Politicians....Organized Criminals ??? (part 3)

Preface 

This is the third and last post of the trilogy, where I have tried to explore the similarity between politics and organized crime in the country. This post goes into the depth of political rot in contemporary times and also explores the few silver linings in these dark clouds.

        With the end of Congress Hegemony in Indian Politics in 1989, it was now the era of coalition and vote bank politics. By this time, there was widespread public disinterest in politics. The middle and upper class were completely alienated from the electoral process. The elections were wide open, with extremely low winning margins and several close candidates for each seat. It essentially meant that to be 'first past the post' in any elections, you don't require support cutting across all communities, like in earlier times. Hence, instead of a 'unity in diversity' campaigns for the entire constituency, the complete electoral emphasis was now on specific targeted audiences, based on caste, religion, ethnicity, region etc. The old imperialist technique of 'Divide and Rule' was perfected by the modern Indian Politicians. These politics led the Indian society in the vicious cycle of mutual hate and self-destruction which continues unabated even today.

Protest Against Mandal Commission

        Ticket distribution on the basis of caste has been going on since the late 1950s.  However regressive caste politics reached new heights with the development of competitive reservation system, for vote bank purposes. Every caste/community started proving themselves backward and demanding reservations, added and abetted by opportunist political leaders. Instead of expanding the overall pie, all efforts went in securing a smaller separate slice for ever increasing sub-divisions. As expected it led to a development of creamy layer in every historically oppressed section of Indian society. The creamy layer kept reaping almost the entire benefit of reservations while the remainder remained untouched as they couldn't even cross the minimum qualifying threshold.

Ram Rath Yatra by L.K Adavani

        The Hindu fundamentalist groups had long been sidelined by secular charismatic leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru. But the continuous vote-bank minority appeasement policies led to dissatisfaction in the majority. On the highly emotional and religious demand of creation of 'Ram Janyabhoomi Temple', the Hindu fundamental groups revived themselves. It finally resulted in BJP forming the first stable non-Congress government in the country. As expected, acquisition of power in the center led to a more moderate and secular approach being adopted. India finally found the long required and very essential (right-winged) political alternative to Congress. However it came at a huge cost on the society. The demolition of Babri Masjid led to several religious riots. The Gujrat riots of 2002, was the second major government-supported riot in the country after the Anti-Sikh riots of 1984.  

Laloo Yadav

        Party sponsored criminals, during elections, had been a very common thing, right from the late 1960's. Later booth capturing, intimidation and sporadic violence during elections, became the norm of the day. But now hard-core criminals started coming into politics. With their muscle and money power, they were able to gather enough critical votes to be the 'first past the post' and hence they were welcomed with open hands in all parties. The thin line between organized crime and politics was blurring very fast. One of the worst sufferers was the state of Bihar. For more than two decades, the state was very similar to a mafia-ruled place. There were even parallel caste armies and proxy civil wars in the state. Things were not much better in the rest of the country either. In eastern India and especially in tribal areas, organized exploitation by the state and police machinery increasingly drove people to violence and Naxalism.

Political Choice

        All the mainstream parties more or less lost their separate identities. Party ideology became a poor joke. People frequently swapped sides with perfect ease between rival parties. Horse trading and power struggle became far too blatant and unapologetic. In a supposedly spiritual country of ours, public morality and even basic ethics were thrown out of the window. Another interesting pattern is the change in the personal relationships between ardent political rivals. It had progressed from once ideological differences to personal differences, to now pure shadow-boxing. On a personal level, everyone in politics helped each other. They even bailed out their opponents at critical times, ensuring that rarely anyone ever got convicted in courts. For all effective purposes, the complete political class was above the law. Although outwardly, the politics appeared to be more dynamic, with no party ever being sure of returning back to power; actually, the system became very stagnant, with no real change being brought about, through any elections.

P V Narsimha Rao

        By the early 90's, Indian economic was in tatters. There was a minority government at the center headed by Narasimha Rao, who had mastered the act of staying in power, by hook or by crook. There was not even a single party then, that had economic liberalization in its agenda. Yet the circumstances forced India to liberalize its economy. Great path-breaking reforms that would have never passed had there been proper discussion or debate on it, in the parliament, were readily passed as  everyone was just busy trying to avoid a second election and get the maximum out of the costly election that they had somehow won.

