‘All depends on persons Modi will choose. He must not take any tainted person, not worry about Oppn here, and make CMs partners in governing India’

In this Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7 with The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, former Union minister Arun Shourie talks about the tasks for the new government, the Gujarat CM’s style of working, the “understanding” that Modi could reach with the RSS and the fall in stature of the PMO

In this Walk the Talk on NDTV 24×7 with The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, former Union minister Arun Shourie talks about the tasks for the new government, the Gujarat CM’s style of working, the “understanding” that Modi could reach with the RSS and the fall in stature of the PMO.

These polls are being described as the most significant elections in India’s history although, you will agree, every election in India is called that.
That and, in 1977, when the Emergency was being voted upon. Yes, so everything is significant

Everything is significant, except people like us can say, ‘Hamare time mein zyaada important tha (Things were more important during our days)’. But this election is different in the sense that you might see a change of not just parties or a coalition, but a change of character, temperament, style, ideology.
There will be a change in the sense that it is a presidential election… The people, local candidates mattered a lot, the parties mattered a lot. But this time, only one figure… His critics have made him (that), and the nature of Modi’s own campaign…

Either vote for or against Narendra Modi.
That’s the issue. And naturally, Modi is a very different person from Dr Manmohan Singh and others whom we have seen. Therefore, the style of governance will completely change. I think it’ll be much more centred around the prime minister’s office, the Cabinet Secretariat — 30 secretaries appointed directly by the prime minister — and the government run through them.

I had written in 2007, the day before the results in Gujarat, that if Modi wins, and I had sort of stuck my neck out, that he will not defer to the RSS as, say, Atal Bihari Vajpayee or L K Advani did.
I think Vajpayee did not defer, but he was able to manage. In Modi’s case, I think, there will be a clear understanding and, if the understanding works, the RSS can monitor the conduct of individual members of the BJP who become MPs or ministers and leave policy formation to the government. I think that is a good division of labour. Probably Modi will ensure that.

You also might see over-correction. But the fact is that the prime minister’s office needs to have its — for want of a better word in English — iqbal restored.
Yes, absolutely

To what do you ascribe this fall in stature of the PMO?
Actually to the prime minister himself. The authority of the prime minister of India is so enormous, and I have always felt that this business of blaming Sonia Gandhi for everything — ‘Woh kara rahi hain, usko main rok raha hoon (She is asking me to do this, I’m stopping it)’ — is just not the case. I cannot imagine her being so interested in the details, and therefore, it is the prime minister. And, in any case, there was the RSS and Vajpayee. You could see the RSS was more powerful than Sonia Gandhi. But Vajpayee insulated the government.

When the RSS wanted Brajesh Mishra and N K Singh removed, Vajpayee said, ‘Take my head, they stay on with me’.
And remember, everybody would shout against Yashwant Sinha, his policies. But it was Vajpayee who always stood by him. So prime minister’s office is central, it has to be strengthened, but many more things have to be done.

Because our governance is in shambles.
Absolutely, from top to down. Arvind Datar, the famous lawyer and an authority on income tax in India, was saying that several multinational companies have been served notices. A company has a factory in Chennai, they have exported, and suddenly the income tax fellow says, ‘No no, where is the export form?’. Actually, he has seen the export forms, he has done the audit for one month of that company, and says, ‘No, these are not exports. Foreign exchange has come in, Rs 20,000 crore has come in, so it’s exports’. He says, ‘No, I say these are inter-state sales, so you pay such-and-such amount’. And he (Datar) was telling me about a case he’s handling in which the company has said, ‘We are not investing in India, we are moving to Vietnam’. So if you are giving targets to income tax officers, they will just slap notices and this is the consequence.
On the other side, you have the Ministry of Commerce saying, ‘100 per cent FDI! 80 per cent FDI!’. Who’s going to come? Things have to be done from top to bottom, because one of the consequences of Dr Manmohan Singh abdicating his authority was that every single person became a government on his own.

And every man for himself. In the sense that, ‘Pata nahi kal kya hoga (who knows what may happen tomorrow)’.
Yes, absolutely. In my own case, Hindustan Zinc, your paper published that an inquiry was started.

