The Nightmare Team

We hear a lot about dream Teams, especially when a new government takes office. If there can be Dream Teams, can there also be Nightmare Teams?
During a snooze lately, I had this nasty dream about a semi-literate Italian of questionable integrity ruling India as the Empress. She believed in chucking freebies to the public lest they get mad. Her private fears were that she might end up as another Empress of foreign import - Marie Antionette, an Austrian export  to France. Unfounded fears, of course, but she had to take certain precautions. Just in case.
She had a stuffed dummy placed on the Prime Minister's chair
The Empress's son, a man approaching middle-age but with no convincing qualifications, would make cameo appearances in a patronising, noblesse oblige kind of manner to try and connect with us masses. We, the dumb masses, were supposed to go ga-ga over his sharing our scraps of food and sanctifying our hovels with his benign presence. But nothing else to improve our lot. Except a promise of more freebies. Promises, promises.
As her chief trouble-shooter, the Empress had a slick Harvard-educated lawyer (Slick Lawyer #I) whose chief talent lay in inventing ever new kinds of taxes, and as a hobby he delighted in framing pictures of Hindu leaders. He ran a private detective agency known as the CBI: Chidambram's Bureau of Incrimination. Slick Lawyer #I aka Trouble-Shooter had a son who seemed to grow prosperous in direct proportion to his father's rise in status.
As her legal adviser she appointed another slick lawyer (Slick Lawyer #II) whose forte seemed to be an ill-timed sense of sarcasm, mockery and well-honed talent for jeering. She relied on this lawyer to seek out loopholes, and also to make conciliatory gestures to opponents. Too bad that his conciliatory statements invariably ended up riling the other party.
As her personal spokesman she fielded a Court Jester who was probably an understudy of Slick Lawyer II.. The more ridiculous he sounded, the more encouraged he became to say just what his Empress wanted to hear. To wit, that a bunch of doddering geriatrics, the RSS, was responsible for each and every ill. He too knew he was purveying hogwash, but what the heck, a Court Jester can't win elections. But he can be appointed a governor of some luckless state. So he tended to keep singing in season and out.
She rewarded incompetence. Economy failed? You're the President now. A monumental black-out? The Home Ministry for you. And so on.
Then there was the small problem of the President's Palace. A huge ornate building of British times. Show the British colonialists just what we think of them: put the wort kind of specimen inside it.
That's about a cameo (ah, that word again) of the Nightmare Team since the details of my nightmare would give you the creeps.
Oh, oh. It's not a nightmare! I'm awake and this Nightmare Team's still there! Please somebody, sing me to sleep...

We Need Corrupt Officials

Team Anna has the wrong end of the stick

The country (at least the netizens and newspaper readers)  are currently pinning much on Team Anna and the Janlokpal. The Janlokpal, armed with drastic powers, is supposed to make corruption vanish from the country. Corrupt officials and politicians twirling away at the chakkis is jails, grinding grain like they used to grind us.... oh happy thought...

Too bad it wont happen, any more than they make prisoners grind chakkis in prisons. Not that it should happen. A corruption-free India will become a hell on earth for man and beast - in the present set-up anyway.

How? Imagine if you wanted to buy a car. Present rules say you have to attach a copy of the Driving License, if you want to get the car registered. So you decide to settle that matter of the Driving License first.. Thanks to Team Anna, let's imagine there are strictly honest and dutiful officials behind the window.  "How do we know you live here? Where's your ration card?"

Ah, so you have to get the vital card. The officials at the Food & Civil Supplies are honest too. "Why do you need a Ration Card?" "To get a driving license, Sir".  "That means you're going to buy a car?" "Yes your Highness - er - Sir." "Do you know that Ration Cards can only be issued to poor people? And you can afford a car! Get lost!"

There are other ways to prove that you are indeed you, but the procedures are involved and Byzantine. Still interested in honest officials when a couple of papers with Gandhiji's toothless smile will do the trick?

And what if you got sufficiently crazy to attempt to set up an industry - you know, generate employment, contribute to the national growth, give China a run for its money. You have the patch of land, a brain full of ideas. Some money worth investing. So go ahead ... no, wait.

Get an NOC from the Electricity Board. "Sure, we'll give the NOC, but rules say you'll have to pay for and install your own transformer; and rules also say that transformer becomes the Board's property. But, hey! where's your NOC from the Town and Country Planning department?" So off you toodle to the Dept. of T & C.

