Do we really 'Stand by'?

As a Service, we have been declaring, to the world, that we 'stand by' our colleagues, who have apparently been dealt with unfairly. The question remains, what do we mean by that? Are we willing to go to jail for them? Or are we willing to go jail with them? Perhaps we can pool in their legal fees then. Except that marquee lawyers take upwards of a crore per hearing, and divided among 5000 odd IAS officers, that is some 2000 rupees per hearing per officer. Not a fortune, but surely it would make many people wary of standing by. 

One has not read the judgement passed in the case. One takes the words of the seniors for it, that our senior colleagues have been hard done by. One has met many seniors who have vouched for the honesty of the officer(s) concerned. One is willing to believe that their 'crime' was something which has now been erased from the statutes.

What one finds hard to understand is how a system, which could not determine who was driving the vehicle on the Bandra road that fateful night, and which could not determine who shot the deer on that famous hunting spree, was so sure of itself that it rejected a CBI final report, and recorded in the rejection order that the conduct "falls within four corners" of an offence under PC Act. Was the investigator left with much choice, except to locate the final situation within those four corners? 

Anyway, why should we blame over-enthusiasm of the system, when the case itself was born out of a glory hunting exercise by our own, even more senior, colleague. Does he 'stand by'? That the glory hunting turned itself conveniently into a political hatchet job was conveniently ignored. After the political price was paid, it was all water under the bridge. Except for the officers of the screening committee, who are left with the albatross of prosecution around their necks.

The most notable of the 'convicted' trio is retired. The two others were serving, at appropriately senior levels that their prosecution required sanction of the government; sanction which seems, was easily given. Do the officers, who gave the sanction, 'stand by'? One supposes those officers were sufficiently senior to understand that the named officers were not criminals. Or did they think otherwise? If they did, why don't they come out and convince the association, so that those who are 'standing by' may sit down. Or did they just roll over to the political desire. Or, worse, they did not even apply their minds before throwing their colleagues under the bus?

Anyway, situated where we are, what is the best course to go forth? We know that the system is hugely lawyer driven. If your lawyer is good enough, you are untouchable. Else, your conviction can be snatched out of a final report! Trouble is, pooling a quarter of one's salary for each hearing of our fallen comrades might not actually be feasible. Don't these lawyers take pro bono cases though? A lot of them were present in a post midnight court hearing to prevent the hanging of a convicted terrorist. Surely we can sell the honesty of our honest colleague to someone sympathetic. Or is our honesty just not the worth of a terrorist's pardon. That would also speak for the 'power' of the IAS, who collectively could not convince a proper lawyer for a good discount, if not pro bono hearing. I am sure none of 'best minds of the nation in their cohorts' would have imagined that their fates, at the fag end of life, would be in the hands of their classmates who took to law, and not just at the National Universities! Even the Government has some good quality lawyers, who have made the highest Lords reconsider. Government lawyers are known to take personal cases. If we cannot move these lawyers ourselves, their employers, who are our political masters, surely can. Can some of us request them for this help; once? Or do we roll over again, just like the instance when the prosecution was sanctioned.

Standing by might be conceived as a move at public opinion. We should know by now that as a group, public opinion is not our forte - if it were, we would be politicians (many of our colleagues who do rule public opinion did recently cross to the political side - did someone check with them if they stand by?) If anybody has any false overestimation of what our standing by is achieving in public opinion space, one just needs to check the comments section of the articles about this move. Only a forcefully argued case in the court can help redeem these officers, as well as the Service at large. However, forget about getting marquee lawyers, the supposedly venal officer is unable to afford a simple lawyer. One can only pray for a miracle!

Travel Travails - On Cheaping Out and Chindi Chori

Travelling is a sure way of gaining new experience. Some of that experience moves one enough to write about. But in the era of facebook, where vacation pictures substitute very often for the proverbial "thousand words", much is left unsaid. One cannot embellish the presentation any more than what OPPO would have already done!

Then again, travelling give us some experience that cannot be put to picture. Most of this is the experience in dealing with our 'service providers'. For a person less literarily inclined, the thoughts are expressed in choicest swear words. Not that the literarily inclined do not swear. However, they also let their vexation take form of prose, as yours truly is proceeding to do forthwith.

So, I'll start with the mildly amusing irritants, and graduate slowly. This one happened when I was taking a flight out of Lucknow. For some curious reasons, the better eating options at the Departure terminal of CCSIA Lucknow are located on the outside of the "secure zone", and thus, are more often missed by hurried passengers who try to get their security check done as quick as possible. It so transpired that, on that day, some of the files of an office located near the airport needed action urgently, and so, in view of my expected absence for the coming few days, I had consented to see them at the Airport. Thus I was stuck in the non secure area, waiting for their arrival, and, having missed my lunch, ventured to this cute looking KFC, and ordered an obvious sounding "Cheesy Crunch" burger. I admired the business like attitude of the menu namer - all the names were obvious. I hate those highbrow restaurants who use names like "potato stuffed Indian flat bread toasted golden in clarified butter served with mint seasoning" to disguise the plain old aloo paratha. I got the order and settled to enjoy my burger in solitude. However, I was troubled by a very pertinent question - where the f*** was the cheese? I shared my trouble with the guy manning the counter. He said - Sir, you did not order the extra cheese slice! To which, I quoth, Kind Sir, why is it called a "Cheesy" Crunch burger? Ahh, his eyes lit up, Sir, the sauce is flavoured with cheese! How profound! I was thankful it did not turn into the whole "Sir, have you ever seen Kashmir in a Kashmiri Pulao" debate. Thus enlightened, I savoured each bite for long, trying to find the cheese with the self doubt laced determination of a fresh religious convert.