The Supreme Court has set it aside, the high court has set it aside.
The CBI’s seniormost people said there is no inquiry, but one SP and DSP based in Jodhpur started an inquiry. And when they came here, they talked to the officer, they talked to me, they talked to two officers, we asked them what is the complaint. They said, ‘There was no written complaint, we got the information orally’.

I remember when economic reforms first started in ‘91, I was coming from overseas and started chatting with Customs people. I said, ‘Kya kar rahe ho aap? Now things are very relaxed’. He said, ‘No, we are not following any of the new orders, we are checking everybody because these two fellows, Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, want to sell India’s interests, destroy our industry, and give it all to multinationals. We will never let this happen’. So this is a country of self-appointed freedom fighters.
That is one point. The second is… Avinash Prasad, a big consultant based in the UK, said the task of the new government is going to be to break India’s anti-growth lobby. The enemies of change.

Would you define that lobby?
They are people who imagine the difficulties that change would bring about.

One is the povertarian, who says growth is bad.
‘Growth is bad’, secondly, ‘inequality will increase’. You make a big dam, there’ll be families that have to be relocated. It’s one point to have good rehabilitation relief policies, but what happens in India is you start focusing only on the three families which have not got housing as yet. And you say the whole thing is bad. The activists do it, they are issue-hunting. Media falls for those activists. So any negative stance in India gets a lot of play. Therefore, it’s the income tax officer, the lower courts, a whole network that is impeding growth.

I heard a former general say the other day that there’s a nuclear plant coming up in Haryana. ‘A canal’s water will be used to cool it and then the water will irrigate the fields, it will carry radiation’. This is almost like Mani Ram Bagri in the ‘60s saying, ‘Bhakra Nangal mein paani mein se bijli nikali, ab gehoon kya paida hoga (Electricity has been taken out of Bhakra Nangal waters, what wheat can it irrigate now)?’. These things go unquestioned now.
Indira Gandhi said in 1983 in Parliament that one of the great breakthroughs for India’s atomic programme was the uranium finds in Andhra Pradesh. We have not been able to take one teaspoon out of it.

I will admit that the media is a lot to blame in this. We too don’t want to be confused with facts… ‘Meri theory hai, mujhe khabar mil gayi hai, confuse na karo (This is my theory, I have the information, please don’t confuse me)’. If the telecom scam was 4.4 per cent of India’s GDP, the price of that spectrum in 2007, so be it.
I think there are very difficult decisions to be taken, which Modi would have to use all his reputation to do. I was looking at these debt figures in Pranab Mukherjee’s time… In the next five years, you know how much we have to repay? Almost three times what we have been repaying. So what will you do on expenditure, on subsidies, because you can’t go on cutting capital expenditure as has happened. You can’t just go on postponing expenditure to April from March and show that my deficit is okay.

One good thing has happened, in the middle of all this. At least we have an RBI governor now who has a calming presence.
There is faith that there is professionalism in policy formulation. Therefore I was distressed that pebbles are being thrown at him by maybe prospective ministers. Meghnad Desai was right in saying, ‘You remove Raghuram Rajan, not one penny of foreign direct investment will come in’. People will not have faith that this is going to be a professionally run country, even in monetary policy, which has always been insulated from political winds. So Modi will have a lot of disciplining to do, other ministers, finance, defence… You know better than anybody else what the condition of civil-military relations is, what A K Antony’s modesty has cost the country.

I call Antony the Bapu Nadkarni of politics. Bapu Nadkarni was a cricketer who holds a world record that will never be broken — 22 consecutive maiden overs. His figures were, I think, 24 overs, 23 maidens, one run and no wicket. He would not let anyone make runs, nor get them out. When batting, he wouldn’t get out, nor score runs.
But there is another feature which our common friend Ajai Shukla told me about… I hope I remember the figure correctly, 88 per cent is revenue expenditure of the Army’s budget. Only 12 per cent is for new acquisitions and weapons and capital improvement. So is this the way to defend the country?

