From the Hippocratic Pact To the Consumer Protection Act - A Medical Journey

 [This article was written for the souvenir brought out on the occasion of the diamond jubilee celebration of the Patna Medical College, formerly the Prince of Wales Medical College, Patna long time back.Later a severely edited version of this article appeared in The Economic Times,perhaps in 1992 or 93. A series of correspondence with an esteemed friend of mine on related issues  led me to reconstruct  this article from old papers and notes. The version that appears  here  may not be the same as it originally appeared in the Patna Medical College journal.]

  

In the B.B.C. comedy serial Yes Minister, as an instance of bureaucratic insensitivity extra long tubes for the existing stethoscopes are offered in response to demand for more of this item form a certain hospital. Humour apart, it can also be taken as a grim metaphor of the fact that in our avowedly compassionate society, doctors are forever receding form its sick and morbid members. The physical interface between the patient and his doctors, the detailed examination to question the dis tempered part, the protracted palpation is gradually giving way to a mechanical probe by means of vast and impersonal appurtenances of technology.

Every age has its own paradigm about what causes disease. The role of the doctor as well as the community’s expectations from him is closely aligned to it. In the earliest times, it was believed that sickness occurred as a result of the invasion by evil spirits. In a manner of speaking the shamans and exorcist could be said to be the earliest medical practitioners. Their therapeutic regimen consisted of a closely defined procedure, a technique of the incantation of the magic mantra to propitiate or exorcises the malevolent presence. When summoned to tend the sick the Tibetan Lama would, by reciting the cosmogynic myth, symbolically project his patient to the dawn of time. The whole subsequent temporal drama would be enacted step by step, by the recitation of the myth of illness, the myth of the first shaman and so on. The patient by this journey back would be restored to the primeval and essential condition of health from which he appeared to have strayed en route.

In primitive cultures, before scientific hubris overtook human civilization men trusted forces larger than themselves to mend things. The shaman could at best be a mediator, an agent, a medium through whom grace could flow. History records many such events where  prophets and saints have charmed away excruciating pain by mere touch and sometimes suffered the pain themselves in the bargain are trans historic and cross cultural models. The practitioners of the art of healing were public spirited men with a super abundant gift for affection and empathy. Even till sometime back, physicians are known to have tested dangerous poisons and their antidotes on themselves.

Over the years the paradigm of the causation of disease has undergone several changes.  A historian records that theories like autointoxication, disproportionality of Yin and Yang imbalance of the bodily humours, deviation from natural way of living, even excessive love of theatre as being responsible for disease held sway. The role of the doctors as well as the repertoire of medical strategies has undergone commensurate changes. The point that needs to be underlined is that the practice of medicine has always been a tripartite arrangement, between the doctor and his patient and the two taken together with the contemporary social cultural scientific milieu.

The concept of focal infection, of specific etiology, the medical equivalent of the reductionist, causal, deterministic world view has captivated the medical imagination for close to hundred years. The one to one relationship between the disease and the causative agent was spectacularly demonstrated by Louis Pasteur. Due to the efforts and under the influence of Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur, Paul Ehrlich and others a whole new demonology of pathogens – the disease causing agents- was complied with a countervailing pharmacopoeia of “magic bullets” and precision guided chemical munitions capable  of specifically engaging and destroying  the enemy.

In the beginning of the 20th century, Lord Kelvin in one of the headier moments declared that the task of physics was well nigh over. What remained to be done was to tie up the loose ends. The contemporary medical thinking was equally convinced that the only end of medical endeavour and research was  to isolate as many pathogens as possible and develop suitable drugs. Consequently a shift in the traditional role of the doctor took place. A large area of his activity was relegated to the microbiologists and the pharmacists. Separating the malady form the sick person became the  very raison d'etre of the practice of medicine.

Diseases like tuberculosis, measles, small pox, meningitis which swept through towns and villages like a visiting pestilence were tamed. But perhaps the newer ones, foremost among them cardiovascular diseases, cancer and AIDS have overshadowed the triumph.Therefore,when Rene Dubos describes their endeavours as creating a "mirage of health" or Ivan Illich insists that there are strict "limits to medicine" it does merit concern if not downright alarm.