Then, there are cases where one finds oneself behind the market learning curve. Since the days one has been travelling, stay in any decent hotel (that includes all places of stay, except for those seedy ones in Paharganj in Delhi) meant that it included the "breakfast buffet" in the morning. It is something almost all middle class travellers know, (and most of us capitalize upon with full vengeance.) However, despite everything Alia and Ranvir tell you, Make My Trip, without giving any obvious warning to the effect, put one on a fairly expensive deal, with no breakfast! This NO MEAL thing popped quite prominently on the final booking papers. Along with "NON REFUNDABLE"! Somehow, both these things were not so obvious before I pressed that Pay button to seal this Unbreakable Covenant.

Something similar happened with one of the flight bookings on this same very trip! (That one trip was really fraught.) So it was the first time I deigned to book Spicejet, the chief reason being it was the only carrier flying to our destination directly. So, I completed the booking, and was putting away the browser tabs, when all of a sudden, my phone pinged. 'Dear Customer, your fare is Hand Baggage only. You are not allowed to bring on any check in luggage'. Or something similar. Again, this was not something they had shown prominently before I paid. Being behind the learning curve, I did not even know about the existence of such packages! If discounted "hands only" packages were available, then I, who normally travelled with just a light back pack, had been apparently losing money paying for "check-in" packages all these days! Ironically, on a personal family trip with a 2 month old baby and the associated luggage, I was stuck with hands baggage only fare. I tried browsing through all the 'upgrade' options there on the website. They had a whole spectrum of offerings, for the appropriate (and wholly inappropriate) fees - sandwiches, leg room, priority boarding, a lap dance with a "happy ending" (we wish!), but no upgrade to check-in option. I called the helpline. I was told that we can check-in luggage by paying a princely sum of ₹400! So that was it. For the expected gain of an amount equivalent to one apiece of their sandwich and coffee, they had performed this bait and switch on us. And they did intend to gain on it, as I was bombarded with daily SMS, all telling me they I won't be able to check-in luggage. It was the way the Income Tax people bombard you with SMS in the week preceding 31st July. I panicked and, over the week, contacted their landline twice just to confirm that I'd be allowed to check-in luggage at the counter! I was allowed, in the end, after shelling out the aforesaid promised 400. Was it really worth a week of a customer's panic for Spicejet? 

Airlines are in a really cutthroat business, and they have to earn every penny they can. Of course, not all of them can be like my favourite carrier - Air India. You don't have to pay for your legroom - AI rows end around 25, while other airline rows go on till 32 to 36. You don't have to pay 300 bucks for a cold sandwich - all meals are included. Plus, in the back of the aircraft, almost all seats can be "chosen", free of cost. Their fare is also reasonably within the range of our "low cost carriers". However, some may object to the use, as a benchmark, of a public subsidized carrier, which has often fallen in red, and which no investor is willing to touch with a barge pole. Then again, you have a functioning, profiting and expanding example of Vistara, who seem to be able to do their business without short changing their customers. Recently Vistara was also seen offering a super cheap "meals free" option, which worked out some 300 rupees cheaper than the regular economy class. However, they were forthright about it - the payment option clearly showed all three options in parallel - super saver, economy and flexi - and the difference between them was clearly demarcated. It did leave the Incremental Financial Analyst in me perplexed. Since Vistara gives the meal option as a default option, with the supersaver being basically an opt out, wouldn't a passenger opting for this option lead to net revenue loss? For, to be truthful, the economy class complimentary meal does not cost the airlines as much as the ticket fare discount of 300 rupees. 

Anyway, whatever 'honorable' airlines like Vistara do, they do it with full disclosure. On the other hand, I recently had an airline service experience which needs an opening joke of its own. This was one of the first juvenile "non-veg" joke we heard back in our early teens. Two Mechanical Engineering students, both friends, as well as rivals, decided on their graduation, to meet up again after 5 years, to see how successful they have been in life. On the appointed day, after 5 years, in front of a jury of common friends, the first guy arrived in a really long long limousine. When the applause died, the friends asked the mantra behind his success. He said that being the horny mechanical engineer that he was, he had devised a machine, which had to be fed one rupee coin, along with one's d*ck, and for that it would provide, uhhm, "relief" to the person. (Think of a vending machine, which vends not goods, but autoerotic service.) What an idea, sirjee! Obviously, the other guy was not coming because there was no way he could top it. Until he actually arrived - in his personal VTOL jet plane! Everyone, including the first guy, bowed to the master, and sought his story. Well, he said, being a horny mechanical engineer, he had devised a machine, which had to be fed one rupee coin, and for that it would provide "relief" to the person. The listeners exclaimed - this is exactly what the first guy did. Ahhh, true, he said, but there is a catch - my machine started when you put in a rupee, but it let you "withdraw" only when you put in a hundred rupees!

