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Is this the India you wanted?
When the history of the country’s
descent towards violence and chaos is written, its judiciary can
claim pride of place among those who speeded this up
Most
conclaves these days talk of India as the next economic and military
superpower, booming sensex, 10% growth rate and a single minded
pursuit of a strategic relationship with the US. It is time to think
what kind of a country we want India to become. The agricultural
economy is collapsing. So the argument becomes that when agriculture
is not contributing to the GDP growth, why not take away the land,
water and other resources from agriculture and give them to the
sectors which are leading the growth — the SEZs and the IT industry
for example. So as the rural economy is destroyed under the SEZ and
IT sector stampede, the poor get pushed to suicide or to urban
slums.
Mainstream electronic media — even news
channels, which are the staple information source for the middle
class, feature increasingly vacuous intellectual content and pander
to the baser instincts of sex, violence and a morbid fascination for
gossip. Stories about real people and serious public interest issues
have been reduced to mere sound bytes of a few seconds. A sickness
afflicts the soul of the dominant elite of India today. It is a
sickness which has led to a total loss of vision and has made us
lose our moral bearings. It is this sickness which is allowing us to
celebrate our great GDP growth and our emerging superpower
status when the majority of our countrymen sink to deeper and deeper
depths of destitution and despair. It is this sickness which has
produced the vision of the State as the facilitator of this
rapaciously exploitative model of development. It is not surprising
then that the “powerless” regard the State as predator rather than
protector. Even more unfortunately, the recent role of the judiciary
which was mandated by the constitution to protect the rights of the
people is making it appear as if it has become the cutting edge of a
predator State.
The courts are spearheading the massive
assault on the poor. Take the tribal oustees of the Narmada Dam, or
the urban slum dwellers whose homes are being ruthlessly bulldozed
without notice and without rehabilitation, on the orders of the
court, or the urban hawkers and rickshaw pullers of Delhi and Mumbai
who have been ordered to be removed from the streets again on the
orders of the court. Several recent judgements of the court have
grossly diluted the various labour laws which were enacted to
protect the rights of workers. Currently the term of endearment for
this is “labour reforms”. The courts have thus stepped in to do what
the government cannot do politically. One important reason why the
court can do such things is because it is completely unaccountable.
The executive government must seek re-election every 5 years which
acts as a restraint on its anti-poor policies. The court has no such
restraint. On top of this, the Supreme Court has by a self serving
judgement removed judges from accountability from even criminal acts
by declaring that no criminal investigation can be conducted against
judges without the prior approval of the Chief Justice of India.
This has resulted in a situation where
no criminal investigation has been conducted against any judge in
the last 15 years since this judgement despite common knowledge of
widespread corruption in the judiciary .This has bred and is
continuing to breed enormous resentment among the poor and the
destitute. That explains the growing cadres of the Maoists who now
control many districts. The government thinks it can deal with this
menace by strongarm military methods. When the history of the
country’s descent towards violence and chaos is written, the
judiciary of the country can claim pride of place among those who
speeded up this process. We desperately and urgently need a new
vision for the country as well as for the judiciary. We need to
rediscover and perhaps reinvent the concept of the State as a
welfare State.
29
November, 2006
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