On Kiranas, Naturalised Citizens, Amit Shah and Sohrabuddin

Here is what I read this weekend….

First, a strong case by Prof R Vaidyanathan on why our “kirana” stores need to be supported (emphasis added):

…More than 125 lakh kirana stores provide a source of livelihood to 16 crore people...The retail trade comprises all kinds of people and formats — from street vendors to departmental stores of various types, shapes and characteristics.

More than 80% of trade is accounted for by partnership and proprietorship forms — often called the unorganised sector. The kirana shop adjacent to my home opens at 7am and closes at 10pm every day, 365 days of the year. It is very efficient, and one can order through a mobile. The owner knows the tastes and price preferences of our family, but his business is classified as “unorganised” by our experts and national income data.

The footfall in his shop cannot be measured using western models (since there is no place for anybody to set foot inside his shop), and so he is derided and ignored. It is like clubbing housewives along with prostitutes in our census data to show them as unproductive citizens.

..The retail trade suffers from two major handicaps. One is the non-availability of credit at reasonable rates from institutions; the other is the bribe one has to pay to the government babus to leave him in peace.

…Large companies get loan rates below the prime lending rate, but my vegetable vendor gets it at 0.5% per day. They have to return 50 paise at the end of the day for every Rs100 borrowed in the morning. This will work out to be more than 180% per annum.

My retail provision stores man gets his money in an interesting way. He gets Rs45,000 (for a loan amount of Rs50,000) upfront and pays Rs500 a day for 100 days to repay his full Rs50,000. It turns out to be more than 10% for three months. More than 70% of the working capital requirements of retail trade in 2009-2010 came from non-bank sources.

The other perennial problem faced by the “unorganised” retail trade is the “organised” dacoity by minions of the state. They need to bribe the cops, bribe the municipal authorities and other local goons. The cost can be as high as Rs20 on an income of Rs200 or so per day. That is 10% of gross income. The same is true of fruit seller, the fast-food idli joint or the beauty parlour.

Read it in full here.

Next Sh A Surya Prakash raises some uncomfortable points about Naturalised citizens and national security (this is from 2004; emphasis added):

Some recent revelations about certain events pertaining to defence purchases and national security when Rajiv Gandhi was India’s Prime Minister, should, in my view, put citizens on high alert in regard to the possible dangers in allowing naturalised citizens to hold constitutional offices.

The most disturbing revelation is the one made by B.G. Deshmukh, a distinguished civil servant who was the Cabinet Secretary when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. In his book “A Cabinet Secretary Looks Back”, Deshmukh refers to a bizarre situation when he found Rajiv Gandhi wanting the Special Protection Group (SPG) to be trained in Italy and that too by persons unrelated to VIP security. Deshmukh’s narration of this episode is fully corroborated by B. Raman, a former Additional Director, RAW, who had referred to this unpleasant event in an article he wrote in The Statesman, six years ago.

In a nutshell, the story as narrated by these two citizens who held senior positions in the Union Government, runs as follows: All of a sudden, Rajiv Gandhi suggested that the SPG be sent to Italy for training even though the Italians have never been known for any specialisation in VIP security. Rajiv wanted the operation, which was to cost a quarter of a million US dollars, to be funded from RAW’s secret funds. Strangely, though it concerned the security of the Prime Minister, the arrangement was not with the Italian government or a governmental security agency.

Our SPG personnel were to be trained by some private agency. The deal had been arranged by a middleman who turned out to be Sonia Gandhi’s sister’s husband – a man called Walter Vinci. When Deshmukh and Raman protested, their objections were brushed aside and the deal was put through. Walter Vinci came to India, stayed in the Prime Minister’s house, and, according to SPG officials, had the temerity to scold and abuse them.

This is what Deshmukh himself has to say about the incident: “That the PM”s house had access to funds from abroad, I became aware in a very curious way – one of the security officers at 7, Race Course Road said one or two of them would be going to Italy for special training. I was rather upset as I had neither seen nor cleared the proposal. Rajiv wanted payments to be made from RAW’s secret funds to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian brother-in-law, a businessman, to train our SPG personnel”

The man who was entrusted with the job of handing over a quarter million dollars to the brother-in-law was S.E. Joshi, the chief of RAW. But Joshi had a major problem on his hands. Though it was earlier worked out that the Italian would collect the booty from the Geneva office of RAW, he told Joshi that he should deliver the agreed sum in Italian currency in Italy itself. The head of RAW told the Cabinet Secretary that it was inappropriate for the head of RAW to carry suitcases full of Italian currency half way across the world. It could lead to unforeseen complications.

Deshmukh says, he told Rajiv Gandhi that the arrangement suggested was not acceptable. “He (Rajiv Gandhi) flushed and told me to forget the whole affair. Later, I learnt that the PM’s house was asked to be more discreet with me. I also realised that in the Mughal-darbar-like functioning of the Gandhis, I had committed the cardinal sin of cross-checking with the king himself“

Read it in full here.

Next, Retired High Court Judge N Haridas asks whether the Supreme Court has over-stepped its limits in Amit Shah’s prosecution (emphasis added):

Under the laws of the land, both the Centre and the states are the ‘states.’ The law allows a state to prosecute an offender — whether it be a private citizen, an official or an elected representative, but the ‘top ruler’ is not an official in this respect. Here, the agitating question is: Can one state prosecute another state?

…Neither the Constitution of India nor the criminal procedure code has specifically empowered the courts with the power of prosecution. The power of the court to order a criminal prosecution is a power invented by the Indian courts which is supported neither by the English rule of law nor the burgeoning power of American judicial review.