Increased specialization set in motion the process of dehumanization of the doctor.The reductionist world view diminished the doctor from restorer of health and wholeness to a mender of broken or distempered parts, while the patient is reduced to a registration number. From being a person, a unique organism with definite physical and psychosomatic boundaries he becomes an object of piece meal curiosity- probed by machines, seen trough x- rays bounced off him in a strange setting, shut off from his family with white masked, dispassionate observes from outer space, as it where as witnesses to the procedure. The dehumanizing almost dismembering aspect of technology is now part of our medical imaginary.

Given the ineluctable logic of consumerism, the hidden tenet of capitalist industrialist system, health care was, sooner or later, bound to become one of the greatest growth industries. The law of supply and demand ensured that the doctors flocked in disproportionately large numbers to urban centres, where the standard of public health and sanitation are already much better than the rural areas where the medical facilities are woefully, criminally inadequate. But these areas of deprivation do not have buyers and markets are not known to be moral agents. So the poor languish for want of basic health care, while the rich are spoilt for choice and tertiary care nursing homes exist side by side with death wards dubbed as primary health care systems.

But of late the practice of medicine has got inextricably linked with the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Like a puppet jiggling on strings the medical practitioner has become an involuntary even unconscious agent of the drug industry. Peddling avoidable surgeries and needless invasive procedures with the persuasive skill of a salesman he also   prescribes new fangled drugs-chemically synthesized, materialized out of nowhere,re-engineered with a molecule displaced here or a carbon bond dislocated there, these drugs are sometime launched  with inadequate field trials, sometimes they are   potentially dangerous. But this has come to occupy the center stage of his activities and he must carry it on if he has to remain in business. However the doctor alone cannot be trusted to boost the sales to achieve projected profit levels of the profit hungry pharmaceutical companies. So the advertising industry, always at the beck and call of those who can pay to perpetrate their lies, complement its activities by plugging  the drugs directly to the people,  making them so  consumer friendly that they are ingested without medical supervision. Just as the General Motors or Toyota have to innovate constantly to give more rev to their engines to keep the consumer preference from getting jaded so more potent and more lethal antibiotics have to be made available at the drug store because the bacteria have become resistant due to the indiscriminate use of earlier generation, of antibiotics. If the T-model Ford represents progress when compared to the wheel cart, and a Ferrari is a progress compared to the T model ford shouldn't the human self that responds only to Ciprofloxacin represent progress when compared to the generation that was amenable to ineffectual, antiquated penicillin?

Ivan Illich, the Hashelmere group and a host of others have amassed such a wealth of data that the charge that doctors are pushers in the illicit drug trade can no longer be brushed aside as mere rhetorical jibe.  How ironic that the legal drug trade yields the same astronomical profit as the illicit one!

It is perhaps recognition of this sad fact that the society does not hold the doctor in that same spirit of trust and confidence; his Hippocratic Oath is no longer binding enough. He is made further answerable in the consumer protection act. Next time round he short sells people on health, healing or happiness, he will have to pay the equivalent in monetary terms. In our country, where the record of  the enforcement and adjudication  of the 3000 odd legislation has been less than awe inspiring there will be devil to pay on both sides, especially for the poor who would find medicare much more expensive without being able to secure the protection readily.

From healer to dispenser of drugs, from counselor to promoter of particular nostrums,   the doctor has traveled a long way indeed. Forced to choose between the myths of Hygeia (health is the natural order of thing provided we live prudently) and Asclepius (to abstract and treat disease  to repair any damage of distemper due to an encounter with outside causative agents or accident of birth), he chooses to pay obeisance to Mammon the universal god and benefactor of our time.

The word doctor says, Lewis Thomas, has been derived from the root word "leg” one of its meanings being" enchanter, speaker of magic words" Which is perhaps just as well! Even in the days of self confident scientific medicine he does not fail to invoke the hawk-headed god Horus whose amulet Rx he appends at the top of his prescription to set in motion the process of healing. Even in these cynical times the magic works if the faith of the patient and the intent of the physician act in unison. Try as he might then, the doctor cannot escape his inheritance and one fervently hopes his unique responsibility as a healer, as a mediator of grace as an "enchanter speaking magic words".

BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND REFORM

  The J S Verma Committee report is being hailed as the Magna Carta of women’s empowerment. Breathtakingly comprehensive in its approach, it encompasses all aspects of gender based violence and harassment- from garden variety misdemenour to aggravated  rape  - that women are subject to, qua women .The UN has declared it to be a forward looking document, and no one who has read it in its entirety can fail to notice the revolutionary fervor of the proposals. 

