Will the criminals and their patrons heed judicial ruling? It's a war

Only figuratively do legislatures represent the people; in real terms they represent the political class. When a legislature passes an irresponsible law, the political class as a whole stands condemned. This is patently so when laws are passed to protect criminals in the House. Such transgressions have been going on for a while, enabling murderers and rapists to function as law-makers and as cabinet ministers. Democracy was shamed in the process and India disgraced before the world.

Although in a different context, Nani Palkhivala had drawn a distinction between what a sane Parliament can possibly do and an insane Parliament may probably do. The insane Parliament he feared had been prominently at work in recent years, now giving immunity to criminals, now blocking Parliament's proceedings altogether. Worse, at no point did party leaders, including supposedly eminent ones, pause to think about the abuse of democracy that was happening under their nose. At no level was there any effort to stop the criminalisation of legislatures.

Can the judiciary do what politicians refuse to do? It is not surprising, but ironic nevertheless, that simple matters elected representatives of the people must do in their line of duty are left undone and that the judiciary has to step in to reassure the people. Acid attacks on women became frequent enough to demand remedial measures at government level. No action came, not even after nudging by the judiciary. The Supreme Court has now served an ultimatum that if the Centre does not come up with a plan to regulate the retail sale of acid, it will impose a ban on all sales.

Open solicitation of voters with virtually free rice, bicycles, computers, mangalsutras and the like was making a mockery of elections. Yet, all political parties jumped into the freebee racket with competitive fervour. The Supreme Court had to cry a halt to this evident malpractice. Freebees, the Court said, "shake the root of free and fair elections to a large degree". Will the politicians listen when, further shaking the root of democracy, they are manoeuvring to put political parties outside the scope of the Right to Information Act?

In the circumstances, we cannot be sure if the Supreme Court will succeed in its latest move to cleanse the legislatures of criminal elements. Its pronouncements are unambiguous -- that MPs and MLAs will stand disqualified the moment they are convicted; the provision that allows them to retain their position by filing an appeal is invalid. The Court also ruled that a person who is in jail cannot stand for elections. These new norms are easy to misuse and therefore need finetuning, but they mark a welcome beginning.

The Election Commission had recommended many similar measures with a view to putting an end to legalised fraud. By adopting some of those recommendations, the Government could have helped keep criminal elements out. Instead it was party to outrageous malpractices -- jailed candidates holding dance-and-dinner parties inside high-security prisons, elected criminals going to Parliament under police escort to take oath and then returning to their cells. Such violations turned "the largest democracy in the world" into a farce.

The political class has of course welcomed the new judicial rulings. No doubt for public consumption. But the fact remains that every party without exception has goons and mafia dons in its "leadership" list. As many as 1406 MPs and MLAs in office today have criminal cases against them. Among them are big leaders who are already campaigning for prime ministership. They are not about to walk into the sunset just because the Supreme Court wants to keep criminals out of Parliament and Assemblies.

The strength of the criminal class is that it has become indistinguishable from the political class. The muscle power and the money the dons mobilise are obviously lifeblood for parties which, therefore, will look for ways to frustrate the law and cheat the voters yet again. The war is actually between politicians and the people, between evil and good, between those who exploit the country and those who love it.

Love must win.

Clean chits abound, Ministers crawl, and India falls.... O! what a fall!

In a surrealistic way, the rupee's fall to record lows reflects India's fall in prestige to record lows.... O! What a fall is there, my countrymen; then I, and you, and all of us fall down, whilst bloody shamelessness flourish over us.... At home unclean men get clean chits. Abroad America and Europe, China and even Pakistan slap us around, and we turn the other cheek. We have become a country that can be taken for granted. We just don't count.

In other countries prime ministers get jailed for offences ranging from bribery to rape. In our country it all depends on who you know and which party you belong to. The latest to get a clean chit is Pawan Bansal, former Railway Minister. Nephew Vijay Singla and eight others got a CBI chargesheet alleging they accepted bribes to fix a Railway Board appointment. No fool will bribe a nephew unless there is an obliging uncle behind. Therefore the clean chit to Bansal is a continuation of the clean chit the "private businessman" Robert Vadra got from the Haryana Government. And sports lover Suresh Kalmadi got before him. Our country is swarmed by certified clean people. We are blessed.