"Sure, we're here to give you our NOC! That's our job! But where's your NOC from the District Environmental Engineer?"

The District Environment Engineer wants to see the NOC from the Revenue Department. The Revenue Department wants to see the NOC from the Forest Department, that your proposed factory doesn't abut Sanctuary land. Then you start looking around for a revolver to blow your brains out. But you need an Arms License first...

This is only a sample. Multiply with numbers of departments in existence and square by the numbers of officials who are your bhagya vidhatas. That's the amount of Red Tape of the reddest hue that the benighted aam aadmi has to untangle on a daily basis. Are you still sure you want honest officials manning all those posts?

Team Anna, I'm sorry to say, has the wrong end of the stick. What he should have been agitating for are simpler procedures, less red tape. Then corruption will wither on the vine and disappear. The Lokpal can sit content in his office, playing Solitaire.

What’s Wrong with our Courts

Yeah, what’s wrong. This is not asked as a question. This is a statement. I’ve been knocking around in the courts as a litigant more than my due share and have noticed some interesting things.

1.         Cases drag on for years, even decades. (Oh sure, we all know that). But why? Because…

2.         There are far too many cases. Way too many. And that’s because…

3.         Bad laws is one. Pigheaded officialdom is another. Some corrupt judges may be yet another. But there’s another very important one: You can lie and furnish false evidence in the courts with impunity. In other words, you can commit perjury till the cows come home, or till either you or your opponent in the case dies of old age. 99.99 percent chances are you will be unharmed.

Perjury

Perjury is when you lie in court, of course under oath. Even producing a fake piece of physical evidence (like a forged agreement) and swearing it’s real is perjury. You get caught committing perjury and get booked, right? Wrong.

If you get caught lying in court, it is the judge who has to file the complaint: this guy lied in my court. This means that the judge now becomes like any other plaintiff. He will also have to mount the witness stand in a court and give his statement. Then he will be cross-examined by the defendant’s lawyer.

No judge wants to undergo that. Finis. So no case is filed for perjury.

Thousands of cases are heard every working day in courts across the country.  It is a safe bet that in almost every single case at least one of the parties is lying. In too many cases one of the parties has built up his case on the basis of forged documents, planted evidence, false affidavits or witnesses-for-hire. He may lose the case eventually. But that’s a long time in the future. Thousands upon thousands of liars every day; no prosecution for perjury.

So why not go to the nearest courthouse and file a case – any case – on that guy whose face you don’t like, or that old woman who’s the owner of that prime piece of land…

Here are some examples (NONE of them relate to me, by the way).

Example 1: I’ve seen a forged will produced in a court which was so crudely done that even a one-eyed bat could see it was made up by patching together different pieces of paper with cheap, discoloured cello-tape. One piece had the old man’s signature, the other had the will typed on it. This case dragged on and on for years. Eventually one of the parties got a retired forensic scientist (at considerable expense) to show how and where the forging was done. When last heard, the case is still in the court, and the affected party has gone off to the UK in disgust. In the end the forger will merely lose his case and right to the property (which he is already occupying anyway). Will he suffer for lying and forging? Fat chance.

Example 2: A guy was recently acquitted by the Supreme Court in a murder case after being booked ten years ago. The case was held to be totally fraudulent. He’s free now, but after being arrested, “interrogated”, sent off on judicial remand (and life can be pretty tough in judicial remand; the older prisoners “welcome” the newcomer with a physical beating for starters). Then struggling to get bail. Then trying to raise resources to fight the legal fight which would drag on for ten years through the Sessions, High and Supreme Courts. Murder case lawyers don’t come cheap. This guy would certainly like to proceed against the people who lied against him and framed him. Can he? The answer is pretty obvious now. Meanwhile, those folks sleep easy, smug in the knowledge that they’ve taken away the best years of their enemy’s life, and ruined him financially to boot.

The Solution

Easy. Take away the provision for the judge to be the complaining party in a case of perjury. Let the victim be the complainant, the judge’s judgment sufficing as evidence that so and so has been lying or has given a fake document, instead of having the judge go on the stand to say so. If anyone aggrieved by a judge’s judgment can go in appeal in the normal course, so too can the litigant or witness do so, if the judge has called him a liar. What is the need for the judge to himself be a witness?

