Fight against Corruption

Corruption has been the worst bane of India’s maturity into a developed country. From the very beginning of an independent India, the socialist mentality and model of government meant the politicians and bureaucracy held disproportionate power and hold on the life of an ordinary citizen.

Till some years ago, the Government was directly or indirectly involved in every single aspect of an ordinary person – ration cards, gas connections, telephone, and banking. The procedures were set up so that an ordinary person had to jump through a thousand hoopes to get a single request approved. This was a favorable breeding ground for corrupt bureaucrats who began asking for bribes for the most routine issue to be sorted out. And when everyone realized there was at the most a remote chance that they would be prosecuted and an even remote chance that they would ever be convicted for these offences, over the years it became a norm. Secrecy about how government offices worked and made decisions was of utmost importance. Most people had not seen anything better in the Government and only a daring few could do something about it. People have become so used to it now that they cannot believe any civil servant will actually be clean and do their job without asking for favors.

However, ever since the Right to Information Act of 2005 came into effect, there are positive signs that things may finally be beginning to change, albeit slowly. While the media has been slow to use this to the advantage and dig up information about waste of public funds, corruption and other acts of malfeasance, various individuals and Non Government Organizations (NGOs) have taken up the cause to fight corruption and are doing commendable job at it.

Arvind Kejriwal of Parivartan was awarded the 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award for activating India's Right to Information movement at grassroots and social activities to empower the poorest citizens to fight corruption by holding the government answerable to the people. More recently, another NGO has been launched in Chennai. It is known as the 5^th Pillar. 5^th Pillar was in the news recently when it launched its initiative to fight corruption using a “Zero Rupee Note”.

It is up to each and every one of us to get involved in such efforts to root out the culture of bribery and corruption plaguing our public sector. Let’s all hope that such efforts can on and gather critical mass in the society that a difference becomes visible to the common man in next 5 years.

Judicial Activism in India

A war of words has recently broken out between two branches of the Indian Government – the executive and the judiciary and looks like that the issues may not be resolved for a long time to come. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan defended their own turfs at a seminar in New Delhi recently.

My personal opinion is that the executive / legislature should decide the laws of the land and that the judiciary must interpret those in case of a conflict. If the judiciary finds the legislation as unconstitutional, it should simply strike it down and direct the executive to remedy the unconstitutionality. The judiciary however must not make policy decisions. All this is fair in academic terms, but in reality, in India, the executive branch has gotten used to taking decisions irrationally and purely for political gains without much regard for fairness.

The legislation allocating an arbitrary quota for the OBCs has been stayed by the Supreme Court and rightly so because a 76 year old census cannot be used as a basis for deciding any policy today. A previous judgment indicating that even the IX th schedule of the Constitution is not immune from judicial review is another example where in my view the so-called judicial activism is justified. It is also justified in cases that review purely political actions like dismissal of state governments under article 356 without regard for ground realities in state legislatures.

Unfortunately, such examples are not uncommon because successive administrations in the Centre over the years have shown little respects to laws of the land which they themselves enacted. In India, if you are privileged enough, you can almost break every statute in the book with impunity. The court system is so backlogged that everyone knows that it will take over a generation for any case to come to trial and if they have good influential lawyers, they would be able to get out with a minor slap on the wrist.

While in theory, judiciary overstepping its mandate may not be a good thing; but in India, unfortunately, that is the only branch of Government and even that mostly at High Court and Supreme Court level that citizens can somewhat trust to enforce their rights and receive justice. And until our political leaders mature enough to separate governance and politics, judicial activism is about the only hope for Indian people.

58th Republic Day in Washington DC

We were planning a quick trip to Washington DC on 26th January to visit the Indian Embassy to attend the Republic Day celebrations there. It was sunny but a really cold day – about 18 deg. F (about -7.7 deg. C) at 9.00 am that day.

The function at the Embassy started sharp on time at 10.00 am with the unfurling of the flag at the hands of the Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen. Bowing to the elements, the rendition of the national anthem and other festivities were held indoors in the Chancery building of the Indian Embassy.

The Chancery building is not huge but nonetheless an impressive building (actually two adjoining ones) and one of the oldest properties held by GOI abroad. In the front of the building is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi. The function was held in the lobby of the building. It was a neat little lobby but a little too small to accommodate crowd nearly a hundred strong. The lobby is has photographs of sitting President and PM as well as those of late Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. An impressive oil portrait of Sardar Patel also adorns the walls. There was a small reception room and two bigger adjoining rooms on either side of the lobby, which that day were reserved for food arrangements.

The function indoors began with the national anthem. Later the Ambassador read the speech by the President Dr. Abdul Kalam. While the contents of the speech were impressive in the usual Kalam style, the listless reading by the Ambassador turned it into a test of audience’s endurance. Also lacking was any note of welcome from the Ambassador himself and this made it feel as if he was there only because he had to. The cultural program was a display of typical “babu”dom that the GOI is famous for. After a couple of decent patriotic songs rendered by some Embassy staffers, there were a few songs by an ex-AIR lady singer. Some were OK and some quite so-so. Then came something, calling which a song would be a crime. The beautiful “Ae mere watan ke logon…” was destroyed to shreds by a lady who was introduced as being from the World Bank. There was no tune, notes were all over the place and it was just plain torturous. The master of ceremonies had told us this divine song would move us and bring tears to our eyes. It almost did – albeit for totally different reason than intended. The saving grace of the function was the last performance by an elderly gentleman who rendered a Tamil song in praise of India. It was quite good though I do not understand Tamil myself.