People's Committee Against Police Atrocities

        Apart from having a very positive impact on the economy, the economic reforms completely changed the scale and scope of corruption, black money and politics in India. The pace of economic reforms and liberalization slackened as soon as the Indian economy stabilized. Certain key sectors were never reformed, and the bottleneck in those critical areas now yielded much higher returns for the bureaucracy and politicians, from the increasingly rich business class. The country moved from 'ineffective socialism' to 'effective crony capitalism'. This crony capitalism led to very harmful effects on the environment and much greater exploitation of the extremely poor (especially tribal) class. As a reaction to it, counter-productive communism and Naxalism spread explosively, to cover approximately one-third the total districts of the country.

        As the scale of corruption scandals grew, so did the task of covering it. Rajiv Gandhi made a mess of covering up the Bofors scam and hence paid dearly. Learning from that, the politicians soon realized the need to bring every investigative agency, especially CBI, under their water-tight control. Very soon they were masters of the game and even the creation of CVC by Supreme Court through the famous 'Vineet Narain case' helped little. CBI soon became one of the most effective tool, in the hands of the government to blackmail its coalition partners and others in the opposition.

Election Commissioner, T N Seshan

        After the demise of Indira Gandhi, the non-political, independent institutions of the country slowly strengthened themselves. In 70's and 80's a number of elections were rigged. Money and muscle power had become predominant in Indian elections, slowly turning India into a banana republic.  One man, Election Commissioner, T.N. Seshan changed it all. He utilized the power and autonomy of the Election Commission, under the constitution, to free the office from all political pressures. His legacy ensured that elections became freer and fairer over the years.

Vinod Rai, The Controler and Auditor
General (CAG) of Ind

        After the Emergency, no government could ever dare to put binding restrictions on the media. With the emergence of TV and the subsequent popularity of the media, it became a very powerful fourth pillar of democracy. The media has never been completely free from political pressures. However the fact that its competitive popularity in most cases, rests on taking an anti-political and anti-establishment stance, has led it towards constant scrutiny and criticism of the politics. Similarly, as the executive kept losing popular support and people power, the judiciary filled in the gap through increasing judicial activism. A lot of important decision were taken and monitored in courts rather than in executive bodies. Historically, the CAG's audit reports were routinely thrown into the dustbins by the politicians. Lately, under Mr. Vinod Rai, the CAG has successfully managed to name and shame politicians. Thus India has, over time, developed and nurtured all the necessary elements of a fully working democracy.

        The advent of modern technology, the internet, social media, the spread of education, the growth of urban middle class and increase in prosperity due to economic reforms has strengthened the civil society of India. IT revolution, growing demand for e-governance and greater public scrutiny through acts like RTI has dented the political power slightly. Even though disturbing similarities do exist between current politicians and organized criminals, the experience of other countries, who have gone through a similar path, suggest a far rosier future for India. India is too diverse a country to make any sweeping statement and hence it remains a matter of speculation whether Indian politics has reached its nadir or not.

Politicians....Organized Criminals ??? (part 2)

Indira Gandhi

        In the previous post, I went over the initial era or the golden era of Indian politics, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Lal Bahadur Shastri. Till this time the rot was only at the lower levels, while the Gandhian aura still persisted in the higher echelons of power. Politicians were still highly respected and revered in the society and great debates used to happen in the parliament. All this was about to changed very rapidly.

       

        Indira Gandhi had been the president of the Congress in 1959, but that was not something liked by Nehru. He never gave her a cabinet berth and he was frequently embarrassed by her ruthlessness and disregard for parliamentary traditions. Only due to growing nepotism in the party, Lal Bahadur Shastri gave her an unimportant portfolio in his ministry. However defeating Morarji Desai in the party election, she became the next Prime Minister of India. 

     
        Indra Gandhi stood for almost the exact opposite of everything that her father stood for. She nearly destroyed everything that her father had so painstakingly built over so many years. Indira Gandhi had huge personal ambitions and absolutely no respect for any institution or person. Her primary goal was to keep herself in absolute power, whatever may be the cost, and to ensure that the power remained within her family perpetually. In her own words to the journalist Bruce Chatwin - ‘you have no idea how tiring it is to be a goddess.’
      

