Politics and political afflictions

A former Chief Election Commissioner observed sometime back that “politicians are the cancer of society”. It is indeed possible to build further on politics as a metaphor for the disease - a familiar literary device from Homer’s Iliad to Camus’La Peste –that is responsible for the many of the dysfunctions of our society.

Politics owes its current morbidity to the original sin of cohabitation with crime in order to gratify its desire for electoral success and subsequent generations have acquired this illicit lust, which is both indiscriminate and indiscreet. The criminal element in politics has metastasized over the years and has now become firmly implanted in the bone marrow of politics. Cancer evokes a feeling of helplessness, of resignation and an existentialist terror in those who are condemned to watch it take its toll of their loved ones. Despite our ritual expression of horror, people accused of murder, rape etc are being courted by all the political parties for the forthcoming parliamentary elections. The civil society finds itself less and less able to count on its antibodies – the institutions, whether formal or informal- because the sentinels themselves have deserted or stand compromised.

On the eve of elections to the various legislative bodies the political arena almost presents the scene of an asylum for victims of senile dementia. Old friends pass each other by as strangers, while implacably hostile enemies hug each other; promises of eternal friendships sours in three days flat, and alliances are made and unmade several times during the course of one electoral season. The consequences of this promiscuity could be perceived as comical were it not for the fact that it concerns such a vital aspect of our lives. In the manner of seasonal transfer of players of the professional soccer league, newly inducted political players are inaugurated on the prime time. In its naiveté or diabolic crookedness –politics believes that the itinerant travelers of the whole political landscape – many of them have traveled from extreme right to leftist extremism and vice versa -are like so much malleable putty, capable of being moulded into any shape, or so many tabula rasa on which you could inscribe any ideology. Like so many robots they are programmable for any performance. The baptismal waters of their new faith debugs them instantly and their memory is erased for being formatted anew.

When confronted with basic issues politics tends to look side ways in an uncomprehending manner or ramble in an incoherent muddled sort of way. How does politics justify the expenditure of such astronomical sums of money on these gladiatorial contests called elections, seasonally and sometimes unseasonably as well, while 300 million of our people live below poverty line? Where do the funds come from? The financial status and criminal antecedents of the contestants, the performance report in respect of earlier promises are issues that are recognized but evaded with cunning and disingenuousness that sometimes characterizes the patients of schizophrenia. Or it resorts to some singularly idiotic arguments. Charged with financial misconduct or corrupt practice its stock response is that worse immorality has been seen. Popular verdict is accorded a sacerdotal value and electoral success is touted as exoneration from guilt as well as investiture with civic virtues.

Political discourse, consequently has itself acquired a hothouse atmosphere. Critical debate has given way to bellicose gestures. Incantatory formula does regular duty for a detailed and rational exposition. Insinuations, innuendoes and invectives are the weapons freely used to occupy the moral high ground. Each one of them has a “secret plan” which the other is somehow aware of - whether to destabilize the government, fracture the unity of the country, or subvert the cause of social justice; (Foreign hand is a flavour that is out of favour this season! ). It is impossible to list out all the insecurities of a paranoid mind. Unsure about the most vital points of their self-definition they define themselves in terms of opposition to the other. So a secular alliance is the one, which does not have anti-secular elements in it. Some other alliance may declare itself to be the sole custodian of both ideology and memory precluding the possibility of any debate. Very often no party is in a position to frame clear issues of public policy, which can be debated without reference to the a priori culpabilities of the Other, or categories of exclusion. It is much easier to catch people’s attention by appealing to their prejudices ignorance or insecurity rather than their reason. So these weaknesses are not only pandered to but also systemically inculcated in its particular constituency. The illusory, irrational quality of political debate becomes deathly real only when elected representatives sometimes get physical in the august precinct of the house.

Myopia again is the easiest affliction to manage. One can get a suitable pair of glasses. But the debilitated contemporary politics, finds itself unable to walk to the nearest optician. Instead it chooses to reduce the world to its myopia. The perspective on future is condensed to the next election and on many an issue of grave importance, its thinking shows the same tawdry, Lilliputian character. No wonder that politics fails to read the writing on the wall, clear to even someone with a vision of 6/60, that prohibition against cohabitation with crime is no longer a moral injunction but a medical necessity.