But, “revolution” as Bernard   Shaw said, “does not end tyranny; it merely shifts the burden to other shoulders.” My hunch is that some of the proposals are so drastic that men in uniform have some very genuine reasons to be worried about. The report which is at pains to debunk the stereotyping of women happily accepts the stereotype about men in uniform. It is true that some men in uniform commit rape- as indeed other men do - but it cannot be raised to a universal rule of perception.  

So penetrating and so far reaching is the stern gaze of the report that even after inserting a new section for enhanced punishment  for  custodial rape, the  new section 376 F Offence of breach of command responsibility,  recommends incarceration for those in command  of these men.

“Whoever being a public servant in command control or supervision of the police force or armed forces,……….fails to exercise control over persons under his or her command, control or supervision and as a result of such failure offences under sections (from eve teasing to aggravated rape)   are committed by persons under his or her command control and supervision shall be guilty of the breach of command responsibility, where

Such public servant knew or should have known owing to the circumstances that the men under his control, command or supervision would commit such offence,

Such public servant failed to take necessary or reasonable measures to prevent or repress the commission of such an offence.

. Any police or armed force organization is hierarchical in structure and the control and command of the force is mediated through various levels of functionaries. In case of Police, the ultimate control, supervision and command vests with the state government.  So if a Jawan commits rape in a remote field situation will the section commander be hauled up or will it be platoon commander or would the DG along with the whole ensemble be condemned?. Men in uniform, apart from death on active duty, will now be exposed to another occupational hazard - the disgraceful prospect of imprisonment for  up to 10 years for  “passive rape”.

 Conventionally, any crime must satisfy the twin requirements of a criminal act (actus reus), and criminal intent (mens rea) but in the instant case the mere incidence of the crime incriminates the command structure. Perhaps the omission to “prevent or repress” rape itself qualifies as actus reus. As everyone knows the crime of rape needs no preparation and the culprit can commit this crime with utmost frugality- anywhere, any place, any time. So what are the symptoms to watch for? What circumstance or season is most conducive for encouraging rapist tendencies in men in uniform and does it affect everyone equally? Is there a calculus for anticipating criminal behavior, a predictive theory at the disposal of the officer in command to “take necessary or reasonable measures to prevent or repress the commission of such an offence?”

The introduction of vicarious liability in a criminal offence is in itself a bit of a rarity but why should not the same underlying principle be applied uniformly and to other sections of society  as well? If a student commits rape on the campus or a sportsman commits rape in sporting arena, or minor sons indulge in such acts in domestic settings why should not teachers, captains, fathers and others be made similarly responsible After all parental authority or the authority of a teacher or a captain is no less compelling.

 It will be germane to the discussion to review our experience with section 304 B of the IPC enacted in to specifically combat the dowry deaths in the aftermath of a spurt of   reports of dowry deaths.  Over the years along with genuine cases of dowry deaths thousands of malicious cases have been reported and as many numbers of innocent relatives of the bridegroom have languished in jails. Such was the mental climate that police seldom exonerated people once their name figured in the FIR and the judges were equally parsimonious in granting bail. The whole criminal adjudication system seemed to have taken a vigilantist hue. Happily the courts have become more liberal and the police more circumspect in the light of past experience. Happier still the social evil of dowry has taken a drastically downward trend. Not because of the law but because boys and girls are increasingly choosing their spouses. Even where marriages are arranged the children insist on no dowry. In the meanwhile this experiment has irreparably shattered the lives of many, including old men and women.

 The atrocities against scheduled caste and tribes similarly   have not seen a radical decline because of the specific act.  But such egregious misuse has come to notice wherein an IG in a state police force, not satisfied with the vast disciplinary powers over his lowly subordinate, lodged a complaint against his orderly accusing him of having committed an atrocity against him under this act.

 The world is an unjust place for women no doubt,   but the  remedial measures  must not overlook the triad of culpability, legality and proportionality.You cannot run a  society solely by decrees , the  gradual change in  mental climate and  social ethos is a necessary accompaniment  to reforms  and that is  the surer  empowerment .

 

THE UNLOVED ONES OR THE STATE OF INDIAN POLICE.

The death of the lowly police constable Tomar underlines the existentialist irony in  the lives of police men in general. Caught up in these irrational, lawless times where the temperature and virulence of public unrest   has the potential to make or unmake political fortunes of parties, police lends its face to the invisible enemy in the war between those in power and those others in exile. But this is one war in which death rarely brings martyrdom their way, no matter what. It is being very diligently debated that Tomar did not die of injuries inflicted by the mob; his system simply failed to cope with the tension generated by the situation. Such deaths are not worth being bothered about.

