a few minutes, speed limits are a formality, but by far the worst such transgressions are those where a person drinks and drives.
Drinking and driving is seen as one of worst offense that a person can commit on the road, since drinking (above the legal alcohol level) means that a person is no longer in full control of their senses, and as a result, is driving a powerful and heavy machine that can easily maim or kill. In countries where drinking and driving is penalized, a person caught easily loses their license to drive for some time, may have to spend a night in jail, and is on probation for some time after that. In India, incidents such as Salman Khan driving over people, Sanjeev Nanda driving over people when drunk happen; and these are the celebrity ones, there are many more that happen on a normal basis.
So far, the law was only on the books, but for the past some months, the Mumbai police seems to have taken this far more seriously. They have been catching drunk drivers, sending them to cool off a day in jail (recently they jailed the very first lady who has been caught like this for a day). Sample this incident which shows the crackdown, as well as the general attitude of people:

Keyur Parikh must have never imagined that the traffic police were actually tracking his movements, after a court suspended his driving licence in July for a period of six months for drunk driving. On Monday, the police caught 28-year-old Parikh outside Heera Panna mall, a stone's throw away from his upmarket Tardeo residence, for driving without a valid licence. Parikh then started dropping names and threatened to summon his lawyer, hoping to get off scot-free. But the cops ignored his arguments and hauled him to the Girgaum court. It turned out that he had been booked for four other parking offences as well in the past.
"Nearly 9,000 motor driving licences have been suspended by the court since June last year. We had a hunch that some of these motorists might still be driving despite their licences being suspended. A list of 10-15 such drivers was prepared and we tracked their movements from their residence to their place of work. Our officers were armed with their vehicle registration numbers and photographs. Parikh walked into our trap on Monday,'' said deputy commissioner (traffic) Harish Baijal.

This is another part of the whole problem. How many people have not heard of cases where people receive traffic citations by normal post, and tear it up without paying, since they are confident that the traffic system of generating these citations are not computerized, and that there is no major problem if they don't follow up. I recently heard that the Delhi police head was talking about such a system; and the fact that so many years after computerization, availability of hand-held system, police still cannot check real-time whether a car in front of them (and its driver) have other citations against them.
However, one should be happy when things start working. In this case, I have been hearing of this drive for many months now, so this is not a campaign that starts, runs for some time, and then stops. It is only when people believe that they are in danger of getting caught, and they cannot escape either by paying a bribe or dropping some high names that there is some progress. Of course, educating drivers is also necessary, but without some enforcement, it mostly does not work.

Labels: Driving, Drunk, Law, Police, Punishment, Traffic, Transport

A few months ago, in an important case where the young man of an important and powerful family is on trial for the drunken running over of some poor people in Delhi, there was a lot of commotion. What was revealed was the notion that India's judicial system could be as corrupt as other parts of the executive, when a TV channel ran a sting program that revealed that the prosecution and defense lawyers in the case were hand-in-glove in trying to subvert the case, by offering the chief witness money to change his testimony. There was a lot of commotion and media reports at that time, and even the High Court has suo moto taken up the case. But then the reports died down, and the general impression was that this was a normal occurrence, that there would be a commotion and then things would die down.
However, that was not how this case would turn out. A few days back, the High Court passed its judgment in the case, and ruled that the 2 eminent lawyers (both of whom have been in practise for decades, and have held important positions including as a Member of Parliament) were indeed guilty, and slapped them on the wrist, not by disbarring them or hauling them for contempt of court (subverting the normal proceeding is similar to contempt of court), but by temporarily not allowing them to practise for 4 months.
And what was the response from the Bar Council, they protested against the usurping of authority by the High Court in banning them for 4 months, claiming that only the Bar Council could do so (although they have not done so):

Even though it steered clear of commenting on the merits of the case, BCI, led by its chairman Suraj Narain Prasad Sinha sought setting aside of the verdict, predicting it would set a wrong precedent vis a vis debarring of lawyers from practice. "As far as the merit of the judgement is concerned, we are not bothered... our stand is with regard to the powers encroached by the HC in directing the two senior advocates not to appear in HC and its subordinate courts for the next four months," Sinha said.
When asked what action is the regulatory body planning to take against Khan and Anand now that HC had held them guilty for "obstruction of justice", Sinha pointed out that it was state bar council, Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) which was still examining the issue. "If the disciplinary proceedings were not finally concluded within one year by the state Bar Council, the matter will be transferred to the BCI," the Chairman said. Interestingly, for all its indignation at what it sees as HC's "transgression", even the BCD has made little progress in its proceedings against the guilty duo.

Till the time that this article was written, there has been no action by the Bar Council of India against these 2 senior advocates, R K Anand and I U Khan. They don't care for the merits of the case, and don't care for what the public could think of; no wonder the public have a pretty bad opinion of advocates and lawyers.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delhi/HC_encroached_on_our_powers_BCI/articleshow/3398006.cms

Labels: Corruption, Judicial, Law

Ragging is a phenomenon that is not unique to India. It is present in many societies, in many forms and with different names. In India, it can sometimes take on a pleasant sense of introductions, of breaking barriers and introducing new people to life in an academic community. However, at the same time, there are many many cases where raqging takes on a more offensive nature, where the senior students consider it their birthright to make the junior suffer and subject them to humiliation and other such behavior. This has often been justified that it breaks the ice between batches, make for a better introduction to college life, and that it is 'harmless fun'. Often, when this results in serious implications for the junior students affected, the institute tries to push it under the carpet (inventing many different reasons), and so on.
For the past few years, this has assumed major proportions. In the absence of major efforts from the educational institutions (Ministry, colleges, etc), it has been left to the courts to 'legislate' in this behalf; and they have done so. The Supreme Court has passed severe restrictions against the practise of ragging, making it a criminal act and holding the educations institutions responsible for such conduct in their premises. And yet the message does not seem to have percolated through:

JAIPUR: The Kanota police have finally lodged an FIR against some senior students of Apollo College of Veterinary Medicine for alleged ragging of a junior – Prateek Bagi. The police are searching for the students who seem to have disappeared since Friday.
His hairs were allegedly cut off and he was forced to move around naked on the college campus. The seniors thrashed him many times as well. Prateek had to quit his hostel room when neither police nor the college administration paid heed to his problem. His parents had to come to Jaipur twice for their son’s rescue, but to no avail. "We had met the college administration, but received cold response. Now, we hope that the police will take an appropriate action in this regard, so that my son can study peacefully," said Parteek's father, Satish Bagi.

The college does not want to come into the limelight, not wanting to have scandal around the image of the college. However, it should be clear that senior students have no god-given right to harass junior students, and if the junior student does not want to do any of the 'activities' under ragging, he or she is well entitled to refuse.

Labels: Court, Education, Law, Penalty, Punishment