The Age of Reason recognized the relation between social environment and physical well being which revolutionized our thinking on hygiene and cleanliness in our personal lives as well as our physical environment. It is to be hoped that the widespread disaffection with criminal politics will be similarly translated into some activism in the realm of moral and intellectual hygiene in the public sphere. The hundreds of millions of the voters of the country could certainly impose an effective quarantine against crime, fumigate the contaminated public spaces and start all over again. The new millennium justifies this millinery hope.

Bihar – the siege within

Migrants from Bihar have been served urgent notices from time to time, in many states of their own country, to pack up and go home. After Assam, Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi, Goa and Tripura which other state is going to discover that it is these Bihari migrants who carry the bacillus of dirt, filth, disease and crime and infect the host state and hence it is not safe to have them with in their borders?

The Biharis are subject to persecution which is both random and routine because the mere label of Bihari seems to have become a necessary and sufficient cause. Snide remarks if they are lucky, and savagery if they run out of luck, are constantly at their heels. They are the Jews without the redeeming and comforting assurance that they are God’s chosen people. George Steiner once said, “When he is pelted in Argentina or mocked in Kiev, the Jewish child knows that there is a corner of the earth where he is the master, the gun is his. ”

But Biharis know that they have severed their umbilical chords with their homes. They must rough it out and resist the strong emotional tug, especially in times of crisis, to go back home. Because for many of them their home is only a country of the mind, without the wherewithal to sustain all its inhabitants.

Migrants in search of livelihood or better opportunities are often viewed with suspicion, because they do not fit the cognitive, linguistic or the cultural map of the world they migrate to. They also compete for jobs, sometimes drive down wages and hence arouse hostilities of the local people. But in our times, the politically produced xenophobia by parties like the MNS is the most common threat. Mumbai has seen sporadic campaign against outsiders and currently the north Indians are at the receiving end. One does not know how real is the threat of cultural inundation but in view of the recent delimitation of parliamentary constituencies the concentration of migrants in urban areas does raise anxieties of the political kind. Levi Strauss who has spent a lifetime studying the strategies of various groups in coping with the threat by groups designated as the ‘other’ or ‘stranger’ suggests that alternative but complementary strategies of assimilation, exclusion or extermination have been resorted to in order to tackle the problem of aliens, and strangers. The Biharis have seen a mixture of all the three strategies resorted to against them.

In the cosmopolitan Mumbai, it is being decreed that the bhaiyas must now adapt themselves to the local ways, learn the local language, and adopt local customs. The topical bone of contention is the festival of chath, which is celebrated with great devotion and fervour by many Biharis. In short amnesty would come their way only on condition that they cultivate voluntary amnesia; abdicate their right to be themselves, slough off their Bihari identity and grow a new skin. So when a couple of hundreds of them are harassed, or dozens of their taxis are burnt, even a few of them are killed to feed the media beast, the mobs goaded by the upwardly mobile politician are only advancing the cause of cultural assimilation. If the bhaiyas do not deliberately court amnesia of the mental kind, the amnesia of the physical kind can be induced by obliterating and consigning to the memory hole the means of their meager sustenance, be it their taxi, their thela or small shop.

Those who are spearheading the campaign know it only too well that it is these migrants, who live cheek by jowl in the congested areas, who are so undemanding and are largely cut off from municipal services, keep the city going by their taxis, thelas, khatals, and dhobi ghats. But the political mind is also aware that the mob impulse of hatred is the surest glue to keep their flock together, as also the easiest method to enlist many more to their fold. So long has it occupied itself with the mathematics of fracturing society into viable total of fractions that the political mind has become obsolete and incapable of devising capacious and inclusive policies. On occasions like this a call to solidarity against the common enemy helps displace the awareness from intractable problems. The misfortune of the migrant Biharis serves to keep the political pot boiling for their reluctant hosts, as well as well as their champions back home. Ideally such occasions should compel deep and honest introspection in Bihar, and reinforce the determination to pull Bihar by the bootstraps. But all that it does is to unleash jingoism of the worst kind and we tend to overlook the fact that the poor cannot afford to have too much pride. The fragile political consensus witnessed in the aftermath of Rahul’s killing was but transient and spent itself in a mindless agitational violence. In the end all that it achieved was the destruction and vandalisation of its own meager resources instead of some constructive activism.

