Protests, progress and polemic

Protest is the means by which we progress. No liberty has been gained, no right secured, nor freedom won, without protest of some sort. All protest starts with an awakening, a sense of injustice, grows into a demand that is more often than not denied because those in power would much rather conserve and consolidate their own position. All protest therefore sooner or later grows into a struggle that seeks to calibrate the degree of vigour in the protest movement with the resistance put up by the status quo. Some protests fizzle out, some succeed. If we enjoy any freedoms and rights at all it is because of past protests that have won through. 

The sight of an elected leader of Delhi demostrating on the streets of his own city against a police force run and controlled by the federal government in the Centre must indeed seem odd. The protestors, usually,  are the dispossessed; their target, usually, is the established state or institutional power. 

So by sitting down on the street and holding a cabinet meeting in his car was Arvind Kejriwal behaving like an elected Chief Minister of Delhi or, as the press and many commentators called him, like an anarchist?

Is it anarchy for an elected leader to take to the streets? 

That depends on who you are and how much power and privilege and comfort you derive from the status quo ante.

 
Chetan Bhagat (an author with some mediocre literary talent, but enough to gain him a right to pop up on television with his views) decries the tactics of street protest used by the Aam Aadmi Party. But that is because he and the people who move in his circles would rather the prevailing situation continued. They would, wouldn't they?

But if you're a slum dweller in the city or a street worker at the mercy of the police, you would see this as a legitimate aandolan for your rights. What we are witnessing in India is the result of years of lopsided economic and social development in which the majority has been left behind, carried along only by false promises made every 5 years by a conniving kleptocratic class of politician; denied their due, instead offered tidbits: a quota here and a handout there.

These politicians have built and run a system of civil administration that functions only to keep the masses in their place. As a result, education, public health, infrastructure for transport, travel, electricity, water and sanitation serve, to the extent they function at all, only the minority; police and and the criminal justice system work only in the service of their political masters. 

Suddenly this arrangement - cosy for the elite, burdensome for many, and desperate for the mass at the bottom of the heap - is coming under challenge. For those on the lower rungs this is not anarchy. It is a revolt against the oppressive regime that prevailed. It is an on-going protest. It may yet fizzle out but that would be the bigger tragedy.  

Quotas and reservations - again

One of my earliest blogs was on the subject of reservations and quotas for groups defined in some arbitrary way - colour race or in India's case by caste or the lack of it. 

I argued then that any such policy of preferential treatment of people from special interest groups lead to a corrupt regime where establishing entitlement takes precedence over striving for excellence. 

In this week's Economist the harm done by 'affirmative action' as it is called in America is reviewed once again. Much better put than my own blog post but essentially the same argument. I feel vindicated. 

But I also know that the political imperative to continue with a system that provides so much opportunity for patronage is not likely to diminish. That India's corrupt and debased system of caste-based reservations does nothing to help those whom it is intended to benefit is not a strong enough argument, so long as there are enough voices to convince the majority of the downtrodden that their turn will come if only they fight for an even bigger quota. The desperate will buy any promise however debased, and the charlatan politician will make any promise howsoever false.

But that should be no reason for India's reformers and thinkers not to lead a quiet revolution in thinking that accepts the manifest  impossibility of guaranteeing jobs and prosperity not by better education, infrastructure, respect for law, and protection of property, but by offering access to a percentage quota  of the same grossly inadequate opportunity. 

To paraphrase the Economist editorial's concluding paragraph:

Selection on the basis of caste is neither a fair nor an efficient way of identifying and helping people who suffer social and economic disadvantage. Caste-based reservations replace old injustices with new ones: it divides society rather than unites it; it creates an incentive to establish entitlement rather than to work hard and excel; it blunts enterprise and dulls effort while encouraging complacency. Governments should tackle disadvantage directly, without reference to caste. If a school is bad, fix it. If there are barriers to opportunity, knock them down. And if the sons and daughters of people like the late ex-President KR Narayanan and  Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar apply to a university or for a job, judge them on their academic prowess, not their caste.

