rule of law and staged encounters

Eight men are dead and their photographs have been widely shared over social media and newspapers/TV channels. 

We are a country ruled by law. The law says that persons accused of a crime —-whether it is cheating or trespass or murder or a terrorist act —-must be produced before a court of law to decide whether or not they are guilty of the crime. The police must collect and present before the court all evidence that it can gather to establish that the accused are indeed guilty of the crime they are accused of. The court must look at the evidence, and also give an opportunity to the accused to rebut the evidence. If the court finds that the evidence is insufficient, it must discharge/acquit the accused. It is only when the evidence produced before the court is considered by it to have established beyond doubt the guilt of the accused that the court convicts the accused . The court then decides the sentence as per the provisions of the law. Once again, it hears both sides before making a decision. It takes into consideration extenuating factors, if any, or aggravating factors, if any. Very rarely is the death sentence pronounced. As in other parts of the world, the death sentence is being gradually phased out in India, and though it continues to remain on the statute books, the Supreme Court has, in a series of judgments , laid down very stringent conditions which must be met before a person pronounced guilty of a crime is sentenced to death. In effect, therefore, the death sentence is pronounced only in the “rarest of rare ” cases, and after careful deliberation by the court.

Once an accused has been pronounced guilty of a crime by a court of law, and sentenced to punishment as per the provisions of IPC or other relevant law, he has recourse to several appellate remedies. He can approach the higher courts, right up to the Supreme Court. If he fails to get relief from the courts, he can file a mercy petition before the President of India. It is only when all these options have been exhausted that, in cases where the death sentence has been pronounced, the person found guilty of a crime will be executed by the State.

Since the Constitution of India assures to citizens the fundamental right to life, including the right to dignity, the convicted person is executed as per prescribed procedure, and it is ensured that his dignity is not violated, nor that of his family and friends.

What happens in staged encounters is a violation of all the Constitutional and legal provisions that ensure that no one will lose his life except as per the process set out by law. The police authorities assume the role of prosecutor, judge, and executioner, and on the basis of their own judgement of the evidence that they have themselves collected , they deprive an accused of his life, and in death, he is made to lose his dignity as well, as gory pictures are splashed all over mass media.

Some proffer the explanation that “terrorists” deserve no better. This a facetious argument because the law of the land does not distinguish between categories of suspects —– it lays down the same procedures, and makes available the same appellate remedies, no matter what the nature of the crime. Are we to let the police authorities decide that a particular crime is worse than others, and needs to be dealt with by suspending due procedures? The consequences of such an approach would be horrendous —– who will police the police? Who will decide where the police authorities will draw a line ? If the police can contemptuously toss aside Constitutional and legal provisions that ensure that no person loses his life or liberty except by due process, and not suffer the consequences, there is no knowing the extent to which such power can be abused.

Terrorism is a huge challenge for our nation. So are female foeticide and atrocities against Dalits and adivasis. These are crimes which evoke very strong emotional responses. However, passion cannot dictate the response of the State to crimes, no matter how horrendous. The State must at all times act within the confines of law. If this dictum erodes, so does the rule of law in all other aspects of our life.

As a nation, we are already confronted with crumbling institutions, unmet aspirations, and social turmoil. We cannot afford to add to this mix a contempt for the law by the very agencies that are tasked to uphold the law , without inviting a very bleak future for the nation.

impermanence

the house that my father built
lies desolate
weeds have run over
the flower beds
the fruit trees
are barren
someone smashed
the window glasses
and wind rushes in
and rain water
and birds
that do not find
shelter elsewhere
the walls that
stood high and proud
have crumbled
the Ashoka trees
alone remind
one of the glorious
dreams the house was built upon
he lived there but a year
or two
and then passed on
and I often wonder
as I go about
setting my
house in order
how soon before
another house
another dream
ends
dust to dust
ashes to ashes
how fragile are
the foundations we
build our lives on
if impermanence were
the first lesson
in school
would our lives
be any different ?
(pvks)

a room with a view ---- 1

As I swivel in my newly upholstered chair, a green canopy fills my field of vision. On even a dark and cold day, it is a sight designed to soothe frazzled nerves. On warm, sunny days. it energizes. I lean back in my chair and wonder at the destiny which brought me to a secure job, a comfortable office, a smooth ride from home to work in the splendid solitude of a chauffeur - driven car, all at the cost of an 8 hour work day which may or may not entail actual work. 

