Aiding and abetting contempt
One of the great national delusions which according to self-serving propagandists of socialist post-independence India, distinguishes this country from communist China, third world dictatorships and Middle East satrapies, is that it is served by a magnificent, free and independent judiciary. But the plain truth is that commendably democratic India’s judicial system is the slowest justice dispensation system in the world with a pending backlog of 30 million cases, most of which have been trapped in the coils of the sytem for decades. Instead of addressing this problem and demanding its resolution, their lackadaisical lordships of the Supreme Court and the upper judiciary are pre-occupied with stifling public criticism by invoking self-defined contempt of court laws.
The latest example of misuse of judicial power is the sentence passed by the Delhi high court against four journalists of the Delhi edition of Mid-Day, an afternoon daily in the national capital, for contempt of recently retired chief justice of India Y. K. Sabharwal and by implication of the Supreme Court. The daily had reported widespread allegations that in his last days in office, Sabharwal had passed orders sealing business premises in residential areas of Delhi which had benefited his businessmen sons. Taking suo motu cognizance of the Mid-Day reports, a bench of the Delhi high court ruled that the four journalists had denigrated and committed contempt of the Supreme Court and the judicial system as a whole.
Curiously while hauling up the Mid-Day journalists for contempt of the former chief justice and the Supreme Court, the learned justices of the Delhi high court have not taken cognizance of signed articles in the press by former apex court judge V. R. Krishna Iyer and Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan who have publicly demanded investigation of corruption charges against the former chief justice.
Cocooned in their ivory towers, their delusional lordships seem unaware that by neglecting to cleanse the augean stables of the justice system, they are aiding and abetting rising public contempt of the judiciary.
Common man’s can
In the chronically mal-administered republic of rackets that is contemporary, sanctimonious India, the common man — or aam admi whose interests the Congress party which heads the 17-party coalition government ruling in New Delhi claims to represent — is being openly and continuously deprived of his life savings by unholy coalitions of politicians, babus and real estate racketeers. This flagrant racket was briefly exposed when copious rains lashed the garden city of Bangalore in mid September. Following heavy flooding of several arterial roads, it was discovered that a large number of homes including multi-storied apartment complexes had been illegally constructed over storm-water drains in several areas of the city. Quite clearly babus in the land records office of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (municipal corporation) had been bribed to manipulate land records and titles by the city’s notorious fraternity of builders to clear their construction projects. But following widespread public protests over heavy flooding of city roads during the recent downpour, BBMP demolition squads razed 16 buildings in suburban Puttenahalli despite most of their residents being bona fide purchasers who had invested their life savings in their homes. Given widespread awareness of the pathetic dysfunctionality of the judicial system (see above), none of them have filed cases for fraud, conspiracy and cheating against the builders and/or collusive government officials.
The upshot is that the BBMP babus have pocketed their bribes and builders have banked the high prices extracted from bona fide purchasers of the shoddy — now demolished — homes with the common man left to carry the can. That’s democracy and rule of law, Indian style.
Much ado about nothing
Another of the great tragedies of post-independence India’s substantially failed socio-economic development effort is the boundless capacity of the nation’s politicians and bureaucrats — who under the socialist model have appropriated wide powers to (mis)manage the economy — for wasting public money. A case in point is the recently concluded four-day Incredible India @ 60 advertising and promotion campaign in New York orchestrated by the Union tourism ministry at an estimated cost of Rs.10 crore plus. According to media reports, the city’s Times Square was festooned with posters flaunting India’s beaches and temples even as classical danseuses pirouetted in the streets of the city serviced by six buses and 150 taxis wrapped in India colours. All of which has cost Indian taxpayers fistfuls of dollars.All this would be very well if the Union tourism minister had prevailed upon the government and the home ministry in particular to improve ground conditions back home in India, so that the pathetically small number of 4 million brave tourists who visit annually (cf. 49 million who visit China) have an enjoyable stay in the country and give it some positive word-of-mouth publicity. It’s hardly a national secret that from the minute a foreign tourist arrives in India there’s a mad scramble to rip off and shakedown him/her.
Indeed on the very day that the Incredible India@60 extravaganza reached its grand finale (September 25) in New York, two Japanese women tourists were drugged and raped in Agra — where harassment and exploitation of foreign tourists is flagrant and uninterrupted by the law and order authorities, if any. According to tourism trade insiders, sexual molestation of women tourists by lumpen elements who throng popular tourist spots — and adverse word-of-mouth publicity about this largely unchecked phenomenon — is one of the major reasons why tourist inflow into the country has been stagnant for over a decade.
Unfortunately neither the free-spending tourism minister nor her jet-setting babus seem to be aware that the experiences that harassed and ripped-off tourists recount when they return from India are of the incredible on-the-ground chaos, insecurity and frustration which this country provides. Little wonder that measured in terms of incremental tourist arrivals, the government’s Incredible India extravaganzas are much ado about nothing.