Be careful what you wish for

In the days following the Delhi gangrape in December last year, a justifiably outraged public rightly demanded swift action by the police. When 5 men were arrested and charged with the crime there were calls for a swift trial followed by the death penalty. Some commentators even called for summary execution.

Yesterday the news broke that Ram Singh, one of the 5 accused, was found hanging in his Tihar cell. Job done and justice delivered? Or was it another example of the failings of India's crumbling, corrupt and decrepit system for administering criminal justice?

No one, least of all those who had called for the death penalty, should rejoice at this turn of events. Ram Singh's death in custody is as much a tragedy for India's justice system as the original crime was a brutally grim reminder of how we as a society treat our women. Before we condemn him with loose comments to the effect that he got what was deservedly coming to him anyway, lets not forget that he was accused of a major and horrific crime, not yet convicted by a proper court of law after due process.

This matters to each and every citizen of India. When the police investigate a crime they often arrest a suspect. Just as any of us could become the victim of crime so too can any one of us be picked up as a suspect. A suspect - potentially one of us, remember – has a right to his day in court, to answer to the charge and to test the prosecution's case that he is guilty. During the time that the suspect is in custody his - or her - safety and welfare is the responsibility of the police, the courts and the rest of the state apparatus that make up the criminal justice system.

And when the suspect dies under suspicious circumstances in jail before his trial has concluded it is not summary justice. It is a tragedy for everyone involved: for the original victim’s family because they have been denied knowing for certain that the right man has been convicted and punished; for the justice system because it has failed to deliver justice in an open and transparent  way; and it is a tragedy for all of us because our trust and faith in the ability of the police to do their job properly is eroded.  

How Ram Singh came to meet his end is now the subject of another investigation. But the fact of his death under suspicious circumstances when in custody, in theory at least the safest place possible, is unacceptable and shocking. Any number of possibilities come to mind but it is difficult to believe that the system that allowed this to happen will be capable of getting to the truth of what happened in that jail cell.  

Mr Modi's speech - misleading or harmless embellishment?

I saw and heard Mr Narendra Modi’s 6 Feb speech to students in New Delhi – it was carried live on all the major news channels and I caught it in Nagpur. It was widely billed as Mr Modi’s bid to be the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister should they win the next general election.

It was an impressive performance: using no notes he held the attention of his young audience by focusing on his priorities and what he would offer as a future prime minister. Development and good governance: he had achieved that in Gujarat, he argued, and could repeat the performance for the country. Development to him meant progress on 3 fronts, farm productivity and growth, industrial sector reforms and service sector expansion.  Conscious of his audience he argued persuasively his belief that the future belonged to the young people of India. (Note 1)

He did not once mention Hindutva or the Ram Mandir issue – clever move. Nor of course did he mention Godhra – again good move. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that sorry episode, it is well behind us and some would argue time to move on (I disagree but many in India have moved on).

I was getting increasingly convinced that India needed someone like Mr Modi to provide strong leadership and push hard on development.  Until that is, he narrated, towards the end of his speech,  a story that sounded so positive and so heartening that I decided to look further into it.

Some years ago, Mr Modi said, a young man, diffident, a Canadian of Gujaratai origin, not a gifted communicator, saw him in his office with a somewhat rambling story of his plans for building a busisness. Mr Modi soon felt that he was a bit of a time waster and so brought the meeting to a close by referring him to the District Collector of some part of Gujarat.

Some 40 months later ( later on in the story this became a year later) this young man once again sought an audience with me, said Mr  Modi. He almost tried to wriggle out of another potentially pointless meeting when his PA told him that the young man wished to invite Mr Modi to an inauguration of a new factory.  The young entrepreneur also asked Mr Modi to reserve a date in his diary for 6 months later when there would be a product launch – the first output from this factory.

By now of course everyone in the audience was agog to know more about this young man and his impressive business acumen. Mr Modi never revealed the name of the entrepreneur but told his audience with  all the flourish of a stage performer that the product of this factory in Gujarat was well known to his student audience – they were the coaches of the Delhi Metro!

Wow! That was some story. It captured at once the industrial enterprise of Gujarat and the role of young people in economic development.  But could it be too good to be true? I decided to dig around a bit.