The popular mind has a very straight forward and simple expectation from the police. It is that police should make itself useful to them in all sorts of circumstances. It is a demanding task. You cannot be useful to the victim and the offender, to the complainant as well as the accused, to the party in power and the ones in perpetual quest of wresting it, to the under privileged and the powerful, all at the same time. To alienate  them from the people further, every one’s grouse becomes a police problem: the students angry at issues relating to the campus, workers and government servants disgruntled at their service related conditions, doctors furious at being maltreated by neglected patients are police problems. And they all come calling without notice or ostensible reasons in all their variety and degrees of seriousness.

The seminal role of the disobedience movement in the struggle for our independence has attributed some sort of a sacerdotal value to breaking of laws. A significant section of the society is in a state of perpetual civil disobedience. Ceremonially courting arrest and proudly going to jail are the surest endorsement of faith in democracy- just as hurling brick bats, burning buses, and scalping a few policemen are the other articles of democratic faith. The adherents include venerable politicians , public men  many of them , who  may have  till  recently  sworn by the rule book in their capacity  ministers, chief ministers,  army generals and  police officers . Forced into the role of necessary respondent or reluctant third party, the police become duty bound to defend public property and maintain order against the self designated forces of disorder almost on a daily basis.

Nobody should be left in any doubt that most of the agitations are staged, seasonally and unseasonably, by various political parties, special interest groups and other layabouts jostling for some place under the sun. In the spectacles that are staged almost on a daily basis, more important than registering their protest, showing the government of the day in a poor light is the dominant agenda. The government may have its own compulsions in not yielding to their demands but at the same time protests are democratic and have to be countenanced. The police force who have the powers in law but they are hemmed in by a hundred pragmatic considerations.

Any demonstration or show of strength becomes an event and no event worth the name can be staged in the absence of the television. The mere presence of television camera influences the behavior of both the police as well as the participants. The participants become, consciously and unconsciously actors   the reality of the situation is reduced to a drama. Thus television is in many cases, the unwitting instigator for many acts of spectacular mob violence. There are some very happy faces, and some excited voices reporting lathi charge or police firing. Cleverly infiltrated agent provocateurs make their day The Brahmeshwar Mukhiya episode in Patna was a copy book example of what Umberto Eco calls television as  “mise en scene and reality as scene setting.”

The government normally wants to eat its cake and have it too in the sense that it would not like to be seen to be abdicating its responsibility but is also deeply committed to populist concerns. The police man knows, as everyone else does, that  neither courage nor conscience  is  associated with the vocation of politics, and public fury always prevails over fairness. The standard response in situations which go awry is to sacrifice a few police men to satisfy the braying media beast and other political animals. In the ultimate analysis, while handling an unruly crowd situation, leaders in the field dither and deliberate the damage to their career should the political cost prove to be exorbitant? Most police excesses- or inadequacies-  are the result of the misreading of signals; a tentative leadership involved in fine political calculations and career prospects ends up by inflicting more casualties than is required or abdicates its responsibilities.

The liberal opinion fed on a diet of “selective feeds” from the TV can flay any handling of the law and order situation because the monopolistic right of the lawless society to break laws is taken for   granted. At the same time it is very prompt in pointing out the limits within which the police can operate, the whole episode is scrutinized in the light of finely calibrated theory of escalation of use of force. So not only Delhi , not only Patna I cannot recall many instances where police has covered itself with glory or earned the gratitude of people for their adroit handling of law and order. The eternal Mamu who is the object of ridicule or mild derision throughout the year takes on the shades of a psychopathic villain after every such outing.

 But above all it serves a very utilitarian purpose. The   current  protest movement helps society  evade the question that it needs to ask itself , and ask with great urgency– what kind of a pathology is producing such a rich crop of rapists to whom  every female is fair game. They can happily speculate only if the Delhi police had been more efficient, more alert, had escorted every bus, chaperoned every girl, Damini would have been alive today. The society would be happier if a police man added to its roster of paranoia one more – treat every passenger, every commuter, every office goer, in fact every member of the male gender  as a potential rapist!  

