From Pundit To Banned It - Prisoner of Agenda
Perhaps it’s the summer heat, this silly season in which everyone seems infected. The time was when our leaders were thinkers, or at least capable of rational thought. No longer, alas. Today bullying substitutes for liberty, and banning substitutes for debate.
“Liberty”, Salman Rushdie writes in the New Yorker, “is the air we breathe”; imperfect, perhaps, but still freely available. This notion — Rushdie goes on to write of the assumption of liberty and freedom as fundamental to our existence — is increasingly alien in India. We no longer want to confront issues or problems of any stripe. Our answer to them all, from addressing poverty by kicking out the poor to copyright infringement on the Internet, is only one: ban them all. All too often, our ban-dits fall back on one great unanswerable lie, more tripe than trope: “it is against our culture”. Yashwant Sinha wants the Indian Premier League’s bizarre T-20 cricket format banned because it offends this ‘culture’. And everything else besides: professors, cartoons in text books, movies on television, books the ban-dits have never read, films they have not seen, scholarly works. But an ageing superstar’s desperate comeback attempt via, all else having failed, feverish pelvic thrusts is all right; so is the typifying of women as ‘vamps’ based entirely on their dress; and elected members of a legislature watching porn on their cellphone. What is this ‘culture’ that needs protection?
The perverse influence of business interests on civil liberties constantly takes new forms. On 29 March, the Madras High Court passed an ex-parte “John Doe” injunction on an application by R K Productions Pvt Ltd. This is a company that owns the rights to a Tamil movie, “3”, most notable for the song “Why this Kolaveri-di?”. The producers sought a blanket ban against infringement of their copyright in the movie — prohibiting the unlicensed sharing in any manner of any part of the film. The targets were several Internet Service Providers and five unknown persons, all named “Ashok Kumar”, all described as “Unknown Person, India”. None of the ISPs were heard before the order was passed.2 The curious thing about this application is that it seeks to ban the very thing that gave the song, and therefore the film, publicity; the song went viral on the Internet.
The order itself appears to be unexceptionable. It is not the first of its kind, either here or abroad. Roe v Wade, for instance, used a pseudonym to protect the identity of the woman involved.3 In 2011, the Kolkata High Court passed a similar order at the instance of Reliance BIG Pictures for its movie, Singham.4 There have also been other orders relating to music sharing services.
The problem is not with the Madras High Court’s order, which, in any case, is restricted “until further orders”, and ISPs can immediately apply to court for a recall or a modification or clarification, or file an appeal. Why none have done so yet is unclear. The trouble lies with the application itself, and the way in which the order is being interpreted.
In Search Of Ambedkar's Parliament - Prisoner of Agenda
The conceit of India’s Republic is founded on one major premise: equality. It is this premise that underlies the thinking of our Constituent Assembly, and it is this premise that, perhaps in the interest of retaining its collective sanity, led the Constituent Assembly to believe that the elected representatives of the people who were to form Parliament would be not materially different from themselves: men and women of understanding, some learning, stature, maturity, committed, with a sense of purpose and public service, and also with the ability to laugh at themselves.
The problem with the assumption is, of course, that it is utterly wrong. There is no such thing as equality. As an aspiration or an ideal it is like the cup of Tantalus, condemned to be forever just out of reach, and though it is a conceit, it is an essential conceit, for without it there is no basis for the system of governance we adopted. The implication is that every adult is entitled, as a matter of right, to offer himself or herself for election, notwithstanding the notable lack of the many qualities shared by the members of the Constituent Assembly; common sense among them.
Someone To Watch Over Me - Prisoner of Agenda
It’s a vision from hell or, at the very least, from Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale or Fahrenheit 451. An award-winning film is slated for its television premiere. At the last minute, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting — it’s hard to think of a government authority with a more quintessentially dystopian moniker — pulls the plug and insists the telecast be moved to a late-night slot. We must protect our children, we are told.