The answer to everything has been to pass the buck on to a committee. Either it’s the GoM, or an e-GoM, or there is one more regulator…
The head of SEBI, he gave me a figure. Do you know how many regulators there are for the economy? Thirty-six. In the financial sector alone, there are nine. In one single sector, education, there are 13 regulators.

That’s why we have such wonderful higher education.
With these 13 regulators, the good colleges are not being allowed to function, and you have a situation in which Rayalaseema University alone in two years gave 2,600 PhDs. Secondly, 23 universities in Andhra Pradesh admitted in five years 38,000 PhD candidates and gave PhDs to half of them.

I think it was Agra University or one of these old universities in UP which gave a PhD on ‘Hindi Sahitya mein lote ka mahatva’. You just have to have the imagination.
In many cases, you don’t even have to have that… And, you know, we are talking of governance at this (top) level. At the bottom, we just don’t understand what governance has become. That’s why the appeal of AAP (Aam Aadmi Party). I’ll give you an instance. We were sitting in the evening, and the person downstairs, he told me a policeman has come. I ran down, and he asked if Anita Shourie lived there. I said, ‘Yes, she is my wife, she is unwell, so she is upstairs’. He said that she is a proclaimed absconder.
I asked why. (He said) that summons were served but there was no acceptance, so now a non-bailable warrant had been issued against her. He said if she didn’t appear in a Faridabad court by 11 am the next day, she would be imprisoned for five years. I ran to Faridabad. There was a young magistrate sitting there, so I asked her, ‘Madam, you issued this, but why?’. She said, ‘Our register shows that five times the summons were served’. I said, that didn’t happen, nobody came. And then somebody said, sometimes people do not go and just write in the register that summons were not accepted. But why was it served? She said, ‘You built an illegal farmhouse’. I said, ‘We’ve not built any farmhouse’. She said, ‘You don’t own such-and-such plot?’. I said we owned it but sold it five years ago because we needed the money to build a house near Pune. The person standing there happened to be the person appearing as the prosecutor. He said, ‘Yes, they have not built the house, they don’t even own the plot’. But she said, ‘Now the process has started, your wife has to appear at the next hearing’. She was suffering, so two of us had to hold her and take her there. The magistrate saw her condition, said, ‘Okay, I’ll give bail but only till the next hearing because I may be transferred’.
Now Anita is on bail for a summons which was not served, which was issued for a house that we have not built, on a plot which we don’t own. But I keep going to Faridabad.

That’s why people are so angry.
Angry, and therefore a great opportunity for Modi, but one which will require implementation from top to bottom.

He’ll need a lot more talent, my apologies, than what the BJP has right now.
Well, that’s true. If you look at the candidates from political classes as a whole — not (just) from a party — they are the same as they were last time.

Or their children.
And you have to make a government out of this. There was this wonderful couplet, by Anand Narain Mulla. He has written a book on Muslim personal law and he writes shayari also. He said, Dil qaidi ka behlane ko…

To comfort the prisoner.
To give solace to the prisoner… Darbaan badalte jaate hain.

The guards keep changing.
So that should not happen. The fact that all hope has come to rest on Modi is a great responsibility for him… Naturally, he would require, as you said, a lot of talent. As he has mobilised for the elections, he will have to mobilise for the government.

And you get the sense that the process has started?
I suppose, in a preliminary way, some lists would have been done, some notes made. But probably everything has got swept aside because of the campaign.

He has surprised everybody with his energy.
With energy, focus. A good way to look at it is to see, in retrospect, that all manufactured apprehensions — ‘other BJP leaders will not let him come’, ‘he does not have appeal outside Gujarat’, ‘the Congress will do some trick’ — have fallen aside.

‘He’s not a Brahmin’.
Yes, anything, saying he is a chaiwallah. Mani Shankar Aiyar only made him famous.

You and Mani Shankar went to the same college, at the same time.
We were in the same class. His great achievement in life is that he got, I think, 4 per cent (marks) more than me in his exam.

So Modi needs talent.
Talent, and also he needs the perseverance he has shown. Not GoMs and so on. What his style is, he makes everyone who is concerned sit together. Let’s say coal has to be solved, everybody concerned must sit on the table, discuss it thoroughly for eight hours. Decisions are taken there and then. Coal secretaries are asked what they need, finance what they need, commerce… it is done there and then. Now report back (in) the next meeting, one month from now.