We are twice blessed, actually, because our Government in turn gets clean chits from its patrons in the West. Consider the latest scandal about America spying extensively on other countries. To some extent we can understand the US spying on Iran, a declared adversary. The National Security Agency's surveillance equipment collected 14 billion pieces of intelligence from Iran. But next in line were "partners" of the US. From Pakistan they collected 13.5 million pieces of intelligence, from Jordan 12.7 million, from Egypt 7.6 billion and from India 6.3 billion.

Friendly allies and military collaborators like France, Germany and Turkey were also spied upon. To their credit, they protested. Germany summoned the US Ambassador to ask for an explanation. What did the Indian Government do? In an incredible show of servility, the Foreign Minister justified the US. "It was not snooping", said Salman Khurshid. "It was only computer study of patterns of calls". This shaming of India was similar to Manmohan Singh telling the despised George Bush that "the people of India love you".

What is the need for such shows of slavishness? Even Pakistan had the courage to protest against US drone strikes and occasionally threaten retaliatory action such as blocking lorry convoys to Afghanistan. Pakistan has benefited from such firmness. India makes itself so weak that big powers feel they can have their way by bullying it more. The present Washington line, for example, is effusive about Pakistan and its "genuine shift in policy" which has "encouraged the Taliban" to attend peace talks on Afghanistan. US leadership also wants India to make concessions to Pakistan over Kashmir so that the problems in Afghanistan will be solved. With strategic partners like this, we don't need enemies.

It looks like India is yielding to bullying by the European Union as well. With 38 percent of its new 2014-2020 budget earmarked for agriculture, European Union farmers are the world's most subsidised. Now they are going to have the additional advantage of a Free Trade Agreement with India. If approved, this will open a virtual one-way street from Europe to India. India's pepper, Basmati, tea and even generic medicines and indigenous silk will be adversely affected. Amul which now has two cheese manufacturing units in Europe will have to close them down.

Yet Commerce Minister Anand Sharma described the FTA plan as "India's most ambitious trade and investment agreement". Our Agriculture Minister, who supports even Monsanto-Endosulfan lobbies, is happily silent. A good time to ask: What is the matter with us?

Perhaps the only way to comfort ourselves is by seeing all this as Indian aid to Europe which is currently in a bad way with unemployment at 50-60 percent in some countries. But neither their economic woes nor our enforced Free Trade aid to them softens the arrogance with which they humiliate us when we apply for a visa. Ungrateful lot!

UK's Visa-Bond idea can be countered if Delhi is not a boneless wonder

Margaret Thatcher was tougher and more imperialistic than Britain's present Prime Minister David Cameron can ever be. Back in the 1980s the Iron Lady tried to make some easy money by raising the tuition fees of foreign students in England. Most countries took it lying down. But Malaysia was not amused.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed was a medical doctor and a soft-spoken genteel personality to boot. But he had more iron in him than the reputed Lady of London. He was appalled by Thatcher's unilateral move to squeeze money out of foreign students. Thousands of young Malaysians were studying in England and most of them were on government scholarship. So Malaysia's stakes were high in the tuition fee fracas.

Mahathir hit back. And he hit where it hurt. The first move was to announce a "Buy British Last" policy. The ease with which British goods found their way to the former colony suddenly vanished. Twirling the knife inside the wound, Mahathir followed up with a "Look East" policy. Japan suddenly became the supplier and model of the rapidly growing Malaysian economy. A shaken Margaret Thatcher climbed down and flew all the way to Kuala Lumpur to make up with the Malaysian leader.

Mahathir played graceful host, but used every means to drive home the point that his country was not to be taken for granted. The same year Thatcher went to Kuala Lumpur, 1985, Mahathir went to London and addressed the Confederation of British Industry. With understatements and innuendos the British would have secretly admired, he told them:

"We regret very much that the advantageous position that you had when we gained independence was not exploited by you. But partly this was our fault. We Malaysians looked up to you so much that you must have felt taller than you really were. It took the shock of dealing with a reputedly abrasive personality to correct an outdated patron-client relations..... Malaysia is of course not in the same league as Britain, but young nations tend to take equality seriously".

