India - Waiting for Deconstruction

India as the largest democracy, India's celebrity-filled Bollywood, and India's three Metros - Delhi, Bombay and Chennai, plus its IT capital Bangalore, and of course its omni-present and omni-potent spiritual sadhus (pseudos to be exact) are well known all over the world. But this is only one side of India. Today, I will take you to the other side - almost voiceless rural, poor, half-literate India. Yes, almost voiceless because, in-spite of all that, there are some expressions of it on Internet.

I have this piece from 'Whom to trust?' by Prashant Raman, at ExpressBlogs - http://blogs.expressindia.com dated 12-01-2009

and quote directly "Red tapism and corruption have ensured that lathi is the only reliable weapon we can count on. Just imagine if corru have done the same to our defence forces. We have still not got over Mumbai and there is another encounter going on in Mandher, Jammu and Kashmir and the story is same we are not sure how many days it will take to clear the area. It's baffling as to how can some one come in our territory, build bunkers and hold on for so long. What’s the point in trying to find out from where these people have come and who is supporting them?"

ExpressBlogs is official website of India's leading newspaper 'Indian Express' group.

Another expression from the same site is 'India's Crisis' by Satisha M.K. His words on Indian Democracy, worth taking note of, are - "Though the fundamentals of Indian democracy are very strong, it has reached its peak in terms of turmoil, deceit, self-defeating in terms of application and is fooling itself by believing that it is a sanctimonious & biggest democracy in the world. Governing authorities (political & bureaucratic) and its timely / right decision making hands to run the country are tied up by many pulling / pushing and conflicting forces. In this situation, moving forward is impossible. It has left the country in the lurch and quandary."

Nita Kulkarni is a writer from Maharashtra, whose blog 'Wide angle view of India' at http://nitawriter.wordpress.com also has a post on India's political situation. I quote "India has not improved it’s image where corruption is concerned, not if one goes by the recent survey by Transparency International. This year India fared worse than last year…There is also a state-wise survey for India. Indian states have been ranked on a scale of Alarmingly Corrupt, Very Highly Corrupt, Highly Corrupt to Moderately Corrupt…However no state in India is free from corruption and here’s a small list of projects all over the country which are riddled with corruption"…

India has been a slave country for over a thousand years, so is generally devoid of self-confidence. Voices of Indians are often ignored by their compatriots, who feel more honored in giving their ears to foreigners. So, here is an assessment from 'George Foundation' at http://www.tgfworld.org/critical-ruralpoverty.htm

"The real story of rural India must be told with over 300 million characters who live in poverty with less than a dollar a day in income for a family of four, and whose social status in their communities is relegated to below the holy cow, the potent snake and the spirited monkey. It is a land where the elites of the villages - the upper class and the landlords - prey on the helpless, often in collusion with government officials who are supposed to help and protect them. It is a life where hope for a better future is as distant as the burning sun, and nothing that happens around them, including the so-called "IT revolution," brings about solace.

Consider the national statistics on adult literacy; it is claimed to be around 65%. Rural literacy is slightly lower. Does this statistic really reveal anything meaningful? Most of those "literate" village folks have hardly benefited from the schools they might have attended wherein poorly trained teachers irregularly hold overcrowded classes that often combine several grades or standards for want of enough teachers. Similarly, primary health care is delivered to the rural population through a network of over 150,000 primary health centers (PHCs) and sub-centres, but the reality is that the system is badly broken, as revealed in the words of one Central Health Secretary (in a private conversation with me), it is "beyond redemption." While grain production has been growing at an average annual rate of around 1% in recent years, only a handful of farmers have the means to cultivate or own cultivable land in most villages. Rural infrastructure is barely visible beyond those villages that are close to rural towns; interior villages still wait for electricity, and their muddy roads get washed away with each heavy rain. There are claims that great strides have been made in the economic empowerment of women through entrepreneurial activities with micro-credit, but the poor illiterate women I have come to know can hardly hope to succeed from such programs".

India gets a large chunk of Interbal aids for improving lives of its poor classes, but with the condition expressed above, nothing seems to be reaching the intended beneficiaries. Are the funding agencies blind to these bare and open facts.