If you were to give Modi a to-do list and a not-to-do list, what are the three things you will put on each one?
Find persons. Everything depends on the persons you will choose. No appointment is unimportant, because suddenly irrigation may become important, power may become important, mines and coals may become important. Second, please watch the conduct of everybody because everybody will be watching. Third, please realise how difficult the situation today is, with the economy and with national security. China, which is doing well, is a threat to India. Similarly, with the Americans going out of Afghanistan, in a sense in defeat, Pakistan acquiring influence there has only one way to deal with its militants — deflect them back into India. Also, don’t worry too much about the leaders of opposition here, make the chief ministers of India your partners in governing India. Panditji (Jawaharlal Nehru), in the most difficult circumstances, at the height of the Chinese war, would write a fortnightly letter to each chief minister, explaining to them the general context of policy.

And the three ‘not-to-do’s’.
Do not take a single tainted or incompetent person in your government. Because, as they say, a single chain is as strong as its weakest link. Follow up every order that you have given. This is not Ahmedabad, this is Delhi. This is a Mayanagri. One more thing to avoid. I have seen in Rajiv Gandhi’s case, and other cases, they thought that because they are managing Parliament, they are managing the situation. Not the case.

Transcribed by Hansika Chopra

Correction: In an earlier version the reference to Anand Narain Mulla incorrectly appeared as “a mullah in Allahabad”. The error is regretted

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/all-depends-on-persons-modi-will-choose-he-must-not-take-any-tainted-person-not-worry-about-oppn-here-and-make-cms-partners-in-governing-india/99/

Rescued from the abyss

Rescued from the abyss

Arun Shourie, Tuesday, August 22, 2006

In the first of a three-part analysis of the Indo-US nuclear deal, Arun Shourie argues that credibility has passed from the political class to professionals and entrepreneurs. And that the prime minister was wise to engage with the scientists’ misgivings

The prime minister’s statement in the Rajya Sabha on 17 August was a triumph for him – after months and months of seeming to be dragged along, he stood up. He spoke for the country. He drew a line.

And it was equally a triumph for all who have led the campaign to alert the country to the abyss into which we were being pulled. Leading defence analysts like Bharat Karnad and Brahma Chellaney; Yashwant Sinha from the BJP; Digvijay Singh from the JD(U); Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechurry from the CPI(M); and several others deserve the country’s gratitude for their unremitting labours in this regard. It is after a very long time that a public campaign has had a salutary outcome.

The most influential voice, of course, has been that of the scientists. And in that lies an important lesson which transcends the nuclear deal. They are the ones who have over the decades built our nuclear capability. They are the ones who know. That is why what they had to say on the nuclear deal just could not be ignored.

But their voice also carried greater weight because they are professionals. And in that lies a lesson. When Siachin is at stake, were the retired Army Chiefs to speak up, their message would count for more than anything anyone else could say. When reforms get blocked, if entrepreneurs who have built empires out of nothing, who have brought prosperity to millions, were to speak up; when institutions of excellence like the IITs and IIMs are sought to be shackled and stuffed with mediocres, were educationists to get together and speak up, were the alumni of these institutions — alumni who, after all, have changed the world’s perception of India, and India’s perception of itself — to detail the consequences, the wrecker’s hand would be stemmed.

Credibility has passed - from the political class to professionals and entrepreneurs. This is what the immense impact that the scientists have had this time round brings out dramatically. In a word, professionals should exercise the authority that has fallen to them, and speak up on issues that are their specialty. When they neglect to do so, they fail the country.

The nuclear issue has been exceptional in another respect also, and in that it holds a lesson for the media, at least for some in the media. This is one of the very, very few issues on which, and after a long time, well-reasoned, well-documented arguments have been carried by the print media - arguments both pro and con.

But some at least in the media must have been embarrassed by what the prime minister has now said. For on every particular, his statement was an acknowledgment that the apprehensions which have been expressed were valid about the direction in which Americans were taking our Government. Were some of our papers and reporters to look back on how much trust they placed on “backgrounders” and “briefings”, they would squirm. They were used to insinuate constructions which the prime minister has himself decisively put down.