I had a similar experience performing a "web check-in" on Indigo. Whenever I travel without any check-in luggage, which seems to be almost always, except for the time I actually book a no check in fare, I use the facility of web check-in. It allow one to avoid the queue at the check-in counter, and that is mighty useful when one is running late. This occasion had the potential of being a running-late situation, and hence doing the web check-in was essential. However, when I tried, I was sent to a "choose seat" page. Just that I found that all the seats were paid, even the middle seats in the tail section. Now I was in no mood to pay extra for those. Infact for a 40 minute flight I was not willing to pay anything extra. So I chose to skip the option of seat and to proceed further. However, like the Super Mario world 8-4, it redirected me to the same pages and menus again. Worse part was, I received a "booking modified" email, and my booking page was not opening in a separate tab too. So I called up the call centre. He told me that I must choose a seat. I told that there is no free of cost seat. I do not want to choose any seat, so the airline should let me have any seat, howsoever badly placed. He replied that there is no free seat! I asked if someone, who had a valid booking and was checking in at their counter was unwilling to pay more, would he be made to fly standing, a-la Delhi Metro? Obviously the call centre guy did not have answers to such managerial decision questions. So, being the guy with his d*ck caught in the machine, I dutifully coughed up the money for a cheap seat. However, it still remained stuck! So I made one more payment for the same seat! And it still remained stuck! So I had to call the call centre guy once more. Luckily, for me, despite all the bad things I said to him for the delinquent behaviour of his employer, he stayed calm, and completed my web check-in remotely, bless him! Thus, only after taking an ample sacrifice did the system let me be. Well, it was not all bad news here. Since I had paid twice for the cheaper seat, I was moved to a better window seat - and when, next day, a copassenger with an ingratiating smile tried to coax me into exchanging my window seat (which is the "lower berth" of airlines industry) with his middle seat (which equates to the train middle berth!), I politely refused - citing my "extra payments" done for the seat. I actually dared him to match my contribution, if not better it. I needn't. On hearing about the extra payment, he quietly settled into his middle seat like a tranquilized gorilla. If only Indian Railways could differentially charge its berths, with a premium on lower berths, it could cure all the aches and sores middle aged uncle and aunties develop when they spot someone younger than them in occupation of a lower berth.

Why am I writing all this? Some might opine that being a literate member of the society, I should read the fine print finely. The fact remains that I am not inclined to peruse those online terms and conditions page as thoroughly as I would read my official files. Legally, Court rulings do tend to favour a consumer, especially when he is practically forced to sign up to a very long pre-drafted contract. The least that is expected is that the other party notifies the consumer of any deviation from the standard practice. Contract, being a case of a private legislation, is not an absolute Commandment, and answers to judicial review on such grounds. However, that would take too much effort, for essentially not much pecuniary redress. Ranting about it, however, does give one closure. Somewhat similar to the way many persons, as a part of a much celebrated movement recently, chose to air their grievances on the social media, instead of seeking the legal remedy. (I won't name the movement, lest I be labelled gender insensitive.) However, it remains a serious irritant, and the companies are competing amongst themselves to find even more and more outrageous methods to pinch pennies. I hope enough people notice, and get riled by, these antics, so that this madness stops, without actual lawsuits. Or, I fear, someday, when one orders a Cheesy Crunch, one may be expected to savour the cheese wafting in the kitchen aroma, and to imagine the bun in the lush wheat fields outside.

Of Monkeys and Men

Title credits - John Steinbeck

Recently, after a long hiatus, I have resumed my morning walks. The hope is to graduate to running, but the walk routine keeps getting interrupted before a momentum is built. Anyway, that's another story. This is about an epiphanic observation I had, in the quiet of the morning.

The trouble is that our colony is infested with rhesus monkeys. I am sure that, in an age where finding deities in animals is a trend, many of the readers' colonies would be so infested. For some reason, they are en masse on the colony roads in the morning. Maybe the daytime is still too hot for affording much movement. May be it is their biological clock. Anyway, for some reason, whole families of these creatures are there in the roads - some are crossing it, some are sitting on it, and some are (shudders) perched on the house boundaries and overhanging tree branches.

Now, those who are not familiar with these monkeys should know that they are quite aggressive and dangerous. They are known to bite, and chase down unsuspecting humans. They are known carriers of rabies. I have, as an SDM, seen cases of fatalities where women in villages have been chased off their terrace, plummeting to their death.

I have no personal experience of being attacked by these monkeys. However, every morning is a mental ordeal. One has to keep a very alert eye for the fear of running into one of these beasts. Especially the kind perched on walls and trees. If one of them is sitting in the middle of the road, one has to squeeze oneself on the sidewalk and pass, lest one gets too close and provokes them. One has to be cautious and watchful. Carrying a big stick is an option, but that precludes the possibility that the walk would graduate into a jog someday. Hence, most days one is unarmed and vulnerable. A relaxing exercise is turned into a nerve racking vigil. This breeds resentment for the monkey. For no attributable direct cause, I resent him. For making me feel unsafe. As James Potter said of Snape - because he exists!

Well, that was not the epiphany I was talking about. That part came when I passed a rather large family of rather large monkeys very closely. My wary eyes looked a them for a long time - and I was astonished to notice their -

absolute nonchalance, with regards to my existence! 

They just went on picking bugs out of each others' coats, and looking threatening as ever. But they cared two hoots about my passing them. All my fear of them, and all my resentment of them did not matter to them. So I was forced to look at their perspective of it. From their view, it is us, their distant bipedal cousins, who have removed the famous Lucknow orchards on whose branches they would have rather swung, as compared to a spiked wall. It is us who are interrupting their morning grooming session, or their transit route to wherever they want to go. Even then, as long as one does not get too in the face with them, they dont care. Yet, here I walk, resenting their existence, feeling very frightened, nevertheless.