On my way to the office, I look out of the window and see office goers sitting or standing with drooping shoulders at bus stops, an expression of resignation on their faces. I wonder whether I  have the same emotion buried deep inside ---- one of resignation (to a dreary but secure job that has many perquisites). I wonder too why the apparent difference in our material positions makes no difference so far as our attitude towards work is concerned. Why do those who wait at bus stops and those who cruise by look equally unhappy  on their way to work? It must be the work itself which creates the discontent ---- absence of work, or too much work, or meaningless work or repetitive work.

Should an office-goer even be discontented? Is he not so much more fortunate than those who literally carry the weight of their work on their shoulders and backs , whether they be farmers or construction labour or rickshaw pullers ? 

It depends, I suppose, on what meaning one ascribes to work. Is work merely a means to earning a livelihood, or is the means to realising one's potential? If it is the latter, is even a minuscule percentage of office goers successful in achieving that goal ? That  being the case, is the expression of resignation any surprise? 

the curse of the medical cornucopia

Do falling hair and puffy eyes and lethargy and miscellaneous aches and pains have something in common ? Would that "something" also be responsible for erratic sleep patterns , wildly fluctuating appetite, and overwhelming ennui interspersed with periods of unadulterated enthusiasm ? Would that "something" account for irritability and temper tantrums and hysteria? Would that "something" be all manners of pills and syrups and suspensions labelled as modern medicine ? I suspect so. 

For several years, I have been a frequent visitor to hospitals and the consulting chambers of medical shamans. Each visit has meant a new prescription till a time came when I was swallowing pills by the handful. Pills for hypertension, pills for migraine, pills for high cholesterol, pills for anxiety, pills for low micro nutrients ----- and each pill came with its paraphernalia of side effects, till I reached the stage where I needed pills to combat the side effects of pills! 

My health did not improve, however. To the contrary, I grew worse each day till matters reached a low that I could not have anticipated. I crashed, and for several weeks, withdrew from family and work, not even making the effort to have  a meal a day. It was during that period of literal and figurative darkness that I decided to pitch all medicines into the nearest black hole, and switch to food and exercise as medicine. 

It has worked wonders. Its almost as if I have awakened from a troubled sleep and begun to live again. Almost all the symptoms of so called underlying pathologies have disappeared, and the only legacy of those dreadful years is a constant ringing in the ears which, I hope, will also succumb sooner or later to a healthy life style. The results are all the more dramatic given the time frame in which they have become visible ---- roughly two months. 

Of course, there are serious medical conditions which are not amenable to being treated by a no-medicines approach , but for all the illnesses for which  it does work, one ought to consciously steer clear of modern medicines and experience instead the miraculous healing powers of food, family and exercise. 

The more one adheres to traditional wisdom in this regard, the better. Things as simple as going to bed early, not having a meal after sunset, and spending time in rituals like prayers, ringing the bell or lighting a diya/ camphor lamps have helped me put hypertension and migraine behind me. Nor does one need a club membership or equipment to exercise ----  house work is the best form of exercise because it not only burns calories and strengthen muscles but also gives one the satisfaction of having a clean and orderly and sweet smelling home ! 

Last year, I had resolved to get fit enough to run a half marathon. I collapsed instead into a bundle of problems brought on by the medicines that were supposed to address my health challenges. I have great expectations of this year ----  and if I do live my dream of running a half marathon ( and who knows, a marathon some day !!) it will be because the curse of the medical cornucopia has been lifted off me. 

Swachhta needs more than a cess

A flurry of cesses to fund the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has been proposed by the strangely named Niti Ayog ( Niti itself being an acronym for National Institution for Transforming India so that we have an organisation which makes the declaration that it is an institution AND a Commission in its name !!). Among other things, the cesses will fund "scientific waste management" which is simply a fancy way of saying that more money will be spent on collecting and disposing of waste, without the taxpayers ever being informed what is happening or has been happening with the public money that was allocated and spent by municipal authorities on "waste management".

Is the goal to minimise generation of waste and reduce the size of landfills till we reach  a point of zero waste - to - landfills, or is to simply keep increasing the landfill capacity?  If it is the former, are we looking at reducing or eliminating the waste reaching landfills by promoting waste segregation at source and waste recycling, reuse and recovery etc ? The first step towards zero waste - to - landfill is usually  ( because this is the optimal choice)  a thorough audit of current waste streams, including the quantities of waste, its origin and composition. Have such audits been carried out ? Have the results of such audits been made public ? 

