Suggestions to the Indian Government on the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas 2010

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is going to be celebrated by the Indian government 7-9 January 2010. On this occasion, here are a few suggestions to the Indian government. I think it is high time that people started demanding the largest democracy in the world for a government that they deserve. First and foremost is to better protect the interests and properties of the NRIs / PIOs in the country. We are away from our motherland, where our old parents and other possibly vulnerable dependents still reside. The government should make it a crime for someone to harass parents and other immediate family members of overseas Persons of Indian Origin. The government should sternly deal with any illegal occupation of or damage to NRIs properties in India and adjudicate the case in say, 90 days from the date reported.

It seems to be a widely held perception with those in the government that NRIs have plenty of money to spare, so are a good catch for bribes. Corruption, particularly where the victim is an NRI must be made a cognizable, non-bailable offence, not needing government permission for prosecution. If the Anti Corruption Bureau really wants to do justice to its raison d’être, it must not limit itself to just a few corrupt officials who have fallen out of grace or to those who become pawns in the politics of the more powerful. It should target corruption in the most important functions of the governments such as law and order. As it is often said, cleaning should ideally start from home – the home department, which is also the home of the ACB. It is anybody’s information that there are several personnel in the home department itself, who have assets glaringly disproportionate to their income sources. To clean something, the cleaning system must first be clean itself!

NRIs cannot easily participate in legal and particularly criminal proceedings. There have been a number of incidences where frivolous criminal prosecutions were initiated on NRIs / PIOs, so much so that US and Canadian governments issued travel warnings in this respect. These prosecutions simply take advantage of the fact that NRIs cannot easily defend themselves as the cases take years to adjudicate and NRIs cannot afford to stay away from their careers for so long. The government must create special sections in the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code exclusively for NRI cases to punish complainants filing frivolous cases and to exempt personal appearance of NRIs, permitting them to appear through advocate even in criminal cases.

It is very important to make all sectors of the government more accountable, particularly the judiciary. One reform that the country and the legal fraternity, including the bar council can consider is to bring-in democracy into judiciary as well. Every judge and major policy changes in judiciary should go through a bi-annual mandate. Unlike the legislature, judiciary is a professional body. So, they may not like to go to the people campaigning, as the masses may not even understand what makes a good judge, let alone choosing them. There is also a danger that some shankar dada or munna bhai may get elected after getting a (law) degree, similar to what's shown in the popular movie. So, the electorate would be restricted to all the members of the bar council and judicial officers of sub-ordinate courts. That way, judiciary remains independent and becomes accountable to at least to the immediate populace they impact.

Another related aspect is the use of contempt of court act, by the Honourable courts. It is an established principle of civility that one cannot judge and award punishment for injury caused to self. That is, one cannot be a victim and a judge simultaneously for the same incident. The entire concept of judiciary seems to be based on this principle. In the case of “contempt of court,” the victim is the judiciary. So, it may not be appropriate for judiciary to adjudicate the case. The law should be changed so that on the rarest of the rare occasions when “contempt of court” cases arise, they should be referred to the Parliament or the Executive. The adjudication can still be done by professionals drawn from the legal community, but reporting to the Executive or the Parliament. This body of legal professionals which does not report to the judiciary should also be vested with the power to entertain any complaints against the judiciary. Just like a victim cannot adjudicate injury done to him, so also an accused, in this case, the judiciary, cannot adjudicate complaints against himself.

A democracy will not be effective when freedom of speech is scuttled and there is no transparency in government transactions. Parliament proceedings are now widely available to the public on the internet, TV, etc and are freely debated. Judiciary should similarly make all of their judgments open to the public and allow public to freely comment on them. Thanks to the technology, the Internet is now writable. Technology allows any reader to post comments right underneath what they read on the Internet. So, judiciary can use this technology to gain confidence of the public. If the inability of the honourable judges to call for a press conference to defend criticism is the only holding factor to implement this, this restriction can be removed. In fact, we often are seeing the Honourable judges making statements to the press on various occasions. So, the justification that judges cannot call for press conferences does not seem to hold water.

A solution to many problems with government is to make the ordinary citizen more powerful than the government. After all, a government derives its power and money from the citizens. RTI is a small step towards this goal, but there is a lot more to be done. A genuine complaint from a citizen must be treated like an emergency in the government department, and dereliction of duty or misuse of power, a crime. It is high time that tax money started to get teeth!