PRABHAKAR TIMBLE
None can forget the trailblazing Hindi cinema ‘Deewaar’, the stunningly successful film which opens up with a trade unionist committed to the workers cause. He is coerced by the businessman who threatens to eliminate his wife and two sons. Later, the henchmen of the business tycoon succeed to poison the workers against the union leader. For the betrayal, the workers kidnap his soon and tattoo his arm with the words “ merÄ bÄp chor hai” (my father is a thief). This flashed my mind on reading the resolve of the central government to label an individual as ‘terrorist’ through the amendment to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Bill 2019. The amendment gives this blanket power to the executive without following any judicial process whatsoever. The remedy available to the smeared person is a review application before the central government and a Committee constituted by the same government will do the appraisal. Later, the TV media will be pleased to bake, roast and feast on the individual like a tiger getting his prey. Social censure and ostracism of the individual and the family is the minimum assured return on this terrorist docket of the government.
A letter written by intellectuals and public thinkers to the Prime Minister expressing agony and pain at the mob lynching is receiving counter-attack from organizations espousing the right-wing political ideology with demands that the intellectuals be charged with sedition. The contempt with which the right-wing brigade hold intellectuals for their secular and democratic moorings is an open secret. The current central government has the patent to label social activists as ‘urban naxal’ and malign those who have anti-establishment stance. Now, with the brute majority in Parliament, the government has extracted the power to place the cap of terrorist on people. In civilized democratic societies, only the courts should have such power and more particularly when an individual is sought to be condemned as terrorist. This is too serious an issue to be bestowed in the domain of the political and administrative executive.
When all was fine with the Right to Information Act, the government flattened the potent law by tinkering with the periphery. By an amendment to Section 13 and 16, the term of office, salaries and other conditions of service of the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and the Information Commissioners (ICs) at the Centre and State level will be determined by the central government. The law as it existed provided a fixed tenure of five years and the emoluments to the office were clearly stipulated. Now, it would be as fixed by the government from time to time. There is no logic for this alteration except that it seeks to threaten the autonomy and independence of the incumbents to the office. The argument that the CIC and SIC are statutory and not constitutional authorities is correct but this is no ground for erasing the autonomy and public confidence in the institution as it existed. If the government desires to modify the explicit terms as they exist under the law, then the fresh terms could have been specifically stated instead of keeping the same vague and undecided. The amendment is bad because what was clearly stated will now stay hidden leading to unilateral decisions. The amendment disturbs the healthy federal principle through centralization of power by entering the domain of SICs. Any renovation should add more independence and step up public confidence rather than the likelihood of exactly the opposite in respect of the current amendment.
It is true that the central government did not propose any amendment to RTI on material aspects. That’s the BJP legacy of tinkering with the periphery to puncture the efficacy of the law. To recollect, it was the master brain, the so-called ‘Chanakya neeti’ as always referred to by admirers of the then Goa BJP Chief Minister which excluded Goa from the jurisdiction of the Pune Bench of National Green Tribunal (NGT) through an order issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in August, 2017. This was to put the activists and litigants in grave inconvenience. From a distance of 450 km, the NGT was put 1,872 km away just to make access costly and problematic. However, the Goa Bench of the Mumbai High Court took the matter suo motu and quashed the notification.
It is interesting to note the observation of the High Court --“If the NGT in Pune has so very many cases from Goa, it is not because or not just because, the people of Goa are litigious; if true, that may only speak of their continued faith in the legal system. It is because they perceive that there is something of value here to protect. The Court went further to spot that “This is an extraordinary state, in more ways than one, perhaps more than anywhere else, sky, sea and earth meet. From horizon to horizon, it is a land of abundant richness -- it is still a mostly liberal land. It is a kind and gentle land, of a kind and gentle people”. Politicians who castigate environmentalists and activists need to underscore this.
The amendments to the RTI and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) laws are indicators that the BJP government is in haste to develop a model of opaque democracy. The message is that they have everything to hide except their chests championing fake nationalism to hoodwink the gullible amongst the majority. The power to declare people as ‘terrorist’ is a political missile coated with nuclear molecules.
The BJP is strengthening India’s democratic train on the track of liberal economics and free economy, which is needed and acceptable. However, if this is accompanied with shackled politics and opaque governance, the erosion of democracy and justice is fait accompli.