Look at the benign interpretations they read into the House and Senate Bills and what the prime minister has now acknowledged about the real import of their provisions. Look at the way they greeted the “overwhelming vote” by which the Bill passed the US House of Representatives, and how the margin was projected as a victory — not just of the Bush Administration, but also of Indian diplomacy – when the overwhelming margin simply reflected the fact that, so many new conditions having been added to the Bill, the overwhelming proportion of legislators felt it would now overwhelmingly advance US’ objectives, and sink our autonomy.

“Amendments defeated”, some of our papers proclaimed and led readers to believe that, as this had happened, the Section binding India to assist US efforts in regard to Iran, the Section envisaging an India with a foreign policy “congruent to” that of the US were out. Readers were not told that, in fact, these Sections were very much a part of the main Bill, and, therefore, remained — amendments or no amendments.

The lesson thus is: the more contentious the issue, the more it has become a matter of prestige for a Government, the more wary

we should be of “backgrounders” and briefings.

Lessons for governments

There are lessons for Government also. The prime minister has spoken, he has spoken unambiguously. But he has spoken at last. It is to his credit that among the propositions he has now stated unambiguously are ones that can break the deal. But that he delayed articulating in public an unambiguous position in regard to them for so long now means that his interlocutors will conclude that the Government has gone back on what it was leading them to believe, that it has done so as it has had to succumb to pressures at home.

After all, several of the pronouncements had been ambiguous in the extreme. Thus, while answering a question in the Lok Sabha on 26 July, 2006, the PM said, “We will never compromise in a manner which is not consistent with the July 18 joint statement.” On the one side, it meant that, so as not to be surprised into surrender, every concerned person here must decipher which manner of compromise, and which particular compromises, would, in the view of Government, be consistent with the July 18 joint statement! To the US negotiators such statements would have signaled that our Government was going to be more flexible than they have now found it can be.

There were ambiguities even on the most consequential operational aspects. We do not wish to place any encumbrances on our Fast Breeder programme, the prime minister told Parliament on 7 March, 2006. In the next sentence, he said, however, that we have decided to place all future civilian thermal power reactors and breeder reactors under safeguards. Then that the fast Breeder Test Reactor and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor would remain outside safeguards. Yet, immediately after that again that future civilian thermal power reactors and civilian Fast Breeder Reactors would be placed under safeguards. There always are ways to pare such statements and show them to be harmonious. But, just as easily, others can spot gaps through which to drive bargains.

Even when “unambiguous statements” were made, they were in fact empty vessels into which anything could be poured. To every apprehension, the answer used to be the bland assertion, “Nothing will be done that violates the 18 July joint statement.” But that sudden scripture was a general statement of intent, an empty vessel into which anything could be, and was being poured. Who, upon reading that general statement, could have detected that, through it, India had undertaken to close down, within four years, the recently renovated CIRUS reactor? This is one of the two research reactors that have been producing weapons grade plutonium (the other one is Dhruva). In fact, it has hitherto been supplying one-third of the fissile materials that we use for our weapons programme. Did anyone going through the 18 July statement deduce that such a critical reactor will be closed down as a consequence? And there is the related question: in view what that reactor has been yielding for our weapons programme, how candid was the prime minister when he told the Lok Sabha on 10 March 2006, “Both CIRUS and Apsara(whose core Government has agreed to shift out of the Bhabha complex) are NOT related to our strategic programme...”?

Moreover, as has been pointed out, the Government has pledged to close down this reactor in spite of our not having a reactor to replace what it has been supplying for our weapons-programme. And it has agreed to do so, in spite of the fact that, as Bharat Karnad has pointed out in The Asian Age (14 June, 2006), the Americans themselves have not been able to establish, even to their satisfaction, that we had violated any treaty obligation in regard to the use of materials from this reactor. US Undersecretary of State, Robert Joseph told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 2 November, 2005, that whether India had “illegally” used the CIRUS reactor for military purposes was still “inconclusive owing to the uncertainty as to whether US-supplied heavy water contributed to the production of plutonium used for the 1974 device.”

