📰 Realism versus liberalism in international relations
Understanding basic concepts which explain great power politics and rivalries
•Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled the realism versus liberalism debate in international relations. While liberals in general call the war an attack by “authoritarian Russia” on “democratic Ukraine”, realists argue the war was the culmination of the post-Cold War power games in Europe. While this debate can go on with no consensus, it’s important to understand the basic tenets of the two theories that are fuelling it.
•Basically, both theories try to understand the behaviour of states, especially great powers, from different perspectives. Liberalism broadly has three core beliefs: states are the main actors in the international system; the internal characteristics of each state vary from the other and these differences shape the state’s behaviour; and some governance models are good and some are bad (for example, democracies versus dictatorships).
•After the end of the Cold War, in which the liberal West defeated the communist Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama, in The End of History and the Last Man, called the western liberal democracy the final form of human government. So, liberals emphasise on the internal characteristics of states which, they argue, impact states’ external policies. According to them, good states are supposed to make peace while bad states could seek to expand their power at the expense of others. Within the liberal framework, there are three different but interconnected theoretical approaches — economic interdependence, democratic peace and international institutions.
Theories of liberalism
•The proponents of economic interdependence argue that a liberal economic order is essential for a stable international order. Economic globalisation is intrinsically linked to this argument. Democratic peace theorists claim that democracies do not go to war with each other. So, to create a world without war, according to this theory, a world of democracies should be built. And the role of institutions, according to them, is critical to maintain peace and order in the global system.
•The League of Nations was formed after the First World War. The League collapsed and the Second World War broke out. But the post-War world order was rebuilt with new international institutions starting with the United Nations. Therefore, the ideal world order that liberals want is the one where democratic states are connected through economic globalisation and function in a system that is regulated by international organisations.
•While liberalism offers an optimistic view of the global order, it’s more about what the world ought to be. Realism is more about what the world is.
•For realists, a peaceful global order is desirable, but that’s far from reality. Hence, they are pessimists. Realists, like liberals, also consider nation states as the primary actors in the international system. For them, the world is basically an anarchic place with no supreme authority to maintain order. Therefore, this makes the world a dangerous place. As historian E.H. Carr notes, realism “tends to emphasise the irresistible strength of existing forces and the inevitable character of existing tendencies, and to insist that the highest wisdom lies in accepting, and adapting oneself to these forces and these tendencies”.
Premises of realism
•There are three main streams of realist theory in international relations — human nature realism, defensive realism and offensive realism. And all streams seek to explain why states seek more power.
•Human nature realism (also called classical realism), laid out by Hans Morgenthau in Politics Among Nations, is based on the argument that humans’ lust for power can have a profound impact on the nature of states as states are led by human beings.
•According to human nature realists, states, by default, have this ‘will to power’ wired into them like human beings, and in an anarchic order, they continue to seek expansion of power. This could create conflicts.
•Defensive realists, on the other hand, don't believe that states are inherently aggressive. Kenneth Waltz argues in Theory of International Politics that the fundamental aim of states is survival. But Waltz also agrees that the global order is anarchic and this structural factor forces states to compete with each other.
•Offensive realism is also a structural theory like defensive realism that bases its arguments on the structural factors rather than human behaviour. John Mearsheimer, the Chicago University professor who conceptualised offensive realism, argues that great powers always seek to maximise their power at the expense of rivals. While defensive realists argue that great powers seek to maintain the existing balance of power, offensive realists argue that status quo powers are rarely seen in international politics. “A state’s ultimate goal is to be the hegemon in the system,” writes Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
Mission Vatsalya must bring together services and structures to help children in distress
•Schemes designed for social good do well on intent, but their success depends on whether they are built on principles of sustainability and work within structures of accountability. While the Centre’s intent to provide ‘integrated benefits to children and women’ is behind the comprehensive revamping of the Department of Women and Children’s schemes, is this a rejig constructed with rules that will ensure maximising benefit for shareholders — women and children? Mission Vatsalya, which has been operationalised, is one of the new triad of schemes along with Mission Shakti, and Poshan 2.0, that aims at securing a healthy and happy childhood for every child. Components under Mission Vatsalya include statutory bodies; service delivery structures; institutional care/services; non-institutional community-based care; emergency outreach services; training and capacity building. The impact of this on one of the pillars of India’s child protection services, the ChildLine, has been giving child rights activists sleepless nights. ChildLine (1098), the 24-hour toll free helpline for children in distress, will be manned by the Home Affairs Ministry under Mission Vatsalya, Union Minister Smriti Irani said last year, citing the need to ‘preserve data sensitivity’.