Fighting the menace of rape : first things first

  How To Fight The Menace Of Rape: First things First 

The gang rape and murder of the Delhi girl has stirred the conscience of the nation with an unprecedented call to solidarity and action. But the response has been marked by an unusual degree of rhetoric and few practical suggestions seem to have emerged. Predictably calls have been made to make laws more severe – from chemical castration to decapitation to lynching to death everything has been suggested to deter the potential rapists. But lynch mobs rarely make good laws consistent with the legal and cultural practices of a society and even the best laws are not self propelling mechanisms; the machinery of law has to be brought into action by first reporting of the crime.

To stay practical and sure footed crime against women- especially rape- has to be contextualized so that one sets realistic goals. In our  social milieu which forever treats woman as “the second sex “in the memorable phrase of Simon De Beauvoir, for  the female of the species, if she survives the gender discrimination test then other degrading prospects like domestic violence, curtailment of reproductive rights and female sexuality, eve teasing, sexual harassment stare her in the face despite institutional guarantees. The discourse relating to issues affecting women belong to two different discursive worlds and legal narratives certainly belong to the world of male concerns and values.  The suffering of the raped victim– injury to her body but the more lasting psychic destruction-is never the dominant issue. Rape is largely an issue between contesting males; between one who is her custodian as her father brother or son and the other who is the trespasser illicitly seeking carnal knowledge of her. That is the key to the whole problem- the problem is never seen from the viewpoint of the victim. Honour killing is just one variant of the gamekeeper mentality.  So it is not only the laws but the social order that needs to be changed.

 Rape is one of the most grievous of crimes but its reporting is extremely tardy for a variety of reasons foremost among them is that the victim is made to feel like the shamed party. The criminal aggressor often exploits the silence of the victim for fear of public humiliation to his advantage. Quite simply men feel encouraged to rape because in many cases they know they can rape without the fear of being reported or punished. The casual approach of the society can be gauged   from the fact that the marriage of the victim to the perpetrator of rape is often considered as an amende honourable.My long stint in the CID as head of the cell for offences against women confirmed the general belief that rape is not a rare misfortune suffered at the hands of a depraved stranger.  Much more often the culprit comes wearing the mask of a father, brother, friend, and teacher and the society colludes to sweep the incident under the carpet?  So any serious initiative to fight this   crime must take into account long history of rape with impunity, a legacy of indifference and silence about abuses and a very philosophical often tolerant and sometime appreciative attitude to the indignities inflicted on women in domestic settings. Given the nature and context of the crime reliable data is not available. In strife torn areas allegation of rape by security forces abound and the attitude of the governments to these rapes are akin to incestuous rapes in familial setting-one of unofficial condonation.

So it instills in the victims a strange diffidence to their own degradation. The reluctance of the victim to report rape and other abuses is matched by an equal indifference in the authorities to register the complaint.

The procedure to secure justice has its own hazards. Rape is a crime which is generally committed in secrecy, in the presence of few or no witnesses at all. In case of gang rapes the witnesses are also accomplices. So the victim has only her words by way of evidence. The material serological evidence on the person of victim as well as the accused is often degraded or lost because of delay, sometimes for unavoidable reasons but sometimes with intent. In any other offence against the body the injury is palpable and demonstrable but in case of rape the victim has to undergo the necessary but demeaning examination of her private parts. At the trial she is made to relive her private shame publicly. The victim is interrogated and cross-examined. Physically and psychically shattered, the victim is, in a manner of speaking reduced to an inhuman exhibit. As a strategy the most indelicate questions, calculated to embarrass and intimidate her into disassociating herself from trial are posed to her. In seeking retribution for her present misfortune her sexual past quite unnecessarily becomes a subject matter of mischievous curiousity.  After all this ignominy she has only one in five chance of securing a conviction for her tormentor!

The question of sentencing comes only when these  conditions have been met successfully; a case has been reported in time, the police have put up a good and professionally investigated case, the prosecution has  presented its case cogently, the presiding judge is satisfied that rape has indeed taken place as to warrant the verdict guilty. The provision of law itself gives the judge a lot of freedom as to the award of the sentence. To introduce a bit of legal realism, in practice, adjudications – particularly gender based adjudications – often lead to widely divergent outcomes. A host of subjective factors including the particular social background, intellectual leanings, gender bias and other prejudices of the presiding judge  may come into play.

So those clamouring for adequate justice to women must dispense with rhetoric and emotion and put their cool heads together to consider measures which are consistent with the current thinking on penology and the legal enforceability of the measures. The history of   sentencing philosophy during the last century or so has seen a move away from the physical pain of the body to an economy of suspended rights. In a situation where demands are being made for dispensing with capital punishment altogether, taking away of the life of a person whose victim has survived the crime is not likely to be favoured by many.  Retribution has forever to be tampered with the chances of rehabilitation. The emphasis should be on ensuring speedy and successful trial so that the nexus between crime and punishment is firmly established and acts as deterrent to potential rapists.

