India’s legal system can work very slowly, what with the massive backlog of cases that it has. Due to this backlog and the time it could take to get a case heard, people resort to their own form of justice or get frustrated waiting for a resolution to the cases. In the case of a bank that has given a loan to a person and the person is delinquent about repaying the loan, the proper procedure is to institute a complaint and follows the proper legal procedure for recovering the loan. This would take a lot of time, and hence banks use the services of goons, loan recovery agents who use force, etc.
This is the position taken by banks when trying to do a half-hearted justification of their willingness to use illegal means to recover their loans, or to get their money back by seizing the asset for which the loan was taken. However, this approach has several problems.
It is a known fact of life that there are many communities in India that are backward; many of them get benefits on the basis of caste such as reservations in jobs and education. There is some debate on a policy of reservation, but the prime justification is that these castes have been suppressed as part of social and religious practices; there is also a whole host of politics involved in this whole affair.
It is this problem of politics that causes most problems; for some time now, the Congress has realized that it has been losing the support of Muslims, and this is not something that the Congress can easily accept. In order to regain power in the states and center, it needs to bring together a coalition of many parts of society such as the Dalits (except in Uttar Pradesh where Mayawati has got their support), forward castes such as the Brahmins, and the Muslims. Hence, a concerted plan to take measures that would be seen as benefiting the Muslim community; it is these that are now causing it problems.
In what was shocking news, there was an article in the newspaper about how Arjun Singh made some comments during the launch of a book in which bemoaned the lack of freedom in the party and how comments were not appreciated. Now, we all know this is shocking, not because this is not true, but because nobody in the Congress who wants to be a somebody would say something like this (the very lack of freedom in the Congress contributed to the quick downfall of anybody who made statements like these).
But Arjun Singh did not stop there, he continued in the same line, uttering things that could be easily refuted (such as having advised against the emergency, while most people would have known that he was such a careful person politically that he would not have opposed either Sanjay Gandhi or Indira Gandhi). In fact, he even failed to mention the name of Sonia or Rahul on this occasion, something that is a cardinal sin in the Congress.
The Congress is used to a sense of getting scolded from the Left parties on a regular note on a frequent basis; after all, the Congress does not want to give up power and is willing to face as many words of threats and scoldings as necessary as long as the Left continues to support them. The Congress has rolled back so many initiatives in the past, that people no longer expect much reform from the Congress anymore - pension reforms, labour reforms, SEZ (to some extent), the strategically important nuclear bill, and so on. And the Congress does not only pander to the wishes of the Left, even an insignificant party such as the PMK can make the PM face censure, and yet is unable to say anything. Hence, even when the AIIMS bill (pushed through by the PMK and passed by the Union Cabinet) is thrown by the Supreme Court, the Health Minister (of the PMK) will face no shame since this was after all a bill of the Government; and it is the Prime Minister who faces censure by the media of bad governance and unable to even control misadvances by his allies.
Well, the real name of the amendment brought in by the Government at the urging of the DMK Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss was actually the AIIMS Amendment Act; it should have been called the anti-Venugopal Act since though the law fixed the upper age of retirement of the AIIMS Director to be 65, based on which the noted heart surgeon had to resign. However, since Parliament, in a new low for the Government, actually spent time in passing a law that was directed specifically at one person; it was very easily challenged in court as being discriminatory and meant only to retire him. Venugopal challenged the Act, and even during the initial discussions, the SC had some strong words to say to the Government.
The Central Government on Thursday received a major setback with the Supreme Court striking down the law that enabled premature retirement of noted cardiologist P Venugopal as the Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) after a raging row with Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss.
In a move that indicates that the Government has apparently not done its homework on getting its allies on board on the move to introduce the Women’s Reservation Bill, the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) (whose head Laloo Prasad Yadav and other leaders are part of the Government) has opposed the move by the Government and accused it of taking the action without consulting its allies. The Mandal parties want the women’s quota to have sub-quotas for OBC’s and Muslims, something that the other parties and many sections of the Congress support base will oppose:
The Rashtriya Janata Dal on Wednesday upped its opposition to the women’s reservation Bill threatening to withdraw support to the UPA government if the legislation was not amended to provide sub-quotas for OBCs and Muslims within the generic gender quota in legislatures.
