Ends, Means, Corruption, and Democracy Sadanand Patwardhan asks questions about ends and means with respect to the discussion on corruption, perhaps as framed by the stakeholders of the corruption debate, but even more broadly in questions of rights in a democracy.

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Moral-Fundamentalists & Moral-Strangers, though at opposite ends of the spectrum, would be united in equating the transgressions of a Kiran Bedi and the various monumental corruption scandals of the UPA government. May be Indian Express, which brought out the facts, poses as the former, while a loose canon of a Congress spokesperson, Digvijay Singh, epitomizes the latter. The kind of coverage DS gets in the mainstream media when holding forth on CWG or 2G is indeed an attempt to anesthetize the urban slickers to the real issues facing majority of Indians. More on that later.

Turning to Kiran Bedi controversy, I hold that almost all of us must have transgressed ethics, if not the law, at some point in our life. Many would object to my statement, but I only urge honest soul searching. What Bedi did was definitely unethical, but what she said when facts became public was far worse. It betrayed an attitude that is potently dangerous. She said that excess money thus made was only going to the *noble* purposes of her India Vision Foundation. In simple English it means that *Ends Justify the Means*. This kind of presumptuous do-gooder, when in power, could potentially prove unmitigated disaster like so many autocrats in the past. Behind the presumptuousness lurks another fault line: It is MY WAY or NO WAY, which was the leitmotif of the India Against Corruption movement.

This unseemly controversy takes the attention off the serious violations of fundamental rights, constitution, and law of the land that routinely goes on in areas that metaphorically are far away in time and space from a Delhi or a Mumbai; where the freedoms and rights, which we enjoy and take for granted, are simply unheard of. Recently, BAIL, NOT JAIL, was a slogan that was taken up in unison by people like Salman Khurshid (How will investment come, if businessmen are put in jail?), Shekhar Gupta (bail is routine, jail an exception), Digvijay Singh (once the charges are framed, accused should get bail), et al. They were alarmed at the violation of fundamental rights of accused such as A Raja, Kanimozhi, Suresh Kalmadi, and clutch of business heads of leading industrial houses. There alarm was justified as in Principle we believe in the Rule of Law- even Kasab is given benefit of the due process of law. But why are the concerns of these worthies limited only to their ilk? Does Rule of Law apply only to well connected, not to others? Sadly it does. Literally, hundreds of activists and even ordinary poor like Kartam Joga, Sudhir Dhawale, Arun Perreira, Soni Sori, are incarcerated in jail on fabricated charges and with serious sections of IPC (Sedition, waging war, Conspiracy) slapped on them merely to make sure bail is denied. Binayak Sen spent 2 years in jail as under trial and another few months as convict, until, finally, Supreme Court granted him bail. Sen shunned a life of luxury and comfort, which would have been his had he wished, and devoted himself to poor and tribals in Chhattisgarh. He was one of us, therefore, his case got well deserved attention, and he used it to highlight that there are scores like him by declaring himself an *Index Case* (a medical term). But take the case of Kopa Kunjum- an adivasi- who too got bail from Supreme Court after spending almost 2 years in jail. It hardly got a mention. Such stories can be multiplied several times over. Travails of Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi –both adivasis- is the latest in this long and sad saga.

No one can fault Mainstream Media of ignoring these cases. It does not. What it does is mention it and then forget it, which is worse. It is turned into a non-issue. Why doesn’t a concerted chorus of hard questioning start in its aftermath? Why are *We the People* or *Devil’s advocate* or *Face the Nation* or any such spectacles (which I have stopped watching long long ago) not seized of these issues affecting the millions, or actually a billion? No one asks these questions because the audience which watches these shows does not care, and probably doesn’t even want to know. To use a now clichéd term (I believe invented by Sharad Joshi) *India Vs Bharat*, Bharat is like a terminally ill senior parent on death-bed, whose lingering shadow spoils the fun of India eyeing the F1 Races or the Metallica Band concert.

Sadanand Patwardhan Posted by collective at December 13, 2011 11:56 AM