Specious arguments

And the case for postponing definiteness was being advanced by specious arguments. “The House and Senate Bill are just interim steps in the US legislative process,” we were told. “Let us wait for the final outcome.” “The US and Indian legislative processes are different,” we were told. “India is not bound by laws passed by the US Congress,” we were told, with much posturing of “standing firm”, of defiance. But the American President is bound by what the American Congress passes! How could he be expected to enter into an agreement with India which went contrary to the law that the US Congress had passed?

It is precisely because the legislative process, etc. are different in the US than they are in India that there was the utmost reason to speak up in time. In India, the power to enter into international agreements and treaties rests solely with the Executive. Parliament may discuss them, but it can do nothing about them - short of throwing out the Government, and the next Government repudiating them. But even that would be done by the Government on its own authority, not by Parliament. But in the US, the Senate has the ultimate power to ratify or reject international treaties and agreements that the US President may enter into or canvass. The League of Nations was in some ways the brainchild of President Wilson. The Senate threw out the agreement he had worked so hard to secure. The same thing happened recently in regard to the CTBT. As Dr P C Alexander reminded the Rajya Sabha during the debate, for three years President Clinton twisted the arm of many a Government to sign up on the CTBT. His own Senate threw out the very treaty that he had compelled others to sign. In a word, there has been every reason to speak up early, to speak unambiguously, to speak unambiguously in public so that no one in the US could be in doubt about what India will accept and what it will not. To wait till “the final outcome becomes available” would be to close all options.

The second lesson for governments engaged in such a far-reaching venture is: a leader must not let such a deal become a matter of personal prestige. He may well choose to sacrifice his post and government on an issue. But that because he regards the issue as vital for the country, or because he wants to make clear to those pushing him around where they get off. Never because he has allowed his personal prestige to get mixed up with the issue. The moment an issue becomes a matter of personal prestige for a ruler, others can wring one concession after another knowing that the ruler, so committed to seeing the matter through, will himself arrange that favourable constructions are put on those concessions.

Third, there is a lesson from the Dabhol agreement. At that time also, that agreement with Enron was being projected as being vital for Indo-American relations. It was being projected as being vital to sustain investor interest in India. As in the ensuing months its consequences became apparent, as the Maharashtra Electricity Board was pushed towards bankruptcy, that very agreement became a cause for the souring of relations and perceptions. Indians came to see Americans as ones who were out to exploit the country. Americans came to see in the fate of Dabhol yet another example of Indians not living up to an agreement.

The nuclear deal is being translated into concrete specifics in the Senate and House Bills. These, as we shall see, are iniquitous in the extreme. In these circumstances, to make the deal the test and symbol of improved Indo-US relations is to inject the vinegar that will sour relations again.

Nor is it ever a good defence, “But you were prepared to do the same thing. Does Talbot not say that Jaswant Singh was prepared to sign on the CTBT?”

Such arguments are silly on their face. Even if India had signed the CTBT, that would have had no consequence at all - the CTBT cannot come into effect unless 40 countries sign it, including US, China, Pakistan, etc. The US Senate has already thrown the treaty out. Even if we had signed the treaty, and even if it had come into force, our options would not be shut in perpetuity, for the CTBT has a clause by which a country can withdraw from it on grounds of “supreme national interest”. In the US Bills we are cabined “in perpetuity”. There is no circumstance at all, as we shall soon see, in which we can, for instance, resume tests.

Specifics apart, there is a fundamental flaw in the “But you were going to do the same thing” alibi. Assume for a moment, that some previous government would have inflicted some grave harm on the country. How does that entitle a successor government to take or extend that ruinous step?

In a word, what is done by a government has to be assessed and defended on merits. And it is this – what was being done in the wake of the general statement of 18 July — which had come to cause the gravest apprehensions.

