Reduce corruption to reduce terror attacks

Government officers complain that they cannot help prevent corruption because the public is forcing it on them, doctors complain that they cannot help prescribing coslty medicines because only then their patients believe that they are being treated well. No doubt these are genuine complaints. There are a handful of people in this society who really want corruption to exist and doctors to prescribe costly medicines because they can afford it. But the important thing for us to take cognisance of the fact that the majority who bribe are those who cannot afford it and are forced to it by the majority of bribe takers. At the end of the day let us accept that it has become an accepted evil like dowry. But that doesn't still mean that the majority would not like to see it being wiped out. And it doesn't need any magical wand to do it.

It only needs our police and courts (including the quasi judicial bodies) to be made efficient and accountable. Unfortunately these have been rated the most corrupt and the second most corupt organisations in India today. And the law-makers are not even talking of making them accountable. In the case of the judiciary even a bill for including the executive in the process for appointing judges to high courts and supreme court is hanging fire for so many years now. And appointing judges is no deal when compared to the onus of making them deliver justice. I shall just quote two examples to prove how wayward out judiciary is.

1. In Jancy Joseph Vs Union of India (1999 (1) KLT 422), the question of applicability of Section 56 of the Civil Procedure Code while ordering arrests under the provisions of Section 27 of the Consumer Protection Act was considered by the Kerala High Court. Under Section 56 of the CPC,'the court shall not order arrest or detention in the civil prison of a woman in execution of a decree for payment of money; regarding recovery of money from others, arrest can be ordered if it is found that the person concerned have means to pay'.

The judge had ruled that 'I quash Ext P5 in so far as it holds that woman can be arrested for recovery of money under Sec 27 of the (Consumer Protection) Act and that means of judgement debtor need not be considered when the power under S 27 is exercised for recovery of money'. (Note: here the supposedly learned judge is NOT applying an exisitng law, he is making ONE!)

2. Subsequently, in Mary Chacko vs Jancy Joseph (2005 (3) KLT 925), a division bench headed by the then CJ of Kerala considered the issue of the applicability of the same Sec 56 of CPC while enforcing the orders under Recovery of Debts Due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act 1993 and ordered that women CAN be arrested because 'there is a clear basis for treating the public dues different from the purely private'. Now this raises a genuine doubt whether the Constitution of India, by which all these luminaries swear by, mention anywhere that justice should be denied to individual citizens? As I see it, or as any man in his senses would see it, it is a big NO! Doesn't it suggest that these people read the Preamble to the Constitution every time they opened a case file? As well as the Gandhi Talisman for added effect?

It was recently reported in the press that a division bench of the apex court had ruled against judges making laws instead of just interpreting them. Also, in a recent case filed in the District Court here by the wife of an advocate against her husband, the advocate literally argued that it would be shame for him to appear before that court and he got an advocate commission appointed to hear the case! And it was also reported in the media that the High Court of Kerala had said that it had refrained from directing the Chief Secretary of the State to appear in person because it did not want to insult him! And that in nutshell sums up the state of our justice delivery system. Can we hope to do anything unless this system is overhauled?

The Right to Information Act had actually opened a window of opportunity to set the system right, But the lawmakers dug the first nail on the coffin of the Act by appointing only those persons whom it could identify as potential murders of the Act as information commissioners- the watch dog for implementation of the Act. And between the information commissions and the judiciary, they are vying with each other to dig the last nail in! Today the information commissions are in the same state where the judicary has landed in 60 years. Dr Abdul Kalam when he was the President asked: why is it that all the undertrials in our prisons are from the marginalised sections of the society? (And all the scams that are being reported in the media involve the politician-bureaucrat nexus!). Today we may ask in the context of RTI Act: why is it that only PIOs of lowest level public authorities have been fined while the law provides for fining the PIOs of all the public authorities if they fail to give satisfactory reply within 30 days of the application?

There are moves a foot to amend the RTI Act. The publicised reasons are of course to make it more user friendly. But going by the history of the Consumer Protection Act we can rest assured that the last nail on the coffin of the Act will be dug by these amendments.

Maj PM Ravindran (Retd)