                                             

                  Some suggestions.

Propaganda has its value. A concerted campaign must be launched to draw out women to report rape. Rape is not their fault and the tormentor must be punished.  Reliable data on unreported rape is not to be had and it is any body’s guess is as good as mine but my hunch is that barely one out of   a hundred rapes gets reported. Out of that one percent, for every hundred rapes reported 75 walk free. So one can only imagine the unconscionably large number of rapists hidden amongst us and the danger that they pose to women.

Exclusive women police stations where specially trained officers and counselors, an idea long on the police agenda, must become available in adequate numbers. The registration of the case should be as unobtrusive and private an affair as is possible under the circumstances. Police has for so long been an exclusively male domain that  the entire organizational culture has come to have a bit  of a  locker room flavour especially when it comes to  a case of rape. Rape which is a special report case must be investigated by a cadre of trained officers.

During the trial questions leading as to the character of the victim should be statutorily barred and the medical report should be businesslike and relevant to the issue. The needless two finger test and other things reflective of sexual history of the victim should be barred. Such trials should be necessarily held in camera. The accused should be put to a polygraph test and his refusal should be taken   note of by the presiding  judge.If the victim volunteers to undergo a polygraphic test it should redound to her credit.

Especially designated fast track courts should dispose of cases so that   the demonstrable nexus between crime and its punishment which is of the essence of deterrence.

The legal soundness of this  proposal may be  debatable  but as an out  of box idea I would suggest that since the courts are already overburdened a trial by jury where equal number of men and women  who are aware of the local  social  conditions and values were represented.( I know jury trials are getting out of fashion.) I would argue for a punishment that is not so much rooted in the physical pain as in public humiliation and suspended rights of the accused. For example the accused could be deported to some isolated settlement to live in perpetual shame of his ignoble deed just as the victim is forced to suffer in memory’ pain. After he has served his sentence, in addition to the various forfeitures that a convict is subject to , he should not be allowed admittance to any public place without the tutelage of a close female relation. The idea is that he must be “revealed” every moment of his life he lives thereafter as a leper of the social and moral order. His name should be put on a national register and it should be available to all the citizens at all times. The newspapers have reported the state of mind of the five accused persons who overwhelmed by the public opinion are horrified at their own deed. The punishment as suggested does not take away life, limb or liberty but it would be a fate worse than death or physical torture.

                                   What Law? Whose order?

The acts of lawlessness by the miscreants in the funeral procession of late Brahmeshwar Mukhiyajee in Patna, last June, raised some issues which any detailed theory of police inaction needed to address: how does the concept of police function in our polity? What is the relation between the government and its police force? In a situation of conflict of interest between the people and the government where should the police position itself? But Mr Abhayanand, DGP Bihar, who is one of the finest officers we have - articulate, innovative and clear headed - has come up with something which obliterates the difference between innovativeness and heresy and, therefore, it must be refuted.

His theory is rooted in the curtailment of the role of police merely to its detective functions of collecting evidence in the form of videographing the vandals and arsonists and prosecutes them later. (What if they are masked?) Do not people have a stake in public property? Would the citizens be put to notice that they should mind their own lives and property? Will police now abjure their preventive responsibility in law to “interpose”, in order to prevent the commission of a cognizable offence?

If there are groups within the state whose antics must be forced to suffer for fear of greater trouble - unacceptable political cost would be closer to truth - this is no cause for celebration either because theoretically the state is the sole repository of coercive violence within the territory. The power of deterrence belongs to the state; it is not for the state to feel deterred. Worse still, it is an open invitation for militarization of various groups in our fractious society. The non interventionist role of police may appear as a welcome innovation for people removed from the unique density of its context or ignorant of the massive scale of disturbances; it may perhaps enthuse human right groups or the intellectual outriders of the society for a while, but as a manifesto for future action, it will just not do.

Law and order is a tricky business and the best of us are sometimes tested and found wanting largely because of the ambivalence of the mandate of police. Law is codified, made formal in various acts-the IPC, CrPC, evidence, etc. But what is order? Is there a permanent, ordained, immutable order? A preferred order? An ideal state of order? The construction of the meaning of order is exclusively the area of police expertise.

