active day for justice

Yesterday, October 23rd, was a very busy day for justice across the country with more than 50 life imprisonment sentences meted out on a number of cases. Perhaps the one getting the most sound bites was the conviction of former UP minister and current MLA, Amarmani Tripathi and three others, including his wife, for the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla.

The second conviction was of 10 cops in the fake Connaught Place encounter in 1997, in which two innocent men were murdered in broad daylight.

The third conviction was handed out to 31 in the Coimbatore blasts in 1998, when the fanatical Muslim organization, Al Umma hatched a plot to assassinate LK Advani. The blasts had killed 58 people. One of the accused, their propaganda master, received four consecutive terms, running to 138 years. Another received 3 consecutive terms, while 10 others received double terms.

Another conviction which wasn't talked about as much as the rest was the conviction of 11 people in Kanpur who had charred to death 11 Muslims during the Babri Masjid riots.

While 60 life convictions in a day is unprecedented, I cannot help but think is this a mere coincidence? Or was there really something cooking in the judiciary to respond to the growing lawlessness in the country? Many people say both things. Lawyers say its no big deal, and the media is merely overplaying the judgments, which are the court's duty in the first place and not out of the ordinary.

Whatever the case, I am very happy that this has happened. People need to believe that the Indian union is still strong, despite the growing lawlessness and the resultant anarchy. They both work in tandem, and both weaken the state. With a defunct police system, crime goes on an upward spiral, and with crime going out of control, many people take the law into their own hands. The last few months are peppered with stories of public lynching and petty criminals beaten to death.

Everyone is unhappy with a lot of things. We are a very, very disenfranchised nation, and most of us are just looking for an outlet to vent our frustrations. Its not everyday that one gets to see solid reminders of a still active judiciary, which is important when we all know the executive has been on a downward spiral since decades.

Blue Line

They call the Blue Lines running in that crappy city we call the capital of India as the killer line. Almost every day, somebody is run over by one of these errant buses, and the response is now predictable - people take to the streets, damage public property, police hangs around, politicians mumble something, and the ants carry about their lives.

True, there are many blue line buses that are at fault, but do you notice the logical inconsistency in my statement? The entire media jugglery has harped on these errant buses, as it they are robots driving themselves around and running over people. Buses are compounded, and fined and are subjected to whatever 'humiliation' that the illustrious administrators of Crappy Delhi seem fit, but the focus on the drivers seem to be missing.

True, by confiscating buses they may hope to influence the bus owners - many of who are local politicians and other officials - into forcing their drivers to do a better job, but wouldnt it have been better to just say it straight to their faces?

There was a training program that the department of transportation conducted for all blue line bus drivers. Less than 40% showed up. Some whimper was heard in the media about this, but its lost in the sea of other bullshit. What I do know is that the safest car, or bus for that matter, can be ruined in an instant if an idiot is behind the wheel. That is the case with New Delhi. Even a khatara bus can do yeoman's service if it is run with efficiency and professionalism. But professionalism and efficiency are two words that are only seen in rare cases in India, and especially in the Governmental context.

I get to see Sheila Dixit vociferously claiming action, and I get to see that dirty man, Harun Yusuf, talk with a straight face about how things will change. Nothing will change.

I got to see great political unity in Delhi when all the politicians got together to cover their asses when their pawn, Ashok Malhotra got caught. Of course, that issue died slowly. Never mind the crores of rupees and acres of land involved. I am sure i'll get to see the same political dexterity in this case well.

There is no one solution. In fact, there is no solution at all. People will still never learn to drive, the two-wheelers will still showcase their death-defying stunts on the road, including driving on the wrong side, zig-zagging between lanes, crossing at will, but if someone's act comes to an immature end, of course, that person is not at fault. I get to see this despicable form of driving everyday, and I know it takes years to condition somebody to do something different, and this is a whole generation of awful drivers with non-existent regards for rules. It will only take a big stick for errants to force some change, and given the spinelessness of our politicians to take bold decisions, I dont see that happening at all.

The bedlam at Johannesburg

Looks like we are not chokers after all. Despite almost snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the Indian team has won the Twenty20 World Cup!

Shoaib Malik apologized to all the Muslims in the world for not winning the world cup and he assured them that the team gave its 100%. I understand his pain, after all, Allah was busy listening to the prayers of his true followers across the border.

But good to see so much young blood for a change.

What is contempt of court?

Contempt of court is a funny phrase in India. The courts use it to reiterate to the errant citizens and people in power that the courts must be respected and any insinuation that they are inept or wrong will be strictly dealt with.

