Soft state justice

Almost half a century ago, in his monumental three-volume magnum opus Asian Drama, Nobel laureate-economist Gunnar Myrdal ascribed many of the woes of post-Nehruvian India, already notorious for government corruption and on the brink of mass starvation, to the Great Man™s amateurish experiments with socialism, and described India as a œsoft state. In step with the establishment, even the country™s judiciary is too soft and reluctant to render swift and condign punishment, especially to the high and mighty who ride rough shod over the populace and the law. This is the explanation behind the strained and convoluted judgement of Justice C.R. Kumaraswamy of the Karnataka high court acquitting Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets accumulation case which was first filed in 1996, and subsequently moved to Bangalore in 2003 to be heard by a specially constituted sessions court. After hearing the case for 11 years, the sessions court delivered a deeply considered judgement (September 27, 2014) and convicted her to four years in prison in addition to a fine of Rs.100 crore for possessing assets valued at Rs.53.60 crore including gold, real estate, sarees and footwear, vastly disproportionate to her legitimate income. On the contrary, in a prolix and meandering 919-page judgement Justice Kumaraswamy described Jayalalithaa™s huge assets accumulated in five years (1991-96) during her first term as chief minister as œrelatively small, and ruling that œthe disproportionate asset (sic) is less than 10 percent and it is within permissible limit, acquitted her. Curiously he found nothing wrong in the CM receiving huge cash gifts into her bank account. In India™s soft state, it™s not only political big fish who get away with the loot, plunder and gross abuse of position. Recently, actor Salman Khan was able to secure immediate bail from the Bombay high court after his conviction in a drunken driving case which involved his luxury limo driving over several homeless citizens sleeping on a pavement. And every week, one reads about sting operations on government engineers, clerks and sub-registrars which yield mind-boggling disproportionate assets, but are then heard of no more. Over four decades ago after qualifying as a barrister, your editor quit a promising career in the Bombay high court following disillusionment with the slothful and cruel justice system. I seldom regret that decision. Shame then & now Recently while on a state visit to China, India™s newly-elected prime minister Narendra Modi felt it incumbent upon him to comment that in the era before the BJP-led NDA coalition was swept to electoral victory in 2014, people of Indian origin abroad regretted their ethnicity and were ashamed of being Indian. Now under the new dispensation, they entertain no such regrets and are proud to be Indian. Recalling my five years as a politically active and outspoken law student in London four decades ago, your editor must admit to being often embarrassed and secretly ashamed of being Indian in those days when stories of the country™s œteeming and starving millions, and clumsy birth control…