The civil society in Bihar appears to have abdicated all responsibility towards it self by delegating power in the hands of politicians. The more there is a perceived need for concerted action in the realm of civil society, the more socially disengaged we seem to become. To take just one issue which has become a trite and timeworn cliché –the creation of a Bihari identity- would indicate our commitment to our state. It has been in wide currency for quite some time now and yet how many strides have we taken towards extinguishing all other loyalities to forge this identity?

The Bihari fleeing from his persecutors is reduced to his casteist identity no sooner than he enters his own home state. It seems that the landscape of Bihar itself, the cultural environment educes a different but deeply internalized sense of identity and belonging. It is the caste, which is the whetstone upon which he sharpens his sense of himself. Neither distance, nor cultural separation could obliterate it. Even in distant lands and foreign countries the Biharis are reported to have separate caste associations. For in the view of a large part of Bihari society, the existential question is defined solely and squarely in casteist terms: who are you and what is your justification for being? To answer this question means that you recognize not only your privileges and obligations, entitlements and opportunities but also position yourself in, however subtle a manner, on the chessboard of caste alignments. There are no exemptions from this fate, whether you are a career politician, academician, doctor, or a civil servant. It must be reiterated that in Bihar the ‘political” necessarily means a no holds barred competitive casteist struggle. In its wake it has brought the political way of doing every thing. So it is no surprise that universities and colleges turn out to be casteist outposts and the struggle to wrest them out of the control of rival groups witnesses the whole hearted involvement of every appurtenance of the polity. (The author had an occasion to investigate, under the orders of the Patna High Court the award of a fraudulent and bogus degree to the wife of a senior IPS officer. His report running in more than 70 pages, which deals with the rot in universities, is available in the Patna High court library. Brief references can be had in the following

http://www. indiatoday. com/itoday/20010806/education. shtml

http://www. liberalsindia. com/freedomfirst/ff457-03. html

Recruitments to public services often carry vague insinuations of casteist preferences. If the various reports that appear, from time to time, in the local news papers were to be believed, the caste composition of officers is also delicately factored into their transfers and postings and requirements of professionalism sometimes take a back seat to maintaining the caste balance. There is a popular perception that the administration in Bihar during particular regimes has been characterized by a colossal waste, because in these dispensation there are always some elements who have to be suffered but kept out of action. A deliberate retrenchment of the available human resources is by now an accepted method of personnel management. So at any given time there is a significant body of public servants, - sulking, alienated and withdrawn- because they think they do not belong to the winning combination, therefore, are either indifferent to the prospects of project Bihar, or are secretly longing for its failure. When the administration becomes so polarized, public policy problems get bogged down in a mental swamp, and a severe governance deficit is the inevitable outcome. The traditional merit based methods of governance faced with a problem like this, finds itself stumped, because these have not been dealt with in the standard literature on public administration. To break this impasse a new public sphere needs to be created where non-partisan, apolitical body of people could engage in critical debate, build mutual trust and a sense of commonality to counter this pre modern mindset. The point needs considerable elaboration and shall be taken up some time later.

But should these proposals appear to be too optimistic or too impractical to carry out, it would be well worth referring to the original provocation to the MNS- the celebration of Chath by the Biharis in Mumbai. Those who have observed the Chath celebrations in Bihar would agree that it appears as if human nature had changed on those three days. The mutual good will, fellow feeling, spirit of volunteerism and the culture of compliance shown by the people, transports Bihar into idylls of an existence where police, municipal services, and even the government seem to have become dispensable. Only if the Biharis could learn the formula for this magical transformation, and make these three days last three months or even thirty days! They would then have people queuing up to come to Bihar and not otherwise

The Letter From The Grave is a compelling document .Lasantha is-was - not such a well known figure outside his own country, but this one letter has become a testament of courage- whatever his politics or affiliation.A reaction to his letter. The link to LETTER FROM THE GRAVE is provided below:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/01/letter-from-the.html#entry-more
DESTROYED BUT NOT DEFEATED
With all the violence and counter violence, taking place in Sri Lanka an uninformed bystander is hardly in a position to judge the case. Lasanta Wickramatunga’s letter published posthumously states the truth of the Sri Lankan situation, as he saw it. What he says is pretty much the standard critique of regimes caught up in the sorry spectacle of fighting terrorism on their soil; his absolutist defence of freedom, human rights, his mixing up of ethical concerns on issues related to war and peace, run counter to the global culture of common sense which insists that liberal democracies can not fight terror through a strict and legalistic adherence to the liberal values. But Lasantha’s words bear the stamp of a rare authenticity and sincerity; their truth is attested, by the extraordinary career of the man, who lived and died for what he stood for. He played his part with great conviction and élan. By courting his death the man himself towers so much above the controversies that he created that it would be impertinence to quibble about them today.


The Letter From The Grave is bereft of any rhetoric. Stark in its simplicity, frugal and almost pared to the bone, it betrays no trace of emotion, there is no straining after effect, no dramatization of self pity, even though the occasion provided for memorable last lines. His account as to why even the President, who is his personal friend, would be compelled to connive at his death is stated in a deadpan tone of reportage and is almost sympathetic in its explanation of his motive and compulsions. Lasntha’s stoicism in face of the imminent death- the two abortive attempts on his life had left him in no doubt- and the quiet certitude and detachment with which he pursued his normal vocation, reminds us of Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, waiting for his assailants to come.
“Death will come to me when I am worthy,
And if I am worthy, there is no danger
I have therefore only to make perfect my will.”
T S ELIOT: MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
Bravery in face of death is a rare attribute .The brave warrior who casts derision upon death is always chancing his courage and his combative skills against the opponent, where should he succeed, power and material gains are on offer. If not martyrdom and a pace in the hall of fame is always reserved. The jihadi terrorist courts death and thereby nullifies the strategy of counter terror. What kind of a threat do you hold out to some one who himself comes seeking it, in order to advance his goal of hatred and polarization of opinion .The Jihadi is no longer a conscious, rational, moral agent but an automaton who is controlled by his handlers. He seeks his reward in the hereafter. In both the cases there is something in wager. The one is pursuing power the other glory.
The friend of none other than the President himself, Lasantha certainly knew the rewards of conformism and the perils of independence. But he chose to wage a relentless campaign against the establishment, heeding to his call of “conscience” , because, “if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted.” Lasantha reminds us of the deep alienation from our own truths, because in a world concerned exclusively with power and advantage, our consciences have long since become equal shares, or at least a sleeping partner, in all our activities. The poignant urgency of the letter and its disturbing import, is on account of the fact that Lasantha makes it appear, as if renouncing a life of power and advantage is the easiest thing to do and dying in the defence of these cherished values is only normal human decency, thereby denying us the comforting thought, that heroic deeds are not for every one. His courage, commitment and public spiritedness have to be measured against the petty concerns for security and self preservation, the extraordinary passivity and indifference of many of us, in face of issues of urgent concern. It is the death of people like Lasantha that keeps the human enterprise going, sustains our belief in the values that we cherish, and renews our belief in the profession of journalism, as one of the most important, in an open society.

Intellectual Terrorism

These are the first thoughts on reading Ms. Roy's article 9 is not 11 .