•ChildLine has been in operation for over 25 years, growing gradually to become one of the largest global networks to assist and rescue children in distress. It has functioned as a public-private partnership between the government and civil society organisations to provide a first-responder safety net, and kick start the process of rescue and rehabilitation of children. A road map to implement the scheme is not yet available, but it is understood that police personnel will first answer the call, handing over implementation to NGOs later. This flies in the face of the facts invoked while setting up the ChildLine in 1996 — children do not feel comfortable confiding in police personnel. It also sought to reduce the burden on the police force, by invoking their assistance only if the circumstances necessitated it. This was proven beyond doubt during a short-lived experiment in Chennai around 2003 when ChildLine calls were diverted to All Women Police Stations (AWPS) — they were inundated with calls, hampering regular work. Sometimes, all the children wanted was to spend some time talking to someone, or they were making multiple blank calls before they picked up the courage to tell all. In many cases, police intervention was not needed at all. The old system was hurriedly revived, and order restored. The Centre will do well to incorporate these responses as it sets out a road map for a key aspect of child protection. Above all, it must consider the issue from the perspective of the key beneficiary of this scheme — the child — and make sure that his/her safety, security and happiness are ensured in a bond born of trust, necessarily going beyond the letter of the law.
📰 How the UAPA is wrecking lives
Under the draconian law, the court’s decision on bail, de facto, becomes the decision on the case
•On March 24, a Sessions Court in Delhi denied bail to Umar Khalid as part of a set of cases that have commonly come to be known as “the Delhi riots cases”. The case of the police was that Mr. Khalid was one of the conspirators behind the February 2020 violence in Delhi, which had claimed more than 50 lives. For this, Mr. Khalid, along with many others, was charge-sheeted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, and jailed pending trial. Mr. Khalid has been in jail for over 500 days. The trial has not yet begun.
•Much has been written about the serious problems with the manner in which the Delhi Police has conducted its investigation, and prosecution of the Delhi riots: in particular, its selective targeting of activists who were involved with the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, which was the alleged trigger for the violence, while refraining from prosecuting individuals who are on record delivering incendiary speeches. The denial of bail to Mr. Khalid highlights an equally serious problem: the broken nature of India’s criminal justice system.
Bail hearing becomes trial
•First, consider these facts. Mr. Khalid’s bail application was filed in July 2021. The order denying bail was passed eight months later, after multiple hours-long hearings, multiple adjournments, and three deferrals of the order itself. It is important to ask why an application for bail took so many hearings and eight months to decide: in criminal law, the purpose of bail is to ensure that an individual is not unjustly denied their liberty while the trial against them is still proceeding and their guilt has not yet been established. As such, in normal circumstances, courts are supposed to consider whether an accused is a flight risk, or is likely to tamper with evidence or intimidate witnesses. If neither of those dangers exist, there is no purpose in denying an individual their freedom before their guilt has been established in a court. This, in other words, is the real meaning of the hoary phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
•This is where the notorious UAPA comes in. Shorn of legalese, the UAPA prohibits a judge from granting an individual bail if, on a perusal of the police diary or the police report, the judge is of the opinion that there are “reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation is … prima facie true.” The effect of this, as the criminal legal scholar Abhinav Sekhri has pointed out, is that the UAPA introduces elements of the criminal trial into the question of bail. There are traces of this in the Indian Penal Code as well, for bail under serious non-UAPA offences. This hints at a larger problem with the criminal justice system, of which the UAPA is only the starkest example. Questions of guilt or innocence are meant to be determined at the end of a trial, after evidence has been sifted, witnesses examined and cross-examined, and arguments completed. The question of guilt or innocence at the stage of bail short-circuits that essential procedure.