V. V. Giri

        Nepotism and personality cult were now openly encouraged. Indira Gandhi first gave a Bharat Ratna to herself and then to V.V. Giri whose most important qualification was perhaps just his loyalty to Indira Gandhi. The Congress party now became a family business. Internal party democracy became a joke. Only loyal and subservient people were given important posts and even senior independence struggle veterans were sidelined and shrugged off. It created a huge furor in the Congress party, the result being that the party was split twice. But Indra Gandhi prevailed over all her opponents within the congress party and outside, majorly due to championing the socialistic cause, her hugely popular "Garibi Hatao" slogan and the Nehru-Gandhi family legacy.
  
        Instead of the corruption being bottom up and behind closed doors, it became top down and the norm of the day. Honesty and morality were thrown out of the window completely. Corruption spread to every government department and was institutionalized, with fixed percentages for every officer in the department, from top to bottom. With the official patronage given to corruption and an absolute guarantee of safety ensured to its perpetrators, corruption spread like cancer in the entire system.

   

        Indira Gandhi took the Nehru's socialism to newer heights with her nationalization drive, the abolition of privy purses etc. However her motives were completely different. Nehru genuinely believed that democratic socialism was for the upliftment of the poor and the welfare of the nation. Indira Gandhi had no such noble aims. She had rarely ever invoked the word 'socialism' before 1967. Socialism was only her way of cashing on the popularity of her father, engendering populist support for herself, creating more centralization with a concentration of power in her hands and generating more money through rampant corruption in the license-permit-raj. In fact under Indira Gandhi, the country started moving from democratic socialistic policies to communistic policies of Stalin and Mao. 
       

        Indira Gandhi believed in staying in power by any and every means. She resorted to open rigging of elections, booth-capturing and violence, using public machinery for party purpose, spending much more than the allowed limit etc. She even encouraged anti-national elements just to counter the rise of new regional parties. She was also notorious for imposing president's rule on flimsy grounds in a lot of non-Congress states. Constitutional posts like those of the president, the Governor etc became her puppets. There were interferences even in the appointment and promotion of Judges. The bureaucracy was obviously kept under an iron fist and good and honest people were promptly sidelined.

   
Total Revolution

Jayaprakash Narayanan

        While the Gandhian morality was dying in the Congress, a new ray of light appeared in the 70's in the form of Jayaprakash Narayanan. JP had abandoned 'rajniti' for 'lokniti', but in 1974, he came back to the national politics to fight against corruption and misgovernance. He gave the call for "Total Revolution" to redeem the unfulfilled promises of the freedom movement. He openly equated the Congress government with the British government. His movement soon spread from Bihar to the rest of India. His movement was so intense that to keep herself in power Indira Gandhi had to declare an Emergency.
    
Emergency (26 June 1975 – 21 March 1977) and Janta Party
        Oppression brings out the best in a country and the Emergency achieved just that. The vehement opposition of emergency in the country proved how deeply Indians care about their liberty and how deep were the roots of democracy in the country. The growing apathy to politics in the Indian society was replaced by the most popular public movement since Independence.

Morarji Desai
(India's First Non-Congress PM)

        Jayprakash Narayanan called for a united front against the Congress and hence Janta Party was formed. However the design was flawed from the beginning. The Janta Party was an amalgam of various parties who had just one thing in common - opposition to Congress and Indira Gandhi. They had no common ideology, agenda or even an acceptable PM candidate. Moreover JP was not that much concerned about the character and past record of people joining the Janta Party. However, to be fair to him, he was almost on his deathbed at that time and had no time to prune or mentor the party like Gandhi did for the Congress Party. 

        The Janta Party government proved to be no less corrupt that the Congress Party. It began to wither as significant ideological and political divisions emerged and broke up in less than three years. With the death of JP, the grand endeavor to create a credible alternative to Congress came to an end. Indira Gandhi came back to power but she was never as much in control as in her early years as the Prime Minister. More importantly, the country lost one of its best chance to reform the Indian Politics even after such great public mobilization and turmoil.

Dynastic Politics

Sanjay Gandhi

          Indira Gandhi made no bones about the fact that she wanted Sanjay Gandhi to succeed her. After his death, Indira began grooming her other son, Rajiv Gandhi, for the top job. This Dynastic tendency, though started by Indira Gandhi, was not just limited to the first family or the Congress(I), but it soon spread to most regional political parties. By this time almost all political parties had become like family businesses. Ideology was secondary and getting to power was the primary purpose. Most of them had tasted power in the State and had become more of less like Congress itself.
     