People who drive in Delhi know the current bad case of Delhi’s traffic obeying drivers - there is not a single rule that you can expect drivers or pedestrians to obey; whether this means stopping before the zebra crossing, no talking on the mobile when driving, no drunken driving, stopping at the red light and only crossing on the green, driving the wrong way, giving way to elderly people, and so on. All of these are meant to be broken, and are often broken down.
And why could they do this with impunity ? Well, because say for example, the fine for jumping a red light is only Rs. 100, so most people would calculate the chance of getting caught, or even of having to pay the fine, and they would be fine with doing so. After all, there is only so much that a Rs. 100 is worth nowadays; and mind you, this is only when you actually get caught.
In a classic case of why the judiciary starts to take on policy making powers, the Government dithered this way and that, and did nothing to make fines steeper so that people feel the pinch of the fine and are more careful the next time (as an example, friends who are caught speeding in the United States and have had to pay upwards of Dollars 150 as a fine are very careful from that time onwards; and trust me, in Singapore, you don’t want to be caught speeding). No action at all from the side of the Government, till one fine day, the High Court added a minimum of Rs. 500 to every fine, so that even jumping a red light would charge at least Rs. 600. However, this is now a thing of the past:
The Women’s Reservation Bill is something that has been debated on and off for over a decade now, and no Government has been able to bring in this law due to the immense controversy over this issue. The BJP was unable to do so, and this Congress / UPA Government has not been able to do so. Each time, this is because of the blocking by the various OBC groups who are suspicious of the motivations behind bringing such a bill. They believe that the splintering of the electorate along caste lines is going to be moved back by such a law if it does not also have relevant reservations for OBC’s and Muslims. In addition, the belief is that upper caste women will capture a large chunk of the seats under such a Bill.
I am ambivalent of most reservations since I believe that the proper strategy of bringing about change is to make more facilities, education, etc. available rather than reserve some of them for somebody who does not have the skill set needed for the seat / job for which the reservations is sought. The only exception that I can think of is the case of politics where I have not been able to understand the type of talent required (if any is required); and hence maybe reserving electoral seats for women may be permissible - anyhow, in a lot of cases, winning or losing depends on the party rather than the individual.
The Delhi Traffic Police must be feeling vindicated. For the many months now in which the BRT corridor design and construction has been in progress, they have opposed the whole concept of segregating special lanes as a non-workable concept given the volume of traffic and the tendency of Delhi’s drivers to ignore the needed discipline as something not applicable on them.
The Government and experts have been advocating a dedicated bus corridor as has been used in many cities around the world, but have always ignored advice about adapting the corridor to local conditions. The result has been there for all to see; the difficulty is that there needs to be encouragement for having more buses and other mass public transport on the road. So now the bus corridor conditions have been sought to be changed for the extensions:
The changed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) design, designated Pilot B, that’s now being proposed between Moolchand and Delhi Gate, is in effect only a thinly veiled version of the existing pattern of traffic flow on all roads in the Capital. Under Pilot B, which will be implemented between Moolchand and Delhi Gate, it is being proposed that buses would ply on the extreme left, next to the footpath and cycle track. There will be no concrete medians segregating the bus lane from the MV lanes, which will now have three lanes for other traffic. The road space for buses will be painted.
We have come to regard bank drop boxes as a great extension of the branch; dropping checks, payment, check book requirements, and similar requests into these drop boxes. For credit card payments, where the required date is very close or even today, it seems like we can just drop the check in the drop box the same day and avoid a late payment. So, it will surprise people to know that this is nowhere near being a fool-proof instrument, and is subject to many delays and lack of responsibility by the bank. Refer this article:
A Mumbai resident recently dropped his credit card payment cheque in a box placed at a travel company. Although he dropped it four days before the due date, the amount was not debited from his account. Despite registering a complaint with the bank’s customer care helpline, his card was deactivated. To top it, he has been asked to pay a late fee and finance charges.