•But that is not the only problem with turning bail hearings into mini-trials. The problem is also that this mini-trial — to borrow a colourful phrase from the U.S. Supreme Court — licenses “one side … to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow the Marquis of Queensberry Rules (i.e., the rules of professional boxing)”. What the judge has before them is entirely one side of the case: the police version. In a trial, the defence would be entitled to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses, determine inconsistencies in their testimony, examine its own witnesses, present its own evidence, and otherwise demonstrate that the case against the accused has not been made out beyond reasonable doubt. In a bail hearing, the defence can do none of that. The starting point of the bail hearing is the presumption that everything in the police report is true. Based on that presumption, all the two sides can then argue about is whether according to these “facts”, the legal ingredients of the offence are fulfilled — or, in some rare cases, about whether the facts themselves are self-contradictory or flat-out implausible, so that no reliance can be placed on them even at the stage of bail. To use an analogy, it is like holding a debate between two sides, stopping it after one side finishes, allowing the other side to pose two or three questions but not say anything more, and then deciding whether the motion passes or falls.
•Such a system might possibly be defensible in a situation where criminal justice was swift, efficient, and trustworthy. If, for example, criminal trials habitually concluded within six months, it might just be possible to argue that in terrorism cases, six months of pretrial incarceration is a painful but proportionate price to pay (in my opinion, it is still unjustifiable, but there is at least a case to be made). However, that is not the case in India: a UAPA trial takes years — often more than 10 years. In such a situation, the court’s decision on bail, de facto, becomes the decision on the case: the denial of bail means that a person is likely to spend a decade or more behind bars, as the trial winds on. And given the UAPA’s abysmally low conviction rates, the trial will likely end in acquittal.
•This, thus, explains why bail hearings take so long, and are so convoluted (although there is still little excuse for the eight-month-long process in Mr. Khalid’s case). Both the defence and the prosecution know that the outcome of the bail hearing is, for all practical effects, the outcome of the case itself. The result of the denial of bail is, functionally, the same as the result of a finding of guilt: a decade-plus in jail. But, as we have seen, while the denial of bail is effectively a finding of guilt, it has none of the safeguards that the criminal law puts into place before an actual finding of guilt. The accused is first gagged from contesting the police’s version and is then condemned for not being able to disprove the police’s case.
Rank injustice
•In a notorious judgment in National Investigation Agency v. Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali (2019), the Supreme Court made a bad situation even worse by forbidding the lower courts from scrutinising in depth even the police case. This leads to absurd situations like Mr. Khalid’s bail order. A reading of the bail order shows that the court reproduces various allegations against Mr. Khalid — some of them hearsay, and therefore inadmissible during the trial, and some extremely implausible; dismisses the defence’s challenges to them without any engagement; and then denies bail. Lawyers and legal scholars may disagree over whether the UAPA actually requires the courts to become stenographers for the prosecution, even under existing legal doctrine. The point, however, is that for all the reasons we have discussed above, the result is rank injustice.
•Reforming the criminal justice system is the task of many years. In the immediate future, however, it is at least possible to curtail the manner in which the UAPA plays havoc with the lives of so many individuals. Striking down or reading down its bail prohibitions and subjecting the police case to stricter scrutiny during bail hearings would be a start. It remains to be seen whether the judiciary has the will and the inclination to do so.
📰 Sending a strategic message
The footings for stronger India-Australia ties have been set
•At a recent meeting in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was almost forced to give a brief lecture on geological history to his colleagues while highlighting the importance of integrating the Indian and Australian economies in contemporary times. By way of a metaphor, he pointed out how India and Australia were part of the same supercontinent, the Gondwanaland, until both drifted apart during the Jurassic age. For a variety of reasons, almost till the beginning of this century, New Delhi and Canberra remained apart much after the original tectonic shifts had originally split them.