The law obligates a police officer of appropriate rank present on the scene of trouble to do everything within his legal means to prevent trouble and disperse the mob. It is a responsibility, not a privilege and powers to discharge this responsibility inhere in him; he does not enjoy it during the pleasure of somebody. Now the DGP says it was on his orders that the police force did not react. That says it all. Law must take a bow before the dictates of order.

Ruling orders throughout the country approximate in their invocation of law and order as a pretext for using police for partisan, political ends. Allegedly, the police abdicated their responsibility in law in protecting the Sikhs against pogrom sanctioned by the ruling order in Delhi, in Godhara in Gujarat the Muslims were at the receiving end of police inaction, in the Marxist West Bengal there were credible allegations of police harassing or denying protection to those opposed to the ruling order, etc. Law and order is Janus faced - the police can kill on law and order duty to suit  the interest of the ascendant order just as in some other situation their passivity to people being killed, maimed or looted, serves the cause of the order. Their primary responsibility of maintaining law and order at any cost, if need be by bending, violating or abdicating their responsibility in law altogether, comes with an unstated guarantee of ex post facto sanction of their conduct. Whenever the powers given to them under law threaten to engulf the ruling order any excess or abdication of their responsibility is underwritten. Forbisganj and the handling of situation born out of Mukhiyajee’s murder are the two sides of the same coin.

I would have used this occasion to make the honest confession that policing is about keeping the governments and other powerful groups happy; people are incidental to policing.

RESURRECTED FROM RETIREMENT

For the last several decades ambitious political leaders have sought to create fiercely loyal battalions of bureaucratic palace guards who, if they pass the loyalty test, are exempted from every other. The idea of the neutrality of civil service has long since been jettisoned in practice and the civil servant and political masters often show the internal cohesion of predatory gangs. Occasionally civil servants reveal themselves to have been secret party moles by seeking elections at an appropriate juncture on party ticket or being nominated to legislative bodies. Governments, regardless of political persuasion, are now ruthless even palpably unjust and vindictive in their approach when it comes to dealing with those who do not have the talent to please  or have nothing but their professionalism and commitment to fall back upon. The perils of independence are unacceptable, the rewards of collaboration unimaginable.

 The very best of civil servants – assuming that those who reach the top are the best –acquire a ‘”palimpsest identity composed of a series of snap shots painted one over the other.” It comes in handy in passing the loyalty test of mutually hostile regimes and speeds up their upward journey. By reaching the top they become doubly blessed. The ripe old age of 60 opens for them the opportunities for the various sine cure assignments, carrying huge responsibilities and countervailing powers, privileges and immunities. In some measure on their efficient and impartial functioning depends the strength of our democracy.

Montaigne who died at the relatively young age of 59 felt that, “aging diminishes us each day in a way that, when death finally arrives, it takes away only a quarter or half the man.” At sixty the ravages of time and the effects of fighting many a succession battles  reduces the successful civil servant to one quarter of a man and three quarters of moral vacuum. His outward appearance however is closer to Levi Strauss’s description who felt like a ‘shattered hologram’ that had lost its unity but still retained an image of the whole self. The image of the whole self of the civil servant also hides the evolutionary miracle of his regression to the stage of invertebrates.  Rendered intellectually supple and morally maneuverable, he is a handful of putty in the hands of governments who appoints them.

The political class is in a win win situation .On paper they can boast of the most progressive and forward looking oversight agencies. Central Vigilance Commission, Information Commission etc which are tools of empowerment for the people, but one supplicating incumbent heading such a body actually works to disempower the people.  Just one instance of the scandal relating to the recent appointment of a CVC will jog the public memory about the general malaise. There were credible allegations against the Chief Information Commissioner of a state, a compulsive post retirement office grabber, of having killed the RTI. The political class laughs all the way because by placing one reliable pawn it can have at its command one whole compliant institution. And should someone like the present CAG, who heeds to the call of his conscience and does what his charter commands him to do, e a general murmur of disappointment and betrayal is heard all around in the corridors of power!

By the way has anyone ever wondered that despite an overwhelmingly large population of young men and women why do we end up having a whole geriatric community, comprising of decrepit civil servants, presiding over the crucial institutions on whose performance the health and hygiene of our democracy depends? Would a young and conscientious lawyer make a worse CVC than, say a retired telecom secretary? What special skill does he bring to a job that a young and politically uncommitted lawyer cannot? Is a social activist or a teacher less suitable than a cabinet secretary who may have engineered several palace coups to head the Election Commission? This is where the civil service comes in handy. Making of rules is a typically bureaucratic industry; unmaking it or finding a suitable exception to suit every contingency is an art form of which they are the greatest exponents. The inbred system resists injection of fresh blood and stifles creative possibilities.