A Google search tells you a great deal of the design and procurement processes of the Delhi Metro. By and large it is a success story having delivered the Metro ahead of the planned time table and within budget. The main factor responsible for this remarkable achievement – esp given that it was delivered in that cesspit of corruption known as New Delhi – witness the mess that was the Commonwealth Games of 2010 – was Mr Sreedharan, the boss of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. He insisted on and won absolute freedom from political interference  and meddling in the procurement process.  

The trains were sourced from more than one company. Those that are manufactured in Gujarat are the MOVIA cars that the Canandian company Bombardier Transportation was contracted to supply for 3 of the Metro’s Phase II lines. Bombardier set up a dedicated manufacturing facility in Savli, Vadodara (Note 2)  for this purpose. Bombardier Transportation is of course not new to the rail transportation industry In India. They have long had a presence in the manufacture of components for India’s state owned railways.  Other companies involved in the Delhi Metro are Hyundai and Mistubishi for Phase I. The first 60 0f Hyundai’s trains were made in their Korean plants but all the others are manufactured in BEML’s plant in Bangalore.  

This is quite a different narrative from Mr Modi’s version of a sole entrepreneur achieving something big. When a big international firm wins a contract to set up a manufacturing unit for an infrastructure project of the national profile of a brand new metro system in the nation’s capital, it is unilkely the charismatic and business friendly chief minister of the state lucky enough to host the factory will first hear of it through a young,  wet-behind-the- ears, entrepreneur.

So why the needless  embellishment of what would have been a success story even if more simply presented. The narrative that "Gujarat was chosen as the site for a brand new manufacturing facility to make trains for the Delhi metro – because we have the skilled manpower and the infrastructure" - that in itself would have been some story to boast about 

His speech was not scripted, of course – most Indian politicians tend to speak extempore without notes, especially  when making speeches at mass gatherings. It could be he got carried away by his own rhetoric – he was after all emphasizing the role of young entrepreneurs and wanted to use the example of Bombardier’s investment in Gujarat.

I have no doubt  that Mr Modi did not intend to deceive, but in emebellishing a story that needed no spicing up, he may have fallen prey to a temptation politicians find hard to resist - to say whatever will please the crowd.    

Notes

1. See http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/people/10-punch-lines-from-narendra-modis-speech-at-srcc/slideshow/18370143.cms  

2.  See Projects Monitor Press notice on Nov 17 2008. http://www.projectsmonitor.com/detailnews.asp?newsid=17375

‘Bombardier Transportation India, the domestic outfit of US-based Bombardier Inc, inaugurated its new railway coach manufacturing plant on November 12. Located at Savli in Gujarat's Vadodara district, the plant will be India's first fully foreign-owned railway coach manufacturing unit.
Initially, the unit will manufacture 340 Movia metro cars for the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. The cars, valued at Rs 2,360 crore ($590 million), were order by DMRC in July last year. The cars will be delivered ahead of the Commonwealth Games to be held at New Delhi in October 2010. Bombardier also won a follow-up order in March this year for supplying 84 Movia cars, valued at Rs 548 crore.
Bombardier already has a production site at Vadodara, Gujarat, which has been in operation since 1996 for the manufacture of a range of converters, electronic controls for trains, communications for three-phase propulsion technology, as well as circuit breakers and tap-changers. Bombardier's signalling office and software development centre are also located at Vadodara, where it develops software for signalling and traction applications, catering to the software requirements of Bombardier Transportation worldwide.’

For  information on Savli, Vadodara see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savli

The wrong question

Public anger following the December 2012 rape, assault and murder of a young New Delhi woman focused attention on the scale and horror of violence against women in India. The incident seemed to have awakened a new struggle for the right of girls and women to be free from the fear of sexual harassment and violence. The anger, while understandable and perhaps even desirable, must not however lead to mistaken policies that might do harm without doing anything for the cause of women’s safety.

The Government set up a 3 member committee chaired by retired Supreme Court Chief Justice JS Verma to consider ‘amendments to the criminal law so as to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals, accused of committing sexual assault of extreme nature against women’.

