Letter to Justice Verma

In the aftermath of the Nirbhaya rape case in Delhi, a committee was constituted by the government to suggest changes in laws dealing with safety of women. Justice J.S. Verma, retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was the head of the committee. The committee asked for suggestions from the public. My suggestions are contained in the letter below:

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Hon’ble Justice Verma,

            I am an officer in the rank of Joint Secretary, and I am scared of going to a Police Station.

            I shudder to think what I will do, if I have to report misbehaviour with my daughter or even something more mundane like a minor theft in my house. I will probably call up a friend in the police department or someone who has a friend in the police. That police officer will in turn call the police officer, who supervises the “thana” of my area.

Believe me, Justice Verma, you would do the same!

It is often said, indeed stated as ample justification, that the police force is drawn from the same society and it therefore cannot be any different. This is the most specious argument that is put forth by way of explanation for incompetence and corruption. But, we forget that the same society throws up members of the armed forces too, who show much better standards of discipline and morality, though not impeccable in recent times. Let exceptions not become a façade for all-round ineptitude.

In the same manner as the police or other government functionaries cannot be turned into islands of virtues in the society that obtains today, a single law cannot be enforced in isolation if the justice delivery system ignores the rest of the jurisprudence.

A vibrant democracy is known not only by universal suffrage and free voting at the polling booth, but also by the institutions that it creates and nurtures. Institutions that protect the minority, the weak, the diseased and the destitute, women and children, dalits and the dispossessed. A majority rule, otherwise, will at best look askance and at worst perpetuate the divide. In a good democracy the majority binds itself, through these institutions, to look after those, whose voice is but a feeble appeal for help and likely to drown in the victory cry of the majority. I need not tell a learned Judge like you that some of these institutions are the Judiciary, the Human Rights Commission, the Police, Parliamentary sub-committees and now increasingly the NGOs.

Coming back to the “from the same society” argument, we underestimate how much difference training and technology can make to the apathy and sometimes collusion of an insensitive government institution. Citing another example from my own department, it is there for all to see how corruption at reservation counters has been virtually eliminated by computerizing these and then going another step in enabling a citizen to book a ticket on the Internet. He can now even travel by showing the SMS message that he receives on his mobile phone after he books the ticket. No need to carry a printed ticket! Even the airlines in India, in spite of their entire hi-tech demeanour have not achieved this.

But, this letter is meant to give you some suggestions that your committee seeks from the public on laws related to safety and security of women. Let me give these in the form of a questionnaire.

1.    Why does it take a “connection” to make oneself heard in a police station? In any other civilized country a victim demands to be taken to a police station!

2.  What should be the redress to a citizen if the police station or the SHO, refuses to attend to him within 10 minutes of his arrival with a complaint?

3.    Why should it take hours upon hours to file an FIR, if one is not connected and indeed if the FIR is agreed to be written in the first place? Why can’t it be done in 30 minutes to reduce further trauma to a victim or a complainant?

4.  Why should a complainant have to face a hard nosed police inspector or his “munshi” for filing a complaint? Why can’t there be a more “civil” interface, which has no vested interest in not registering a complaint? An FIR is after all only a “First” Information Report.

5.   Why is there so much difference in the categories of a “station diary entry”, a “police complaint” and an “FIR”? What is this rigmarole of converting a complaint into an FIR at the behest of higher ups? Why can’t the CrPC be amended to give credence to each type?

6.   An FIR, by its name and definition is a “First” Information Report. Why then this exercise to find additional information and carry out more investigation before agreeing to file one? Each “exercise” and pre-investigation is a source of corruption and a chance to get the mighty, the powerful and the moneyed to distort the “first” information, the names of suspects and dilute or enhance the charges. The CrPC gives enough leeway to the police to add further information to the FIR subsequently. Why do it in advance?

7.   Why this insistence of the police on geographical jurisdiction for filing an FIR, when the CrPC clearly permits that FIR can be registered by any police station? This only delays action and the poor victim is further traumatised running from pillar to post. The FIR must be written in the police station nearest to the victim at the time of writing the FIR.

8.   In case a police station refuses to file an FIR even in cases of heinous crimes (or for that matter, any crime), what is the action prescribed against such SHOs? Section 4 of the the Scheduled Castes  and  the  Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 provides as under:

Whoever, being a public servant but not being a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe, wilfully neglects his duties required to be  performed by him under this Act, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to one year.

Under this Act, a Police Officer, if he fails to register a complaint/FIR, is liable to be punished. Shouldn’t violation of a woman’s body attract similar, or higher, penalty on a government official who fails to take immediate action?

9.  There is a talk of making a database of rape convicts. This is mere eyewash. A rape convict is probably already in jail, because he is a convict. What purpose will such a database serve? Why not make a database of errant SHOs, who are in the habit of turning away complainants or delaying action, of senior officers under whom such SHOs thrive and make such a database public? Surely, you would agree that a police officer needs to be put under higher public scrutiny given the bottom that we have touched in the area of policing.

10. Why should there not be a database, open to public, which should list all police stations and cases pending investigation, under investigation, under trial and finalised against each along with dates? Names of the police inspector and superior officers supervising each case should also be mentioned. After all the CVC does make public names of government officials against whom enquiries are pending. The higher courts, viz. the Supreme Court and the High Courts routinely publish the data of pendency of cases against them. Why should the police station be exempt from making its functioning public? This is not a call for the details of investigation to be made public, just of the fact that there are these many investigations, trials pending and their details.

11. Why should it take a judge in a lower court years to hear a case? Why can’t he sit longer hours like most other officers in the government do, including police officers?

12. Why should a judge grant bail so easily to an accused citing the cause as failure of prosecution to present a strong case? If every player in the justice delivery system is allowed to get away by blaming the one before and the one after him, the blame game will continue ad infinitum.

13. If a court case, of rape or any other crime, fails to bring the culprit to justice due to incompetence of the police, what action is taken against the prosecution officer, and the supervising police officers all the way up?

14. Why should the government hire a cheap public prosecutor against the brightest ones launched by the high and mighty? Why can’t a careerist law officer be allowed to practice in a court of law? Such a person would be a permanent officer of the government and would be subject to evaluations and promotions based on his performance just like any other officer.

15. Why shouldn’t psychological profiling be a routine exercise for all police officers, from the thana staff to all the way up? There are several positions and posts in which unsuitable officers and staff can be posted, until they are retrained and retested.

The police has effectively acquired an independent status of its own, separate from the government. We do not find it incongruent when statements like “the government has asked police to act” are made. The police is the government as much as any other department is. It is strange that police officers and the entire police establishment have started behaving independently as if they have an independent constitutional status like the judiciary. The oft repeated demand of making police independent of the government (or of “civilian” oversight) is a slogan orchestrated by the police itself. Give us more freedom and we will deliver! I am afraid any more freedom and the police will become the Frankenstein’s monster. There necessarily has to be a political and bureaucratic oversight of the police function.

It is common for even senior police officers to state that “no complaints have been received so far”; “we will act when a complaint is received”. There have been numerous cases, where, even after the crime has been reported on TV and in Newspapers, no action was forthcoming from the police. What were the SPs, DIGs, and the DGPs or the DCPs and the CPs doing? After all, the fifth and the sixth pay commissions gave them allowances to buy and read newspapers. What for? To wait for a formal complaint to reach the SHO? It is with aplomb that the police disregards even the Human Rights Commission and gets away with it. If the Supreme Court or a High Court can take cognisance of events and admit a PIL based on a newspaper report or a postcard, why should a police officer wait for a formal complaint? For one may not know a complainant may already have been turned away.

I think that the police requires more supervision, not less. Police also requires transparency that technology today enables. Indeed, they also deliver better when under pressure. In the recent case of rape in the moving bus in Delhi, the driver and accomplices were caught within a few days, even from far away Bihar. Facts that the bus and the bus owner were regular defaulters were already known to the police and the RTO. There is a need to create a system that keeps the police under similar pressure even for crimes, which do not attract public attention.

If your commission ends up recommending on just how crime against women should be dealt with, it will at best be a half-done job. Please expand the scope of your terms of reference and give comprehensive advice to the government. Let the outcome of your deliberations be as much of a landmark as the judgments that you wrote earlier.

I shall be glad, indeed, deeply obliged, if I am given an opportunity to visit your office and speak further on this important issue.

Tushar and Windows 8 - A Birthday Wish

Tushar, my son decided to upgrade his laptop to Windows 8. This adventure taught me something and force me to take a critical look at the software development so far.