The Dirty Picture, loosely based on the life of the South Indian film actor Silk Smitha, won three National Awards, three Filmfare Awards, six Screen Awards and, for the telecast, 56 censor snips (36 suggested by the producers and 22 by the Censor Board). It was scheduled for a telecast at noon and 8 pm on 22 April with what our Censor Board calls a U/A certificate, more or less equivalent to the PG-13 certification abroad: unrestricted public exhibition, with parental guidance advised. A day before the telecast, our paternal-minded I&B ministry wrote to Sony TV, advising them to follow the Censor Board’s recommendation to reschedule the telecast to 11 pm.
Video Killed The Media Star - Prisoner of Agenda
O tempora! O mores! Thanks to the nature of these things, we can no longer say what we all know, and are forced into the needlessly elliptical. Therefore and thusly: the recent demise of the political career of a government spokesperson on accusations of his — for want of a better phrase — infelicitous conduct caught on some dull security camera videotape has generated all manner of controversies, from protestations of this being an entirely private matter to accusations of besmirching high office.
No crime has been committed. There are victims, perhaps — family and friends — but they are silent and their concerns are indeed private and not for public delectation. Beyond that, something like this should have no bearing whatever on the person’s work, capability or — forgive me this — the discharging (so to speak) and performance (so to say) of functions and duties, even if as the redoubtable Shashi Tharoor famously wrote, we now know what an Act of Congress really means.
The Pushmi-Pullyu In Law: The RTI Act - Prisoner of Agenda
Hugh Lofting’s Dr Doolittle children’s books had many wonderful imaginary creatures. One of these was the pushmi-pullyu, a gazelle-unicorn hybrid with a head at either end of its body. When it moved, both ends headed off in opposite directions.
Our RTI Act is beginning to resemble the pushmi-pullyu. In October last year, a Shiv Sena MP introduced a private member’s bill seeking to dilute the RTI Act with an amendment that required every RTI application to give reasons which would be tested for sufficiency. The bill was absurd. Of the post-Independence statutes, the RTI Act is the one that has had the most profound impact on governance. Not one of our many public disclosures — what we love to call “scams” — would ever have come to light but for this Act.
Live And Let Die - Prisoner of Agenda
He has been on death row for years. Now, three days before he was scheduled to be put to death, the Central Government has stayed his execution. This particular case, Balwant Singh Rajoana, seems to be peculiar. He was convicted for the assassination of Punjab’s Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995. He chose not to represent himself. He still does not seek a reprieve. He says he has no grounds to do so, and has no faith in our system. Instead, today, it is the ruling party in the state that urges clemency.
This political tug-of-war — and it is entirely political — distracts from the question we should be asking ourselves: is it time to abolish the death penalty?
From Myth To Mandamus - Prisoner of Agenda
It is a scheme unlike any other: four times the capacity of China’s Three Gorges dam, five times the capacity of similar projects in America, six times that of existing projects in India. This is the Indian river interlinking project, one that four weeks ago received judicial benediction from the Supreme Court.
Linking rivers is not new, even in India. Inter-basin water transfer projects have been completed both here (Beas-Sutlej, Madhopur-Beas, Kurnool-Cudappa, Periyar-Vegai for example) and abroad. What this particular scheme proposes is of another order of magnitude altogether. It has two components: the Himalayan Development project will create storage dams along the eastern rivers, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra in India, Nepal and Bhutan (using the goose-neck in Assam to avoid problems with Bangladesh). Then canals will transfer something called “surplus” water from the eastern tributaries of the Ganga to the west; the Brahmaputra and its tributaries will link with the Ganga, and the Ganga with the Mahanadi. The Peninsular component then sends water from east India to the south and west. The Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery rivers are to be canal-linked. West-flowing rivers to Mumbai’s north and south of the Tapi are to be linked with more dams. And there are similar proposals for the Ken-Chambal, and separately for west-flowing rivers along the Western Ghats.
The Good, The Bad And The Bovine - Prisoner of Agenda
It would be comic if it wasn’t so insidious. Karnataka proposes to pass into law the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill. This isn’t just to ensure the health of livestock (it does exactly the reverse) or control slaughter-houses. It targets specific communities and groups, particularly the poor, Dalits and Muslims.
