The Servant of the People

This may be my most politically incorrect article. Well, to hell with it, for what is ‘politically correct’ but a politically correct way to address a hypocrite.

What is the need for a State of any kind? Usually, this is the first thing which is taught to any freshman civil servant. While the more evolved explanations are quite abstruse, and, in my humble opinion, pretentious, the basic explanations point to just one reason – to create a source of legitimate force to right the wrongs.

Righting the wrongs itself is a tricky topic, unless we are clear on what constitutes right or wrong. In my view – wrong is the absence of justice. What is justice? In the most simplistic way, justice can be framed in three paradigms – one, where everyone has in proportion to one’s ability / might; two – where everyone has equal, and three – where everyone has in proportion to one’s need. All three systems have a logical self-containment, and a good set of moral arguments to bolster them. In fact, all three are actually practiced, if imperfectly, in various social institutions of the modern society – the first in most free economy markets, the second, in most modern welfare states, and the third, in most modern families. The first system is highly sustainable in itself – the strong will continue to corner most of the resources, and the weaker shall keep perishing. It has been described as the system of ‘matsya nyaya’ (literally – fish justice – the big fish shall eat the small). Needless to say, it is an inherently violent system. However, the other two paradigms of justice are against natural order of things – the stronger persons under the matsya nyay paradigm shall end up losing, and weaker end up gaining, and hence, there shall always be a tendency of the relative losers under the system to fight and take away what was ‘naturally’ theirs to begin with. Thus, there is the need for the presence of some deterrent force which may prevent the strong from preying on the weak, on the threat of violence. To make the plot more interesting, we add to this the human touch. While the small fish of the sea may be easy prey for the bigger ones, weaker humans often have a tendency to unite and resist the depredations of the stronger. Such resistance is often bloody and violent.

As it may be seen, both the enforcement of matsya nyaya and the conduction of the more ‘evolved’ systems of justice require the use of violent force. One thing about violence, when it is used, is that it is materially destructive. It may throw up a victor, and a vanquished; but both end up losing something – and the losses may spread to persons who are not even party to the violence. So, while the threat of violence was necessary to sustain the society, the act of violence itself was destructive. It is a classic conundrum, very aptly described by the great poet Ramdhaari Singh‘Dinkar’ in his poem, ‘Shakti aur Kshama’ (Power and Mercy)

सहनशीलता, क्षमा, दया को

तभी पूजता जग है

बल का दर्प चमकता उसके

पीछे जब जगमग है।

 – the crux of which is – in order for one’s abjuration of violence to be seen as sincere, the threat of violence must be very real and credible. Thus, there was a growing realization of the need for a repository of violent might so strong that its threat of violence would be universally credible – and hence, universally obeyed. This was the bloody origin of the ‘State’ – an institution into which we, as a society, vested our right to indulge in violence on our behalf, as we ourselves, as individuals or as small groups, abstained from it. It may be seen that states are the legitimate repositories of coercive power – not only against their subjects, but even against their external counterparts. In both these arenas – internal and external, the actual use of violence is gradually declining – internally by the reliance on the penal laws, and externally by the doctrines of mutually assured destruction – thus, the credible threat of violence is making the world go round.

Over the time being, the system of deciding that who shall man the apparatus of the state changed. Initially, in the days of monarchy, the offsprings of the incumbents were expected to man the apparatus after them. Gradually, some form of representativeness was involved, and thus, in today’s world, most of the advanced civilizations have some or the other form of democracy – where all the key posts of the State are manned by representatives of the people. Almost all the persons in the employment of the state are now deemed to be ‘public servants’. This whole piece deals with what, in my opinion, was that supposed to mean, and what it has been wrongly construed as by the majority of persons – mostly lay persons, but also some of the intelligentsia with vested interests.