(To be continued)

Lethal Custodians

Arun Shourie

Things work at two levels in India, that of paper and that of fact. On paper, for instance, we have section 167 of the Indian Penal Code under which a public servant is to be hauled up for preparing a false document; we have section 192 of the same code under which the punishment for fabricating evidence that leads to conviction for murder is the same as for murder itself; indeed, on paper, we have the entire Criminal Procedure Code which provides safeguard after safeguard for the accused. On paper we have sections 25 to 27 of the Indian Evidence Act which state that no confession made to a police officer shall be used as proof against a person unless it has been made in the immediate presence of a magistrate. On paper we have Article 20(3) of the Constitution which decrees that no one can be compelled to testify against himself.

And if you read commentaries on these sections and Articles or the judgements in which they figure, you will find them becoming more and more liberal, more and more esoteric with each passing year.

That is what is on paper. In practice we have the police lockup. With the help of some of our correspondents, I have surveyed 45 police custody deaths that occurred during the last year in seven states and Delhi. Several states-even UP, and Bihar -- could not be covered for reasons to which I shall return in a moment. Even so the patterns are so uniform one death to another, from one state to another, that generalisations are possible.

First, the victims are invariably poor. You can decide for yourself whether this is so because the well-to-do do not commit crime in India; or, if they do, because they are not hauled in; or, if they are hauled in, because they are not interrogated vigorously (and in that too whether that is so because they confess more readily or because the police feel that vigour in such cases is liable to become public knowledge); or, finally, if they too are questioned just as vigorously as the poor, it is just that they are a hardier lot and can survive torture more cheerfully. In any event, the custody -- literally, the "guardianship", "care", "safe-keeping" of the police is fatal only for the poor.

Second, several of them seem to have been hauled in on no charge at all. Latoor Singh, a well respected Harijan of Hodal, the last Haryana township on the Delhi-Agra road, landed in police custody because he got into a heated argument with the SDM about the construction of a Harijan chaupal. Next, the police said, his body was found in a well. Outraged, the people gheraoed the police station. Police opened fire, killing two. Gangu, a Bawaria of villace Dehina in Mahendragarh district in Haryana was picked up, not because hee was wanted in a crime, but because the police could not locate the Bawaria they were looking for and thought that the Bawaria, sitting then at the village bus stand, must know where the other fellow is. That was on November 1, 1979. By November 5 he was dead. (His wife Misarli, who used to take him food every day, and was told on November 5 that Gangu had died, filed a private complaint, and sent letters to the Prime Minister, Home Minister etc., the usual lot. On January 23, two days before her complaint was to come up for hearing, a police party came to her house, dragged her out and shot her at point blank range). And so on.

Hauling a person in without "arresting" him and without registering a charge has become common practice in states such as Punjab and Haryana. The man is formally "arrested" and charges are registered only later when he has confessed to the crime under the customary methods. If he does not confess or if, through the thrashing, the police get convinced that he is indeed the wrong man or that he has learnt the lesson they wanted to teach him, he is let off with the warning that should he talk... Both Punjab and Haryana have institutionalised the more productive methods of interrogation by establishing a separate Criminal Interrogation Agency, an outfit of dregs specially skilled in the swadeshi methods of brutality.

Third, in the case of persons who were formally arrested and in whose case we have been able to obtain information about the charge, in the overwhelming number of cases the alleged crimes were puny -- theft (a goat in one case, copper wire in another), the casual complaint of another that the victim had occupied his land, ticket-less travel (believe it or not). In four cases the charge was serious: interrogation in relation to a murder in two cases, attempt to murder in one and murder in the fourth. But remember these are deaths in police custody. That means that in none of the cases was the guilt of anyone of them established, In each case the matter was still being investigated. Indeed, the hauling in of three of these four victims was the first step in the investigation.

Fourth, in seven of the 45 cases the bodies were so badly mauled, the evidence of external and internal injuries was so considerable that even the authorities had to eventually register cases of murder against policemen. Five were reported as having died from natural causes ("snake-bite", "heart failure on way to the hospital", "suddenly took ill", etc.) Five were said to have died for mysterious reasons (e.g., "found dead in lock-up"). All the others are said to have committed suicide.

