I purposely took several days to write this blog. I did not want to jump into conclusions, in a highly emotional response to something that is so serious. My conclusion - we as a country never learn from our mistakes. and this is neither in prevention, action or reaction to any incident.
My disgust in the state of affairs stems more from my absolute rock bottom opinion of the bureaucrats in this country. i wrote a blog way earlier on the issue of setting the bureaucracy right. the level of apathy, corruption and arrogance that they have is amazing and i think any country that tolerates that, is doomed. Politicians are definitely culpable but take into consideration that they are only work for maybe three years in each of their terms. also most of them have little clue on what they are upto...looking for clues and suggestions from the bureaucracy. why would i expect that a A Raja would know the ins and outs of spectrum auctions. I only want him to be smart enough to recognize who does know the ins and outs and get help to make up his mind.
We have seen again and again the bureaucrats sitting on files of importance until they are pushed to a corner where there is no option but to act. we saw it in kargil, when information on incursions were not followed through and today a decade later we see them not acting on information, infrastructure, any thing. only thing they worked hard on was to ensure that the defence, paramilitary and police services get paid lower than they do. if they are that worried about the chain of command, let them come forward today and take the flak also.
If the politicians do not want Police Reforms, i am reasonable sure that a large part of the police don't want it too. cases like Arushi Talwar's clearly show how the UP police, so used to sitting around taking bribes had no clue on how to conduct a murder investigation. in numerous riots, they have shown themselves to be partisan. So much so that a national political ty cannot recognize a non-partisan investigation conducted by Hemant Karkare and labelled him as politically motivated. it took his death to show them otherwise but i am yet to hear an apology from them. But in some ways i don't blame them. they are probably used to meeting with the corrupt ones because the others have little need to meet and socialize with their political bosses. A police officer who attends a party in an illegal pub and then says he left it before a gruesome murder occured in the public view can become the commissioner of the police of major city, only in India. A police officer who refuses to follow the political diktat is hounded for life only in India.
The same is true of the rest of the country. with the civil bureaucracy getting away with all but murder, the rest of them start to believe that they need not follow separate set of rules. so you have a "ketchup" colonel, a fanatic colonel, a spying general and so on. I have seen middle level defence officers sit in my parent's drawing room defending Bindranwale and his followers. It was only time that a Purohit had to happen who possibly did more than talk.
we as a civil society are also culpable. In a country that finds it difficult to find good candidates for the police force we create circumstances where the requirement for traffic policemen is as high as the need for NSG. After all road accidents are india's largest killer not terrorism. if each of us kept to our lanes, waited for pedestrians to cross, crossed roads as pedestrians at the zebra crossing, did not over load our trucks, or travelled in trios on two wheelers, we would need lesser cops on the road monitoring us. For heavens sakes, we need a cop to tell us to wear helmets which is meant to protect our brains not his.
we are happy to circumvent every law when it suits us. i have had colleagues who say, if you reach an airport with minimum time gap, you don't have to go through the security procedures. when a flight gets delayed, we all believe that no terrorist could wait for a delayed flight and hence carry out a farce as a security check. When you hate a new neighbour, you think nothing of calling the cops to say he abused your wife/daughter. I have heard of cops getting paid off to continue to participate in such harassment until the person leaves the neighbourhood.
While politicians may want to control the electoral rolls, all the mischief in this end is from bureaucrats. if they carried it out honestly and efficiently there would be no need for people to go and submit their voter id forms several times. after three attempts at getting it, i have decided to give up my voting rights until the PAN card becomes my voter id. each time i try an idiot sitting at the other end decides that a single woman cannot possible be owning a house and hence changes the gender to male. i am reasonable sure that the local mla and mp were not involved in this. i am sure they don't even know i exist, and i prefer it that way most of the times.
this whole inefficient system of bureaucrats briefing the politician inadequately leading to inaction, paralysis and a constant draining of the economy of funds has to stop. politicians come and go. the common link is the bureaucrat. i think we should target them and shake them out of their peaceful slumber.
If we want change, we need to change all aspects of our current system.
We need to stop misusing the systems.
We need to question and refine the systems.
We need to participate and make all parties accountable for what they are responsible.
lets all use the Right to Information Act to see how long the defence secretary and the finance secretary sat on files of national importance and urgency and how long the respective ministers did. let us force the local authorities to perform. let us keep tabs on how often the local police carry out their strategic exercises and practice new strategies. until they practice they won't even know what they need. let us push for them to actually get more equipment. let make sure they get it at the right price at the right time. let us force them into action.
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