What would my thoughts and reactions be, if these monkeys were sapient, and they did notice me walking around the place? If they were capable of knowing that I mean no harm, even if I strayed too close and provoked their instincts? What if I myself had been bitten/ assaulted by a monkey once or twice prior to this, and still I was compelled to walk these monkey infested paths?

Suddenly, I understood the female rage!

Understood - not approved of.

Let me clarify that I am not a feminist, and this is not a feminist (and opportunist!) post.

This is just an effort to understand about why my facebook wall is so clogged with posts that seem to insinuate an innate criminality to half the population - the half to which I belong.

If a non sapient crowd of creatures, which are known to harm humans occasionally, (but have never harmed me personally) could arouse such resentment in me, one can imagine what someone, who almost surely has faced some kind of unwelcome behaviour once in her life, from someone who is sapient enough to understand that the behaviour is unwelcome, might feel for an unnamed crowd of men. After all, I did not care that not all monkeys bite unsuspecting humans. (Or maybe they do, I have no clue, and am not a zoologist.)

The crux of the matter is that we have failed to impart a sense of security and safety to women. It is not about the individual instances of depraved behaviour, which are covered under the definition of crime. It is a broader, much subtler miasma of insecurity. It is not that only women notice it. Men too notice it, when the women they care about are out there, alone (and in some cases, even when they are accompanying them, even more sadly!) Nothing overt has to happen to cause this feeling. Our collective behaviour till now has made it ever present.

What can be done about it? This is something which cannot be simply legislated away. In our country, anyway, the way we legislate on such issues (dealing with the welfare of vulnerable sections) leaves much wanting. We essentially turn a slow, unresponsive, out of tune, and hence unjust machinery of Criminal Jurisprudence on its head - essentially ignoring that the machine is still slow, unresponsive, out of tune and unjust. We just replace the injustice towards the complainant with injustice towards the accused. What is to be done with this system has been a part of deliberations, and will be a part of more such deliberations. However, law can punish deeds, or attempts. It cannot punish a feeling.

Again - in the terms of Potterverse - we don't need an Avada kedavra, we need an Expecto Patronum!

Unlike most of my articles, this one cannot prescribe a general solution, or even outlines for the same. If I could, I would make a killing on the stock market - since the thing underlying the behaviour of the stock market is the same - collective feelings, and collective signalling.

However, any collective starts with an individual.

Let us begin with the Hippocratic oath that medical students take - first, do no harm! There is a practical side to this advice. The laws are loaded very heavily against you, and it is hard to where the boundary, between whatever you are doing and statutory crime, is situated. Of course, lesser instances of such incidences would also go a long way into clearing the air.

However, better results would come if the right minded are proactive in making the womankind feel safer than they do right now. It is here that our sapience, so long exposited in the preceding paragraphs as a liability, comes to our aid. We can actually think, and try to make the scene better. There are two ways to go about it. The first way is that of the plain old chivalrous behaviour. If done right, there is no better substitute. Then, again, in today's world, it is hard to pull off without the risk of projecting collateral creepiness, unless you are groomed for it, either by birth, or by training, as given in our Defence Academies. Plus, this behaviour would be objectionable to extreme feminists. (I would not call them feminazis, that's just offensive!) However, even those of who are not equipped with the faculties of chivalry can be proactive in cranking the creepiness down. It can be done by practising the simple art of noticing. Noticing if some behaviour of one is making someone else uncomfortable. If it is, then the best course is to avoid that behaviour. Unless, of course, the behaviour is unavoidable - in which case, one must apologize to those affected by it, and explain why it is unavoidable. Explicit mention of intent behind a seemingly disturbing behaviour shows that one means no harm, and that one cares. That goes a long way into dispelling insecurity.

Finally, if one is challenged by even the above task (but still one is pure and harmless at heart), the remaining option is to give a wide berth. One would do it to beings one doesn't want to provoke needlessly - say, a wandering bull. Or for that matter, a pack of monkeys sitting on the road. Just extend the same courtesy to your fellow human beings. As they say, no harm, no foul!

On Land Disputes - Good Fences Make Good Neighbours

Title credits - Robert Frost (Mending Wall)

                    Imagine, one fine night, your neighbour breaks down the fence between your houses. Or brings the wall between you down. Digs it right through the foundation, and beyond. So now, there is no way to show, where your property ends, and his begins.

                    Are you scared after imagining this? Maybe, you have confidence in your papers. But what papers do you have? A deed of property sale? It mentions your boundaries somewhat as - North-Plot 15/46, East - 9m road, South - 12m road, West- Plot 15/48. Which is fine, except that 15/48 belongs to your neighbour, whose position is also indeterminate, and is, infact, the crux of the problem. Then you remember that you have your government and municipal receipts, that show that the government acknowledges you as the occupier of 15/47. However, your Municipal Tax receipt does not contain any boundary details! I would give you a breather here. If your property is designated as X/Y, you are living in a regulated Urban area, where the town planning office of the Development Authority would be having a plotting plan. Getting a copy of that would be a tough deal. But not as tough as getting a Court to adjudicate that the boundary should be located where the map tells it should be. Even that would be a cake walk compared to the efforts that need to get that adjudication enforced on the ground.