A historic deal
•A pivotal moment in history for the two countries was struck on April 2, when Australia and India struck a trade deal after two decades of efforts. Mr. Modi described it as a “watershed moment for bilateral relations”. The India-Australia Economic Co-operation and Trade Agreement (IndAus ECTA) eliminates tariffs on more than 85% of Australian goods exports to India (valued at more than $12.6 billion a year).
•With a GDP expected to grow at 9% in 2021-22, India is the world’s fastest growing major economy. Today, the growth opportunities for Australian businesses are larger in India than in any other market. Over the five years leading up to the pandemic, two-way trade and investment between Australia and India doubled. Now, IndAus ECTA is “expected to increase bilateral trade from AUD$36.7 billion to AUD$60 billion,” according to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.
•Through IndAus ECTA, tariffs on a range of Australian exports to India, including coal, lentils, sheep meat, wool, lobsters and rare earths, will be eliminated. The deal also includes a phased reduction of tariffs on wine and agricultural products including avocados, cherries, nuts and blueberries. This is welcoming news to Australian businesses, particularly in the face of economic sanctions on a range of Australian produce they faced from China last year.
•The deal also extends to enhancing services exports and strengthening our people-to-people links, including a quota for chefs and yoga teachers, post-study work visa of 2-4 years for Indian students on a reciprocal basis, mutual recognition of professional services and other licensed/regulated occupations, and work and holiday visa arrangements for young professionals. The role of the Indian diaspora as a key national economic asset should not be underestimated in this deal. Data from the India Economic Strategy Update confirm that nearly one in five overseas students in Australia are from India, making full fee-paying Indian students the largest group of overseas students.
•But as a former Indian Ambassador to Australia tweeted, it is the strategic message of this ECTA that is as important as its economic content. With the turbulence faced by both nations in the Indo-Pacific region, the convergence of economic and geopolitical risks is real. ECTA is a clear response to those changing dynamics that both countries face. And the fact that India today counts on the support of Australia through the Quad and maritime security and now through a trade agreement shows the diversification of its strategic and economic approach.
A deal despite challenges
•Yet the Russian invasion of Ukraine remains a ‘balancing act’ for India. Half of its arms imports come from Russia and some 70% of its military hardware is Russian-made. The need for India’s military diversification is now greater than ever. Australia is limited in its delivery on this front. And whilst India would no doubt like to rely less on Russia, the U.S. is not stepping up to supply India with its latest missiles.
•It is a testament to the growing resilience and bandwidth of bilateral ties that despite differences over India’s reticence in condemning the war in Ukraine and its purchase of heavily discounted Russian oil, the trade deal was brought to a closure with remarkable alacrity. In the past, Canberra’s fierce response to India’s 1988 nuclear tests and the Indian media’s over-the-top reaction to attacks on Indian students in Melbourne in 2009-2010 had almost derailed ties.
•While both countries have come from different places, they seem to have arrived at the same place, practising economic liberalisation at their own pace. Hailing from opposite sides of power blocs during the Cold War, they now have shared norms and democratic principles and support a rules-based order. While they will continue to face headwinds that create new geopolitical and economic uncertainties, the footings for a stronger relationship have been set. Their mutual commitment to economic advancement through IndAus ECTA is symbolic of how far the relationship has come. That means the future for both nations’ peoples is full of promise and opportunity.
📰 Repairing the complex India-Nepal relationship
There needs to be quiet dialogue to resolve their many differences, with New Delhi needing to be sensitive and generous
•The Nepal Prime Minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, paid a long-awaited visit to India last week (April 1-3). Sworn in in July 2021, this was his first bilateral visit abroad, in keeping with tradition. The outcome might appear modest but what is significant is that India and Nepal effectively managed to steer clear of divisive issues. At 75, Mr. Deuba is a political veteran and first became Prime Minister in 1995. Now in his fifth stint, he is no stranger to the complex relationship between the two countries.
