File:Comp/PM/220417 22 Apr 2017
Mr Prime
Minister,
Greetings! Have
a great day!
Before I
proceed further I must express my helplessness in compromising with the twin
requirements of brevity and comprehensiveness while writing to somone like you.
You are the first Prime Minister that I know of who is working so hard, so
focussed and with the best interests of the nation in your mind. The only other
name I can recollect is of Sri Lal Bahadur Sastri. But unfortunately his term
was cut short and we are still to know the truth behind his mysterious death in
foreign soil.
Somebody had
rightly said that those who condemn politics as the last refuge of a scoundrel
are bound to be ruled by scoundrels. And we need not go further than our
Constitution to realise how those who had inherited power from the colonisers
let down the masses who had made tremendous sacrifices for the freedom they had
struggled for. Law makers without any prescribed qualities, qualifications or
experience, their men Fridays (popularly known as bureaucrats, who are required
to help them in decision making by collecting and collating data and
maintaining records) without any accountability but with all the scope for
manipulations and a judiciary which has the scope for making the most arbitrary
and whimsical decisions being held not only without accountability and beyond
criticism but also protected by a totally illogical and weird armour called
contempt of court, are the essential features of this Constitution in a nut
shell.With such a Constitution and laws made under it, it is no wonder that
governance in India had become synoymous with corruption and treason!
Now, I am also
aware that you have no magic wand to do all that needs to be done. But still
there can be a list of to do things arranged priority wise. And here is where
all that thrust on Swatch Bharat and Make in India, however well intented and
necessary, sound as hollow as Garibi Hatao of the 1970s.
Continued overleaf...
-2-
Changes must no
doubt begin with government administration. I do not know if you have heard
about the Independent Commission against Corruption of Hong Kong and how they
cleansed the country of corruption in the 1980s. The reality in India is terribly
worse. But nothing seems to be moving in that direction. I must say that much
more than what has been achieved by demonetisation would have been achieved by
conducting a surgical strike at corruption at the top echelons of the
bureaucracy. Your thrust on Aadhaar can also be considered quixotic given the
fact that a similar program had been discarded by much thinly populated but
economically much stronger nations like the US of A, UK and Australia on two
counts- privacy and cost. And we are a country where even after continuing with
a program like PDS ever since independence, we cannot issue ration cards
faultlessly! If you doubt my words ask the CM, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, why the
Food Security Act has not been implemented in Kerala so far!
The
implementation of the Right to Information Act should be a case study on how
laws should not be enacted only to be subverted with impunity by those very
public servants who are tasked, empowered, equipped and paid to enforce them. I
can state without an iota of doubt that had our justice delivery system been
even 10 pc as effective as it ought to be all the information commissioners at
the Central Information Commission and Kerala State Information Commission
would be spending the rest of their life behind bars after being convicted
under Sec 219 of the IPC.
That also
brings me to the fact that all crimes, with exceptions, can be considered to
begin in some government office. It starts with denial of mandatory services,
progresses through bribe and culminates with judiciary asking for proof for
demand of bribe for convicting the corrupt! You may like to recollect the case
where a lower court judge in Gujarat had issued non bailable warrants against
the then President and the then CJI after taking bribes. After the initial hue
and cry the matter ended with the apex court exonerating the judge on the
ground that he signs many documents in a day and he cannot be held guilty if
some wrong documents had been signed by him! And one is yet to know of the
results of the prosecution of the sting operators in that case for defaming the
judiciary! And what has happened to P D Dinakaran who resigned the day before
he was to be impeached? And the case where bribe money was delivered wrongly to
one judge instead of another judge with a similar name?
Continued ...
-3-
The apex court
may have illegally abrogated the National Judicial Appointment Commission Act
and one can understand your helplessness. Hoping for the day when you will have
atleast two thirds majority in the Parliament and one can work towards not only
a National Judicial Appointment Commission
but also the more important National Judicial Accountability Commission
with powers to try judges as per laws applicable to ordinary citizens and with
double the
severity in
punishments. Meanwhile what about all those quasi judicial organisations which
are as bad or worse than the information commissions and even the courts? Don’t
you think that a National Quasi Judicial Appointments Commission and a National
Quasi Judicial Accountability Commission are equally needed and feasible?
I will sign off
for now because when I start on this subject of transparency and accountabilty
in government the volume could exceed Mahabharath and Ramayan put together.
There are some blogs posted at http://raviforjustice.blogspot.in
dealing with subjects ranging from ‘Who will judge the judges?‘ to ‘Will the
army chief get justice?‘ and ‘Fraud in governance and redressal of public
grievances‘ to ‘
RTI Act-Shailesh Gandhi and Schopenhauer's Law of
Entropy‘ and ‘
RTIA-Exposing the Idiots and Traitors amoung Public
Servants‘ to ‘ For whom the Soldiers
sacrifice their Lives And Lifes…‘. You may like to peruse them.
To conclude, I
only hope that this letter will be put up to you. But I also know that I can
get through to you without any babus coming between us. So please do not be
surprised if I have to post this as a blog and tweet the URL to you.
Jai Hind!
Regards and
best wishes,
(P M Ravindran)
Sri Narendra Damodardas Modi
Prime Minister
7, Race Course Road, New Delhi
Note: This has been forwarded to Dept of Justice by the PMO. Its status can be checked at www.pgportal.gov.in/ViewStatus.aspx by entering registration number as PMOPG/D/2017/0195841
No comments:
Post a Comment