                    So let’s raise the stakes a bit more. What if you dont live in a regulated urban area, but in a suburban/rural settings. Your deed shows your boundaries as - North-Ramkhelawan ka bageecha (Ramkhelawan's orchard), East - Khadnja (Cobbled path), South - Taalab (pond) , West- Shyamsundar ka ghar (Shyamsundar's house).There are no perfect gridlines, and no Town Planning maps. The last time the area might have been surveyed would be in 1880s. The maps would be extremely lucky to survive to this date. Believe, I have tried to get access to some of those maps myself, as a sitting SDM of the location concerned.

                    But then, again, what if the map was available? Or, to simplify it all, assume that it not a house which is under encroachment proceedings, but rather an agricultural field, and the adversary has ploughed through the medh (bund) into your field. Now your papers are on a much solid footing. You are the proud owner (legally, a tenant) of plot number 1057. 1057 is clearly demarcated in the village Lekhpal's map. So you plan to get that boundary put up where it ought to be. It is now that you realize that the map does not match the field! The map was made at the end of the last consolidation exercise. Since then, people have changed their boundaries by mutual arrangement, divisions, convenience, or heft. So if you rely on using 4 edge corners or 3 edge corners as "fixed points", you find that measuring from one side gives contradictory results as compared to measurements from the opposite end! So you decide to get the field measured from the boundary pillars, or sihadda. Only to discover that the sihadda is not even available on the location! It has been removed years ago by someone inconvenienced by it.

                    Of course, here, we have assumed that you are the sole owner of 1057. Most probably, it is co owned by 4 generations of your clan. You have divided and subdivided it based on mutual oral agreement, forgoing the distress of painful revenue court partition proceedings, but, in the bargain, ensuring that your generations of agreement finds no place in the official revenue records. Even more probably, it is one of your cousins who is gobbling up your field. And you have zilch evidence to show that it is your field.

                    So you panic, and call the police. Or you decide to, as they say, take the matters in your own hands, and the police gets called. What happens now? Firstly, the only offence that may directly be construed here, is that of criminal trespass (IPC 447), (since IPC 434, destruction or movement of a landmark fixed by public authority, is non cognizable, and police cannot act on it unless directed by the court) wherein, given the situation that the boundary itself is in dispute, it is not clear to the patrol vehicle crew, that who is the trespasser and who is being trespassed upon! Why should the police believe you? All they see is a violated and undefined boundary, and potential for a breach of peace, both of which can be solved amply by arresting both sides, as the police is bound to do under CrPC 151, to prevent the cognizable offence of affray (IPC 160).

                    So here is the catch - if you fight, you are guilty of affray. Read the definition in IPC 159 - When two or more persons, by fighting in a public place, disturb the public peace, they are said to “commit an affray”. There is no right or wrong side in an affray. And if you do nothing, you lose your property, or parts of it, with a very heavy burden of proof.

                    How heavy, we shall just see. Our statutes provide for such scenarios, in two ways. First, there is the remedy under CrPC 145 -

                    (1) Whenever an Executive Magistrate is satisfied from a report of a police officer or upon other information that a dispute likely to cause a breach of the peace exists concerning any land or water or the boundaries thereof, within his local jurisdiction, he shall make an order in writing, stating the grounds of his being so satisfied, and requiring the parties concerned in such dispute to attend his Court in person or by pleader, on a specified date and time, and to put in written statements of their respective claims as respects the fact of actual possession of the subject of dispute.

                    Notice the language - the Magistrate has to be satisfied that there is a possibility of breach of peace, for the relief follow. However, in such a case, it is the bounden duty of the same Magistrate to get you sign bonds that you shall not breach the peace, and then lock you up in case you do cause a breach of peace after that! Further -

                    (4) The Magistrate shall then, without, reference to the merits or the claims of any of the parties to a right to possess the subject of dispute, peruse the statements so put in, hear the parties, receive all such evidence as may be produced by them, take such further evidence, if any, as he thinks necessary, and, if possible, decide whether any and which of the parties was, at the date of the order made by him under sub- section (1), in possession of the subject of dispute: Provided that if it appears to the Magistrate that any party has been forcibly and wrongfully dispossessed within two months next before the date on which the report of a police officer or other information was received by the Magistrate, or after that date and before the date of his order under sub- section (1), he may treat the party so dispossessed as if that party had been in possession on the date of his order under sub- section (1).

                    Did you notice that big "if possible"? Yeah. Right. Further -

                    (6) (a) If the Magistrate decides that one of the parties was, or should under the proviso to sub- section (4) be treated as being, in such possession of the said subject, he shall issue an order declaring such party to be entitled to possession thereof until evicted therefrom in due course of law, and forbidding all disturbance of such possession until such eviction; and when he proceeds under the proviso to sub- section (4), may restore to possession the party forcibly and wrongfully dispossessed.

                    So, if it comes to 145(6), you are in good luck. Very good luck. For now we shall revisit the "if possible", under CrPC 146 -

                    (1) If the Magistrate at any time after making the order under sub- section (1) of section 145 considers the case to be one of emergency, or if he decides that none of the parties was then in such possession as is referred to in section 145, or if he is unable to satisfy himself as to which of them was then in such possession of the subject of dispute, he may attach the subject of dispute until a competent Court has determined the rights of the parties thereto with regard to the person entitled to the possession thereof: Provided that such Magistrate may withdraw the attachment at any time if he is satisfied that there is no longer any likelihood of breach of the peace with regard to the subject of dispute.