 The appointment of even class four employees is strictly regulated but the governments have arrogated to themselves huge powers to appoint such functionaries many of which do not require any parliamentary oversight or consultation. This is an ideal situation for breeding political and bureaucratic corruption and the likes of Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare would be equally well occupied in ensuring that what is given to the people by the right hand by various progressive legislations etc is not taken away by the left hand of the government.  

The Rusted Steel Frame

The occasion for this piece was the open admission of helplessness, by a chief secretary in putting up the file to the government for its order, on my submission, in a matter of grave public importance. 

I wrote this the same evening, in a state of emotional overdrive.  There are many statements which, on more sober reflection, I would like to modify, but I am posting it as it is, to commemorate the integrity and depth of my emotions.  I shall revert to the matter which triggered this meditative piece in due course of time.

The disappointment with the degenerate world is a necessary accompaniment to the process of ageing.  What many of us – retired, or about to retire, civil servants – often fail to see, or deliberately overlook, is our own contribution to the deterioration.  The de rigour refrain – things were different in “our time” – begs the question:  who is responsible for leaving it different.  Did the rot set in overnight?   How did we occupy ourselves while the grass was growing right under our feet? 

This post tries to lend some clarity to my own muddled, confused thoughts on the issue of abdication of both courage and responsibility at the highest level of civil service. 

Intellectuals have a major role to play in the civil society – by civil society I mean that area of intellectual independence and political neutrality where issues are deliberated for their intrinsic worth.  In Bihar, in a limited sense of the term, the higher civil service was also an extension of the civil society; the official file was both a crucible for intellectual honesty as well as a site for resistance.  The opinions of the civil servants, which often ran contrary to the wishes of the chief political executive, expressed fearlessly and with conviction became part of the folklore.  Their careers were as important to them as anyone else, but there was a certain detachment and stoicism about it in the best of them. 

The Indian Administrative Service consciously modelled itself after its more illustrious predecessors in the ICS whom Philip Woodruff described as, “a ruling class, a class apart.  They were hard working in a debilitating climate, incorruptible in a society riddled with bribery, celibate until middle age in a subcontinent which married at puberty.  Above all they were intellectuals.”  

Being an intellectual brought in its wake the responsibility to speak "truth to power", in the famous phrase of Julian Benda.  And in the early years of independence, many did conform to these ideals .  They were the Praetorian guards, defending the public service against the onslaughts of corrupt elements from below and above.  Incrementally, but not imperceptibly, the service has lost its independence of thought and, thereby, its identity. 

The steady process of diminution has been noticed by all, but no collective effort has been made to stem the rot.  The service not only rubbishes well-founded criticisms of servility and capitulation, it felicitates itself loudly even though it is aware of the merit of the criticism all the time.  The other strategy to deflect criticism is to outwit and silence the critic with a more vehement self-critical diatribe, an anguished self-loathing of their own, as if the act of advertising could, in itself, absolve the service of all the sins that were being advertised. 

For the Guardians – that is how the ancestor service had been conceived, and the descendants are quick to flaunt their lineage – moral and ethical standards were the first line of defence.  Peer opinion came next.  The deterrence posed by laws figures at the bottom of the pile.  But there are no gold standards now. 

The pursuit of that “bitch-goddess – success” has become part of a collective, coercive creed, so much so that anyone who refuses to believe in it finds himself ostracized. 

The new role models are also the new power brokers in our society, whose non-traditional ascents to key positions in government have challenged the established orthodoxy – honesty is the best policy or professional competence can take you to the top.  Stripped of their moral authority, they nevertheless still strut with a phony majesty.  Many of them, their egos already inflated past safety level, are generally a deluded lot who think that they cast a shadow on the world stage, disproportionate to their size and importance.  (Disproportionate wealth would be nearer the truth, but we invariably miss that point.)  

There are, of course, still some – I would not expose them – who have resisted the temptation, in a tragic, almost masochistic, adherence to values which the rest of the service has long since jettisoned.  They are so rare that you have to have the instinct of an archaeologist or the skill of a scuba diver to prise them out.  Or go about in the darkness at noon, like the Athenian cynic Diogenes, lantern in hand looking for courageous civil servants.