Now, there are a few things to note about these accounts of suicide. If the police are to be believed, suicides almost invariably come in three forms -- the Victim jumps into a well, the victim jumps in front of a running bus (in Haryana the victims are, as in the case of the 59-year-old Rattan Singh of village Gumana, considerate enough to dive between the front and rear wheels of speeding buses so as to spare the drivers the liability that would be theirs if the victims were crushed by the front wheels of the vehicles) and third, the victim hangs himself by his lungi or his belt (the last in his lockup or, as in a case reported from Tamil Nadu, in the open courtyard of the police station).

Quite apart from the fact that even terminal patients, even those facing execution, do not commit suicide as readily as these victims accused of theft etc. seem to do, many of the police accounts of suicide are idiotic. Latoor Singh, to whose case I alluded earlier, is said to have committed suicide by jumping into a well when he went unescorted to ease himself in the fields. Now, why did he go unescorted into the fields when the police station itself has a lavatory which detainees use all the time? The police in Delhi cantonment started calling Emmanuel in to question him about a girl who had disappeared. They terrorised him into believing that he would be held responsible for her murder. Each time he was beaten severely and told to return the following evening. This went on every single day, every single day from March 27 to April 10, in this the capital of India. On April 11 he presented himself as usual at the police station. That evening he was found lying on a road, badgered and unconscious. He was rushed to one hospital and then to the other. But he died without regaining consciousness. The police version: suicide by taking poison. What about the beatings from March 27 to April 10? Why was his body bruised and badgered if all that had happened was that he had taken poison? And so on. (The girl Emmanuel was said to have murdered or kidnapped has since turned up).

So improbable are the accounts of suicide that in five of the cases in which the enraged people obtained new post mortems, deaths that had earlier been reported to have been by suicide were eventually proved to have been caused by external and internal injuries.

Next, what action was taken in the case of the deaths? In the seven cases where, under intense pressure from the public, murder was eventually proven, policemen have been suspended and murder charges have been framed against them. (As all the deaths occurred within the last year, one would not expect any conviction and none indeed has come). The customary procedure, however, is to assert first that no action is required as the case is obviously one of suicide or of death from natural causes; next, if public pressure is intense, to transfer a few policemen; if that too does not assuage public outrage, to suspend a policeman or two and then reinstate them (most often in another police station) after few months. In Gangu's case in Haryana, for instance, the inspector in charge of the CIA cell has been transferred to Chandigarh. In Emmanuel's case in Delhi, the sub-inspector and constable who were initially suspended in April have been reinstated and transferred to another police station within Delhi.

So much for the patterns in death. Now for five general points First, in no state are deaths in police custody examined systematically, not by the government, not by any civil rights organisation, not by the press. In no state is even information about them collected in a systematic manner. In each case, inquiries about the death are looked upon by the police and the civil administration as illegitimate encroachements into their private preserves. And this is why in spite of our efforts we could obtain little information about U.P. and Bihar.

Second, in each instance where an inquiry was ordered, it had to be wrested after intense pressure by the people.

Third, remember that even when torture does not result in death, its effects can be lethal. Three months ago in Delhi the local police successfully got two young boys to confess that they had murdered a third boy only to have the latter turn up soon after the case of murder was formally registered against the first two. (Contrast the formal provisions of section 192 of the IPC I cited earlier with the fact that all that has happened to the Station House Officer and two sub-inspectors who had shown such exemplary efficiency in proving murder is that they have been transferred to a neighbouring police station).

Fourth, contrast the helplessness of these victims and of those who subsequently take up their cause with the effectiveness with which the well-heeled and the influential are able to use the same sections of the Codes, of the Evidence Act and the same Article 20 of the Constitution to stall proceedings against themselves for decades.

Finally, note the strength of the police (which functions in these matters as quite the most effective trade union) and note its causes -- the almost total absence of civil rights organizations and the inability of the people to sustain their anger. How else would the police get away by merely transferring the guilty or reinstating them after a month or two?

How would you want me to end this survey -- with the plea that the formal provisions of law should be adhered to, with the plea to the police to be humane, with the plea to the public to keep their anger from subsiding with such unvarying certainty, with the plea that we build up strong civil rights organizations, with the plea that the press do its job better? Choose the one you think will bear fruit.

Indian Express
August 11, 1980