                    Look at that "if he is unable to satisfy himself". Your property can be attached and taken away from you, till a Civil Court decides the question that the Magistrate was unable to. How is the Civil Court going to do so, with the same set of available evidence, that's best left for some other discussion.

                    The procedure of CrPC is there for all kinds of property. Anyway, as you must be thinking by now, this provision isn't there to provide you justice. It is there to preserve the peace. If need be, then by snatching the toy from the hands of both the quarreling kids. However, if the property happens to be an agricultural land, you have few more means to pursue. Sample UPRC 24-

                    Dispute regarding boundaries.- (1) The sub-Divisional Officer may, on his own motion or on an application made in this behalf by a person interested, decide, by summary inquiry, any dispute regarding boundaries on the basis of existing survey map or, where the same is not possible, in accordance with the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1953, on the basis of such map.

                    (2) If in the course of an inquiry into a dispute under sub-section (1), the Sub-Divisional Officer is unable to satisfy himself as to which party is in possession or if it is shown that possession has been obtained by wrongful dispossession of the lawful occupant, within a period of three months preceding the commencement of the inquiry, the Sub-Divisional Officer shall-

                    (a) in the first case, ascertain by summary inquiry who is the person best entitled to the property, and shall put such person in possession.

                    (b) in the second case, put the person so dispossessed in possession, and for that purpose use or cause to be used such force as may be necessary an shall then fix the boundary accordingly.

                    (3) Every proceeding under this section shall, as far as possible, be concluded by the Sub-Divisional Officer within six months from the date of the application.

                    The language of UPRC 24 (2)(a) is quite similar to CrPC 145 (4). However, while CrPC allows the Magistrate to be unable to decide this question, UPRC 24(2) seems that the "summary inquiry" will solve the question. As we have seen earlier, Civil Courts were left to decide things the Magistrate could not. Again, here the Sub-Divisional Officer, with his "summary inquiry", is deemed equal to a task to which the Magistrate was not. Is the Sub-Divisional Officer of a superior cerebral make up than the Magistrate? The funny thing is, that the Criminal Court of Sub-Divisional Magistrate, and the Revenue Court of Sub-Divisional Officer are presided by the same officer! And the magic he is supposed to do in his inquiry in such indeterminate cases is as given by the UPRC Rule 22 (13) -

                    (13) Where boundaries of plots/survey numbers are not  identifiable or damaged, due to alluvion or diluvion or heavy rain or for any other reasons, the Sub-Divisional Officer may, on the application of the Chairman of the Village Revenue Committee of the village or on the report of Revenue Inspector or Lekhpal of the Circle or on the joint application signed by all the tenure holders concerned, direct, by general or special order in writing, the Revenue Inspector or Lekhpal concerned to demarcate the boundaries on the spot on the basis of the existing survey map or where it is not possible, on the basis of the possession and to redress the grievance, if any, on the basis of the conciliation in consultation with the Village Revenue Committee. The Revenue Inspector or the Lekhpal shall comply with the such order within two weeks from the date of the order and submit the report  thereof to the Sub-Divisional Officer.

                    So, finally, a dispute regarding possession is to be resolved as per possession! Either that, or it shakl be left to the shenanigans of the Village Revenue Committee and its officials, and the conciliation (!) done by them.

                    So, to summarize - you see your neighbour invading your property. Your papers are not really reassuring to you after a quiet contemplation about what they represent. If you call the police, there is a fair chance that you too shall end up locked, and for nothing, because the Police have no powers to help you in there. You petition your Magistrate, but by that time, the status quo is quite different, and there is a fair chance that you are unable to prove your case to the Magistrate. Anyway, you go to a proper court proceedings, only to find that, in absence of any better proof, the possession itself is a proof of prior possession! Of course, your decency, your law abiding nature, and your general ordinariness hurt you here. Had you been as willing as your opponent to risk a criminal case, you could have maintained the status quo, by force. For, sadly, the status of the law, as it stands, cannot protect the homes and hearths of the law abiders.