Once perjury has been proved, let the punishment be hefty enough. A heavy fine in ordinary cases, and imprisonment if the victim faced loss of life or liberty.

With this mechanism in place, there may be a slight surge in litigation in the beginning, when aggrieved victims finally take on their tormentors. Once the punishments start getting meted out, people will think twice before using the courts to settle scores or blackmail someone.

Now ask a lawyer to pick holes in the above.

The Bullock Cart - A Cautionary Tale

The Bullock Cart and the Indian Economy – A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a time there was a bullock cart full of passengers. The passengers had paid the cart driver's firm to get them to their destination, but the slow pace was taking ages. They would nag the driver off and on and even threaten to replace him. The old driver Nehru died and after a short interval his daughter Indira replaced him.

"I'll make you go faster," she said and whipped the bullocks severely.

Also, to lighten the load, she didn't allow the passengers to eat properly. There was a short spurt of speed but the cart inevitably slowed down even more, and the passengers were now even more unhappy.

By a tragic accident this driver died suddenly and her son Rajiv took over the cart. He took steps to make his passengers happy: he painted the cart in bright colours. Other vehicles on the road were all the time overtaking this bullock cart, which was still creaking along at a slow pace. The passengers could see the bright chromium rear bumpers of the American, European, Japanese, Korean and Singaporean cars racing ahead in the distance.

The bullock cart still trundled along at a slow speed.

There was some pushing and shoving and some of the passengers tried to drive but the bullocks were exhausted and the wheels were worn. The cart zigged and zagged and some passengers even threw up. But progress was still painfully slow.

A driver, PV, belonging to the old carting company, took over. He realized that things couldn't carry on like this. He told his mechanic Manmohan to take some steps. Manmohan took out the old wooden wheels and put in alloy wheels. He also put ball bearings in the wheels. There was a noticeable improvement but – it was still a bullock cart. If you looked hard enough you could still see the sun winking on the chrome on the rear bumpers of the cars racing ahead.

The passengers were pretty fed up by now and tried a new team. The new team leader Atal kept his eyes closed most of the time, but did put some competent guys in charge: Jaswant, Yashwant and Shourie. These guys simply got rid of the bullock cart and loaded the passengers on to a motor car instead. They gave the wheel to a private driver and told him to do whatever he liked, as long as he got cracking. The driver smartly snapped the car into gear and zoomed off. The drivers of the vehicles ahead peeked into their rear-view mirrors and remarked, "These Indians are going to give us competition".

But the passengers missed the old team out of nostalgia and brought them back, kicking out the previous lot. It was so comforting to have the Old Firm back.

The team leader of the Old Firm was now Sonia, but she didn't have a valid driver's license. So she told the old mechanic Manmohan to sit at the wheel and pretend to drive, while she gave the instructions. The private driver was shown who was boss and told to be the cleaner of the vehicle or get off. The new team started fiddling with the controls. The speed slowed down a bit but nobody noticed; the car was running along on its old momentum.

The Atal firm too had a change in leadership. First LK, the new leader, chucked out the trio of Jaswant, Yashwant and Shourie. Then he offered himself for the post of driver.

"I know all about handling bullocks and carts. I also know all about temples," he said.

The passengers were not interested and let the Sonia firm handle the car. The speed was now noticeably slow. And then the passengers discovered that this lot had been slyly fiddling the fuel and maintenance bills. They were indignant.

A whole gaggle of would-be drivers now joined in the fun: pushing this lever, pulling that knob and flicking every which switch. The car started making protesting noises. PC hauled on a lever marked Handbrake and hoped the car would go faster. It didn't. Rahul punched a button marked Horn and thought the car's speed would pick up. There was some noise but the speed kept getting slower.

"Try and look at the rocks and trees on the roadside, and see how fast we are going, as compared to them", suggested Kapil, in a mocking tone, to the discontented passengers.

Then Kapil saw a small lever inside a glass case marked Do Not Break Glass. Do Not Touch Lever. Emergency Only..

Kapil smashed the glass and pulled the lever. And the bonnet flew open and the engine popped out and crashed to the earth, lying in ruins on its side in the dirt.

"Not to worry!" said Sonia to her mechanic cheerfully, "We've still got the bullocks, right? Go get them and hitch 'em up to this car!"