THERE’S a soft terror that’s going unchecked in our country! As I watch politicians in our country speaking what they want and getting away with it, I’ve often wondered how they get away very often with murder? I’ve realized that as long as we have a system where courts take fifteen or twenty years or even a lifetime to decide an issue, there is no parameter or boundary which the politician won’t transcend! The only fear the politician has is that of the law and if the law takes this long to act, then there is really no law. Justice delayed, is totally, completely, justice denied.
Knowing this, you will notice the last thing the politician wants to do is to get this system right. India cannot call itself a democracy if the law takes so long to act. Today, I hear of hundreds of thousands of acts of goondagiri, committed by thugs who know that even if a case is filed against them, it will take dozens of years till it comes up for hearing, and what do they do in those years? They threaten the witnesses, which is why very often you hear of witnesses turning hostile, and they intimidate the complainant! They then, if they have money and power, get police and other authorities to bully the person who has filed the case, till that man or woman in fear and desperation withdraws the case.
The politician, whose duty it is to see that we have thousands of more judges, and thousands of more courts, is certainly not bothered about this terrible lapse of democracy. In Mumbai, over ten years ago, bars had to stop having dances, and after over a decade the court strikes the order down as unconstitutional, but what about all the dancers who lost their livelihood these many years because a minister in the last government wanted to be a moral policeman?
Today, different governments dictate what you and I can eat and drink and even read, and even if the ban is struck down years later, still unfairness of your right to choose exists for that many years. We need to get this system righted!
A rich man gets sent a legal notice and goes to his lawyer, “What should I do with this?” he asks. “Tear it up and put it in the wastepaper basket,” the lawyer grins, “And bully the fellow till he withdraws the case!” Are you and I fooling ourselves we live in a democracy because we have elections? We elect men and women who know they wield a power you and I can do nothing about.
It is time to start a mass movement for more courts, more judges, and immediate justice, otherwise what we have now is soft terrorism, a terrorism where the rich and powerful do what they want, and this certainly is not democracy..!
—Email: bobsanter@gmail.com