Positive outcomes
•Among the highlights was the operationalisation of the 35 kilometre cross-border rail link from Jayanagar (Bihar) to Kurtha (Nepal). Two further phases will extend it to Bijalpura and Bardibas. The ₹787 crore project had been ready for over a year but operationalisation was held up because of the necessary administrative requirements in Nepal to set up a company that could recruit staff. The Konkan Railway Corporation will provide the necessary technical support initially.
•The second project that was inaugurated was the 90 km long 132 kV double circuit transmission line connecting Tila (Solukhumbu) to Mirchaiya (Siraha) close to the Indian border. Constructed with an Exim Bank concessional loan of ₹200 crore, there are a dozen hydroelectric projects planned in the Solu corridor for which the Nepal Electricity Authority has concluded PPAs of 325 MW.
•In addition, agreements providing technical cooperation in the railway sector, Nepal’s induction into the International Solar Alliance, and between Indian Oil Corporation and Nepal Oil Corporation on ensuring regular supplies of petroleum products were also signed.
•The Mahakali Treaty, signed in 1996 during Mr. Deuba’s first visit as Prime Minister, covers the Sarada and Tanakpur barrages as well as the 6,700 MW (approximately) Pancheshwar Multipurpose project. Both sides have agreed to push for an early finalisation of the detailed project report. The ambitious $7 billion project needs political will to move it forward. The joint vision statement on power sector cooperation recognises the opportunities for joint development power generation projects together with cross border transmission linkages and coordination between the national grids; it can provide the momentum.
•On February 27, Mr. Deuba pushed through the ratification of the agreement with the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), despite the reservations of his coalition partners, the Maoists and the UML (Unified-Socialist). The agreement provides a grant of $500 million for building 318 km of high voltage transmission lines along with sub-stations and the maintenance of 300 km of the East-West highway. The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu had actively sought to sabotage the agreement by planting stories that it was part of the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at containing China. The agreement had been signed in 2017, during Mr. Deuba’s fourth stint as Prime Minister, and was awaiting ratification. Together with the Pancheshwar project, it provides welcome synergy.
China’s growing role
•During the monarchy, China maintained a link with the Palace and its concerns were primarily related to keeping tabs on the Tibetan refugee community. With the abolition of the monarchy, China has shifted attention to the political parties and to institutions such as the Army and Armed Police Force and considers Nepal an important element in its growing South Asian footprint.
•In recent years, India’s relations with Nepal have had both ‘highs’ and ‘lows’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often spoken of the “neighbourhood first” policy. He started with a highly successful visit in August 2014 but then saw the relationship take a nosedive in 2015, with India first getting blamed for interfering in the Constitution drafting process and then for an “unofficial blockade” that generated widespread resentment against India. It reinforced the notion that Nepali nationalism and anti-Indianism were two sides of the same coin that Mr. Deuba’s predecessor, Mr. K.P. Sharma Oli, exploited successfully.
•In 2016, Mr. Oli visited Beijing to negotiate an Agreement on Transit Transportation. Three years later, a Protocol was concluded with China providing access to four sea ports and three land ports. The first ever visit of the Chinese Defence Minister took place in March 2017, followed by joint military exercises a month later. A military grant of $32 million was also announced.
•China has overtaken India as the largest source of foreign direct investment. In 2019, China’s President Xi Jinping visited Kathmandu. Annual development assistance has been hiked to $120 million. Today, China is also engaged with airport expansion projects at Pokhara and Lumbini. Rather than compete with China, India needs to up its own game.
•The growing Chinese presence means that India cannot afford to let issues linger but reach out actively to find resolution.