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Every time the Indian state is in the cold glare of international publicity, whether it is its nuclear explosion, its difficulties in Kashmir etc, or the massacre in Mumbai, Ms Arundhati Roy author of God of Small things and intrepid writer of polemical essays discovers her moment of glory. Predictably enough she has chosen to engage in her favourite pastime of berating the Indian state on the Mumbai terror; to remind us that the comeuppance should hardly surprise any one. Ms Roy locates the root of the problem in the specific policies followed by the Indian state, the injustice and discriminatory treatment of its minorities, its callousness towards its own poor etc. As a creative writer of repute she brings no original insight into the unyielding dilemma of terrorism but only "restate(s) a case that has, over the years, already been made …. passionately, eloquently and knowledgeably" in several thousand words. Ms Roy knows "it's all been said and done before" yet she feels compelled to "say our line". Before we engage with her Mumbai Was Not India's 9/11 it would be useful to locate Ms Roy herself in the context of the global discourse on terror and why she says the things that she says. "If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic…. I own no territory. I have no flag. I'm female, but have nothing against eunuchs. "(The End Of Imagination). So Ms Roy is not speaking as a sympathetic Indian grieving at the things that have gone wrong and need to be righted, but as a secessionist, as a hostile alien indulging in virulent propaganda. No wonder there is such a congruence of views between her, the Lashkar-e-Tayaba and the hawkish opinion in Pakistan. She marshals pitiless evidence only to subtly, subliminally degrade the fetish objects of her hate-the Indian state, its security apparatus etc. But at the same time she provides a platform for the views of people like Hafeez Saeed, and goes to great length to explain the extenuating circumstances for the diminished responsibility – if at all they are responsible for their acts-of the fidayeen destructive and self destructiveness of the terrorist and their handlers. "What we are experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds". The Mumbai attack has ushered in a new civilizational threat wherein soi disant stateless intellectuals, take it upon themselves to explain and contextualize the acts of mass murder and wanton destruction of terrorists disowned by their own state. There is another reason why Ms Roy can not find herself at peace with herself. The self confessed "fame junkie" that she is, suffers from withdrawal symptoms, if she is denied "the applause, the flowers, the photographers, the journalists", for any length of time. These essays which stir a great deal of controversy act as the much needed 'fix' for the publicity addict. But we still have this essay to contend with. The ugly communal incidents of the recent past have certainly been some of the worst in our political history. But these are local environments of oppression and injustice and can not be conflated over the whole body politic, to tar by the same brush the entire country to an extent that we have even "forfeited the right to our tragedies". Justice to all its citizens and the protection of their human rights are worthy goals no doubt for every state to pursue, and our record has certainly not been flawless, but which state as a model has she in mind while handing her damning indictment. Does she fancy the standards set by the Taliban, the achieved utopia of the army of the pure, where decapitating and dismembering people according to whatever jurisprudence is in vogue, or the summary punishment of death, decapitation, or externment handed out by the left extremists in the areas –liberated – they hold sway, to the "class enemies" Chastised perhaps by the example of Mohan Lal Sharma, Karkare and the two other police officers did their dying in the full public view under the eyes of the camera. But in her secular enthusiasm Ms Roy exchanges one form of extremism for another and insinuates some foul play because Karkare had unraveled the Malegaon case against Hindu terrorists. A rhetorical shape shifter that Ms Roy is, she has one voice for the terrorist and the other for the defenders of the Indian state. Justly proud to be a woman, she has nothing against the eunuchs but does that lead her to harbour such a deep seated prejudice against all the brave and committed members who bear arms to defend the state and society to take on these apocalyptic terrorists, so as to deny them their humanity and all that goes with it – the dignity of an honourable death, the glory of martyrdom.

Ms Roy will not give up though. "So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy ". The problem lies not with the evidence but her disposition because she can not bring herself to believe that the Indian state has a case or that its enemies can ever be wrong.

Terrorism as Civilisational Paranoia

Randomness and unpredictability are the defining characteristics of terrorism; the way it selects its targets, the manner in which victim-hood gets displaced and dispersed from those under threat to society as a whole are of the essence of its diabolic hold on our imagination. One may not have done anything to hurt the cause of the terrorist and yet be sucked in the vortex of revenge and retribution as it happened in Mumbai recently, where revelers, business travelers, party goers or ordinary commuters were cut down by a hail of gunfire. The loved ones that they left behind to mourn did not have even so much as a faint reason to attribute their misfortune to. The terrorist attacks, have succeeded in instilling fear and anxieties in the minds of not only the Mumbaikars but of the country as a whole, about the ability of the state to ensure their protection against these depredations. Mumbai’s anguished cry- enough is enough- has been taken up, amplified and finds a resonance all over the country. Make the police more efficient is the rallying war cry. The prayers seem to have been heard-not here, not yet any way-but in Hein Reich Boll’s nerve wracking novel The Safety Net.

Fritz Tolm’s election as the President of the “Association", which is the consortium of all the industries of Germany, makes him the most visible symbol of capitalism. His position automatically earns him the tag of the enemy and a place on the hit list of the radical group, alternative society identified merely as “They” which is perhaps just as well, because the discourse on terrorism is largely couched in shadow hints metaphors, unprovable claims, plausible deniability etc. The threat is undefined, yet perpetually present because the suspects include members of the family as well. As the safety net is spread farther and wider to apprehend the assailant before he strikes, the placid and tranquil suburb transforms into a schizoid world; the people stand designated in their fate either as the terrorists or the terrorized, presided over by the ever present security apparatus. The Safety Net is the finalized and teleological promise of comprehensive and fool proof security. But it comes at a price. The lives of the protectees are no longer their own and they must live and die, marry or mate under the gaze of the omniscient, omni present security, like so many fish in a gold bowl. And yet the all-encompassing security, this achieved utopia of a carcereal society fails to reassure. "The best that we can do is to acknowledge that we are prisoners-that we will perish in security perhaps from security", rues one of the characters.