India is a young nation, too. Unlike Malaysia, it is in the same league as Britain if Indian investments in that country is any indication. But India has a leadership that does not take equality seriously. It merely wanted clarifications from British authorities when they announced that visa applicants would have to pay a cash bond of Rs 2.75 lakhs (£ 3000). Clarifications came -- that it is a pilot programme, that it is only aimed at high-risk applicants, etc. The fact is that India is branded as a high-risk country to be watched and regulated by Britain.

In fact India is high-spending country. Bonafide Indian tourists spend £ 793 per person in England (when an American tourist spends £ 710). There has been a three-fold increase in the number of Indian visitors to Britain in the last decade. That translates to the kind of big money a nation of shopkeepers will appreciate. Add to it the millions Bollywood's film makers spend on location shooting. The reverse economics of the cash bond idea is going to bleed Britain.

But it is the insult implied in the policy that India should take note of. High-spending Indian middle-class, capital-investing Indian businessmen, and Indian actors and authors who help keep Britain still somewhat Great have been equated, clarifications notwithstanding, with infiltrators of the kind every country has. India as a whole has been equated with countries known for their malfunctioning systems and consequent eagerness among some of their citizens to abuse the systems of other countries.

The malfunctioning countries are helpless. India is not. Tourists and students will punish London by simply going elsewhere. Already Indian student flow to Britain is down by 25 percent. It is the Government that can deal the coup de grace. All it has to do is to impose an equivalent cash bond on Britons seeking Indian visas. Or simply announce a "Buy British Last" policy. To do that, however, we need a leadership with backbone. Maybe Britain knows that Delhi currently is a boneless wonder.

Britain admits torture in Kenya,but no one talks of it in India

In our pre-occupation with petty politics -- like history's most pointless cabinet reshuffle -- we fail to notice the significance of some breakthrough developments around us. How many of us notice that Istanbul is not Cairo, or that Britain has done something astonishing by admitting that it used torture as policy in at least one of its colonies?

The citizens' protest in Turkey is nothing at all like the Arab Spring in Egypt which, ultimately, helped only the resurgence of political Islam, not the democracy the Tahrir Square movement was all about. The Turkey uprising is against the newfound authoritarianism of a once popular leader who was elected Prime Minister thrice in succession. It is a reassertion of liberal democracy, people saying that even a Prime Minister who took the country forward economically and strategically cannot be allowed to turn arrogant and dismissive of public opinion.

In Brazil food prices reached all-time highs while public services all but collapsed with medical costs in particular rising beyond acceptable limits. The misery caused by these reached ignition point when the Government began spending massively on preparations for the World Cup football. Even the heroes of the game came out in support of the protesting public.

Historically it is the unexpected turn of events in Britain that must engage our attention. Macaulay's country taught us that British imperialism was a civilising exercise that gave Shakespeare and the criminal procedure code to the natives with equal generosity. That picture changed for ever when the London High Court recently ruled in favour of Kenyans imprisoned during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion and, even more significantly, when the British Government agreed to pay a compensation of £ 2670 to each of 5228 Kenyans who had complained of being tortured in jail.

The case turned against the Government when some 1500 secret files became public. They showed that torture was routinely used in Kenyan jails and that the decisions were taken by the Governor himself with authorisation by the British cabinet. These records were kept for future historians to unearth. Obviously there were British officials at the lower levels who did not like what they were ordered to do and wanted researchers of the future to discover that torture orders came from the very top.

That was precisely what conscience-stricken Americans did during the Vietnam war, the Pentagon Papers being the most famous of the revealed secrets of the time. Isn't that what WikiLeaks did, too, and also the new braveheart, Edward Snowden who revealed American internet spying secrets and is now hunted by the intolerant US system? America institutionalised torture in the Guantanemo prison camp. The CIA even invented a system called "extraordinary rendition" which simply meant outsourcing torture. At least 54 countries carried out procedures too brutal to be done on US soil -- or presumed to be so.

If the law the London Court upheld in the Mau Mau case were to be applied evenly, Henry Kissinger would have to meet the punishment due to a war criminal for ordering, among other things, saturation bombing of Cambodia which was then a neutral country. Ditto with George Bush for invading Iraq on the basis of a lie -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But the world is so wired that war criminals of some countries stay above the law.