The bill was introduced into the legislature in 2010, quickly withdrawn by a bumbling government, and then slipped back in. The 2010 bill supplants an earlier — and fairly innocuous — 1964 bill but goes well beyond: it expands the definition of cattle to include all bovines and bans their killing regardless of age and fitness as for draught, breeding or milk. Worse yet: the 2010 act puts beef on par with crystal meth and cocaine — the mere possession of it is to be a criminal offence. Transporting cattle for slaughter is also a crime and if you’re heading in the direction of a slaughter house — which is pretty much in any direction — your vehicle can be confiscated. The penalties in this Bill defy every standard in law and trespass on common sense. Seven years for cattle slaughter; a cognisable offence. But causing death by negligence, as this paper pointed out last week, only invites two years’ jail time— as we learned from the Bhopal verdict. Karnataka cows are truly holier than thou.
Ignoble, Ignorant And Unloved - Prisoner of Agenda
Law, medicine and theology are said to be the three “learned” professions. Of their practitioners, lawyers have always been singularly unloved. They arouse public suspicion — they are, after all, defenders of criminals and the corrupt and, therefore, believed to be tainted by association. They invite derision and contempt: from popular lawyer jokes to real and imaginary accounts of bizarre courtroom exchanges portraying lawyers as people of limitless stupidity.
Theology and law collide in Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage:
“Be Thou my speaker, taintless pleader
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder
Thou movest salvation even for alms
Not with a bribed lawyer’s palms.”
Speaker, pleader, proceeder and bribed lawyers: these are the ungodly. Jonathan Swift was equally merciless when he spoke of “a society of men bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for that purpose that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid.” Jeremy Bentham was even sharper: “what the non-advocate is hanged for, the advocate is paid for, and admired.” Even outside court, a lawyer engaging in any sort of debate is always accused of sophistry, of “twisting words”, of chicanery.
By definition, a litigation practice — far more than non-adversarial work — comes with a very great deal of baggage. In court, lawyers enjoy all kinds of privileges and immunity in the things they say and do, stuff that might well be actionable outside court. At the same time, lawyers have very real problems within their own community. Very few have any resemblance to the popular image of a rich, crafty and dangerous individual. Many struggle very hard on a daily basis and work in the most appalling conditions, and are honest, decent people; and some are truly men and women of great distinction.
In Joco Veritas: In Jest There Is Truth - Prisoner of Agenda
At the end of 2008, six people met at the Cardozo School of Law’s moot courtroom in New York. They included the free speech expert, Floyd Abrams; a sitting judge the United States Court of Appeals, Richard Posner; a judge of the New York state Supreme Court’s appellate division; and a professor of law and novelist, Bernard Schlink; and a professor of literature. They were there to decide what appeared to be a simple case concerning a loan default.
This case was unusual. For one thing, it was 400 years old. And the lender wasn’t a bank. It was Shylock, the villain of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”. Representing Shylock, a major law firm’s partner argued that his client was entitled to repayment, with all accrued interest. He did not, however, press for specific performance — the pound of flesh — saying that, after four centuries of reflection, he had decided against it. His opponent, from another law firm, attacked the agreement itself, saying it was illegal in its inception. Here’s the exchange, as reported by Lizzie Widdicombe in the New Yorker:
“If it please the court,” Kornstein said, “this is a case about an illegal contract.”
“What’s illegal about it?” Judge Rakoff interrupted. “As you well know, there is a virtual obesity epidemic in this country, and to remove a pound of flesh is wholly to the public good.”
The verdict was not unanimous. Five to two, they held for Shylock, some differing on the issue of interest. Judge Posner was particularly harsh on Antonio, saying it was “completely irresponsible” for him not to have insured his cargo.
“First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. Shakespeare had a thing about law and lawyers. At least 20 of his works feature some sort of legal issue and two of his plays — “Merchant of Venice” and “Measure for Measure” — are centred around trials. The former raises issues of conflict of laws, equity, commercial law, dispute resolution, contract law, insurance and more. The latter involves questions of morality, the rule of law, women’s’ rights, criminal law, and proportionality in punishment. There is a wholly separate line of mock trials regarding the authorship of his plays.
