Columns: The Usual Suspects

Columns

India Today, January 25, 1999
Jan 25, 1999

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Zero Intolerance

Show me the person and I'll show you the law.

By Swapan Dasgupta

For the past week, the conversation in Delhi has centred on the BMW incident on Lodhi Road that left five people dead. Inevitably, there has been a lot of gratuitous concern over indulgent, rich parents showering brash kids with expensive toys and then having to face the consequences. There has been a lot of talk about easy money and easier moral standards. Left unaddressed-not least because it cuts too close to the bone-is a more basic issue. The kids involved in the tragedy were not innately evil or even pathologically delinquent. They were studying abroad in good colleges and have promising careers ahead of them. Would they have behaved similarly in London and New York? Would they have dared sit behind the wheel of their BMW after a boisterous night of partying?

Of course they wouldn't. Then why were they so emboldened to behave so recklessly in Delhi? The answer is obvious. There is no rule of law in India. Like justice, law in this country is eminently negotiable, depending on your pocket, your status and your connections. For every undertrial languishing in jail for a petty offence, there are at least five bigwigs who know they can escape punishment for more serious offences. India operates on a very simple principle: "Show me the person and I'll show you the law." Everybody, from the humblest policeman in the thana to the prime minister, knows it. There is no equality before the law. Consequently, there is no law. And there is no deterrence either.

It's not merely Laloo Prasad Yadav who can parade triumphantly on an elephant after securing bail for allegedly short-changing the exchequer of a bankrupt state like Bihar. Last week's Hindustan Times had an innocuous news item about a successful entrepreneur who avoided an Enforcement Directorate (ED) summons by conveniently presenting himself after office hours, then casually signing the register and departing. The ED wanted to question him on the relatively trivial matter of foreign exchange violations amounting to Rs 300 crore. The next occasion a summons is served, it may be time to follow a more conventional route: secure admission to a government hospital for a "heart condition". Or take the example of a gentleman who is said to have violated the Official Secrets Act and facilitated the operations of Dawood Ibrahim's pointman in Delhi. Mocking the home minister's boast that this was a "test case", he was present last week during the finance minister's consultations with industrialists on the next budget. You can't get more brazen than that.

Perhaps that is why the Delhi Police has confined its application of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's highly effective "zero tolerance" to traffic behaviour in one stretch of Lutyens' Delhi. Across the Atlantic, zero tolerance meant law enforcers taking an equally dim view of jay walking as homicide. It meant creating an environment where law was absolute, regardless of the magnitude of the offence. Now, try enforcing those exacting standards on even traffic flow in our over-congested cities. For every three motorists who are booked for jumping traffic lights or driving rashly, the hapless policeman is certain to be confronted by one who will bark: "Don't you know who you are talking to?" If the policeman doesn't, he could well find himself at the receiving end of a punitive transfer.

No wonder driving in India is such fun. Everyone knows when to get out of your way.

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