shoebite III

After Bush and Jiabao it’s our very own PC who has been a victim of the shoebite part III. The present home minister, PC had to endure the wrath of an aggrieved Sikh journalist today for the failure of his government and those of others to bring the perpetrators of the 1984 anti Sikh pogrom to justice even after 25 years. It’s been a long and frustrating wait for the victims of this pogrom and the Indian Judicial system and other institutions of state machinery (namely CBI) have once again failed to deliver justice to the aggrieved.

Any well functional society is built on the efficiency and fairness of its institutions and it’s a fact that these institutions in India have been totally eaten away by the moths of corruption. For most of these institutions, dancing to the tunes of their political masters has become their primary duty. This has resulted in a situation where there is hardly anything called justice. The lesser said about the Indian judicial system the better, a UNDP estimate has put the number of pending cases in Indian courts at 20 million and even if a single new case is not added to the lot, it will take about 3-4 hundred years to clear this backlog. Thousands of these cases are more than 20 years old. Where does the whole idea of justice stand then? Is it not true that justice delayed is justice denied? I sometimes feel that we are living under an illusion of having a system of delivering justice. It’s a complete sham.

What’s surprising and disappointing is that even extreme cases of communal carnage do not seem to change the mechanism through which justice is delivered. After 25 years and over 3000 massacres we have only had a handful of convictions in the anti Sikh pogrom and none of the accused with political links has been booked. Anybody and everybody who has any knowledge about that tragedy would tell you that this acquittal of the powerful has happened because the whole system of delivering justice has been subverted to meet the demands of these powerful few. Even other major rioting cases like Bhagalpur in 1989, post Babri demolition riots have had miniscule convictions and that too after more than a decade. And 7 years after Gujarat we see the same shameful story being played out once again.

How long is our nation going to deny justice to its own sons and daughters? It’s a frightening question to face and if not answered properly and promptly; then we will have more than mere chappals and shoes being thrown around.