That is a pretty narrow remit, and even if a) the committe comes up with sensible and practicable proposals to change the law; b) the Goverment agrees and Parliament enacts the necessary legislation, and c) the new law is implemented, it is unlikely that women will feel safer knowing that should they be attacked there will be swift punishment for their attacker.

I think this venture is destined to fail whatever suggestions Justice Verma comes up with. 

The Committee’s seeks to suggest ‘changes to the criminal law’ and its target is 'crimes of extreme nature against women’.  

The trouble is not with the law as such but with how the police deal with and investigate criminal complaints, including allegations of rape and sexual assault. There’s no point changing the penalty for a crime if the victim can be dissuaded from making a complaint or withdrawing an allegation. Criminals are not deterred by the severity of the sentence that awaits them should they be convicted. If at all they are deterred by the justice system it is the likelihood of being caught and brought to trial (1).

It is hard to see how the police response to crimes against women can change without a general change in the attitude of the police towards citizens. There is still a widespread and justified distrust of the police. They are generally poorly educated, badly trained, inadequately resourced, hardly if at all accountable to the citizenry, in hock to politicians who in turn regard them as mere extensions of the party in government, and widely regarded (and with justification) as corrupt. And worse they seem to have a hangover from colonial days of being in some way not the guardians of citizens’ rights and liberties, but their masters (2).

The judiciary – with respect to Justice Verma and his Committee - is little better. A judiciary that  presides over a criminal justice system that has tolerated - and indeed allowed - delays of the kind that makes India unique,  measured as it is in decades rather than years, deserves no respect for its professionals standards and ethics.  The legal profession is equally complicit in what Bernard Shaw described as a ‘conspiracy against the laity’.  The system appears to exist not to dispense justice to aggrieved citizens but to exploit people’s ignorance while pretending to serve them.

Justice Verma and his committee would be better employed looking at the following questions.

A) How can the police service be reformed to make it responsive to the needs of citizens, independent of political interference, and accountable to the public?  

B) How can the justice system and the courts (at all levels and both criminal and civil)  be reformed to make it efficient, fair, responsive and timely?

C) Is it right for us to continue with an adversarial system of justice inherited from colonial times, with 2 sets of lawyers slugging it out in front of a judge, sitting without a jury? Is there a case for moving to an inquisitorial system with an independent and well resourced Magistrate Service that receives, records and registers complaints from the public and where an investigating magistrate directs the police investigation into (at least to start with, major) crimes? (3)   

If India aspires to make this an Indian Century then we can hardly carry on with the present decrepit system collapsing under its own inefficiencies and corrupt practices. A fast track court for the trial of the 5 accused in the Delhi rape and murder case might well assuage public anger but what about the other 24,206 rapes in 2011 alone (page 83, Crime in India 2011, NCRB)? Or the other 256,329 violent crimes (page 50) reported in the same year?  

Here’s my prediction. The Justice Verma Committee will achieve little of substance. Let's look back at this in 5 years time and if I am proved wrong I’ll happily donate INR 20,000  to charity.

Notes

1. There’s the additional factor of the balance between what the criminal has to lose by being caught and punished versus what he stands to gain from the crime should he escape detection. But that’s a subject for another essay.

2. ‘A check of the complaints register at any police station usually reveals hundreds of unregistered cases. Nobody is punished for such lapses. Law and order gets priority over crime and corruption thrives. Graft is so endemic to the force and the opportunities for retail corruption so many, that bribes are paid for recruitment. Three months ago, the Andhra Pradesh CID arrested five police sub inspectors for using impersonators to clear their recruitment test. In 2008, nearly 40 sub-inspectors morphed photographs of post-graduate students onto their hall tickets and paid each student Rs.4 lakh to write their test.’

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/terror-strikes-ill-equipped-corrupt-police-force-india/1/151582.html

3. ‘The main feature of the inquisitorial system in criminal justice in France and other countries functioning along the same lines is the function of the examining or investigating judge (juge d'instruction). The examining judge conducts investigations into serious crimes or complex enquiries. As members of the judiciary, s/he is independent and outside the province of the executive branch, and therefore separate from the Office of Public Prosecutions which is supervised by the Minister of Justice’.

Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system