        Although the middle class constituted a very small percentage of the Indian population, they played a very central role in the independence movement. The Congress party itself started as a middle-class party and later it expanded to the lower class. However when it came to winning elections, the middle class had no significant at all and hence it kept getting alienated with time, from the political consciousness. After the death of JP movement, the disconnect between the politicians and the middle class became almost absolute. Voting percentages in the rural India increased but in towns/cities, it came down heavily. A large percentage of the middle class didn't even bother to enroll themselves in the voter lists.
   
Anti-Sikh riots 1984

        The Hindu-Muslim riots in 1946-47 had the open tacit support of the British Government. After that, initially, the Indian Government always tried it best to prevent or contain all riots. Later on, in many cases, due to appeasement policy, the Government went soft on riots. However the murder of Indira Gandhi by a Sikh led to state-sponsored riots for the first time in post-independence history. With this Indian politics touched a new low.
        

Rajiv Gandhi

        Curtsey his mother's death, Rajiv Gandhi came to power with a thumping majority (404/506 seats but only 49.01% votes!!). Since he was an outsider in politics, some people had unrealistic hopes that he might clean up the system. However that requires exceptional moral fiber and guts which he clearly lacked. He tried to introduce some reforms but quickly retraced his steps and went back to tried and tested vote bank politics. Moreover he lacked the basic political knowledge to cover his tracks and thus one after the other corruptions scandals kept coming out of the closets. His inexperience destroyed the Congress's absolute monopoly in Indian politics, forever.
      
        With the loss in 1989 elections, (and murder of Rajiv Gandhi shortly afterward) the second era of Indian Politics came to an end and the era of coalition politics had begun. Things are now about to get much more criminalized, murky and complicated. However against this backdrop of dirty politics, Indian society and many institutions would progress by leaps and bounds. I will continue with the third era of Indian politics in the next blog.

(to be continued...)

Politicians...Organized Criminals ???

Preface 
The one constant feedback about this blog is that its posts are too long. Unfortunately the very purpose of this blog is to express my opinions on complicated issues, where brevity is a luxury I can't afford. However this particular post had become just too long and so I have decided to split it into three posts, one for each distinct era of Indian modern politics.

        There was a time when great leaders like Subash Chandra Bose were affectionately called "Netaji", but now the word has a definite negative connotation attached to it. Politicians are the favorite punching bags all over the world, but there is something more sinister happening in India. Politicians are not just ridiculed in jokes, cartoons and movies but they are openly equated with criminals in the media, social networking sites, discussions, debates and small talks in every nook and corner of this country. This tendency of slamming the whole political class has unprecedented hidden public support behind it. Recently there have even been huge apolitical agitations where such sentiments were openly expressed. Unlike others who see this as a very dangerous, destabilizing trend, I view the public expression of it, as an element of change and transformation for the  better. 

        This degradation of Indian politics did not happen overnight and nor has the situation been like this from the beginning. In fact Indian politics was perhaps the only thing that was right at the time of independence; everything else was in tatters. How ironic is it, that today Indian politicians are the biggest bottleneck to our growth, prosperity and creation of a just society. So how did it happen? What went wrong and when? What were the critical mistakes and lost opportunities? Why couldn't our society arrest the falling moral standards in politics? Also, are things currently improving or worsening in India with time? Let us try to delve into history and try to find an answer to these questions.

Mahatama Gandhi

        At the time of independence, India had some of the most honest, honorable and respected politicians. The Congress party was run by the sweat of dedicated volunteers, who did not work for money. The same was almost true (though not to the same degree) of rival political entities like BR Ambedkar, MS Golwarkar or E.V. Ramaswami. The differences were mostly ideological and not personal.

        Perhaps the seed was born in partition itself. Throughout the 1940s the Muslim league and other communal parties like RSS and Hindu Mahasabha kept gaining ground. The violence accompanied with the partition further strengthened these religious fanatics. The result being that, the Congress party was at its weakest and the popularity of Mahatama Gandhi at its lowest, at the time of the partition. The Indian state was very vulnerable during the early years, battling on a number of fronts. The first government under Nehru did the most remarkable job in strengthening the state. Defying all logic, reasoning and every contemporary prediction, the Indian state did not collapse. However in this firefighting, some of the very critical  trends and fault-lines, that appeared very early on, got ignored, leading to the present mess.

Mahatama Gandhi, Subash Chandra Bose and 
Vallabhbhai Patel in a Congress meeting. 

        Congress was never a political party before independence. It was a congregation of all great patriotic people who wanted to rid the country of the barbaric colonial rule. However there was very little unity among the top leadership on many important issues, like economic policies, governance structures, Kashmir etc. Congress had both left-winged and right-winged, liberals as well as conservatives, within its ranks. Many of the most dedicated volunteers of the Congress thought that with the achievement of independence their objective was realized and so they slowly sidelined themselves, especially now that Congress was associated with power. As expected wrong people started getting associated with Congress and a proper pruning was never done. Gandhi's early death was another big factor. His Ashrams were the factories where future leaders were born. He was not just the symbol of honesty and austerity but had the unique gift of spreading these to other people. It was entirely due to his efforts that the Congress had an army of selfless volunteers and mid-level leadership, that were its backbone. Good people were already scarce due to 1942 Quit India Movement and the communal riots (Honest courageous people are the first ones who get killed during any riots). Gandhi's death ensured that there was no replacement coming.

        Right after independence, Gandhi suggested that Congress should be disbanded. It was a very sensible and far-sighted suggestion. However not many people paid heed to the suggestion at that time, especially since there were rioting, instability and more pressing concerns all around the country. However over the years it has been proved without a doubt that not disbanding the Congress was one of the biggest mistake made, and the country suffers because of it even today.

Jawaharlal Nehru

        The Congress was now in power and instead of discussion, it was the time of implementation of ideas. The government had to choose a particular path on economic policy, centralization, foreign policy and everything else. It was purely Nehru's ideas that got preference over everything else. Gandhi's economic ideas got sidelined stating that they were impractical. His vision of a thousand village republics was replaced by a very centralized power structure at the center and the states. Nehru's left-winged policies, his love of centralization and nationalization, became the official policy of the Congress and the Government. Anyone who did not agree was slowly sidelined. The differences between Nehru and Patel were all too apparent. Unfortunately Sardar Patel died even before the first election. After the death of Sardar Patel, there was none in the Congress who matched the stature of Nehru or had a reasonable chance of success in opposing him.

        A division of old Congress into two equal sized parties capable of forming a strong government and opposition respectively, would have been the ideal solution but that never materialized. Of course a lot of people broke away from the Congress to make separate parties but they were neither united nor any match to Nehru. Neither did any such division had the sanction of someone like Gandhi.

J B Kripalani
(Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party)

        All those opposing Congress were either those who wanted similar things like Congress, in greater degree, like the Socialist Party, Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party and Communist Party or fanatic communal elements wanting to convert India into "Hindu Pakistan" or parties catering to only certain sections of the society. Naturally Nehru prevailed over all of them with a thumping majority. But what made his victory even more astounding was the tag of "Congress" and the goodwill due to Gandhi's association. For the next three elections the same trend continued. Without any credible opposition and the absolute guarantee of being in power, irrespective of personal performance, degraded the Congress Party greatly.

Swatantra Party 

C Rajagopalachari
(Swatantra Party)

        Swatantra party was the only party which should have been the alternate to the Congress party. It was a right winged party opposed to the Nehruvian socialist outlook of the Congress Party. It advocated free enterprise and free trade and opposed the licence-permit raj. Despite initial success and the party becoming the main opposition party in the mid-60s, this grand endeavor failed miserably. The basic reason was again the fact that the grassroot strength of the Congress was immense and it was almost impossible to get over that, especially in a country which had idolized Gandhi and Congress for more than thirty years. 

        Letter exchanges between Jayaprakash Narayanan and Nehru right after the second general elections are a very interesting read. Narayan suggested that Nehru should function as a “national rather than a party leader”; that, even while he ran the government, he should “encourage the growth of an Opposition”, so as to “soundly lay the foundations of parliamentary democracy” in India. Nehru's reply is very interesting -

Jayaprakash Narayanan
(Socialist Party)

“So far as I understand parliamentary democracy, it means that every opportunity should be given for an opposition to function, to express its views by word or writing, to contest elections in fair conditions, and to try to convert the people to its views. The moment an opposition is given some kind of a protected position, it becomes rather a bogus opposition and cannot even carry weight with the people. I am not aware of any pattern of parliamentary democracy in which it has ever been suggested that the opposition should be encouraged, except in the ways I have mentioned above."