                    Land and related cases form the bulk of public grievances. They rank above the police related matters by far. And even there, a majority of the police related cases have a root in similar land related cases. As one of my batchmates put it very succinctly - 90% criminal cases in India have genesis in just two things. One of them is land. (The other thing is something whose Hindustani transliteration would be very similar, if not the same, as the spelling of the first thing; it reflects upon a whole spectrum of what that thing can do - from passion to exploitation.) So, if some government were to do a Pareto analysis, and really solve the issue of land disputes, while leaving pretty much everything else as they were, they would become immensely popular. Believe me, the intent is not missing. There are often drives, and over drives, to solve people's land related grievances. Teams are formed, with multiple tiers of officers, right up to the level of Collectors and Superintendents of Police themselves. However, in absence of any basic improvement in the legal framework or in the use of technology, such drives simply end up as the last few lines of Rule 22(4) - conciliation in consultation with the Village Revenue Committee. If that were to work, there would not have been a problem originally, to begin with. This is confined not only to our professional lives. Most civil servants receive requests from friends, relatives and acquaintances (and their friends, relatives and acquaintances), to intercede on their behalf, where some government related service gets stuck inordinately. I don't know about others, but whenever I receive a text from someone that (s)he needs a help, I pray to the Almighty that it is not a land related dispute! Your electoral registration is not done? Fine, I can request the ERO, and it should get done. You just give me your address proof. Your PDS card is not made? Okay, show me one person who is richer than you and has got PDS, and I can assure you shall get your card. Your power bill seems wrong? It can be requested to get it rechecked. Just show me your total rated power and last few bills. Even errors in your land records can be easily corrected, if you have the correct papers. But we draw a blank when it is a land related dispute. It is true whether I am sitting in my own jurisdiction and ordering my revenue staff, or whether I am calling a distant Tehsildar for a request from an acquaintance. What do I tell them to look at, which guarantees me that my order or request is correct and maintainable. In contrast, if I am asking a Supply official for a PDS card, I can say with confidence that the applicant is more indigent than the listed persons on their eligible list. If I am asking a Local Body clerk to issue a birth certificate, I have the records of the hospital to rely upon. In the land dispute, specifically a possession/boundary dispute, I can just ask him to do an honest job. As a jurisdictional officer, that may be ineffective, but it is not awkward. As a person making a request, it sounds all the more hollow! So, land boundary and possession disputes keep on piling, as new ones keep getting born while the old ones aren't settled yet. And while everyone from the Chief Minister down to the Village Lekhpal is striving hard to address grievances, it is like pushing against a wall.

This article is not just about whining. One can whine about many things, but not about things where one oneself is supposed to lead the change. By oneself, I mean the officers of Administrative Cadres, either All India or State Level. We are the apex officers of this department. Plus we are the ones tendering advice on which the policies of governance are framed. Before approaching the solution, one must have a clear view of the problem. What I have provided till now was a first person perspective to what ordeal a person faces when his land is being usurped. Now is the time to zoom out, and take a policy level perspective of the problem. So, here goes the list –

1.    Technical Procedural shortcomings –First of all, let’s see how we define our plot boundaries. We put boundary pillars and such physical markers, and we include their location in our village maps. In order to locate any specific point on the field, the correct procedure is to take two fixed points on the map (say Am and Bm), locate them on the ground (Ag and Bg), and verify that they are indeed immutable. Then, the point we need to find on the field is first located on the map (Cm), and the distances from the fixed points (AmCm and BmCm) are measured. Then, we try to make a triangle, AgBgCg which is similar to AmBmCm – by drawing an arc of radius BgCg (which is BmCm x Scale of the map) from Bg, and an arc of radius AgCg from Ag, and marking the intersection of both arc as Cg. Just recall from your high school geometry. Since the map is a scaled representation of the ground, it can be confirmed from the similar triangles that Cg is located where Cm should be located. If a 4 sided plot has the corners at Cm, Dm, Em, and Fm, we can locate it on the ground by making triangles AgBgCg, AgBgDg, AgBgEg, AgBgFg respectively. So far so good. But what do we do if the boundary pillars are gone missing (as they usually end up). Convention is to take other immutable points, like old wells, for example. However, even these are not easy to come by. Most (more than 80% by experience) files of boundary disputes have field reports based of field 3-corners and 4-corners as fixed points! To the urban dweller readers, these are the corners which the earthen bund boundaries between plots make, when they intersect. The report says that the distance between the two points was measured and verified as being the same as is being reported by the map. That this does not preclude a rotational displacement is pretty much lost on them! Still, even if we assume these fixed points are indeed fixed, how do we triangulate (“draw arcs”). A Revenue Inspector’s ideal kit contains a whole set of survey equipment – a series of flags and an eye piece – to mark off a straight line over long distances, a 45 degree mirror to mark off right angle views. Theoretically it is possible to draw a straight line from Ag, at a given angle BAC, to a certain distance AgCg, to reach the correct Cg. In practice, flags and straight lines are almost never used. It is very cumbersome a process. They use the surveyors chain, or now, mostly, a simple tape measure. It is 50m in length. You cannot draw 200 m arcs with those. Plus, try arcing with a tape over a crop of sugarcane which is growing in the path of the tape! So triangulation itself is dispensed with. Practically, they measure along any purportedly straight line (earthen bunds of various sizes, basically), to any purportedly right angle, to branch off in the convenient direction, till they reach somewhere near Cg (as per their understanding), and from here it is a ‘Hail Mary’ to locate Cg. That the bunds are curvy, that they are not plane, but have an undulating slope, which can get the horizontal length all wrong, that the bunds do not really make a sharp angle, does not deter them. The fact remains that if the same procedure is applied along some other bund leading to this point, it would lead to a totally different conclusion. So, finally, it is a hash of a measurement job, and very easy for the opposing lawyer to tear apart in the court when the confirmation hearing happens. Did reading that last paragraph seem tiring (or more tiring than the rest of the article)? Imagine how tiring would it be to actually do this! Is there a better way? Of course. There is this little thing called the GPS. Almost everybody today has it on his or her phone. Many of us use it to navigate in the new localities we visit, and over the years it has become quite effective. The government is not oblivious to it. India has its own version, BHUVAN, and it is being used to tag all the works being done under government programs like MNREGA. So, if, instead of defining our land boundaries based on pillars that go missing, and on maps based on the same, we defined our map in a digital form, with all 3-corners and higher level corners, as well as close points on all the curved boundaries being defined by their coordinates, we make the whole process so very simple. The whole business of triangulation is gone. You just feed the coordinates of the corners into the GPS station, and it shall locate the point on the ground (in the most rudimentary case, even your android google maps can do this job). Just this much. Look at the benefits. The system is so crystal clear that there is no scope of ambiguity. Once there is no ambiguity, there is no scope for dispute. A GPS based totalling from any direction would lead to the same point – at least with an accurate equipment. Hence, there is also not much for the lawyers to argue about in the confirmation hearing. In fact, with such accurate, quick and immutable measurements, there is not much reason for someone to brazenly encroach upon someone’s land. Which brings us to the second part of our system’s weakness.