The problem is that the biggest culprits, the politicians in power, usually do not have to go through such a bother. Yet common citizens are the ones who get the most contempt of court notices, or so it seems to my naked eye. Earlier today, the Supreme Court sentenced four people, including three journalists of the Mid Day newspaper to four months in prison for bringing the court into disrepute. The newspaper had run a story that said that the former Chief Justice of India, Justice YK Sabharwal, had benefited his son by his rulings on the sealing drive in New Delhi. The newspaper had also run a cartoon on the issue. The cartoonist bore the court's wrath as well.

Personally, I am a big fan of the Supreme Court, and firmly believe that they are the one wall between the politicians and their desire to sell this country out. But this is just a murder of our constitutional right of freedom of speech.

Slander is one thing, and yes, media does have a lot of personal vendetta, but here, the person in question was not the CJI anymore, but retired, and once retired, he does come under the purview of public scrutiny.

The fact is that the entire functioning of the shitty city of New Delhi is one huge conundrum, and it will take more than a Supreme Court order to set things right. In fact, I don't think things can ever be set right in this country. And its no lie that the judiciary is also steeped in corruption, if not as much as as in the polity, but its there nonetheless.

As for the media, while I agree with them this time, they are not above my contempt because of their utter lack of understanding of national issues.

Lets riot in the name of the Lord

Gandhi said that the greatest constant in the world is change. Most people in India still believe in that maxim, except that they believe that everything else around them should change but their own selves.

I find such examples in everyday life all around the country, where extremist groups, fighting for one ‘cause’ or the other, regularly attempt to subvert the system by breaking rules and then browbeating the authorities into not taking any action.

Most of the country today lives on a very dangerous cocktail of religion and a failing system. In fact, religion seems to be filling the vacuum that the failed system leaves behind. While its a sad truth that the country is falling deeper into the abyss of religious fanaticism everyday, its also obviously clear that most of it comes from the most backward parts of the country.

Uttar Pradesh is one of the most backward states in the country, be it in terms of governence, the filth in their politics, or simply the standard of living. While our forefathers thought it prudent to make UP the most important state in choosing our federal government given its size and population and the then economic might, UP has sadly squandered that privelage. Now it is a state that is used as a whore by unscrululous politicians looking to put a foot into the door to political greatness.

Where law and order fail, other methods take over, and in UP, that method is political bullying by those sections of the society that have been passionately pandered to by the lowly neta. The minorities in UP are some of the most politically important groups in the country, yet are some of the backward as well. Politicians will bend over backwards to get the Muslim vote, but the sad truth is that the latters are still lagging behind in education and basic human development. I am just using this as an example to illustrate the lethargy that has set into the Indian society, a lethargy that debilitates your ability to stand up against exploitation.

I am sure the people of the country know how our illustrious politicians are busy raping the country and the society with their hunting dogs. I am sure because I come across surveys time and time again about how politicians are the most hated of all, how corruption is India’s biggest threat and all that blah blah. Yet we are what we choose. So there has got to be a mental lethargy responsible for the fact that we can’t see that we are voting for monkeys and wolves.

My whole point when I started to write this post was to write about the recent deaths of the ‘Kanwariyas’ or ‘Shiva’s devotees’, who came under a passing train and many died on the spot. Before I elaborate, I just want to say that they should not be considered devotees at all. In fact, this group is the biggest farce in the name of devotion. Their annual pilgrimage to Haridwar is peppered with constant harrassment of everyone else they come in contact with.

On the road, they walk with the belief that nobody else has a right to walk on the same path. When they take the train, they travel with the belief that nobody else has the right to be on that train. And this is one of those vocal, extremist groups that readily break rules and bullys the system into not punishing them. Being vocal and voilent, and somewhat politically important, of course the spineless politician is ready to lick the dust off their shoes.

So this is how the people died in that unfortunate accident. There is a railway bridge somewhere over the Saryu river in Gonda district in UP. There are two tracks on the bridge, and there is no pathway for pedestrians. I am sure all of us know that the only way one can stop a train on any part of the journey other than the station is by pulling the chain during an emergency.

So this bridge comes up and the monkeys, I mean devotees forcibly stop the train on the bridge and get off, walking on the other track. The train coming from the other side does not, and should not expect pedestrians walking on the tracks as if it’s a bloody footpath.

By the time the train comes to a halt, it has run over some of them, while a few jump into the river.

Now these hypocrites are angry because the Railways did not change their functioning to pander to their free will. They tried to burn the nearest railway station, and have called for a bandh in the district and maybe a few other places. Either the media is playing dumb, or simply too stupid/scared to bring this simple obvious fact up. A tragedy it is, no doubt, but these hypocrite hooligans have turned it into another reason why they must be hated.

But then it’s just another day in the gutter of humanity.