Managing differences
•Over the years, a number of differences have emerged between India and Nepal that need attention. The political narrative has changed in both countries and these issues can no longer be swept under the carpet or subsumed by invoking a ‘special relationship’ based on ties of a shared culture, language and religion. Part of the success of Mr. Deuba’s visit was that none of the differences was allowed to dominate the visit. Yet, to build upon the positive mood, it is necessary these issues be discussed, behind closed doors and at Track 2 and Track 1.5 channels.
•As one of the oldest bonds, the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship was originally sought by the Nepali authorities in 1949 to continue the special links they had with British India. It provides for an open border and for Nepali nationals to have the right to work in India. But today, it is viewed as a sign of an unequal relationship, and an Indian imposition. The idea of revising and updating it has found mention in Joint Statements since the mid-1990s. It has been discussed sporadically, but in a desultory manner, by the Foreign Secretaries in 1997, and even at the ministerial level at the 2014 Joint Commission.
•In 2016, an eight-member Eminent Persons Group was set up to discuss it. The report is available with both governments but the perception in Kathmandu is that it should be formally presented to the two governments. As long as it is clearly understood that this is only a report by well-intentioned experts in their individual capacity and not binding on governments, it should be possible for the two Foreign Ministers to acknowledge it publicly. It could even be made public to kickstart Track 2 conversations.
•Demonetisation is another irritant. In November 2016, India withdrew ₹15.44 trillion of high value (₹1,000 and ₹500) currency notes. Today, over ₹15.3 trillion has been returned in the form of fresh currency. Yet, many Nepali nationals who were legally entitled to hold ₹25,000 of Indian currency (given that the Nepali rupee is pegged to the Indian rupee) were left high and dry. The Nepal Rashtra Bank, which is the central bank, holds ₹7 crore and estimates of public holdings are ₹500 crore. After more than five years, it should certainly be possible to resolve this to mutual satisfaction.
On the boundaries
•In 2019, Mr. Oli, facing domestic opposition within his party, needed a distraction and found one in the form of the Kalapani boundary issue. These boundaries had been fixed in 1816 by the British, and India inherited the areas over which the British had exercised territorial control in 1947. While 98% of the India-Nepal boundary was demarcated, two areas, Susta and Kalapani remained in limbo. In November 2019, India issued new maps following the division of the State of Jammu and Kashmir as Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Though the new Indian map did not affect the India-Nepal boundary in any material way, Mr. Oli expanded the Kalapani area dispute. By whipping up nationalist sentiment, he got a new map of Nepal endorsed by the legislature through a constitutional amendment. While it did not alter the situation on the ground, it soured relations with India and added a new and emotive irritant.
•The need today is to avoid rhetoric on territorial nationalism and lay the groundwork for quiet dialogue where both sides display sensitivity as they explore what is feasible. India needs to be a sensitive and generous partner for the “neighbourhood first” policy to take root.
📰 A candid conversation about the ‘caged parrot’
If the CBI is to tread the path of virtue, it should have a strong leader with a distinct belief in the law and ethics
•The Chief Justice of India (CJI), Justice N.V. Ramana, must be lauded for his candid appraisal recently of the pathetic state of India’s investigating agencies. Last week in Delhi, while delivering the annual (and the 19th edition) D.P. Kohli Memorial Talk organised by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the CJI minced no words in condemning the utter subordination of agencies to the executive and its disastrous consequences for the cause of justice.
•D.P. Kohli was the first Director of the CBI after the agency was renamed the CBI in 1963 from the earlier Special Police Establishment. A man of impeccable character, he was faceless and fearless, and a model to be emulated by his successors.
Judiciary’s gaze is crucial
•The CJI has not said anything new at the lecture that we in India do not already know. But coming as it did from the head of the Indian judiciary, his stern warning that investigating agencies will pay a heavy price for their utter willingness to stoop to please politicians should be taken seriously by all outfits, especially the CBI, which has had a patchy record with regard to political interference in sensitive investigations. The CJI called upon investigators to stand up to unethical pressures in order not to betray the trust reposed in them by the public. He even dropped a hint that if middle- and senior-level investigators deviated from the path of objectivity and neutrality, they would pay for it dearly. We have already seen how the Supreme Court of India and High Courts have often admonished investigators for their sloppiness and deviation from ethics. Therefore, we need a strong Supreme Court and equally strong High Courts to keep our investigators on the straight and narrow path.