Meanwhile, even in this highly sanitized world Sabine, the daughter of Fritz, gets “impregnated” outside her marriage. It is in keeping with the whole atmosphere of the novel where even inch of that space which we call private – the conversation between spouses is monitored- the whole issue is treated only as a lapse of security, and not as a breach of trust between the spouses “only the security people can know who the father of our grand child, is if the surveillance is really functioning”. The lover incidentally is Herbert Handler, her guard. On the other hand Breur’s nice little escapade, which did not hurt any one gets blown up with unfortunate consequence, “If we hadn’t been living in a palce, that was always swarming with cops, it would never have got out”. The decadent world of the rich and the spoilt with their fetish for porn and promiscuity is stood on its head and in the ironic trade off the it is only the policeman protectors who have the opportunity for adultery because they have invaded every one’s privacy while carving out a large private space for them selves.

The cops have taken position allover, but still fear takes up permanent residence, living secretly in the bones of the denizens and an undemonstrative distrustfulness to ones neighbour becomes the necessary attitude to have in your survival kit. All ready in our terror stricken cities paranoia in medicinal doses is being prescribed to keep ones sanity intact as the checklist of “to do” and “not to do” increases after every terrorist incident. In the Safety Net somebody reads a book called Castro's Path and immediately attracts silent, icy, hostile and grim looks" as if they were ready to strangle me any minute", which is chillingly close and contemporary. One can be taken off the flight, detained, grilled and deported for lesser crimes: from finger printing to thought reading, from surveillance to racial profiling, whatever the security apparatus can dream up is translated into a gadget, but how can one stop a nihilistic thought arising in some head, some where specially if he has been so thoroughly schooled in the ethic of hatred. “Holger I was, the time bomb; he had become a stranger to her……”They"-who-probably Bev too, had fed something into Holger that was more dangerous than the stuff used to make bombs. Holger was in urgent need of-treatment…… obviously the boy had the bomb in the brain…. How to handle him-hands not words, might be able to heal him". . . Veronica the potential assassin gives up at the last moment but the issue of the bomb in the brain lies unresolved. .

That's how it is. Guns and surveillance are all right but shouldn't we be addressing ourselves with much greater urgency, than we have done so far, to devising an equitable global order, which ensures freedom, equality and liberty for all. The absolute numbers of the starved, disenfranchised, depoliticized, the waifs and refugees, the stateless and asylum seekers of the globalized world order are growing, just as newer records are being notched up for personal wealth. Terrorism is a mere “side show” compared to these problems, says Prof Walter Laquer the acknowledged authority on such matters. The systems and institutions built over the years to contain these pathologies and come to an equable association in healthy ways seem to have become immunodeficient. Alienation starts with the first letter of the alphabet, A, and addressing ourselves to this problem must be one of our first tasks to stem the tide of terrorism.

Making the Police Count

Thousands of lives have been lost in terrorist incidents in locales as varied and different as running trains, shopping centres, places of worship but these were hardly the places where merchant bankers, captains of industry, media barons, and the upper crust the citizens of the global order were likely to be in the normal course of business. Some de rigour noises were made but very soon it was business as usual. But the attack the Taj and other places, has forced them to take notice that our police forces are ill equipped, poorly armed, poorly paid, grossly overworked, and interfered with in the discharge of its duties by politicians. These facts and much else had been highlighted in 1978 by the Dharamvir Commission Report, which was based on extensive interviews of people through out the country. But it was not discussed beyond the narrow grove of the professional circles. On the writ petition filed by an intrepid police officer, the Supreme Court directed way back in 2006, that governments should initiate reforms in the structural, professional and attitudinal make up of police, but alas! It was not to be because it lacked the backing of powerful groups which can compel policy decisions. Therefore, the compliance of many states has been tardy. In a particular state the new police act takes away with the left hand which it gives with its right, and the security of tenure of senior officers becomes contingent on the ambiguous and amorphous “administrative reason” clause. As mentioned above 26/11 has ushered in such a sea change of opinion in favour of police that ordinary citizens, media men, are mouthing the concerns that have remained unheeded for decades. Of course these are music to the ears of policemen but while the nation is prepared to lend the police their ears one must raise some basics issues – how does the concept of police function in our society? Is it an apolitical, professional organization equally available to all, or is it an adjunct of the power apparatus? The urgent impetuosity to the concern underlines the realization that police protection fell short of the needs of that section of society also which so far took things for granted. Some hard and intense soul searching needs to be done here as to how to extend the service to the more numerous poor people as well who are equally entitled to police protection.