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Tushar, my son, is quite a geek. He wants to possess the latest in gadgets and games, if only his dad could afford them all. However, he does read up on them and loves to window-shop. His swanky new laptop was barely out of the bubblewrap with all the glory of Intel i7, a 1TB HDD and multiple gigs of RAM, all under the glorified umbrella of Windows 7 Home Premium, an object of envy for lesser mortals, yet he decided to upgrade to Windows 8, which was offered to him for a small payment.

Even though he is quite an expert, Tushar’s reasons to upgrade were simple – faster booting, longer battery life and a tablet-like interface which is now the industry standard. In his decision to do so he laid bare the myths that software giants like Microsoft had built so far – the bigger the better. That Microsoft too participated in breaking it is no consolation to them, since they did so after being battered into submission. The tablets, whether of the genres of iOS, Android or Blackberry proved beyond doubt that same, nay better, experience can be offered with lean operating systems and leaner applications, what with everything crammed into a measly 8GB, with ample space leftover for your data to boot (pun intended). The “office” packages, such as “Office to Go”or the “Quick Office Pro” are infinitesimally small compare to that bloatware called MS Office, yet deliver everything that one needs to function in his business, with charts, fonts and formatting galore. These iOS or Android applications cost small change compared to the king’s ransom one was expected to pay for the so called productivity suites, most of which was junk inside anyway, just like the junk DNA that we carry and think that we are superior to the rest of the animal world.

Tushar also introduced me to those sweet little things called “APPS”, tightly written codes of software that do nifty things for one, like buying movie tickets, checking one's PNR status or reading a newspaper online. Games suddenly started becoming available for seventy five rupees instead of five thousand, all tuned for hi-res called the retina display. The colossal games, which came on double layered DVDs, asked for a supercomputer to run with mega-power graphics cards and water cooled microprocessors; software and hardware were soon found promoting each other’s builders. If the Windows 8 can boot in a third of the time it took its predecessors, provides a better interface, offers seamless integration of tablets and mobile phones with the desktop and yet consumes less battery, one wonders why Microsoft was keeping employed the umpteen thousand code writers and paying them fat salaries, only to be recovered from the hapless consumers. After all why didn’t anyone think of writing apps for Windows or Mac, leaving it to the poor home PC user to slog it out everytime by logging into high-traffic websites and doing the needful afresh every time he needed to buy a movie ticket or read an ebook, starting with a www.someweirdplace.com? Why compel the customers to do everything himself even after he had pawned his house and his car to buy the OS and the Office Suite?

Has Microsoft learnt the lesson and made amends in Windows 8? Only time and Tushar can tell. Tushar has asked me to wait a few days till he is through with his own beta testing and only then will he advise me on upgrading my older laptop to Win 8. The new MS OS is quite clearly leaner and cleaner. I only hope they do not offer a hundred updates over the next fifty days. I also hope that Tushar does not ask me to buy a new laptop with a touch screen, so that a “complete” experience is his deliverance.

I also wonder what Microsoft will now do with the army of old-fashioned code writers, who in spite of writing a million lines a day could never offer tightly integrated software free of security holes. Or was it because of the million lines that they fumbled all along? It would be interesting to see how many of these programmers are sent home and how many for retraining.

Meanwhile, as Tushar is on his exploration of the unknown and the inevitable, I wish him a Happy Birthday. It is October 30 today. Maybe he could also learn a few tricks from this upheaval in the IT world and emerge leaner, faster and stronger, with lots of apps to embellish his personality. 

Happy birthday, Beta! You do me proud.

Kurien and the Cow

Verghese Kurien, the  "Father of the White Revolution", passed away on Sept 9, 2012. His milk-cooperatives and the 'billion-litre idea' brought about the world's biggest agricultural development programme, enriching lives of millions.

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Is the white revolution dead? The country recently lost its greatest hero in its war against malnutrition and rural poverty. But the revolution lives. It lives in the lives of millions of milk producers and a billion of India’s citizens, it lives in lakhs of healthy disease free cattle and it lives in thousands of cooperatives and hundreds of state-of-the-art dairies that dot this land. The country lost one of the greatest nation builders a few days ago, Verghese Kurien, illustrious son of the land, the man who delivered a nutrition-deficient, import-dependent country from the clutches of multinationals and depths of malnourishment to a place of pride in the world. He left behind a country, where the proverbial milk and honey flowed once again, an India which now ranks as the largest producer of milk in the world.

Before Dr Kurien achieved the previously unthinkable feat, milk came in cows. Milk still comes from cows, but in my childhood milk walked up to our doorsteps actually riding in a cow. The milkman, as a daily ritual, would march to my house every morning with a cow ambling alongside. My neighbours wanted their milk delivered in the evening. No problem with that! Since cows can be milked twice a day, the milkman and the poor cow would do the round of my neighbourhood again in the evening, repeating several miles of round trip from the cow shed to the Point of Sale (POS) and back. What a change from those days! The cow of today has all her meals delivered at her place of residence. She has no choice of plucking out a clump of grass from the roadside or a clutch of blossoms from the neighbour’s flowerpot. The cow’s diet today is confined to the industry standard oilcakes, husk and some grains past their use-before dates. No fun in eating, none in giving milk either – everything has been industrialised, even the milking is done by machines. 

Back to our milkman. As soon as he arrived, one of us children would be deputed to supervise him, to ensure that he did not mix water in the milk on the sly. The milkman would always carry two steel buckets, one of them contained water, which he claimed was to wash the other bucket with. He drew milk from the cow’s udders in the empty bucket. In case the child deputed to keep an eye on the process of milking slipped up, the milkman would quickly pour some water from the other bucket into the milk bucket. A wink or a momentary lapse of attention was enough for him to perform the crafty act. His measure, the “paav” or the “pauua” as he would call it, was said to be a quarter of a seer and was always an object of suspicion. I was sure that unlike simple arithmetic, four of his quarters did not add up to a one, but to a substantially lower quantity. Our neighbour was smarter. He had his own “paav”, which he wanted his deliveries to be measured with. But that was not to be. In his case the milkman insisted upon measuring the milk with the froth, which came naturally in the milking process. You could never win against the wily fellow – if he used his paav he delivered less and if he used your paav he still delivered less, which you discovered once the froth settled down. The cow, oblivious of the devious ways of her master, strode along delivering a seer here and half a seer there, till she was ready to go home.

Milk in the Kurien era began coming in bottles and polythene pouches. No, the polythene that modern cows eat by the roadside does not package the milk inside the cow. Milk is now processed in large dairies, which Dr Kurien seeded. Milk is collected from the doorsteps of the milkmen, organised in cooperatives, carried from the nooks and crannies of the hinterland to the processing dairies in a matter of hours, filtered, standardised and pasteurised, packaged and delivered quicker than the time it took the cow of my childhood to do one round through her multiple retail outlets. The modern milkman, on the other hand gets a fair price for his produce, the cow gets better fodder, we get better quality milk, curd, cheese and butter, all proudly produced in India at affordable prices. 

Gone are the days when one depended on imported milk powder and the poor just couldn’t think of providing the white elixir to their young ones. We have also forgotten the days when the cows were skinny, milkmen impoverished while milk would just go bad waiting to be marketed. All this while there were millions waiting and willing to buy it. Dr Kurien did indeed change the lives of millions like few others. He alone brought cheer to the millions of producers and consumers linking them through innovative cooperatives and modern dairies.

But, Dr Kurien! You also changed lives of many others – the cows do not go on their morning and evening walks, the milkman now sits at home and has almost become a paragon of virtues. Gone also are the days of endless fun from the lives of children out of the game of detective they loved to play against the shrewd milkman. But, on the whole, there is a huge surplus of good that you have done to us. The nation needs many more like you.

We will miss you Dr Kurien!

A Birthday Wish to My Wife

As years pass by of my togetherness with my wife, I continue to discover new pleasures and new meanings of happiness. Wishing a Happy Birthday to Jyotsna.

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A Happy Birthday to the anchor of my life. To the one who has given a new meaning to fulfillment  happiness and contentment. I wish the best to the woman, who raised the standards of my way of life from mere existence to one of sophisticated social mien. I wish the finest and the best that life has to offer to my wife of nearly a quarter of a century, to the beacon in my journey through life, to the mother of my children and to my soul-mate  One who would hold my hand in days of despair as if the same pain stabbed her heart too, jump with joy at my achievements as if they were her own, console me in times of distress, teach me how to bring up our children, deal with ease with relatives and friends benign and hostile. One who would be equally happy in the salary of the third pay commission and of the sixth pay commission. One who would wear a chikan kurta and a solitaire with equal aplomb and satisfaction. One who would be equally understanding in a tiny type IV flat with Spartan belongings and in large bungalow with her antique collection of high class furniture. One who would watch a 20-inch single channel television with as much glee as she watches a 50-inch plasma with today.

In a few months we complete twenty five years of togetherness on this planet, a period which undoubtedly surpasses the previous twenty five years in cheer and bliss, a period which whizzed past so quickly it has left me breathless and makes me crave for another quarter century and then yet another. They say there are seven lives a couple gets to spend with each other. I only hope that my cycle has just begun and will not end at the seventh.

Jyotsna! Wish You Many Happy Returns of the Day.

Last Name Conundrum

My parents decided in my childhood that I shall have no surname (or lastname, as the Americans call it). Little did they know how, in a flat world, it will make my life a constant struggle.

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Having lived with a last name for over a year in Facebookville, an inescapable appendage in this two-name world, I have finally recovered my pristine identity of Firstname Nolastname variety. Since facebook and several other faceless websites just wouldn't let you progress to the next "field" without filling up a last name, I had no option to assume one, my father's of course.

But after several people commented and asked whether it was the same me (!) I finally decided to challenge Lord Zuckerburg himself. That I did it when his chips (literally the stock of his company) are down and quoting below $20 is no coincidence. Rather than angering a valuable member, on whose shoulders he sell everything ranging from women's perfumes to luxury yachts, paper-clips to cat-food, he quickly succumbed and agreed to let me drop my surname. That I submitted a scanned copy of my passport, signed by a mere section officer of the passport office helped too. Imagine Zuckerburg vs the Section Officer; and who wins? The mighty Babu of the supermighty Government of India.

So friends, here I am, at your service again. The same "Shubhranshu" that you knew all along and not a stranger "Shubhranshu Verma". It is springtime once again!

DARA SINGH

Dara Singh, the Original Superman to all Indians, passed away on 12 July 2012. He has left behind an entire generation of men and women, who in their childhood, loved this man and adored him for his boundless strength. Indeed, Dara Singh was the substitute for all that we as a society and a nation, in the dismal decades of sixties and seventies, longed for - strength and courage.

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Dara Singh is dead, long live Dara Singh!

Dara Singh, the eternal superhero of our time, the object of all our childhood fantasies of the ultimate in strength and power, is no more. Even though he had passed away unnoticed into the noisy alleys of the modern era of fake heroes and animated supergiants, he remained an object of admiration in our subconscious, something our children and grandchildren will never understand.

Wasn’t Dara Singh always on the side of every child? If you fought with someone, you presumed that Dara Singh would side with you because your cause was always right. India lost the war with China, simply because our army did not deploy the ultimate war machine, Dara Singh against the foes. Wouldn’t he alone have decimated single-handedly the mighty PLA? Wouldn’t he have been an impregnable moving frontier against the marauding Chinese, their tanks and aircraft, their guns and grenades? Well, they corrected their mistake and sent Dara Singh to the front when the Pakistanis attacked us in 1965 and in 1971.

Dara Singh was the Superman, the Batman, the Spiderman all rolled into one. He was also the single-body incarnation of the Phantom, the Lothar and the King Kong. The icon of our imagination, where puny fighter like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Tyson and Sylvester Stallone would qualify for only valets of the greatest, the mighty Dara Singh. The WWE and the World Wrestling and Boxing Championships would be mere sideshows in the presence of our protector, fighter and guardian. Children of today, whose software heroes live in PS3, Wii and in Cartoon Channels would find it impossible to comprehend that a bigger hero did exist in flesh and blood, the hero of their fathers and grandfathers, one who could never be excelled or defeated, one who was larger than the combined lives of the Hulk, the Hellboy and Keanu Reeves .

Dara Singh of our imagination was not only unbeatable in strength but also in virtues and the do-good intentions. He could always be counted upon to come and vanquish your enemies (frenemies?). After all weren’t you always right and deserved his support most naturally. But, Dara Singh disappointed us all when he took up those lover-boy roles beside the demure Mumtaz! I guess every macho hero has his weaknesses too. So, I and my friends decided to forgive Dara Singh with heavy hearts. O Dara Singh! Why didn’t you wait some years more? You could have had the entire trio of Charlie’s Angels, who would not only be as beautiful but also of an equal fighting class.

Dara Singh! Now that you are gone, “the fight has gone out of our lives”.

We will miss you Dara Singh!