Some change
•There is no denying the fact that the CBI has been grossly misused by successive governments. This is why in December 1997, another fearless judge, Justice J.S. Verma had lambasted the then CBI Director in the so-called Hawala case, rebuking him for stalling the investigation at will, thereby sending inappropriate signals to his subordinates in the crucial investigation.
•Justice Verma was so provoked by state of affairs that he went on to prescribe a new clinical procedure for the selection of the CBI chief, giving him also a much needed and fixed tenure of two years during which he could not be removed by the government. It may not be an exaggeration to say that earlier, CBI Directors were changed at will almost like how one would wear new garments every day. This mandatory tenure was meant to insulate the CBI Director from the caprice of the executive. This process has since been expanded to include the CJI in the selection panel.
•It will be incorrect to assert that all this has transformed the CBI into an apolitical and objective body. Meticulous supervision by the Supreme Court in some important cases has made more than a marginal difference to the honesty of investigation. There is palpable fear among CBI officers that the judiciary could intervene were an aggrieved person to prove that an investigator had been arbitrary and dishonest. It will be unfair to the CBI to say that its investigation has not acquired any greater uprightness than before even after the many reprimands it had received from the higher judiciary. My view is also that the allegation of political interference has been blown out of proportion, because only about 10% of cases handled by the CBI have political overtones.
A bright spot and lows
•The CBI now has some of the brightest Indian Police Service officers in its higher echelons. None of them may be expected to be reckless and sacrifice their careers by bending to unethical pressures from their Director or from the government’s echelons. However, it is not enough if the middle-rung supervisors alone are straightforward. There needs to be a strong and virtuous leader who will not only be honest but also stick his neck out to protect his deputies if and when confronted by an unscrupulous political heavyweight. If the CBI has to tread the path of virtue, it should have the strongest leader with a distinct belief in the law and ethics.
•Unfortunately, in recent years, at least two Directors brought ignominy to the CBI. This has proved that whatever the courts may do to enforce discipline and adherence to the law, there are the odd leaders who could subvert the system. Little can be done to move away from this unfortunate situation unless there are bold and enlightened persons heading investigation agencies, and who will be firm with the executive if it tries to intimidate junior officers.
•My own experience is that if one stands up and explains to a Prime Minister why a particular course of action suggested by a junior Minister or someone in the ruling party was unacceptable, then one has shown the right path to one’s subordinates within the organisation. It is equally true that a Prime Minister will support you nine times out of 10 if you present your view in a rational and reasonable manner. If a Director is unable to display even this element of courage he should not be heading the organisation. If this honest approach to investigation does not get fused internally, mere tinkering with the criminal law and the procedure to appoint heads of important criminal justice organisations will be of no avail.
•It is not that the CJI and the other judges are unaware of some investigating officers swerving from the right path at the instance of a small-time politician. But they are helpless in their efforts to stem the rot because many in the higher judiciary do not want to exceed their brief and upset things.
•There have also been some big fish who have been caught in the net of investigators — a former Chief Minister of Bihar and a former Home Minister of Maharashtra, are examples. But given the magnitude of the problem, the steps taken so far to check dishonesty in the higher echelons of the government are only cosmetic. This is why I am still cynical: however much the judiciary stands by law enforcement outfits, little will change in terms of the public servant (including popular and elected Ministers) curbing the unabated corruption in the country.
What is needed
•Finally, I do not endorse the CJI’s proposal of an umbrella organisation that will oversee all investigating agencies. This idea was meant to avoid having multiple agencies looking into the same set of allegations. Apart from its impracticality, such a novel body could generate its own problems — of turf wars and ego clashes. I would rather have the focus on weeding out the dishonest among officers and rewarding those who have shown and proven themselves to be honest and professionally innovative.