There was recently (around a year back) a ‘debate’ in the pulp media about redesignating the important offices of the State in a more deprecating style – for example, making the Prime Minster into the ‘Prime Servant’, the Chief Minister into the ‘Chief Servant’, and a host of analogous inanities. The logic given was that the holders of these offices were ‘public servants’, and hence they should wear their ‘servitude’ on their name plates! There is the increasing use of calling the State revenues “tax payers’ money” – although, by that analogy, the restaurant revenues should be called “diners’ money” and the movie hall earnings, “patrons’ money”. The idea is to run down everything connected with the state - and the idea met with quite a strong approval – from people who felt that their public servants were getting too masterly in their relationship with the public, and that there was a strong need to cut them to their size. Is the public opinion right in this case? My own vested interest as a civil servant aside, I feel this idea stems from the fact that most of the public as well as public servants have forgotten the dichotomy between the public offices of the state, and the holders of those offices.

To explain the above mentioned idea, we shall expand upon anther question posed in public debate around the same time – is the Parliament above the ‘people’, or below them? We can expand upon this question and make it into a wider one – Is the State above the people, or below it? While it may sound like a value based argument, in which you can take either side depending on your orientation, in reality, there is only one logical answer, which rests on the fundamental function of the State. In today’s world, the State is expected to do much – including things like feeding supplementary food to malnourished babies, to operate Railways and Airlines, to manufacture bottled water and what not. However, deep down, the raison d'etre of the state remains the same – to be the monopolist in the exercise of legitimate violence, in order to make the existence of the modern society possible. All the other functions of the welfare state, or the nanny state, may be equally important to you, according to your location in the political spectrum from left to the right. However, this fundamental function of the state is not dependent on the ideology – it is an absolute fact. Seen in this light, there can remain no question about whether the State is above the people or below. For if the State is not above the people, there is no reason for the existence of the State. Multinational NGOs can do well to ‘serve with a smile’ and bring us all the welfare we need. However, the big arbiter, who is supposed to keep the people away from an internecine war, must, by the very reason behind its existence, stay well and truly above the citizenry.

What then about the democracy, and what then about the public servants? Therein lies the dichotomy which has been ignored for long – the dichotomy between the office and the holder of the office. The person holding the office of the Prime Minster is a public servant, but the PMO is not subservient to the people of India. All the IAS officers in the country are public servants – however, the Collectors and District Magistrates are not subservient to the people of their Districts. The idea of being subservient here means ‘taking orders from’. The procedure about who takes orders from whom is laid out clearly in the Constitution, the Rules of Business and similar enactments. This dichotomy is still clearly evident in the Courthouses of the country. The seat of the presiding officer is usually a few feet above the ground, where the parties and their counsel stand. It signifies the majesty and the supremacy of the Court over those who have assembled before it to resolve their disputes. It is made clear that it is the Court which is above the public, and not the presiding officer. Rules against contempt of Courts are made simply to reinforce that absolute authority. According to the rules, even the presiding officer may, by a behavior unbecoming of the office, commit contempt of his own court! Unfortunately, in India, contempt of Courts is the only offence in which an assault against the state is viewed more seriously than an assault against any lay person of the public. Most developed nations have laws to prevent assault against their law enforcement officials. ‘Cop-killing’ is an offence which is deemed much graver than simple murder in the United States, as it is acknowledged that the assault on the law enforcement machinery of the State is more dangerous than the assault on any private person.

Much of what is wrong with the country today can be ascribed to the waning power of the State. The State had but two basic duties – to the common people – it promised basic safety of life and limb, and to the economy, it promised the enforcement of contracts. In both these areas, the sword arm of the state has been weakened to the extent of ineffectiveness. For reasons described in the later paragraphs, the deterrent power of the police has been steadily eroded, and hence, the preventive aspect of crime control is compromised. Even in the punitive aspect, the investigation is often steered by back seat drivers, and, in case of rural crime, it has to content with various caste and identity groups, which shall stop at nothing to ensure that guilty of their ilk shall never be found out. This pressure politics may often take the shape of faux Gandhian ‘protests’ – alleging that the police is picking out on particular castes – which, in a way is unavoidable, since most rural crimes have a caste angle to them. In any case, any exercise of the state might in the performance of state duties is painted as a ‘people versus state’ conflict in the popular discourse. Similarly, in the case of contract enforcement – the ultimate sanction that any court can provide against a defaulter is the recovery of the judgement dues as ‘arrears of land revenues’. Now, the exaction of land revenues was a serious business some 60 years back. A lot many of the movements during our freedom struggle were sparked off by it – the Bardoli Satyagrah for instance. Even the blockbuster Oscar nominee ‘Lagaan’ had the Hindi word for this tax as its title. In those days, for not paying up the arrears of land revenue, one’s properties could be attached and sold off in the market, and one could end up locked up in the revenue lock up at the Tehsil, till the dues were paid up. Hence, when a court ordered the dues to be collected as ‘arrears of land revenue’ – it used to mean serious business, and hence, the money would usually be paid up by the defaulter before it came to this serious step. However, these days, the collection of land revenue dues has become a very placid affair. The Collection Amin goes to the person’s house, knocks on the door and begs for the dues to be paid. If the defaulter’s heart melts, he may pay out a part of the dues. Else it shall be collected the other day. The only weapons left to the collection authorities are ‘naming and shaming’ of the defaulters on the Tehsil notice Board, and denial of their Arms License clearances! (It is a big deal in Uttar Pradesh.) No doubt more and more people commit all sorts of crimes and defaults – they are beginning to understand they can get away with it.

