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Shashi Warrier

Who'll watch the watchdog?

Your time is mostly your own, except for an occasional outing on working days and, with a regimen of light exercise and a sensible diet, you might prolong your life by several years. You can catch up with your reading, learn transcendental meditation, do all those solitary things you always said you never found the time for.

But your solitude need not be painful, for your company is august: around you are people who were once the highest in the land. There is even a court jester to help you while away the long hours, a priest-cum-palmist to perform your pujas and read your palm. Perhaps the only aspect of it that will not suit is the decor, a uniform dreary gray.

The best thing is that all this is for free. The price of admission to this most exclusive of joints is exactly nothing. Except that you need to break the eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not be caught. You need to be caught with a few millions in cash lying around your house all wrapped up in bedsheets and polythene bags. Or you need to be caught egging someone to forge someone else's signature. Or you need to be caught granting someone favours by way of petrol pumps or government housing in Delhi.

The name of the joint? Got it in one! The Tihar Sheraton, which is being readied for its eminent new occupants.

India has begun to feel like the land of Nero, not Nehru. We have the questionable privilege of watching the biggest political circus in the half-century of India's existence. Thanks to judicial activism and public interest litigation, erstwhile leaders P V Narasimha Rao, Sukh Ram, H K L Bhagat, Captain Satish Sharma, Kalpnath Rai and others are in the dock. Mind you, they have only been charged. They have yet to tried and, if found guilty of wrongdoing, convicted.

The mills of the judiciary grind exceedingly fine, but they also grind exceedingly slowly. Most of these charges relate to crimes committed years ago -- in Mr Bhagat's case, for instance, 12 years ago; in the St Kitts forgery case half as long back -- and, with a good supply of red herrings, each of the accused can expect to complete a long and fruitful life before the court arrives at a judgment. There is also the possibility of appeals all the way up to the Supreme Court.

In any case, a short stint in gaol will only enhance the prestige of the players: you can almost hear Messrs Rao, Sharma, Bhagat et al putting on their holier-than-thou looks and saying, "Look at what I can put up with for the sake of the country!"

While the judiciary's activism seems to have left the legislature feeling shaky, what good has it really done? The Supreme Court's recent rulings have the country's enforcement and intelligence agencies tied up in knots, which is no doubt a good thing as far as circuses go but, in the long run, it will do more harm than good. For one thing, enforcement agencies are badly underequipped to handle their terms of reference.

Take, for instance, Kerala: against a National Crime Commission recommendation of one policeman for every 450 population, the state has one for every 1,800! There is reason to believe that other states are no better off and, in some cases, significantly worse off. The CBI and the IB are certainly in no better condition.

Hanging millstones about their necks while making sensational news copy will put them back 10 years in terms of fighting the growing menace of crimes by less visible people. For instance, only about one murder in 10 is solved: overloading the enforcement arms of the government will reduce this dismal percentage further. It would make much more sense to give the government a deadline to find our what's slowing the agency down and to fix the problem, whatever it is.

The judiciary can be accused of the same staring sluggishness of which it has accused the CBI. Witness the backlogs in the courts at all levels. When faced with this, the judiciary has the same excuses as any other government agency: insufficient people, facilities and funds. Let him that is free of guilt be the first to cast a stone.

Politicians seem to be unduly disturbed by this newfound energy of the judiciary. P R Dasmunshi, for instance, accuses the Supreme Court's actions of defaming politicians. The charge might be true but Mr Munshi and his ilk forget that there are fairly serious charges pending in various courts against over 30 of the current crop of parliamentarians.

Many have been charged with serious crimes: murder, rape, extortion, and so on. Five out of every 100 parliamentarians face a criminal charge, versus less than one in a thousand for the general public. Let's be generous. Let's assume that nine-tenths of the charges against parliamentarians are 'politically motivated.' That leaves five parliamentarians out of every thousand facing a serious criminal charge. If a Martian with a grounding in statistics came down to earth and looked at these numbers he would be bound to think that criminals are more common in Parliament than outside it. And I wouldn't blame him for it.

In neighbouring Pakistan, they say corruption is worse. According to one writer, corruption in India, compared to what goes on in Pakistan, is 'small shit'. But even there, there is a move towards cleaning up: President Leghari wants an ombudsman, an independent agency to watch out for corruption. It's not such a bad idea, a public watchdog. Perhaps we could borrow it. But looking at the history of our country, the inevitable question arises: who will watch the watchdog?

Illustrations: Dominic Xavier