Why are roads and streets not swept regularly ? Why is garbage not removed from garbage bins ? Why is garbage burnt? Why is garbage being transported in open trucks? Where is the garbage being taken ? Is it being disposed of in an environment-friendly manner? Are the safai karamcharis on the rolls of municipal authorities faithfully discharging their duties? Are the government employees who run the municipal bodies serious about waste management ? Do they see it as a priority both from the point of view of aesthetics and that of public health? Are they familiar with the best practices vis a vis waste management ? Are they rewarded if they do a good job and penalized if they are negligent? Do they involve citizens in the waste management exercise? 

The Municipal Solid Waste Act and the related rules also speak about the requirement of proper infrastructure for disposal of electronic/electrical waste, hazardous waste etc . Municipal bodies have been largely silent on these issues and the scattered initiatives of citizens in this regard do not receive the active support of these authorities. 

In towns and cities where construction activity is significant, proper arrangements need to be made for disposal of construction waste or malba. In the absence of such arrangements, malba litters public spaces and common greens, chokes water bodies and creates a public health hazard. 

Going forward, do we have a commitment that the additional expenditure planned to be incurred has these requirements factored in ?  

We should not spend more on "scientific waste management" till we have satisfactory answers to these very fundamental questions.  Unless the answers are forthcoming , no amount of additional expenditure will yield a 'swachh bharat" because huge amounts of money chasing undefined or poorly defined goals and ineffective monitoring of expenditure produces zero results -----we have seen that happen innumerable times in the past, the Ganga Action Plan being a good example. Why do we imagine that the same mistakes will produce different results where Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is concerned ?

The government may carry on with a business-as-usual approach when it comes to spending public money and not bother about reviews and audits and accountability, but if we are to live in a Swachh Bharat and help create that legacy for the generations that follow us, we must become more pro active as citizens, and begin to demand answers from the government.

more or less

Everywhere one looks, one sees commercials urging one to buy, whether it is in newspapers and magazines, on television or radio, on the internet, on outdoor hoardings and banners ----- buy what one does not have whether one needs it or not, buy more of what one has, buy upgraded versions of almost everything one had bought a year , a month , a week ago, buy because there are impressive sales discounts available, buy because celebrities are endorsing a particular product, buy because everyone else is, buy because no one else has and so on and so forth. The idea seems to be to buy first and figure out later why one has made the purchase one has ----- or not figure it out at all !

In a country where millions do have even the necessities of life ----food, clothing, shelter, medical care ------ the rush to buy more and more is almost obscene. It is not as if the poor are even visually segregated from the buyers thronging the markets. The poor are everywhere ----- they work in our homes, they beg on the roads , they stand guard outside the shopping malls, they are building roads, emptying the garbage bins of the half eaten pizzas that we carelessly leave in our plates when we pause to snack between shopping expeditions. They are everywhere, yet we do not see them, and our conscience is not smitten by their tired, unsmiling faces. 

We are blind too to the environmental cost of our unquenchable thirst for material possessions. The mountains of trash that packaging alone creates should perhaps be left outside the shopping malls for the patrons to realize that that which is not in their sight is nevertheless going to end up in a landfill and pollute the air and groundwater for far longer than their lifetimes. It is a terrible legacy to leave for one's children and their children and theirs. While we splurge on possessions we do not even need, the coming generations will pay the price for our profligacy. 

Of course, our lifelong pursuit of a bigger house, a better car, exotic vacations, designer clothes, gourmet meals, etc etc requires that we create the illusion that these comprise a satisfying, even happy, life. We have successfully constructed such an illusion on a scale gigantic enough to encompass almost all of humanity. Material possessions have replaced such attributes of a meaningful life as fulfilling one's potential, creating beauty, and practicing compassion and giving, and we do not step back from our frantic efforts to buy more so as to examine our lives and ascertain whether we are living the life we ought to. We simply assume that the more we buy, the more meaningful our lives will be. That is a false assumption, of course, and at some point we do pause and wonder why we aren't happier than we believed we would be. Unfortunately, such is the strength of our false beliefs that we attribute the lack of happiness to a relative paucity of material possessions rather than to the fact that life has to be more than an exercise in accumulating possessions if it is to fill our hearts and souls with contentment, even joy, and our pursuit of the riches of the material world becomes even more vigorous. The loss is two fold -----as individuals, we live dissatisfied lives without really understanding the reason for our dissatisfaction, and human society loses the richness that individuals engaged in meaningful activity and in creating beauty bring. 

