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Business Commentary/Dilip Thakore

Crumbling law and order situation hits economic growth

It has often been argued in this column that the maintenance of law and order is the most important function of government. This is especially true of the developing nations of the so-called Second and Third Worlds which suffered colonial and foreign subjugation in the earlier part of this century and which are striving to attain the enviable standards of living which distinguish western democracies.

The western democracies or industrial nations of the First World have well understood that independent, smoothly functional and credible judicial and police systems are the pre-requisite of economic development.

This is why they spare little expense to build courtrooms, appoint respectable judges and to keep their laws up-to-date while equipping their relatively well-paid police and crime detection personnel with the latest technology developments in transport, telecom and laboratory equipment.

Moreover, the western democracies are characterised by a political consensus that political interference with law-and-order systems should be limited and carefully calibrated in the interests of economic development and the general welfare. Hence the high standards of living and the greater security which the people of the western democracies enjoy.

These insights into the vital importance of maintaining the law and order machinery in good repair and insulating it from political interference have been stimulated by the presentation of the 800-page Justice B N Srikrishna Commission report on the January 1993 communal riots which brought life in Bombay -- India's commercial capital -- to a virtual standstill for over 10 days occasioning production and business loss estimated at Rs 300 billion ($7 billion), 1,500 lives and which began the process of ending Bombay's reign as the nation's premier business city.

After considerable prevarication, the Srikrishna report was tabled in the Maharashtra legislative assembly on August 6 subsequent upon paramilitary forces and the police being deployed all over the city to forestall incendiary reactions to the courageous tell-all report.

These precautions were well taken. Because the learned judge's conclusions, derived after examining 502 witnesses and 2,135 affidavits over a period of 526 working days, clearly identify the Bombay-based political party the Shiv Sena and its supremo Bal Thackeray as the provocateurs and prime actors in the commercial city's unprecedented communal riots five years ago.

And by a quirky irony, the Shiv Sena is the major force in the coalition government which together with the militantly Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party rules and reigns in the western coast state of Maharashtra.

Not surprisingly, Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi himself a member of the Shiv Sena, has been quick to dismiss the Srikrishna report as ''biased and anti-Hindu''. While presenting the state government's ritual Action Taken Report to the legislative assembly, Joshi stoutly defended Thackeray, described by the Srikrishna report as ''veteran general (who) commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to organise attacks against Muslims'' during the 1993 riots in Bombay.

While ruling out the prosecution of Thackeray whose inflammatory remarks and riotous exhortations are a matter of the public record as they were made in writing in the Sena's newspaper Saamna , the ATR is also silent about following up on the Srikrishna report's recommendation to 'take strict action' against 32 police officers including then joint police commissioner R D Tyagi for connivance with rioting Sena mobs and dereliction of duty.

Instead, in an obvious attempt to divert public attention from the Sena's criminal role in the January 1993 riots, the chief minister and his self-confessed 'remote control' (Thackeray) have highlighted the Srikrishna Report's indictment of the 'effete and vacillating' Congress government which ruled the state in January 1993 when in retaliation to Muslim anger over the demolition (December 6, 1992) of the 400-year old Babri mosque in Ayodhya by Sena and BJP activists, the Sena ran riot in Bombay.

The Srikrishna Report confirms the well-known fact that the then Congress chief minister who was sympathetic to the Sena, dithered for four long days before calling for Army help to quell rampaging Sena and lumpen mobs.

The noteworthy aspect of these shenanigans is the sheer helplessness of the police and justice systems in taking the initiative to discharge their constitutional duty to maintain law and order and to prosecute and punish law-breakers.

Readers with longer memories may recall that exasperated by the reluctance of the Maharashtra state police to file charges against Thackeray and the Shiv Sena leadership for fomenting civil disorder and breaking the peace, your columnist together with a former secretary to the Maharashtra government (J.B. D'Souza) filed a writ petition to the police commissioner and the state government to discharge their constitutional duty to file criminal charges against Thackeray.

As a duly qualified Barrister at Law, it was patently clear to me that Thackeray's inflammatory editorials in Saamna had breached Sections 153, 153-A, 153-B and 159 of the Indian Penal Code which rendered him liable to a three-year jail sentence.

The reaction of the judiciary to our petition was baffling. For a long time it was not listed for admission. Thereafter, it was peremptorilly dismissed at the admission stage. An appeal to the Supreme Court produced the same result with the petition being dismissed on technical grounds. Quite obviously, their lordships of the bench ensconsed in their ivory towers were of the opinion that the scale of the damage was a figment of the imagination of the petitioners and the press. Unfortunately for them, the Srikrishna Report has confirmed the nexus between the rioters and Thackeray as alleged in our petition.

Confronted with the irrefutable conclusions of the 800-page, carefully documented Srikrishna Report, the Maharashtra government is taking the technical plea that it is not obliged to act upon the conclusions of the report.

This is likely to result in a flood of writ petitions to the judiciary asking the courts to issue directives to the police and the state government to prosecute Thackeray. When this happens one hopes that the courts will exhibit the spine to enforce the laws of the land.

It is high time the nation's overblown independent judiciary demonstrated the ability to discern that common criminals don't cease being criminals because they don political clothing.

Dilip Thakore