Unfortunately Nehru couldn't understand that JP was asking Nehru to become another Gandhi and not just an effective Prime Minister. He wanted Nehru to leave behind a working two-party parliamentary democracy.

Purushottam Das Tandon

        One of the major reasons of the moral decline of the Congress Party was the emergence of personality cult and hero worship in the Congress party. Nehru was almost completely responsible for it. Unlike in pre-independence era, when there was true internal democracy in the Congress, Nehru made sure that people opposing him, like Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Rajagopalachari, Purushottam Das Tandon and other were slowly sidelined. It became a sort of an unwritten norm for the leader of the government to also be the party president or at the least, have a pliable candidate in the post. 

Krishna Menon

        The socialistic policies of Nehru created far too much centralization and concentration of power. The license-permit-raj became the breeding ground of corruption. Running any political entity requires a lot of money. Before independence the party had ample resources from voluntary donations, but later the finances started drying off and election campaign just got costlier and costlier. Jawaharlal Nehru, though honest personally, started turning a blind eye to the corruption in the party. The most brazen example was the staunch defense of Krishna Menon by Nehru.

Vinobha Bave
(spiritual successor of
Mahatma Gandhi)

        One of the reasons why Congress was able to maintain such high moral status prior to independence was its participation and leadership in social work and cultural reforms. However over the years the social work became less and less important and the complete Congress machinery was dedicated for just campaigning and winning elections. The major social works done during this period were led by the Gandhians like Vinobha Bave (Bhoodan movement) and were completely apolitical. Social reforms meet a lot of resistance from the society initially, whereas the benefits are long term. Unfortunately it goes against short term goal of gathering votes and the Congress continued making that mistake. The goal of winning elections at any cost led to a development of appeasement policy and vote bank politics by the Congress.

        Instead of fighting the caste system, party tickets were given on the basis of caste considerations. Behind the smokes screen of reservation, the more crucial programs of untouchability  removal and efforts to annihilate caste were abandoned completely. No effort was made to reform the Muslim community, to liberalize the Muslim civil code or to introduce the Uniform Civil Code. Ironically these appeasement policies had the most harmful effect on these respective communities themselves. This growing timidness of Congress cost the nation dearly. 

K. Kamraj

        In 1963 K. Kamraj came up with a plan to revamp the Congress from the 'lure for power' that had in-gripped it. He proposed that all senior Congress leaders should resign from their posts and devote all their energy to the re-vitalization of the Congress. Six Union Ministers and six State Chief Ministers resigned from their posts. However it was too little too late. Moreover with the death of Nehru shortly afterward, the plan was quickly abandoned.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

        Nehru was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri, arguably the best Prime Minister India ever had. Shastriji was no match for the intellectual prowess of Nehru. He was neither a great/original thinker nor an excellent orator or writer. However he was a true Gandhian, possessing great strength of character and will-power. He was instrumental in ushering both the green revolution as well as the white revolution in the country besides winning the war of 1965. When the country faced a food shortage, he gave the call to all Indians to observe weekly fast and convert all available land for agricultural activities. Lakhs of Indians followed suit and in my own family, our garden was converted into a potato field. Today we can't even imagine any politician having the moral authority to give such a call.

        However Shastriji died just too early to be able to change much in the system. With him ended the first era of Indian politics. After him, things went downhill pretty rapidly. The seeds for the same had already been sown in the first era and the stage was all set for Indira Gandhi, to destroy the Gandhian moral legacy in India politics completely and forever. I will continue with the second era of Indian politics in the next post. 

(to be continued....)