What we need is a global movement to knock down possessions from the pedestal they have been placed on, a global movement on the same scale and of the same urgency as the movement to halt climate change. What good will our lives be in a world in which we as a species manage to survive by tackling climate change if each one of us lives an unhappy life , surrounded by millions and billions of equally unhappy men and women? Of course, there is no gainsaying the fact that one cannot live a happy, meaningful life if one is bereft of food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care etc, but we need to learn to draw a line somewhere. Possessions must serve an objective, not be the goal themselves. 

Pause. Look at your life. Are you doing the best you can with the abilities you were born with? Have you made a difference? Have you created beauty? Are you happy? Is this how you wish to live the rest of your life?

the government as polluter

In a couple of days, the Delhi government will begin the experiment of having cars ply on the roads on specified days depending upon the registration number. The objective is to bring down the number of vehicles on Delhi roads so as to combat pollution ----- a laudable objective, we would all agree, but being pursued in a rather short sighted and ad hoc manner.

We are all familiar with the oft repeated ( but nevertheless valid) observations that neither Delhi nor the neighbouring cities such as Gurgaon, Faridabad and NOIDA have the public transport infrastructure or the levels of security to enable a significant percentage of those who live and/or work in Delhi to make the shift from cars to public transport , that the NCR is increasingly becoming oriented towards car owners with roads getting widened and flyovers getting built, that the concerns of pedestrians and cyclists are routinely dismissed in town design, and that the dominant culture today is one of consumerism which urges one to splurge on bigger and less fuel efficient cars if one can and encourages one to own multiple cars.

What I would love to ask the Delhi government is whether it has attempted to form an estimate of the number of cars that are owned/hired/run by the Union and State governments, the municipal authorities, the local civic administration, and the courts, public sector undertakings etc . Are these CNG vehicles? Can they be retro fitted to run on CNG? Can new purchases not be mandatorily of CNG cars? Have the governments, municipal authorities and civic administration considered devising systems which enable working from home? Are office buildings being rented/purchased in clusters so that the movement of files and persons ( which obviously involves the use of cars) can be minimised? Is the use of office cars for personal/ family errands being monitored and penalised? One can safely assert without any possibility of being proved wrong that the answer to all these questions is No. One can also safely hazard that the reason for the answer being No is the mind set that places the bureaucracy in a charmed circle, near - immune from the considerations of economy that influence the decision making of prudent home makers and profit driven businesses.

On a related note, do government organisations review their own work so as to determine whether an organisation has outlived its utility and needs to be wound up, or at least trimmed so as to become leaner ? Announcements regarding the setting up of new government bodies are common, those to do with the winding up of government organisations are rare, notwithstanding the fact that socio-economic changes ( which are currently taking place at a rapid rate) invariably result in some functions and organisations becoming redundant. Governments keep expanding, and so does the environmental cost of ensuring the mobility of government personnel.

The Delhi Chief Minister says that he and other Ministers will car pool to reach office. Will the bureaucracy? Or the judiciary? I for one look forward to the day when the district commissioner or metropolitan magistrate relinquish the sarkaari car and the "gunman" who accompanies them in the vehicle. I don't see it happening in the near future.

One near-criminal use of government owned/hired cars is to transport files ---- it could be a single file which is "urgently" needed and is therefore dispatched by car by a subordinate organisation to the office of a superior authority. Quite apart from the reckless disregard of economy, the environmental cost is not even a consideration when files are thus dispatched. If tomorrow a fiat were to be issued that files will under no circumstances be dispatched from one office to another via car, there would be an overnight jump in efficiency and systems solutions so as to ensure that the information contained in files is easily accessible and retrievable even without the file being physically available.

There is no empirical data available which could help one ascertain the environmental impact of government cars but even if it were a not very significant percentage, what is of great significance is that the issue of the environmental cost of cars would itself get more careful consideration and perhaps a change in the problem solving approach if it were ensured that the such ad hoc solutions as having cars with specified registration numbers ply on the roads on specified days and the resultant inconvenience are equally the lot of levels of government officials.