The Supreme Court Broom Cleans Up The Legislature

On July 3rd a bench of The Supreme Court of India decided that it was unconstitutional for  Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assembly at the state level to continue as lawmakers, and that they should be immediately barred from attending the House.

You would have thought that this was a oxymoron that a law breaker would be setting in the Assembly making laws, when he or she is convicted.However  in 1951, when Jawahar Lal Nehru was the first Prime Minister,  the lawmakers decided to include a clause,Section 8 (4) of the Representation of the People Act that allowed convicted lawmakers to continue  attending,  provided they filed an appeal  to the higher court within three months to get a stay of the conviction. As a result you had a situation where according to the Financial Times, you had 162 out of the 543 elected Members of Parliament had criminal cases against them. Similarly according to the Press Trust of India at the state legislative level you had 1,258 out of 4,032 sitting lawmaker facing criminal cases, roughly about 30 percent.

 According to the Economic Times of July 14-20,2013details of the cases against our so called "leaders" are as follows:

1460 MPs & MlAs who have declared criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits submitted against themselves.

688 MPs & MLAs who have declared serious criminal cases against themselves

162 Lok Sabha MPs who face criminal cases

1,258 MLAs from all states assemblies who face criminal cases

74% share of MLAs of 2009 Jharkhand Assembly who face criminal cases , the highest in the country

31% share of MPs & MlAs or the Bharatia Janata Party who face criminal cases

 21%share of Congress MPs &  MLAs who face criminal cases

A concern is now being raised by the politicians that frivolous cases may be filed against them in friendly courts which would lead to their disbarment. Perhaps the lawmakers will now  better appreciate how the common public feels when they are faced by intimidation by the bureaucrats and  cases linger on for decades.

Hopefully the Supreme Court broom will continue on its mission to clean up the politics of the  country.

Does Urbanisation End Discrimination ?

Two recent reads made me think again how the United States and India are similar. " The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson which won the numerous awards ,is a fascinating book which tracks a few African Americans  who migrated from America's deep south to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Most of them were bright and educated but had to flee because of a lack of opportunities and constantly fearing fearing for their lives from the whites.  The other read was a  news item in the Hindu newspaper of June 24th, which mentioned about a boy from a lower caste who had passed the entrance examination for the Indian Institute of Technology- which has a lower acceptance rate than MIT or Harvard. The article quoted him as saying  “I am the only one in my neighborhood to study this far, but no one knows that I have cleared the IIT entrance. I have not made it known in my village, as life would be made difficult for me and my family by persons from the dominant caste " In both cases the superior " caste" wanted to ensure its economic status was not threatened even if it meant resorting to life threatening violence.

The race discrimination in America did not end with the Civil War when the slaves were emancipated. It took another century for it to formally end through legislation and through non-violent means. However prior to that with the growing urban developments of manufacturing and business hubs on the Northeast, West Coast and the Midwest, the smart , talented, educated and gifted blacks were provided an opportunity  to move to the cities where they were able to live free from fear. From the early 1900's to the 1970's approximately seven million blacks moved out of the South. While not totally free from discrimination, they were able to pursue jobs and careers which helped them climb the economic ladder. The case studies from the book track the life of a doctor, a train conductor and factory worker, and how they ended up with a better life than if they had stayed on in Mississippi or Florida or in other Southern States.

If Hitler had won the war we would have witnessed a global race/caste system in place with the "Aryans" at the top.In India, centuries ago some one with a similar mind set set up a caste system which still exists today.
There is a pyramid of castes with the Brahmins ( or the priestly caste) right at the top, followed by the Kshatriyas ( rulers/warriors), Vaisyas ( traders/merchants),Sudras (unskilled worker) and the Pariah/Dalits/Harijans ( untouchables) being at the bottom of the heap. According to a National Geographic article there were about 160 million " untouchables" in India. The discrimination they faced was no less  than that of the blacks in America. They lived and to some extent still do, " in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense". This occurs despite  the fact that untouchability is banned in India's constitution.

In a pattern similar to that of the United States, partly with the equivalent of the affirmative actions implemented by the government,  the smarter of the untouchables  like the successful IIT entrant , are using education to move out of the villages  to cities.With the growing urbanization , which has picked up pace over the last two decades and is likely to accelerate, there is starting to be a gradual shift of the "untouchables" to the urban areas where  discrimination is less of an issue. This in turn is leading to a shortage of cheap labor in the rural areas, where the upper caste is now forced to work in the fields, or pay the lower caste a higher salary and treat them with respect.

In America it took another fifty years after the legislation was passed  for an African American to be elected President, although some would argue that discrimination is not totally dead. In India even though  we have had a President K R Narayanan , a Dalit from Kerala , who served in the Indian Foreign Service,  discrimination  is still a problem, particularly in the rural areas. This after almost 50 years of  independence. Hopefully now as the country goes through rapid urbanization, we will see the decline of caste discrimination.