Plagues of the Indian Judiciary

Supreme Court of India

           Recently there was a news item which said that, going by the time taken by our judiciary to disposes of the cases, it would take about 350 years to solve all cases pending in the courts of India. The rate at which new cases are coming to judiciary far exceeds the rate of disposal, and the difference, is only increasingly. Hence we can conclude that, effectively, for a large population there is no judicial remedy available at all. I hope readers realize what a big statement that is. Unfortunately it is not a hyperbole at all. Even normal simple cases take years to complete. There is every chance of the justice being denied, on the basis of money/muscle power. Out of court settlements are the norm in India. People in power or in influential posts, hardly ever get punished. Fighting a case in court itself is extremely costly, stressful, time-consuming and somewhat like a punishment in itself.
            Of all the state instruments that the Britishers brought from England to India, such as the police, the civil services, the railways etc., the judiciary was perhaps the only one, whose fundamental nature was not completely changed to suit the continuance of the colonial rule in India. Although in colonial India, Judiciary could hardly be called impartial or fair, as it openly practiced racial discrimination, (hugely favoring Europeans over native Indians) enforced laws that were against the very principle of national justice, bowed to the Viceroy's wishes in cases of great political significance etc. However the Judiciary, even then, was completely secular, above caste politics and most importantly based on rule of law, and not personal prejudice. This, being very rare in contemporary Indian society, was very much appreciated, and it even created the famous myth of "British fair play". 
           After independence, the government focused on to have a systematic judicial system throughout the country and many new subordinate courts were established in various parts of the country. Also, the judiciary was made completely independent of the government, thanks to the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru. Over these years our Indian Judiciary was given some excellent decisions and has earned the faith and respect of ordinary citizens more than any other institution. However, this is only limited to the higher Judiciary. The lower judiciary is riddled with corruption and nepotism. In fact, as a whole, the standard of the judiciary has been falling continuously.

           So what is the real problem? Many people attribute it to the lack of enough courts/judges as per our huge population. According to them, if we can establish a lot of courts and employ thousands of judges, we would be able to overcome this backlog or at least reduce the normal time duration of the cases. However, that is a myth. There are structural weaknesses in our judicial system. They will not go away just by creating more courts. Let us go over them one by one, along with offering solutions for each of them.

Lack of accountability of Public Servants 

           The most crucial thing that plagues our judicial system is that it is not able to punish Public Servants for not doing their jobs properly. Let me explain it. Suppose a person is intentionally harassed by the bureaucracy, like his pension/salary is not being released, or, on some flimsy reasons, he is not given the required license/documents etc. He then goes to the courts with his petition. All that the courts will do, will be to ensure that the genuine work of the petitioner is done. But most importantly, nothing would be done to the bureaucrat, who should have done this job, without court intervention. There is no fixed accountability of any bureaucrat for any particular job or task. The accountability notionally rests on the whole department, or on the 'Head of Department', who actually never looks personally in each case. Blatantly deliberate acts of delay or denial of services never get punished and are never even considered under the prevention of corruption act. Now consider the consequences – the bureaucracy does not have the fear of the judiciary and hence they openly harass the common citizen for bribery. If the citizen protests, he can go to the courts (which is way more expensive and time-consuming) where his work would be done but the bureaucrat would have nothing to lose. Hence naturally most people prefer to pay a bribe and the rest keep increasing the court case score, without changing anything in the system. It is therefore not a surprise that maximum cases in courts are about matters that are no-brainers and that should ideally have been sorted out by the bureaucracy itself.

            A citizen’s charter (or Grievance Redressal mechanism) which actually treats delay/denial of services under the prevention of corruption act and fixes personal accountability for every task to a public servant, would go a long way in easing the pressure on the judiciary.
 
Sticky Areas
           There are certain types of cases which form an unusually high percentage of the total cases. These are the result of a lack of clear (or deliberately ambiguous) policies and rules. Let us take the example of land disputes, which form the single largest chunk of court cases. The worst thing about land disputes is that no document can claim to be unambiguously final and above any reproach. You can have the same piece of land lawfully registered by multiple parties. In the court, the land registry is given no weightage. And the worst part is that the officer who issued the land registration, without checking whether the land was prior registered or not, goes absolutely scot-free. Land Registration document, for which government charges so much and is considered valid proof in many scenarios, is thus effectively, just another instrument of confusion. Documents are deliberately kept in an inconsistent state and are the breeding grounds of corruption in India. It’s not just our complicated history, but the rules that are to blame for this mess. There is no reason why in India we can’t have digitization of all land records, which would be available all across India, in every department in perfect synchronization. It is not a new idea and we have several successful implementations of it. It would ensure that inconsistent documents can never be generated in the future. It would also result in a drastic decrease in land disputes cases with every passing year. All such area (like land disputes) require the same solutions – making laws simpler and clearer, increasing transparency in government departments, introducing IT solutions (e-governance) and reducing human dependence.

