ELECTIONS '98
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The smell of crookedness

Imagine first that an administrator of some repute is shunted out of his crime-fighting job amidst allegations of bribery and outright political scheming. Imagine further that the transfer of this official completely contradicts the Supreme Court's earlier order that specific criteria be applied to the appointment and service of persons to the office he occupies. And worse still, imagine that the government tries to justify the transfer by insisting to the court that its earlier order stated something quite different altogether!

The incredulity of this charade stems from the fact that it actually happened! What a shame that no less than the solicitor general of the nation is made to appear in court and offer a defence to which the members of the court say "if this is not an attempt to mislead the court, then what is it"? That the prime minister of the country should publicly admit dissatisfaction at the handling of the matter and seek to apportion blame for the event says volumes. In our land of wide-spread unaccountability, only the most blatant violations of the law suffer even this mild indignity.

The transfer of Enforcement Director Bezbaruah, the subsequent effort to rewrite the Supreme Court's earlier ruling, and the final back-down all did nothing to enhance the reputation of the ruling party. For starters, it bears asking who in this government dreamed that direct contravention of the court's order could slide by without scrutiny. Second, the blatant rewording of the court's orders to defend the transfer must rank as even worse; only the insane would imagine that the court would let that pass.

Judicial institutions rest on the primacy of the worded judgment; to seek to put a spin on one must rate to them as the very worst offence. In the end, the court prevailed and the transfer order was revoked. In fact, if the government has the sense to understand why the court prevailed, there is an enormous lesson to be learned from this experience.

The court, it must now be clear, has declared its intention to make the executive bodies answerable for their omissions and commissions. The executive, in turn, has attempted to circumvent this effort, mostly by controlling who makes it to the court in the first place. This tug-of-war has been ongoing since the early 1990s, when members of the court first took the position that the Supreme Court's consent is necessary to appoint judges.

It is nearly axiomatic in vibrant democracies that conflicts between the government and the courts shall be resolved to the court's pleasure. The notion of legislators reigning in runaway activism on the part of the judiciary has only the feeblest acceptance in the public's mind. Frankly, it is hard to see how one might even countenance this notion, except in an academic sense. The need to reign in endless abuses of power by the executive offices, on the other hand, is plain as light. Bring on the over-zealous justices anytime, God knows we could use a few of those.

People want justice, and the justice they seek is not forthcoming from the legislatures. In fact, the sad truth is that it is very often the excesses of the executive offices that move people to seek justice in the first place. A government that attempts to muzzle the judiciary is not likely to be seen as able to provide what the people seek. For a party that has carefully cultivated the appearance of propriety to resort to such gimmicks is plain stupid, not to forget scandalous. The state of our society is such that the smell of crookedness, repaid with a booting at the polls, is the sole remaining measure of justice. This affair stinks.

Arm-wrestling the Supreme Court, mercifully, remains a futile exercise. Hopefully, some apparatchik in the Sangh Parivar is taking notes. For those who saw in the BJP the promise of a different sort of government, this must hark back to the very things that have brought us to the current state of social decay. And along with it, the weariness of seeing that so little of the promised change is forthcoming. The BJP has been elected on the promise to be a party with a difference. The shenanigans of the past week cast considerable doubt on that claim.

Eliminate the transfer raj, Mr Prime Minister. Give the good guys the job and let them do it. No doubt a few hundred politicians will bitch and scream, but the people have a million votes for each of them. It's an easy choice to make.

How Readers responded to Ashwin Mahesh's earlier columns

Ashwin Mahesh