Then it was time for some refreshments. As I noticed this time around and also on last Independence Day, Embassy does a good job of arranging for hearty refreshments for the gathering. The fare war tasty and appetizing; consisting of dhokla, pakode, chana-puri, upma, gajar halwa and laddoo and hot and cold beverages.

The crowd was mostly enthusiastic at the function and as always, the most impressive attendees were the members of Indian Armed Forces currently posted in the US. Their faces showing the pride they took in defending our frontiers and their demeanour stately like lions and tigers. They are the main reason that made it worth our while to attend the function in the bitter January cold in Washington. Jai Hind!

Why ban AXN? Just stop this hypocrisy!

The self appointed guardians of all things moral are at it again. The I&B minister P.R. Dasmunshi has banned the Sony-owned AXN channel on the grounds that its “world’s sexiest advertisements” was “a programme against good taste or decency and is likely to adversely affect public morality,”.

Why do these politicians consider themselves the vanguards of Indian morality? This entire concept of the government teaching us individuals about what our morality is or should be is a throw back to socialist and communist times and not worthy in an open and democratic society. In democracy, it is absolutely imperative that people have a right to read and watch anything that they please so long as it does not adversely affect anyone else. And this should include the so-called “morally objectionable” content as well.

What we need is a well-defined system where by channels who use free public airwaves to broadcast without paying any airwaves license fees to the government (like Doordarshan) to abide by the “decency” standards until say 11 pm (as proposed for everyone under the proposed Broadcasting Bill). However, if public is paying for certain channels – as will happen with the upcoming conditional access system for cable television, the choice should be left entirely up to the consumers.

We do not need moral policing – especially from the politicians who, except for a few exceptions, are shameless users of their power and position to advance their own agenda and not their constituents' and have no right to talk about morality and definitely don’t have the right to force it down society’s throat.

SC cracks the whip on IXth Schedule

Supreme Court of India on 11th January 2007 delivered a significant judgment that is sure to wake up the politicians who run our parliament and the government. SC essentially made it abundantly clear through its 9-judge Constitutional Bench’s near unanimous (8-1) judgment that it alone has the right to interpret the Constitutionality of acts passed by the Parliament and that the Union and State governments cannot slide statutes into the IX schedule of the Constitution for the sole reason of avoiding judicial scrutiny. It is heartening to note that in its judgment, the bench has noted that any statute violating basic structure of the Constitution and fundamental rights afforded to citizens under the same.

This judgment essentially throws open the floodgates for a lot of potential lawsuits challenging the validity of umpteen numbers of statutes that politicians managed to stuff in the IX schedule – one of the most prominent being the one reserving 69% seats in Tamil Nadu which directly contradicts SC’s judgment limiting all reservations to no more than 50%.

While I do believe that in a democracy, the will of elected representatives should prevail, the statutes like the anti-defection law make it all but impossible for our representatives to vote their conscience and they have to toe the party-line. Thus we end up depending on the unelected judiciary to do the job of protecting and strengthening our constitutional rights.

Let us hope that our politicians leran their lesson and apply their minds to the laws and legislations they pass.

Tolerance of Intolerance

What happened in Kanpur on 28th of November is despicable. Unfortunately, while not an isolated incident of this type, the desecration of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s statue is indeed shameful. However, what followed in Maharashtra and other parts of India is even more shameful. Loss of public property was in the millions of rupees. Add to that countless hours of lost wages ad productivity. Such violent protests cost Indian economy millions of rupees a year. Whether or not these riots qualify as protest is also a matter of debate. These are just some shameful publicity stunts undertaken by the so-called leaders of their own fiefdoms – be it a small locality or city or a state.

In today’s shameless and opportunistic politics, this great democracy of ours has become somewhat an example of intolerance. Dissent is the very essence of any democracy. But so is tolerance of views one does not necessarily agree with. It is imperative that there be a protest but in no case should this protest result in destruction of public or private property. We as a nation have become quite tolerant of such intolerance.

We let our politicians engage in violent protests without holding them accountable for their actions. We let our government ban books or films that contain slightest controversial material. The Supreme Court, overruling a Madras High Court judgment banning a film, has opined "If the film is unobjectionable and cannot constitutionally be restricted, freedom of expression cannot be suppressed on account of threats of demonstrations and processions or threats of violence. That would be tantamount to negation of the Rule of Law and surrender to blackmail and intimidation. The State cannot plead its inability to handle the hostile audience problem".

We have long let our representatives off the hook for their intolerant behavior. We have let our government get away with not enforcing the law of the land. In fact, the very people whom we as voters have put in power mock the very laws they are supposed to uphold. Our constitution, instead of being the document to live and die by has become a puppet in the hand of these politicians – modified at will and convenience.

It is time to wake up to the power and hold every single representative of ours accountable for his actions and inactions. It is also time to use the Right to Information law to find about what is really going on behind the scenes in the government and force it to correct its course of actions. And above all, it is time to stop being tolerant of the intolerance.