Learned lessons from failed democracies
The curtailment of the monsoon session of Parliament on September 10 — six days earlier than scheduled — because of persistent unruly behaviour of members of the Lok Sabha is proof that the country’s parliamentary system of government is becoming increasingly imperiled. During the truncated monsoon session, the Lok Sabha should have worked for six hours per day for 23 days. Instead it conducted its legislative business for an average four hours per day for only 17 days. Likewise the Rajya Sabha should have worked for five hours per day but it averaged only three hours. Given that every minute of parliamentary time is valued at Rs.20,000, the premature adjournment of the monsoon session cost taxpayers a massive Rs.16.08 crore in lost parliamentary time. The purpose and raison d’etre of Parliament is to legislate laws for orderly governance of the country. Under elaborately detailed rules of both houses of Parliament, proposed legislation is required to be scrutinised and thoroughly debated so that fair and just legislation is enacted for the benefit of the citizenry. To ensure this outcome, members of Parliament are handsomely remunerated in terms of pay and perquisites. But in the monsoon session against the scheduled 25 Bills, only 11 were passed and against the 25 scheduled to be introduced, only 16 were. As a result while at the beginning of the monsoon session 71 Bills were pending, now the number of pending Bills has risen to 74. And given that work shirking and unruly behaviour of MPs witnessed in the monsoon session is the rule rather than exception, it’s hardly surprising that some Bills (such as the Private Universities Bill, 1995) have been awaiting debate and legislation for decades.
The devaluation of Parliament by the people’s elected representatives is particularly unfortunate at this juncture in the history of the subcontinent, when democratic systems of governance have collapsed across South Asia. In particular this country’s foolish legislators don’t seem to have drawn any lessons from the eclipse of parliamentary democracy in neigbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh where military dictatorships (with the broad approval of their people) have supplanted democratically elected governments.
Currently Pakistan is experiencing a period of dangerous political turmoil which could result in prolonged civic insurrection and rioting, following the desperate come back attempts of former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif who squandered their political capital by permitting their party members to devalue Pakistan’s parliamentary institutions. It is pertinent to remember that General Musharaff had widespread support when he engineered an army coup d’etat against the Nawaz Sharif government in 1999 because the public and the establishment were thoroughly disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of Pakistan’s democratically elected leaders to provide orderly government.
As people groan under the weight of unjust laws and continuously witness the unseemly legislative paralysis of Parliament, India’s much vaunted democratic experiment seems to be headed the same way.
Root causes of rough-n-ready mob justice
The rising incidence of vigilante justice, lynching and public humiliation of petty criminals across the country by angry mobs is further evidence that public confidence in the law, order and justice systems is on the point of collapse. During the past two months a spate of mob violence and public lynching incidents have been reported countrywide.
On August 27, in Bihar’s infamous Bhagalpur — a town etched in the public memory after the horrific blinding of 31 undertrials by policemen in 1980 — an irate mob under the encouraging supervision of local policemen viciously beat and tortured a youth who had allegedly snatched a gold chain. Worse, on September 10 in the Newada district of Bihar a mob used hot iron rods to gorge out the eyes of three young men for allegedly stealing a motorcycle. And two days later the grand finale of mob justice was rightly staged in Bihar — by common consensus India’s most lawless and illiterate state — when some 300 people in Dhelpurva village stoned ten petty thieves to death. Tellingly, the citizens of Dhelpurva had reported eight thefts in their village during the three months past to the authorities and had repeatedly petitioned the police for protection. Typically, their pleas were unheard.
Although politicians (and the media) tend to regard mob justice as collective hysteria and moral failure, quite clearly it is intimately connected with public frustration over the nation’s collapsing law, order and justice systems. India has a mere 1,000 policemen per million people (cf. 3,000 in the US and 2,100 in Australia), and in most of the 485 districts of rural India, the writ of the police doesn’t run after 6 p.m. The Indian legal system characterised by archaic procedures and pervasive corruption has accumulated a backlog of over 30 million cases. Little wonder with public confidence in the law, order and justice systems at an all-time low, people are resorting to vigilantism and mob justice.
Curiously the ground reality that India has fewer than 13 judges per million people, whereas the UK has 50, Canada 75 and the US 107, doesn’t seem to trouble the consciences of politicians or the public. And even the 13,000 judges countrywide grudgingly employed by government are provided abysmal infrastructure and support services. Government expenditure on the legal system aggregates a mere 0.42 percent of GDP annually cf. 4.3 percent in the UK.
Rising vigilantism and recourse to rough and ready mob justice is also fed by the conspicuous failure of state governments to arrest and file charges against vigilante groups. In none of the horrific incidents of mob violence detailed above, have arrests been made by the police. Such inaction and condonation of vigilantism is tantamount to tacit approval of on-the-spot mob justice.
However elimination of lynch justice and establishing the rule of law requires more than mere moral exhortation. Criminal — perhaps deliberate — neglect of law and order and judicial infrastructure are issues which need to be urgently addressed and remedied. If not, dispensation of rough-n-ready mob justice will become the rule rather than exception in shining, fast-track India.