Lack of fear of Courts

           The popular perception in India is that if you have power, you can do absolutely anything in this country. It is a real shock to see so many “contempt of court” cases pending. How is the bureaucracy so relaxed with these cases? It is again a case of lack of fear for the judiciary. The courts only do tough talk, but stop short of actual strict disciplinary actions, even in 'contempt of court' cases. It is less of a case of legal power and more of a case of wrong convention (and sometimes corruption) on the part of Indian Judiciary. There are many cases where it is very apparent that one party is deliberately trying to delay the proceeding as much as possible. Instead of ignoring, the courts must take very strict action and set an example. 

Falling Moral standards

Indira Gandhi

           No one can deny that the moral standard of Indian Judiciary is falling by leaps and bounds. It has a bit of history behind it. The tussle between the Judiciary and Indra Gandhi is very well known. During the emergency, the power and prestige of the Judiciary were greatly damaged. Till then, the selection of the Judges was solely under the executive and it was highly misused by Indra Gandhi, besides several other mechanisms to make the institution more loyal to her. Just like the permanent damage that Indra Gandhi did to constitutional posts like the governor, the president etc., the damage to the Judiciary could never be fully restored, even after valiant efforts of people like law minister Shanti Bhushan. More than laws, the customs, traditions and prevalent ethics matter in any establishment.
           The government too has played its part, by giving extremely lucrative positions to preferred High Court and Supreme Court judges, after their retirements. Even though there are no reservations in the Judiciary, the common custom has been to have that consideration, in the selection of Judges, resulting in a poor selection and falling standards.

Reform of court proceedings

           Today the moral standard has stooped so low that bribes are openly taken in courts to just get the case heard. Courts itself have become arenas of corruption and harassment. How can we expect the citizens to have faith in the judiciary, if even in the courts, we have bribery, nepotism and preference to the rich and the powerful?
           The whole approach has to change. Once a case gets in the court, it should become the court's responsibility to ensure justice, and not the petitioner's job to follow up his case, ensure that it does not get lost in the endless files, bribe babus to get dates quickly etc. IT solutions should be employed to ensure no manual interference. Special officers need to be appointed to look at every case in the backlog and ensure that the cases are closed properly. Not just the judgments, but even the relevant documents of each case must be digitalized. Cases which are no longer relevant must be closed off.
           The role of the lawyers, especially in simple cases, should be diluted. The result of any case should depend on the merits of the case and not on the lawyers involved. Unnecessary technicalities must be straightened out and courts should encourage educated people, in simple cases, to present the case themselves. Currently, cases are dismissed on the basis of mere technicalities. Instead of that, the judges should themselves assist in reformatting the writ (as far as possible) then and there.

Vernacular Languages  

          For most local people, courts are a complete mystery because of their ignorance of English language and illiteracy. Though local languages are allowed in lower courts, in many places, it is generally not the norm. Rulings are generally written in English only. This results in over-reliance and blind faith in lawyers, who may or may not have the best interests of their clients in their minds. Lower courts must function in local languages only. For judges it should be absolutely necessary that they know English, Hindi, the local language, as well as local dialects prevalent. All judgments should be in all three languages. Judges should not be burdened with this. Special staff should be kept just for this translation.

           The petitioner should be able to comprehend all that goes on in the courts, the reasons and logic for a particular court decision and thereafter he should make an honest judgment whether to go a higher court or not. Lawyers typically always encourage the losing party to go to a higher court, for their own personal gains. Moreover, the penalty must be increased if a person goes to a higher court unnecessarily on flimsy grounds.

Lack of check and balances
           Because of the notion of the Independence of Judiciary, removal or even trial of any Judge is extremely difficult. Permission is required from the Chief Justice of India to even start an investigation against a Judge. While protecting judges against trivial and personally motivated false cases, is very important; the special privileges and lack of accountability of Judges, becomes counterproductive when bad eggs are introduced in the system. They further spread their corruption unabated in the system, endangering the entire system.
    The situation demands urgent remedies. An institution, completely independent of the Government and the Judiciary (like LokPal or a separate institution altogether) should be empowered to decide whether a case against a Judge merits investigation or not. A feeling of accountability needs to be created among Judges and it cannot be left just to the corrective measures within the Judicial System itself.