The most important cause of this this development is that the whole sword arm of the state has gone weak, due to a multiplicity of reasons. Since the ‘engagement’ with the ‘public’ by this arm is mostly in an adversarial situation, the arm gets mostly bad press. However, the situation has worsened in the decade gone by. Now, the press actually tries to have its cake and eat it too. Both sides of the argument are being taken equally well, without any sense of contradiction or cognitive dissonance. In case of the August-September riots in Muzaffarnagar, a lot of criticism was heaped on the administration for not taking ‘hard steps’ to stop the rioters. Hardly a week after these riots, when instigators tried to do a Mahapanchayat in Meerut, the administration clamped down on the riot instigators. Those aggrieved by the crackdown resorted to pelting of stones on the policemen. The police responded with a few aerial rounds of fire (not allowed by manual, manual insists on firing for effect), and some weapons were trained on the rioters. The press showed this as “Bullets vs. Stones – is this just?”. It was as if they expected a duel, instead of riot control! However, the thing which is most influential in weakening the hands of the field staff in law and order situations is the adverse scrutiny by the judiciary and judicial bodies. Increasingly any use of force is being deemed excess; any loss of life on the sides of the troublemaker is deemed an aggression on human rights. Unsubstantiated media reports are being taken as basis for suo moto cognizance of cases. The judicial machinery, even at lower levels, is exercising its prerogative under CrPC to register cases of murder against the District Officials, when the police reject such motivated FIRs. While it is true that few of these cases do result in any conviction, but then, it is hardly the culmination in conviction that an official has to worry about. The slow movement of cases in the judiciary, with one carrying the tag of a ‘murder accused’ is punishment enough for a crime which has not been committed. These trials may go on for decades together, and the newer personnel are noticing how their seniors who took the call to use force have fared. After all, the bargain is quite clear – get transferred / suspended for inaction, versus get implicated for murder by taking action. The choice is not so difficult to make. To reverse this, the attitude must change, on the part of the judicial bodies. When a Court decides to register a case of murder on the law and order machinery, it must ensure that indisputable evidence has been brought on the record by the complainant. It is not a case of Judiciary versus the Executive, but of State versus anarchy. After all, the prerogatives and writs of the Judiciary run through the arms of the executive only.

Another reason why such tendencies are on a rise is because the state is deemed to be unresponsive to genuine grievances addressed peacefully. This has a certain degree of truth. There are certain constraints, budgetary and human, which prevent the state machinery from delivering to full satisfaction. Hence, peaceful submissions may not be getting full response. Hence, people resort to marches, rallies, stone pelting and other sorts of disorders to grab the attention of the State. However, even this mode of grievance redressal is not good. It is true that disorder has been successful in attracting the attention of the State to the problems, but the growing reluctance to quell these disturbance by the ‘stick’ has been leading to a disproportionate amount of ‘carrot’ being diverted to those creating disturbance. This leads to even greater deprivations to all others. Now the others are in even more dire straits, and they have an example of the successful wresting of state favours by disorder. Thus, it only foments more disturbances, and treating even the ‘just cause’ disturbances with kid glove is wrong.