After health and education, judiciary is the third most important pillar to support the humanity, It, too, is dwindling in India. A research scholar from India expresses his views in his article

'Justice delayed-justice denied' at -

http://www.legalserviceindia.com/articles/jdjdenied.htm

A component of his article says -

"II. Democracy And Indian Judiciary

In a democratic country like India, judiciary plays a vital role in establishing a state of justice. Therefore being the watchdog, they are not allowed to shift their burden to others for their failure to establish an actual State of Justice. It is judiciary on which millions of people have struck their faith of getting justice. It has the capability of imparting justice to the aggrieved. It is that part of our constitution which acts as its Messiah. It is that structure of our society, which cemented its place next to the God and if not properly dispensed will shatter down the entire trinity of democratic instrumentalists with checks balances, parliamentary structure and the judicial facets of our constitution. Generally, aggrieved with lots of pain anguish and hope in their heart approaches the court of law for their grievances to be clarified but at the end of the day the procedural lacuna left them with bare hands. They are denied of their most important right of Justice.

In India, Justice is beyond the reach of most and the right of access to it is not communicated to the citizens properly. In many a circumstances it was found that the litigant who has had access to the court failed to obtain quick relief and for some never have the opportunity even to knock the doors of the court due to ignorance and poverty. If we want justice to be accessible to all, then it must be relieved from the Laissez faire pattern, where justice like other commodity can be purchased and initiative must be taken to educate the populace.

Quest for justice has nothing to do with procedure or jurisdictional aspect rather it cares for its speedy disposal. Delay in disposal of cases is considered as one of the most vexed and worrying problem. It is the code of procedures, which makes it so worse. However personality like Nani Phalkiwala opined that Justice in common parlance is considered as blind but in India it is lame too and hobbles on crutches. It is on the verge of collapse with more than 30 million cases clogging the system. There are cases that take so much of time that even a generation is too short to get any type of redressal."

Kerala is a small state of India having almost 100% literacy. Even this state has over 100 thousand pending litigation cases, as is revealed by Chief Justice of Kerala high Court in a press release. The news item, available at http://news.webindia123.com/news/ is -

"HC successful in reducing pendency of cases : Justice Bali

Kochi | January 23, 2007 9:44:29 PM IST

Hailing the Kerala High Court as the best in the country, Chief Justice V K Bali today said it was successful in reducing pendency of cases to a large extent in one year.

Addressing a gathering at a full court reference to honour him on his retirement today, Justice Bali said the High Court was able to dispose of 88,639 main cases, reducing pendency to 1,17,549 from 1,33,376 even after 72,812 main cases were filed in the year."

Political and administrative corruption has paralyzed Indian body and soul beyond redemption. This is prevalent in all sectors of life including essential services. Electricity has become life-line of humanity and its civilizations all over the globe. Without its availability and proper servicing, humanity can not progress. In India, it is under state monopoly , so is the most corrupt. A study conducted by Center for Media Studies, has this report published at http://www.cmsindia.org/cms/events/electricity.pdf

"CORRUPTION IN ELECTRICITY SERVICES

The focus of the study is on the bribes paid by common citizen to avail service of electricity department. The study does not take into consideration bribes paid by contractors or equipment

suppliers to the department.

3.1 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Ø Value of petty corruption in Electricity Services in the country is estimated at Rs 2169 crores per annum.

Ø Nearly 59% of households in the country claimed to have interacted with the respective Electricity Service Departments in last one year. Naturally, this figure is higher in urban households (70%) in comparison with rural households (55%).

Ø More than one-tenth (12%) of all households in the country claimed to have paid bribe to get service in last one year.

Ø More than half (58%) of those who had visited in last year, did so for at least 3 times.

Ø Nearly two-thirds (65%) of those who had sought one or other service of the department, perceived that the department was corrupt.

Ø Even private utilities are perceived as corrupt. 59 % of the households serviced by private power utilities think that their respective utility is corrupt.

Ø Nearly half (49%) of those who had interacted with the department felt that the corruption in the department had increased in the last year.

Ø More than one-fourth (27%) of those who had approached the department had adopted alternate routes like paying bribes, using influence, approaching middlemen, etc.

Ø More then one-third (35%) of those who had claimed to have paid bribe had paid money to Linesmen, while one-fourth (25%) had paid money to an agent/ tout."

Because of such a high level of involvement in corruption by Electricity officials, no maintenance of electricity distribution network is done, leading to fatal accidents taking place very often. I have this picture of a newly married couple from U.P. district Bulandshahr, village Khandoi showing lying dead after getting entangled with a live electricity wire lying in a field.

elect death Jlye5 21933

In association with the Electricity officials, local police disposed off the case without any action for the urder by negligence.