India Political Blog

From time to time, Indian authorities detect many persons traveling on various trains of the Indian Railways using VIP coupons. These are coupons issued to many categories of people (such as railways employees, politicians, cultural figures, freedom fighters, etc). However, it has been found that many of them get misused - they are meant for the person to whom they are allotted, and for their immediate staff or family; a lot of them get used for the purpose of either being sent to relatives or friends, and in extreme cases, getting sold. Consider this case:

CHANDIGARH: The flying squad of the railways commercial control wing detected yet another misuse of privilege coupons allotted to various categories. Four persons travelling on coupons allotted to Varanasi’s former MLA were nabbed in this connection on Friday night.

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In India, the police are still governed by a set of rules that were set up in British times; then the aim of the police was to implement the policies of the ruler against a ruled nation. Looking at the current situation, one would not be faulted for thinking that something similar is the current situation. The police is formed out of the society as we have currently, and assumes that the police is ‘THE government’ in areas that are away from major cities. If you go to a semi-urban area, then there are only 2-3 centers of power: the local politician of the ruling party, the powerful criminal, the local top bureaucrat, and then the policeman, in cahoots with one, or all of them.
In such a case, a policemen who does not have enough morals or controls would think that he is the local equivalent of all authority, and that any action of his cannot be faulted. If not so, how does one explain the case where policemen can rape a citizen of the country (without worrying that the law will catch up with them):

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Friday rapped the Haryana police for the rape of a woman in Rohtak allegedly by two constables, saying “when the protectors of the law become perpetrators of crime, the life of the common man becomes miserable”.

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Gurgaon, just south of Delhi, is reported as the Millenium City, as a sample of growth. It has gleaming buildings, swanky malls, and plenty of BPO’s, IT offices and many other such high-growth industries. It is seen as a self-sufficient township, with a large number of people now living there. However, there are many warts in this story. It suffers from infrastructure problems with poor water and electricity, lack of easy public transport, and sectors not involved in these sunrise sectors feel alienated from all this growth (one just needs to go and see ‘Old Gurgaon’).
And amidst all this, a heinous trade involving the removal of kidneys from poor people and selling to rich patients needing a kidney was going on (for a long time, maybe more than 8-10 years). Refer this news:

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This seems like a good way to help farmers in Haryana to get information that helps them, and that too without running around and chasing after some Government Babu who may not be too interested. Sometimes one wonders as to how Government departments are able to implement such innovative solutions, that too, which actually work and which can be used by people in the State, no matter where they reside:

Farmers in Haryana are SMSing a free government helpline to get solutions to their agro-problems. The government set up this trouble-shooting service in February, the first of its kind in the country. Farmers can contact senior officials of the agriculture department for advice. Even illiterate farmers are taking help of others in the family or neighbourhood to send SMSes.
Officials say it will take time to exploit such technology in the farm sector. They feel this service will go a long way to educate farmers once they get hooked to it. The department feels that farmers have been deprived of scientific advice as agriculture department officials and professors of agriculture universities have been unable to disseminate information to farmers in remote areas. Mobile technology is helping surmount these problems.

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We keep on reading about incidents like this. Maybe our law and order system has so broken down that people no longer believe that a thief will actually get sentenced, or maybe they will confident that they can administer quick justice, even if it leads to the death of a human being outside the judicial system. What makes it even more bad in this case is the fact that a policeman was there, but did not take a step to stop them. The case is simple, a thief was caught, and beaten up so badly that he died; and apparently a policeman was there who did not stop them. How long can this system go on with people being able to administer vigilante kind of justice:

MOGA: About one dozen persons, including some workers at a local gaushala, lynched a suspected thief on Friday evening in Moga. The suspected thief Mohinder Singh was allegedly beaten to death even as a policeman looked on.
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This was not incest. But because there is a feeling that a boy and girl of the same gotra could be blood relatives, they were killed after they were married. Does this ring a bell ? In a shocking, nay, horrendous event depicting the callousness of life in rural India, a couple was killed after they had legally got married and had returned to their village.

Residents of a Haryana village defended the murder of a couple for marrying within the familial gotra. “Humne theek kiya (we did right),” the accused said as villagers proclaimed before TV crews that the killings would be a deterrent to coming generations not to marry in the same gotra.
Babli and Manoj ran away from their village on April 6 and went to Chandigarh and applied for a registered marriage on May 31. Armed with a court order that provided them “protection”, the couple came back to their village, knowing little what was in store.

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