The primary duty of police is maintainenance of law and order and prevention and detection of crime. Law one can understand-law as laid down by the legislature and codified in various acts like CrPC etc but what is order? This is are not merely a rhetorical question. The crime of rampant kidnapping as well as communal disturbance are both threats to law and order. The police force of a progressive state came in for a lot of adverse notice for the alleged denial of protection to the minorities when they needed it the most but otherwise its record has been very good. The other instance will perhaps complete the story. Another state failed miserably in curbing the menace of kidnapping but the law and order situation in relation to the minorities left nothing to be desired! How does one explain this?

Stanley Mailgram a management expert conducted a series of obedience experiments in Connecticut in 1961 and advanced a hypothesis that human beings have a natural tendency to obey men in authority and they will even stoop to needless brutality and inhumane treatment of their fellow beings should they feel so commanded by an authority. In the light of above findings we can better understand the conduct of the police force in which obedience is drilled in day in and day out. The propensity of elements of police to cater to the wishes of people in power is the stuff of our daily experience but now it is official. A central investigating agency swore an affidavit recently to indicate that at least in one case the investigation of case the followed the dictates of political expediency.

The organizational culture of police puts too much premium on blind obedience, even psycho fancy. So it is not unusual to find politically adroit officers in key position, even though they may be professionally at sea. We will do well to remind ourselves that the CBI, the IB, and R&AW were first rate professional organizations and enjoyed a huge credibility till the other day. Any critically aware newspaper reader knows why they have lost some of theeir sheen as well as the trust of the people. So the Federal agency is all very welcome, and under the stimulus of the challenge facing us today, the right men with the right aptitudes will take it to great heights but what is the guarantee that it would not someday file the affidavit like the one mentioned above. Therefore, the senior police leadership of the day, and in days to come, needs to be put through a crash course in disobedience – to train them to say no to illegal orders, to refuse to make the organization available to the dictates of political expediency.

This brings us to our next concern. Why should the governments arm themselves with enormous powers of appointing top retired officers to cushy sinecures? It is believed that there may be more than a few thousands of such posts conferring the status-and attendant privileges - of union cabinet ministers, ministers of state etc all over the country ? In effect it means a huge promotion for the chosen one after his superannuation. But surely there aren’t that many to satisfy the craving of all. So how are they chosen? The appointment of even class four employees is strictly regulated and yet every now and then we keep hearing of scandals of irregularity in appointments at the behest of the ruling political establishment. Hence more often than not the “here” is bartered by functionaries at top most positions to secure the “hereafter”. So while we are planning to give better protective body armour and weapons to the first responders in the police force, serious thoughts must be devoted as to how to protect the senior most leadership, against the lurking temptation, which erodes its capacity to take decisions. The most obvious remedy seems to be to hand over these appointments also to the UPSC and the state public service commissions.

The enactment of tougher laws and granting more powers to police, are all right. But given the propensity of police to voluntary servitude to those in authority, a mechanism of thorough performance audit by a neutral body to fix accountability as has been directed by the Supreme court, must be immediately put in place,in both letter and spirit,so that cases of abuse of authority, and abdication of courage and responsibility are dealt with sternly and summarily. One must remember that legal narratives only put the imprimatur of state authority on existing power relations, and in our highly unequal society, with tougher laws the perils of abuse deepen for the minorities,and the weaker and marginalized sections of the society.

Is that the whole story? Unfortunately no. In any discourse on police inadequacy the role of the civil servant remains conspicuously unexamined. The DM is the head of criminal administration, the commissioner writes the ACR of SP and so forth, the DM reports on the performance and conduct of the SP to the government directly, and the Home Secretary can starve the police of funds, promotional avenues and treats the top police leadership as if they were mendicants on his personal charity. And yet when it comes to owning responsibility, like Eliot’s practical cat Mcavity, “whatever time the deed took place he was not there”. “Privilege without responsibility”, said Lord Beaverbrook “has been the prerogative of the harlot through the ages. ” It is high time we cried a halt to the harlotry of power all around.