…the Indian courts are not only ordering prosecutions but supervising and monitoring the investigation of the same. By tradition, history and practice, the prosecution of an offender is the sole job of the executive, namely, the cabinet.

…In the present case, the top ruler of the state, that is the chief minister, did not order Shah’s prosecution. Then, the supreme court interfered and ordered the prosecution of Shah in exercise of its power of judicial review. The court has ordered that the investigation and prosecution shall be conducted by the CBI which is the prosecuting arm of the Central government.

…One may take the high moral ground and ask whether a victim has any remedy at all when the all-powerful executive is allegedly shielding a criminal. But we must remember that the courts are only a corrective agency and when the executive or the legislature is bent on sabotaging a prosecution, there is no escape from it. Even when a court orders a prosecution, its progress and effectiveness depend on the goodwill of the executive and the resources at its command.

…In the Amit Shah case, as the Centre and the state of Gujarat are ruled by different political parties, the order to prosecute may find support from the Union executive. But suppose this prosecution was against a Congress party minister, the fate of such prosecution could have been different. The supreme court has established a very dangerous precedent by ordering the prosecution of a state minister by the CBI — an arm of the Union executive.

I will point out another dangerous aspect. As we all know, law and order is a state subject. Following the above logic, what prevents a state government from prosecuting a Central minister (in power) or even the prime minister? No law except the practice stands in the way. Of course, such an act will be devastating to the Centre-state relations, but that places the prime minister in the dock of a criminal. A dare-devil chief minister may do it.

Since law and order is a state subject and if a prime minister visiting state capital commits a crime (say, by smoking a cigar in the Raj Bhavan) why can’t he be prosecuted by the state? The supreme court through the Shah case is opening the law’s Pandora’s box.

And finally, Sh Ajit Doval (former Director, IB) writes about half-truths in the Sohrabuddin case (emphasis added):

Beware of half truths — because you may be holding the wrong half.

…it would be worthwhile to explore the real facts about Sohrabuddin, the nature of police encounters, and the real issues at stake. Sohrabuddin was an underworld gangster who was involved in nearly two dozen serious criminal offences in states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. He maintained transnational links with anti-India forces from the early ‘90s onwards, until his death in 2005. Working with mafia dons like Dawood Ibrahim and Abdul Latif, he procured weapons and explosives from Pakistan and supplied them to various terrorist and anti-national groups (had it not been for his activity, at least some terrorist acts could have been averted).

Sohrabuddin was solidly entrenched in the criminal world for a decade-and-a-half. Around the time he was killed, the Rajasthan government had announced a reward on his head.

In 1999, he had been detained under the National Security Act by the Madhya Pradesh government.

In a 1994 case investigated by the Ahmedabad crime branch, he was co-accused along with Dawood Ibrahim and convicted for five years, for waging war against the Government of India, planning an attack on the Jagannath rath yatra in Orissa, and other offences under the IPC, Arms Act, etc. During the investigation, 24 AK-56 rifles, 27 hand grenades, 5250 cartridges, 81 magazines and more were seized from his family home in Madhya Pradesh.

In 2004, a fourth crime was registered against him by Chandgad police station of Kolhapur district in Maharashtra under sections 302, 120 (b), and 25 (1) (3) of the Arms Act, for the killing of Gopal Tukaram Badivadekar. As fear of him often silenced people from reporting his whereabouts, let alone deposing against him, the Rajasthan government had to announce a reward on his head after he killed Hamid Lata in broad daylight in the heart of Udaipur, on December 31, 2004.

So much for Sohrabuddin’s innocence.

However, irrespective of who Sohrabuddin was and what he did, the use of unaccountable force against him is indefensible is the public view of many (often at variance with their private view).

There are many who feel that there is a higher rationale for such actions in compelling circumstances, as the law of the land has repeatedly found itself helpless in dealing with individuals bent on bleeding the country. Their argument, that the rule of law is a means to an end and not an end in itself, often finds support in the jurisprudential principles of salus populi est suprema lex (the people’s welfare is the supreme law) and salus res publica est suprema lex (the safety of the nation is supreme law).

Even the Supreme Court of India, in the case of D.K. Basu vs. State of West Bengal [1997 (1) SCC 416] accepted the validity of these two principles and characterised them as “not only important and relevant, but lying at the heart of the doctrine that welfare of an individual must yield to that of the community.” The validity of the principles of salus populi est suprema lex and salus res publica est suprema lex could have been part of an enlightened national discourse, and what could be the governing instrumentalities, empowerments, legal checks and stringent processes if these principles were to be invoked. It is better to accept reality as it is and then strive to change it for the better, rather than what we wish it to be.

Feigned ignorance is the worst type of hypocrisy.

But there is another vital question that needs to be addressed. While pursuing the Sohrabuddin case, was the government really serious about stopping the menace of fake encounters, or was it pursuing a different agenda?

…The other negative impact of the Sohrabuddin case is the impression it is creating that all encounters in which police and security forces are involved, are fake. Society needs to be reassured that the majority of encounters are genuine and mostly in response to murderous attacks on security personnel.The fact that, on average, over 1,200 policemen get killed every year grappling with terrorists, insurgents, underworld mafia and other anti-social elements, bears ample testimony to this fact.

…The other downside of the publicity around such cases is that it erodes the people’s trust in governance. Administrations begin to be seen as instruments of repression and self-aggrandisement and politicians as perceived as manipulating their power for political and personal gains. This erosion can lead to a dangerous delegitimisation of the polity.

Do read it in full here. Comments and thoughts welcome.

Past Weekend Readings are here.  Have a fruitful and productive week ahead. Stay safe, keep smiling.