India Is Free- Are Indians?
There have been a few intriguing developments recently which
were not much debated in the mass media which true to its name prefers to focus
on events of mass interest like Shahrukh
khan hugging Salman khan. The first news of interest to us ordinary citizens
was the courts striking down a provision of the representation of people's act
- the election law of India- which allowed any politician convicted of any
offense to continue in power till all his appeals are exhausted and final
judgment comes in - which given the deplorable staffing and amount of workload
of our judiciary means just one thing- indefinitely.
This new judgment turns the tables
and puts the responsibility on the politician himself- till he is proved
innocent he cannot continue in office. So the politicians will no longer be
able to dodge the case and would in fact be forced to try and get it finished
as fast as possible. All things being equal this is quite an achievement for
Indian democracy given that our politicians no longer respect the international
convention of taking moral responsibility and resigning office. When they
prefer to brave all insults and damaging revelations just to stick on like
limpets to power it takes a law like this to dislodge them and show them their
limits.
The second recent development
neglected by the mass media is the decision of allowing all political parties
accounts to be scrutinized under the Right to Information Act. This has sent
shivers down the spines of our brave politicians and they are busy trying to
frame a new law which gives them and only them- exemption from the RTI act.
If the accounts of all the
political parties were available in public, every individual can see for
themselves how little the legitimate party funds are and how much the parties
spend on elections and calculate the difference amount which is obtained by
extorting and doing favors to corporates and criminals. The veil would be torn
permanently from the coffers of the political parties and they would be exposed
with their hands full of loot. Hence the urgent need to remove this ruling and
cover themselves up. Let’s expect soon a midnight ordinance to outlaw the RTI
commission's brave act.
The final news which has caught
the attention of the nation is the suspension of the Uttar Pradesh IAS officer
Durga for taking on the land mafia boldly. This fast developing issue has been
politicized with politicians of all parties and vested interests jumping into
the fray to act as pseudo-guardians of propriety. Last heard of, this has even
been turned into a states vs central issue of autonomy in a bid to defend the
indefensible. And a blogger who commented on this issue was even arrested by the state government for criticizing their action (read here) - which is what i am doing too
I agree that the center should not
interfere too much in state bureaucratic decisions but when the state government
is blatantly in the wrong it is the duty of the center to help out the wronged
officer. But as always in India, there are multiple angles to any issue and the
fact that the center was ready to rush in to help in this particular case
smacks of some sort of inner war between
two political parties ruling the state and center and not a transparent attempt
to protect an honest bureaucrat from unfair suspension.
As yet again another independence
day nears, if we take a critical look at the state of the nation we find that
of the three pillars of the Constitution left to us by the founding fathers,
the one in the most robust health still is the Judiciary. This I would
attribute primarily to the safeguards built into the constitution to protect it
from legislative control, guaranteeing its independent status. Unfortunately
our Constitution drafting committee neglected to similarly protect the
independent nature of the Executive branch- subordinating it to the
legislators, an illiberal, illiterate, gang of self-servers, who believe in the
divinity of a majority.
Our founding fathers are not
really to blame for this apathetic situation and they can only be guilty of not
anticipating the direction our politics would evolve. For consider this when
the constitution was drafted, the first parliament and politics in general was
mostly dominated by educated persons - scholars, lawyers, teachers and
engineers. Dr.Ambedkar wouldn’t have dreamt in his worst nightmare that a
parliament would be elected comprised of the current lot of politicians.
Besides the Indian Civil Service
then was staffed with upright honest officers who held a diverse nation
together for the first time in its history as one whole. Credit must definitely
be given to the British for this, for though conquerors from Asoka to Aurangzeb
had tried to unite India before; it was only the British Bureaucratic system,
the impartial Indian Imperial Service that welded the country together. But
they were hit hard by Independent India, forced to serve rulers who had not the
faintest grasp of issues and what’s more didn’t care as long as they and their
partisan supporters were on the gravy train.
Picture this – a chief secretary
of maybe 58 years, with a 30 years long experience of serving the people, knowing
the ins and outs of running an efficient administration being humiliated and
forced to obey every rag tag local politician who has won by the support of
lumpen elements of his locality and is made a cabinet minister because of
coalition compulsions. Consider the insult to the intelligence of this fine
breed of officers who are reduced to merely typing out the arbitrary (and often
illegal) orders of politicians and implementing them in their own names at the
risk of refusing and being transferred suddenly (overnight) to the ends of the
country- to please every neophyte leader, a scion of some dynasty or other.
And why wouldn’t the country go to
dogs if we de-motivate the entire administrative apparatus? They are the ones
in fact who serve as a bridge between the public and government. As such it
becomes vitally necessary to isolate the executive from the whims and fancies
of the goondas who are our ruling class. The solution lies in Administrative
Independence of the Executive.
If the legislators are supposedly
elected by the will of the people- warts and all, let them sit in Parliament
and legislate. Let nobody interfere in the day-to-day administrations and we’ll
see a definite change for the better in how the nation is governed. If each
branch of the government sticks to its own duty- parliament to make laws,
executive to implement laws and judiciary- to interpret laws then the nation as
a whole would run smoothly. If parliament alone has the power to terrorize the
other branches of government with transfers and punishment - then we would only
have dictatorship of politicians- an oligarchy in fact.
But all this is of academic
interest only- we know by now that politicians will never give up an inch of
their power voluntarily as evidenced by the numerous judgments ruling for
autonomy of the CBI which have been routinely disregarded by governments in
charge which prefer to use the police for their personal vendettas rather than
as a crime fighting organization.
As
they say- the more things change the more they remain the same. India can grow
older and older as a free country for India has got freedom but not Indians.
Ask any Indian on the street if he is completely free and you will hear the
truth. I am tempted to echo the Tamil
poet Bharathiar's song here - a lament which goes like - Endru thaniyum engal
sudandira dhagam or when will our thirst
for freedom be quenched? Will it ever
be?