Kenya was no isolated case. At least two cases of British atrocities against freedom fighters in their colonies have become notorious -- the Batang Kali massacre of Malays in 1948 and the wholesale butchering of Yemenis in Aden in 1965.

There must be many cases in India similar to these; remember the "Moplah rebellion" in which soldiers stuffed natives into railway wagons to be suffocated to death. But no one has filed cases and no historian has unearthed incriminating files. It was a bold move when British Prime Minister Cameron visited Jallianwala Bagh some months ago. But compensation? Forget it. He even refused to apologise, merely expressing "regret for the loss of lives". Perhaps the greatest legacy of colonialism is outrage against the moral law.

London's speeding Minister is jailed; Our speeding MLA beats the cop

Ours is the only democracy in the world where people's representatives can commit crimes and still walk around with their heads held high as people's representatives. Sure, a few Suresh Kalmadis and A. Rajas have recently seen the insides of jails. But the notion that people's representatives are above the law remains firmly entrenched. The "I-have-done-no-wrong" statements issued by the recently sacked Ashwini Kumar and Bansal are the passwords of the corrupt.

Elsewhere Presidents and Prime Ministers pay dearly for their crimes. Look at what happened in the country with which we have the closest soul links, Italy. Silvio Berlusconi, fresh out of the Prime Minister's office, was sentenced last month to four years in jail. Ravishing under-aged girls was the least important of the charges against him. The ones that weighed more heavily were tax fraud, bribing lawyers and breaching confidentiality.

In Israel, a man who was President from 2000 to 2007, Moshe Katsav, was given a 7-year jail sentence for raping a woman and molesting two others who worked for him. Confirming a lower court verdict, Israel's Supreme Court said, "It is hard to see someone who served as an official symbol of the state going to jail". But to jail he went.

We have had no President or Prime Minister who violated under-aged girls, at least not as far as we know. But we have had senior ministers who "forgot" to pay income tax for decades, and who breached confidentiality to help foreign intelligence agencies. Not only did nothing happen to them; they remained venerated leaders.

The Philippines had a matinee idol, Joseph Estrada, as President. Philippine Presidents exercise power, like American Presidents, and Estrada took off like the hero of an action thriller, treating the whole country like a wild-west movie set. Half way through his term, he was forced out of office and into jail for corruption. The most serious of eight charges filed against him was "plunder". Another President, Gloria Macapagal, was also arrested, first for election fraud and a second time for "plunder".

In fact, some Asian countries whose democratic credentials we do not recognise have a better record than us about holding their leaders accountable. Taiwan's President, Chen Shui-bian was jailed in 2009 for corruption. Two years later he was given an extra term of nearly three years for forgery and money-laundering. Similar things have happened in South Korea. In Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had to flee to avoid a jail sentence. He is still staying away although his sister Yingluck is the current Prime Minister.

War crimes are an altogether different-game where punishment is selective. Recently Guatemala's ex-dictator Efrain Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison, primarily for the genocide of Mayan people. Last year Liberia's ex-president Charles Taylor was given 50 years in jail for war crimes.

The biggest war crimes of our age were committed by Kissinger-Nixon in Cambodia/Vietnam and Cheney-Bush in Iraq. But they will never be hauled up before any court -- the privilege of superpowers. We should look not at the US but at Britain if we want an object lesson in democracy.

Jonathan Aitken, a Conservative Party minister was imprisoned in 1999, and Conservative Deputy Chairman Jeffrey Archer in 2001 for perjury, violating an oath. Chris Huhne who was Energy Minister in the current coalition Government was caught speeding in 2003. He told the police officer that his wife Vicky was driving. This helped him escape a driving ban, but the wife had penalty points entered in her driving licence. Eight years later Huhne abandoned his wife for another woman. Vicky took revenge by revealing that he had lied to the police about the over-speeding. The case was re-opened and both were sent to jail for "joint offence". Huhne's party is still in office, but he resigned from parliament in disgrace.

Compare this with the police officer who booked a Mumbai MLA for speeding. He, the policeman, was suspended, then called to the legislative assembly and beaten up there by a gang of MLAs. In India people's representatives are a shame.