Editorials

India Today, March 29, 1999
March 29, 1999

Property as Theft

Battling Pune's land mafia is the Mahasatra government litmus test.

Property as Theft In the aftermath of Arun Bhatia's removal as Pune's municipal commissioner, Chief Minister Narayan Rane was at pains to explain that the otherwise "straightforward" officer had overstepped his brief. Bhatia, he said, was guilty of procedural violations during his campaign to demolish unauthorised buildings. The point Rane seems to have missed is that even if his logic be true, its credibility is negligible. As the spontaneous public protests following Bhatia's transfer showed, to the average Pune resident it is Bhatia who is the victim. He is the fearless civil servant whom the byzantine system has sought to gun down with technicalities. The Bhatia affair does, of course, present further evidence of the contempt with which people treat a politician's word. The larger issue notwithstanding, it would be wise to focus on the immediate one. Combined with the Bombay High Court's indictment of Manohar Joshi, former chief minister of Maharashtra, and his son-in-law in a Pune land scandal, it suggests trouble for the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in an election year.

When the man who was chief minister till only a few weeks ago has been implicated in a case of fraud, it would appear the ruling coalition's fate is sealed. Even so, there are still nine months to go for polling day -- long enough for Rane to fulfil his promise of a clean administration. It is all very well to say honesty is a matter of perception. Nevertheless, perception cannot be entirely divorced from objective reality. The future of unauthorised construction in Pune is the test case for the Rane regime. The chief minister will hide behind clich s like "the law will take its own course". Sadly, as India has so often found out, when this threatens to happen politicians tend to change law's course. In the end, it is not one Arun Bhatia who is important. If he is truly a committed bureaucrat, he will carry his professionalism and integrity to his next job. What is more relevant is the can of worms he has prised open in Pune. It is Rane who is carrying the can.

Law of the Jungle

Crime but no punishment: the importence of India's crime-fighting system.

Law of the Jungle Despite the somewhat overstated reaction of those who see it as an attack on the free press, there is no doubt that the murder of journalist Irfan Hussain is a damning indictment of Delhi's crime-fighting machinery. True, the police cannot prevent every murder and every robbery. Yet, how does one pardon the laxity with which the law enforcers behaved after Hussain was reported missing? His body was found five days later, only a few kilometres from where he was apparently attacked. In the intervening period even neighbouring districts had not been adequately briefed. With an astounding 26,911 thefts and 649 murders -- both figures well above those of the three other metros combined -- Delhi is India's undisputed crime capital. Even so, its macabre tale is not a singular one; it is replicated across the map of urban India. The tension between a rampant consumerist class and a teeming underclass; the joblessness and the hopelessness; the very atrophy of city life: this has become the pan-Indian recipe for disaster.

At one level it is a subject for sociologists and psychologists to study, for longterm policies to address. The police, however, can be allowed no such luxury. Today the sheer impotence of its lawmen has become a sick joke staring India in the face. Underpaid and underequipped -- with some exceptions, notably and ironically Delhi -- policemen are left to fight a patently unequal battle with gangsters or even freelance marauders who seem to strike at will. Is there a solution? There has to be one. The easy way out would be to set up a commission -- task force seems the preferred expression these days -- to decide on upgrading the crime-fighting system. The less tangible but more important business is one of morale -- between the brazen outlaw and the terrified citizen. It is this battle of the mind that India is losing. It is this equation that the men in uniform have to reverse.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication