Dinesh_Malhotra
Skilled
I can only hope, this whole political menace ends someday.
check the quote..
Source
IBNLive : Sagarika Ghose's Blog : No fear of the law
check the quote..
Shiv Sena attack on IBN shows the police are non existent in daily lives.
After the Shiv Sena's attack on the offices of IBN7 and IBN Lokmat, email messages, smses and phone calls have been pouring in from viewers and well wishers. All have expressed heartwarming solidarity with the IBN team and the press in general. They say we must carry on with the IBN brand of fearless reportage and must never give in to those who intimidate and cause physical harm. There are also many viewers who have sent out a cautionary message, urging us not to report on the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navniram Sena, not to give them the oxygen of publicity or the "hype" that the media customarily does, as it is such hype, they believe, that contributes to the larger than life image that the Sena has come to acquire.
In all the messages I have received so far, I have been struck by a single unifying trend: no one, but no one has mentioned the role of the police. People have said the Shiv Sena are thugs, some have said the media is needlessly provocative, others say civil society is indifferent, but no one has seen fit to even comment on where the police was, why the police was unable to act quickly enough, indeed why in Mumbai, city of the infamous "encounter cops", there is simply no fear of the police or fear of the law. Police? Police who? Police where?
IBN and the Shiv Sena is only a small story in a much larger picture. India is a 21st century democracy and an aspiring 21st century economy, with no visible law enforcement machinery, no fear of the law, and total helplessness and powerless of the police when it comes to dealing with political goons. We are a country without an effective police, a state without the capability to enforce the law. And the state's incapacity to enforce the law will soon intrude into every sphere of our daily lives, if the state does not wake up fast.
Lets leave aside the IBN story for a minute and look at a broader social trend that has emerged in our urban areas and even in rural centres. A class of super rich, lawless, thuggish plutocrats, with their personal armed guards, their vast mansions, their total secession from any form of "public" participation or "public" institutions is coming to dominate post-liberalisation, globalizing India. They are like little sheikhdoms on their own-each living in his fortified castle with his own private militia. Manu Sharma and Vikas Yadav are only the tip of the ice berg of the growing class of criminally-inclined spoilt brats with their fleets of cars, their caches of weapons and their daddy's connections, for whom India is a free-for all playground where they will act, drive, drive, behave, flout, abuse in a manner that in any other country would be considered criminally anti-social behaviour.
But the criminally spoilt mama's boys and papa's boys in their BMWs and their Range Rovers care two hoots for the laws of democratic India. Why should Sunil Raut, brother of the Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, who is accused by the police of masterminding the attacks on IBN care about the police? His brother's a Lok Sabha MP, isn't he? He'll get him off the law. Why should Manu Sharma not have hesitated even once before pulling out a trigger and killing Jessica Lal? Why, because daddy's an important man and nothing will ever happen to him.
A killer generation of spoilt brat law abusers has now reached adulthood in India. Many of them are born of hard working parents who may have slogged up the social ladder by fair means or foul but now having born into riches and privilege they have nothing but contempt for the processes that keep alive Indian democracy. They have born to believe they are superior, born to believe no law can touch them and born to believe that their grotesque machismo and swagger will impress average citizens into numbed deference. The killer generation is a generation to beware of in the new India. Every film star's son who believes its his god given right to be star, every politician's son or daughter who believes its his god given right to command the adulation of the masses, every business tycoon's son who has experienced none of the pain of building a business but has only experienced the gain, each of these members of the spoilt brat army (of course there are many honourable exceptions) seems to be slowly chipping away at the foundations that have built our nation, by insisting that in their very existence, that in their birth lies their superhuman status, their immense sense of entitlement and a status above the law.
Of course the Shiv Sena's brand of political violence is different. The Shiv Sena has attacked and terrorized Mumbai with total fearlessness of the police for decades. But today a Shiv-Sena type fearlessness of police can be seen in the brazen lawless conduct of the rich and the powerful in the roads and public spaces of every city-most of all in Delhi. Individuals can pullout guns and shoot other over parking disputes, a young girl can get shot on a highway while she's returning from work, a police officer's son can rape and murder a young woman, spoilt brats can move from posh bar to glittering nightclub with a posse of armed guards, all of it with total fearlessness of the police.
The law has become an absurdity in our national life-either imposed vengefully to settle scores or ignored and overthrown in cases where justice is crying out to be done. The custodial deaths, the torture, the wrongful detentions, the encounter killings are only the flip side of a police force that simply does not exist in other areas of society. The cowering constable trembling with fear at booking a rich man's son or a politician's relative is a pathetic creature who has no equivalent anywhere in the world. On the other hand, the gleefully mocking constable eager to book celebrities and make statements to the media about a "high profile" catch, is his alter ego. Both stereotypes ensure that there is no need to take the police seriously.
And yet India is blessed with some of the most exemplary police officers-upright and tough men and women who have worked desperately hard to make the force function at least with some semblance of credibility. This is a land which has produced policemen like Hemant Karkare, Tukaram Ombale, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar, the men who fought terrorism armed with nothing but raw courage and mighty hearts. as we remember them on 26/11, we need to also direct our attention to the condition of the police force that they were part of, a force which across the country has been so compromised and so weakened that it no longer stands as the sentinel of democracy. Today in our daily lives there is not only no fear of the law but the conviction that even if caught, connections and wealth will ensure an easy passage. As Manmohan Singh meets Obama this week in Washington, perhaps he can apprise him of this unique feature of India: a country of a billion which exists in absentia of a Tough neutral and alert police. What happens when a nation exists in absentia of the police? We have to forget about dissent and opposition, we have to keep our heads down and ignore the gross violations of democratic behaviour, we have to only proliferate a safe and comfortable "entertainment culture" where a Bollywood and soap opera machine crowds out all thought, free speech and robust challenge.
Nikhil Wagle and Kumar Ketkar are two of the bravest journalists I know--tough, uncompromising, fine upholders of the great traditions of Indian journalism where editors are courageous and idealistic. It is no wonder that the Shiv Sena should repeatedly attack them. After all, why bother to attack those proliferating feel good entertainment journalism? It is precisely these two fine exemplars of a tough no nonsense press that the Shiv Sena wants to destroy. It is no wonder that it is Ketkar and Wagle, individuals of whom every Maharashtrian should be proud, who have been repeatedly attacked, Ketkar's house was stoned, Wagle has been injured in the past, and there existed no law, no law enforcement to create and uphold the universe of free speech.
No wonder in all the email messages I have received from viewers about the attack by the Shiv Sena-kind caring and heartful messages-there has not been a single message or a single line uttered about the police or the law or fear of the law or how can the law be overthrown. There is mention of the media, the sena, the Mumbaikar, but we don't even mention the P word anymore. P is for police, p is for passé.
Source
IBNLive : Sagarika Ghose's Blog : No fear of the law
