Not tougher but unfairer laws

For some unknown reason, I occasionally waste my time reading comments on news stories at ToI (Times of India). For all those waiting to pounce upon me for reading a virtual tabloid … I know, I know. The only reason I read ToI is because they are probably one of the fastest with breaking news in India.

In any case, as I was saying, I was recently going through the comments at ToI after the Delhi blasts. It kept sickening me as I kept on reading idiots, writing in barely comprehensible English, rambling about how Indians needed “tougher laws”. I closed my eyes to let the fleeting wave of disgust and condescension pass over, shuddered, and kept reminding myself of the realities of the country I lived in. It pained me to see how ordinary fellow citizens are being misled by the irresponsible, incompetent and corrupt politicians – both in the opposition and the ruling party.

The phrase “tougher laws” is a good example of marketing propaganda. Just using the right words makes it seem as if it is the solution to our apparent problems. Just put these laws in place, and, voila, terrorism would disappear in India. Could running the country be any easier?

What a load of bull*. The fact is there is nothing tough about the laws that BJP/Modi/Moily and others are harping about. To actually phrase it correctly, the right words to be used here are unfairer laws (if I may coin such a word for brevity).

I had written sometime back about the thoughtlessness of POTA, which BJP has been clamoring for a while to be put in place. Others are talking about putting in place similar acts like MCOCA and something similar in Modi’s state.

I will just repeat the highlights of the POTA here – it allows you to be imprisoned for six months on mere suspicion and without even filing charges in court, leave alone the delays in the court! It allows your (most possibly tortured) confessions in front of a policeman as evidence, as opposed to confession before a magistrate. The act is even accused to be based on the assumption that the person is guilty until proven otherwise – a complete departure from the basis of justice in any modern country where a person is considered innocent till proven guilty.

The sad thing is that people are assuming all this is good as long as it is applied on the bad guys. The basic fallacy in the line of thinking is that one is committing the same mistake as the law itself – they are assuming that the police has caught the bad guys in the first place. I am not even going into one of the basic principles of a democracy – justice that is fair and reasonable.

How many of these POTA zealots has any reasonable confidence that:

• the police is competent enough to distinguish between good guys and bad guys, not based on mere suspicion but with chargeable evidence
• The police is not so much under pressure for results that they are looking for a scapegoat
• the police is not prejudiced enough to affect their investigation. Prejudices could be about religion, caste, income, etc.

We all know of landmark cases like the recent Arushi murder case, or the Nithari cannibalism cases, or the BMW case, or any of the recent glorified police-media crime circuses. Don’t they give you a lot of confidence in the competence of policemen to catch the bad guys in the first place? It is amusing how the very people who had been critical of Gujarat police of being one of the accessories of the riots there, are actually taking the same police by their word that they have caught the people behind the Ahmadabad blasts.

The problem is that each of these common people like you and me, keep believing that cases like Arushi’s father or other similar stories will not happen with us. It takes only one of these to destroy the lives of you and the people around you. And only when they do happen to you, would you realize the need to keep the justice system strong, alive and more importantly fair in this country.

As in everything about India, the country revels in symbolism and not in actual work. Clamoring for POTA is such an act of symbolism. Just put it in place, and go around thinking that you have fixed the problem. It is like starting off a poverty alleviation program and going around telling people that you have taken care of poverty – never mind that only 5% of that money you put in will actually reach the poor (the actual objective of the program in the first place).

It infuriates me no end every week how completely useless checks are being done in malls and other public places, which only ends with us getting into needless traffic snarls and delays. Especially, when I know with the sham of a check being done, anybody can drive into the basement parking of any of these malls with a car loaded with tonnes of explosives and blow up the mall without being caught. Another example of symbolism – lip service for mall owners to show off their apparent “concern” about security.

Have you seen how the security checks while getting into the cinema hall in the mall is just so much stricter than the one in entering the mall? And this security check is not for your security – it is for the cinema owners so that you are forced to buy their overpriced food (so you are checked to see that you are not smuggling any food in), it is for the movie producers so that you cannot take bootleg copies of their movies (so you cannot get that pocket camera you have been carrying for casual snaps inside the hall). Doesn’t this give you a good perspective about how seriously the mall owners think about your security?

Nobody will talk about fixing the real problems in the security scene of our country today – corruption in police and the judicial system, enough human intelligence, enough training and sensitization of police so that the common man is comfortable enough to work with the police, co-ordination between the states and the center, more investment to make a world class police force, adequate staffing in the perenially understaffed and overworked police force.

BTW, I actually find it very amusing how after every blast someone stands up saying “We had warned you that something like that might happen”, just to score a point. After the Bangalore blasts, the center claimed so. After the Delhi blasts, the Gujarat government claimed so. It is a proper circus out here.