A K B Krishnan
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The rape of a woman executive by a taxi driver in the dead of the night a few nights ago in New Delhi has had everyone from the country’s home minister downwards looking for explanations, excuses and expletives. Add to it some extraordinarily clumsy handling of the situation by the powers that be and you know it’s only a matter of time before everything will be back to square one. Until next time, that is. And be under no illusion that you have heard the last of it. There will be more, many, many more, such incidents before anything effective is brought to bear on the system. |
For, it’s the system that is basically at fault and until some major systemic changes are put in place, India will continue to suffer such shame. There is much talk about how the society as a whole should change before we see an end to these dastardly acts. How the male-dominated families give little importance to the girl child and how couples even illegally abort foetuses once they ascertain, again through illegal means, that they are about to become parents of a baby girl.
In that last sentence I had to use the word “illegal” twice. That in itself should explain the situation. There are laws that forbid “sex determination” of foetuses. All hospitals and clinics across the country display this government notification prominently in their reception areas. But Indians get around this hurdle easily by greasing a few palms that are more than willing to be greased. Abortion too has several restrictions placed on it, but then again the aforesaid grease will see the day through. There are agents who could arrange these things for you for a fee. All you need is cash. You could also have it your way if you know someone who will know someone in the right place. But for that you naturally must have the cash in the first place because otherwise no one knows you.
If you happened to be unlucky to get caught while committing any of these two illegal acts mentioned above, then these very agents could fix things with the cops and everybody gets to home happily ever after. OK, you are one whose luck is running on extremely low fuel. You get caught and the cops also are of no help. You are charged and the case goes to court. Nothing much to worry. There is always the ubiquitous lawyer who could bail you out without much trouble and you could be back home before dark.
Of course you may need to have somewhat deeper pockets to pull this off. But then you don’t get into these situations if your wallet is paper-thin in the first place. Power and pelf can open doors that are otherwise shut tight.
What about the case, you may ask. That will go on for the next 20 or even 40 years and the lawyer will take care of it. By the time the sentence is passed you could be as dead as the baby girl you killed in the womb!
Just consider what happened in the courts this past week even as this lady executive was being tormented by the taxi driver. A lower court in Delhi convicted four men for the January 2, 1975 assassination of Lalit Narain Mishra. That’s 39 years and 340 days after the incident! And it was no ordinary man who was killed. Mishra was a senior minister in the federal government led by Indira Gandhi. You get a clearer perspective of India’s criminal justice system when you consider that one of the convicts, 66-year-old Ranjan Dwivedi, is a lawyer who was out of bail and had been practising his trade across courts in the nation’s capital! And if you think the matter will end here, you are deluding yourself. There are at least two other appeal courts where it can be held up indefinitely.
If the assassins of a federal minister can be roaming free and, for that matter, even practising law, then what hope does the ordinary man, or as in this case an ordinary woman, have?
After the Mishra case verdict, The Times of India had this to say: “Good governance is a popular catch phrase of the modern era, but it has little meaning if we do not have a judicial system that delivers credible justice and does so within a time frame that makes it meaningful. When murders go unpunished for 40 years, the faith of people in the system is severely undermined. That is why fixing the judicial logjam must be one of the priorities of any government that wants to ensure good governance. Whatever it takes to achieve this end - more judges at the level of the lower courts and high courts, time-bound resolution of trivial cases and so on - must be done. The alternative is making the “rule of law” an empty slogan and that’s a recipe in the long run for jungle raj.”
The Old Lady of Boribandar, as The Times has been known for nearly a century and a half, was perhaps being polite. It’s not in the long run, but here and now we have the “Jungle raj”, or rule of the jungle. There is no fear of the law. So you have cab drivers taking their fares for more than a ride. Drive around on Delhi roads and you will experience first-hand what I mean.
Sadly very little is being done to make people respect, perhaps even fear, the law. No, this does not mean harking back to the Middle Ages and hanging the criminals at the nearest public square. India has enough good, deterrent laws covering almost all sorts of crime. But they remain so in the books. What you get on the ground is totally something else. You get knee-jerk reactions like banning the cab service on whose behalf the errant driver took this particular fare and sexually assaulted her. And if that were not enough, ban all other cab services that are run on similar platforms. That’s perhaps the modern-day version of a public hanging.
Not that Uber, the service provider in this instance, is without blame. In fact, it has a lot to answer for in terms of its callous approach to background checks and consumer safety. But at the same time precious little will come out of the ban except putting the travelling public in unwarranted distress even as it encourages other unscrupulous cab operators to act pricy with their fares.
Prime Minister Modi can coin as many catchy phrases as he wants to attract public attention to his development narrative. They will all remain catchy without catching anything of import as long as the criminal justice system in the country is set right. The “Swachh Bharat” (Clean India) campaign is far too focussed on toilets. Whereas real cleanliness can only be delivered once the courts start delivering justice, but not the kind that Lalit Narain Mishra got.
Cat’s out of the bag!
When Modi declared during his Independence Day speech on August 15 that his government would bring to an end the 64-year reign of the Planning Commission of India, it left most Indians in wonderment. Not just because such a momentous decision had been taken but also because the announcement had come from the prime minister during his Independence Day speech which till that date had been used by successive prime ministers to hold forth on India’s perceived march towards progress after shaking off colonial rule.
But here was a prime minister announcing a major government decision at a public rally with hundreds of foreign delegates in attendance, whereas it is usually made either through press notes of the ministry of information and broadcasting or, if it so warranted, a full-fledged press conference with live television cover by a senior minister. Instant analysts on television channels as well as newspaper editorials the following day had not only mostly praised Modi for his courageous decision but also for the way he chose to announce it. Why should an Independence Day speech be a dull recitation of past glory, they asked. It takes courage to say the things that Modi said, they concluded.
It now turns out that Modi’s courage had the backing of a cabinet decision. For, the cabinet at its meeting on August 13, two days before Modi climbed the ramparts of the Red Fort, had decided to do away with the Planning Commission. Apparently Modi wanted this to be made public on Independence Day.
But the cat sneaked out of the bag, as it were, when a presentation made to the state chief ministers at their recent meeting with the prime minister mentioned the fact that the cabinet at its meeting on August 13 had “approved the repeal of the cabinet resolution” dated March 15, 1950. Modi, after all, may not be the dictator that his detractors would have us believe!