Terrorism As Theatre Of The Absurd

Even after the din and bustle of the activity of those fateful 60 hours has settled, the mind somehow fails to make sense of the theatre of the absurd that was staged in Mumbai right before our eyes. To fight a motley group of less than a dozen terrorists who had declared war on the Indian state, which is a nuclear power in its own right, it had to throw all it had –the army, navy, air force, and its elite commando units apart from the local police to counter the threat. We are still celebrating our Pyrrhic victory but as Pyrrhus himself explained after the battle of Asculum in Apulia, “one more such victory and we are lost”. An enraged nation finds that it is not as easy to deliver a lethal blow to the real enemy who controls these foot soldiers jiggling like puppets on strings. And these remotely controlled vehicles of terror can always be landed in a vast open and liberal democracy.

Kurt Kusenburg's story "Three In One" may be read, as an allegory on the dilemma of modern states fighting the war against apocalyptic terror. As the story goes, a certain tourist Mr. Fidelis Valentine in his account of his travels to the republic of San Trajan mentioned that the match box manufactured in that country were of a poor quality and only one out of three match sticks ignited. The President of the republic asked the writer to withdraw his offensive observation or face war. Upon his refusal war was declared from both sides. The problem of the combatant nations getting at each other was solved by a wealthy millionaire, who in order to relieve himself of his boredom offered his deserted Island for the combatants to slug it out. San Trajan mobilized for war and arrived in full strength on the Island hut they didn't know how to light a lone enemy. The forces of the Republic were finally split into two equal halves and one each was given to the warring camps. But sensing, the futility of the conflict the combatants deferred to the fact in issue: the tourists claim regarding matchbox. The San Trajan matches failed the test and the general of the republic accepted defeat with good grace. Meanwhile, in San Trajan the conduct of the protracted war encouraged people at large to verify for themselves the claim about the matchsticks and to their horror they discovered the unjustness of the war. The people rose against their president deposed him and the victorious tourist was installed in his place.

The global world is now full of sovereign states that are faced with the predicament of San Trajan, if we substitute the obdurate tourist with a terrorist. In fact Yossef Bodansky's book is captioned “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America.” There has been a paradigm shift in the nature of conflict. Wars in the traditional sense are becoming increasingly unlikely because of the highly enmeshed nature of economic relations and power equation. In a positional warfare things are clear-cut and laid down. There is a front, there are orders, and there is a hierarchy. The enemy is there. There are positions to defend, targets to demolish, territories to occupy or hold on to. But today a lone terrorist or a highly organized group of them embedded in several countries exploiting the sovereignty of the host state exposes the inadequacy of the territorialized nation state against global terrorism which copiously draws upon the resources of globalization.

The global world has created some entirely unforeseen new responsibilities and at the same time eroded the old capabilities of a sovereign state. It is now required to protect its national interests not within the realm only-but increasingly beyond its sovereign jurisdictions. There is a direct relation between military might and national security but military power becomes its own caricature when it is unable to realize its objective of deterrence, retaliation or punitive expedition. There are very few nations, barring perhaps USA and Israel, who can connect military power to their national security concerns emanating from terrorist threats from outside their borders. The devolution of terrorist organizations into smaller and more compartmentalized groups capable of acting independently and unbeknown to others acts as virtual sapper squads of international terrorism who commit their acts and disperse quickly into the local population or cross over to another nation who may not share the view of the victim nation. The Indian state has been reduced to the situation wherein it must depend on the good will of its hostile neighbour, reminiscent of the bored millionaire, to hand over the fabled 20 terrorists for them to be got against, because war is clearly not an option.

There was a time when the exercise of military power had its own logic and the outcome was decided by the relative strength of the combatants but in the globalized world even this equation has changed. So here we are, more than seven years after 9/11, despite the deployment of the full US military might and state of the art surveillance machinery-from powerful spy satellites to stool pigeons, the task of arresting dead or alive a bearded, possibly cancer ridden sixty year old man, who may be traversing the Pamirs of Afghanistan astride a mule has proved elusive. Could Jorge Louis Borges have proposed a better script?