One big effect, and also a cause in itself, of rise of law and order disturbance is the rise of intracity ‘warlords’. Basically starting as small time leaders of political / criminal world, they have occupied the ‘muscle power vacuum’ left by the State. When rioters ran amok all across India during the riots related to some statement by a fringe Godman in Punjab, the administrative machinery chose to play safe, for all the reasons given above. It was a call given by a 'great political leader', to ‘teach the rioters a lesson’ in a way that is the trademark of his 'great party' that brought the disturbance to a halt the next day in the city of Mumbai! This sort of awe should be commanded by the State, not by political leaders indulging in muscle power based politics. When power has been ceded to these people, invariably it would lead to situations which would be deemed as law and order violations by the State, but for these people, it is simply business as usual. Ironically, these leaders are often more efficient in quelling riots, since they are not as amenable to Human Rights inquiry, as the state is!

One side effect of the democratic politics of the country is that the political leadership of the nation is directly responsible to the people. That is a very good thing, as it makes the top echelons of the government sensitive to the issues of the lowest stratas of the society. However, here also, there is an increased sense of confusion between the office and the public servant occupying it. There is a perverse pressure to appear sensitive, at the cost of being professional. In every scene of crime or calamity, the thing which seen is the rank of highest official who has ‘visited’ the place. Even the media dedicates disproportionate attention on who visited / did not visit the site of crime / calamity. One thing needs to be borne in mind – the officials – either elected or appointed, are no deities, whose mere appearance on the site will lead to dispensation of some boons or the righting of all the wrongs. The laws of the nation have defined roles for everyone – the crime scene is to be investigated by a Sub Inspector of Police – and the higher echelons are there is simply see that he does that in the right spirit and manner. The appearance of the Superintendent, the Collector, the Commissioner or the Minister himself does not speed up the investigation – on the contrary, it impedes it, as the local police get busy in arranging for the high profile visits. Moreover, these high profile visits to site have two distinct perverse effects. Firstly, all the victims of similar crimes expect that the same courtesy be extended to them as were extended to the Joneses next door – and there aren’t enough man-hours in the top echelons of the government to satisfy that want – even if the people at the top left all their other jobs and worked 24 hours a day, doing just site visits. Hence, it would lead to resentment. Secondly, and more importantly, once the public starts to parley with the Collectors and Commissioners ‘on equal terms’, they start to equate themselves to them in a hierarchical sense. They actually start treating the professional subordinates of those officials with contempt – what is the status of a lowly SI, when one has spoken with the DIG of police himself! My call against ‘treating of public as equals with higher official’ may sound quite offensive to a majority of the readers, but the truth is that I write this in the context of rural northern India, which is deeply hierarchical – and the subordinate of any peer is treated as subordinate, and any subordinate is treated with disdain – it is seen in the way the servant boy at the tea shop is treated by them. While our sentiments may get hurt by the deeply feudal tenor of the article – it must always be borne in mind that we are referring to a society where genuine rape cases are being swept under the carpet in the name of ‘panchayati samjhauta’ (informal village agreements), while the new draconian women laws are being used to fix opponents in the Panchayati elections! It is a society with 16^th century sensibilities, but exposed to modern technology, modern political awareness and modern laws – a very dangerous cocktail.

In the end, it boils down to a simple question. If every action of the State is seen as a state versus people clash, then for whom is the State working? The trouble is, the beneficiaries of state actions tend to stay silent, rather than speak out. There is no rigid class of the beneficiaries of state action – everyone gets some benefit from it. In the billions that live here, even if one looks out for the interest of millions, there will always be thousands whose vested interest will be under threat. By choosing to highlight merely these conflicts, the media has always made its anti-establishment credentials clear. What is lamentable is the silence of those whose interests were being defended by any particular action on any particular day. Perhaps they assume it is their right to get the said services, and they would not be wrong. However, in the end, it is a democracy, and the organs of the state must be nurtured by the masses. For already, the people are beginning to realize the ineffectiveness of the threat promised by our penal laws, and have started taking recourse to primitive violence to right their wrongs– just the way it was in the days before the rise of States – for the human need for justice does not wait for ineffective mechanisms to rejuvenate. Now is not the time to emasculate the State further, but to empower it to tackle this descent into anarchy, and to reverse it. For a ‘servant’, the nation does not need a fawning butler, but a strong charioteer.