2.    Lacunae in the Legal Framework - Our land laws are inadequate. They might have been adequate for the purpose they were framed (or, rather, the laws on which they have been modelled, largely, were adequate for their erstwhile purpose), which was the exaction of land revenue for the colonial state. Guaranteeing a hassle free proprietorship over the land (legally, tenancy) was not the aim. It is lacking both in substantive as well as procedural wings.  Many of those issues were largely covered in the article which I wrote last to last year. However, today I want to talk about a more sinister facet of these laws – they incentivize encroachment! They do that in the following ways –

a.    A strangely permissive system with regards to sanctity of private property – Most part of the legal system that deals with private property is civil in nature. Your land was snatched, you sue for it and get it back. There is no effective criminal provision to deter such tendencies. All I can think of is the provision of UP Control of Gundas Act, 1970, Section 2(b)-

 (b) 'Goonda' means a person who-

(vii) is a house-grabber.

Explanation. - 'House-grabber' means a person who takes or attempts to take or aids or abets in taking unauthorised possession or having lawfully entered unlawfully remains in possession, of a building including land, garden, garages or out-houses appurtenant to a building.]

Even this Act of being a Gunda and acting as a Gunda entails just an externment for 6 months. The language of IPC 441 is a bit circumspect –

441. Criminal trespass.—Whoever enters into or upon property in the possession of another with intent to commit an offence or to intimidate, insult or annoy any person in possession of such property, or having lawfully entered into or upon such property, unlawfully remains there with intent thereby to intimidate, insult or annoy any such person, or with intent to commit an offence, is said to commit “criminal trespass”. 

Now it can be argued that a person’s attempt to deprive you of your property is an annoyance, and hence the offence of trespass is made, but then, do you remain a “person in possession” in such a case. Anyway, forcible dispossession is not defined as an ingredient of this crime. So while a sympathetic investigating police officer might add this charge on the person who wronged you, the pedantic court would be inclined to throw it away. Similar is the case with 434 IPC. Is your compound wall really 'a mark put up by public authority'?

It is not that forcible dispossession is not defined in any statute. Both CrPC 145 (4), as well as UPRC 24(2)(a) define such a case to be proven. However, what follows in such cases is that the Court restores the possession to whom it was wrongly snatched from. However, it does not inflict any punishment on the one who forcibly took possession in the first place. There are penal provisions for forcibly taking possession over lands of SC/ST tenants (twice), which is two years of imprisonment under UPRC 65(2). No such punishment exists for taking forcible possession of other tenants’ lands. No such penalty exists for forcible possession of non-agricultural property of any person, to the best of my knowledge. It is a very cavalier attitude to penal legislation. We have criminalized freedom of expression, because “hurt feelings” can lead to breach of public peace. However, the real reason behind most of the violent crimes, including murders, goes totally unpunished, even though the act itself is a wrong (even without its provocation potential)! Hence, forcible extra legal dispossession of any property needs to be made a punishable offence, with a sentence that carries an adequate deterrence. May be we can make it a 2 strike system, the way it is with SC/ST lands right now. Or even 3 strikes. However, in absence of a credible deterrence, the land-mafia will always take their chances.

b.    An unwieldy, slow and uncertain measurement mechanism makes it possible to reap the benefits of the forced possession - This overlaps with the part covered in the previous paragraph on technical issues. The problem defined there are technical-procedural. Yet, they are not there due to the lack of technology. I have been using GPS on my phone for about 8 years now. The problem is in the way we have legally defined our plot boundaries – with boundary pillars and cloth maps. This engenders a system where the measurement has to be made in a cumbersome, inaccurate manner, after petitioning the Revenue Officers and Courts for a long time. Then, when the measurement is done, in a period of months, if not years, there is ample scope for impugning the various weak links of the measurement chain – whether the fixed point was really fixed, whether the tape was standard, whether the mathematics adds up, etc. All this while, the forcible occupier enjoys his ill gotten gain, while his law abiding victim degrades financially as well as in his self esteem. It is this uncertainty inherent in this system that makes an effective supervision of a higher official almost impossible. When there are so many “right” results, it effectively means there is no right result. Whatever the revenue staff puts up as its report, as long as on paper it looks internally consistent, is an acceptable report. So there is an ample scope to make the report as per the pressures put on by the staff – political, administrative, or pecuniary. The most right meaning officer cannot get better of those pressures (the wrong meaning officer can – through adequate pressures of their own!) Hence, it is past saying that we need to leave our archaic plot demarcation and location definition, and adopt one which encompasses way more accurate technology (the GPS) which has been present with us for at least a decade. While we are at it, we need to modify the procedure too. A GPS based system would not need the kind of man and equipment mobilization that is needed now, and the court procedure needs to shortened to reflect the same.

One problem which may come here is the day we switch to a GPS based system, we would find that due to initial inaccuracies in the map, as well as due to subtle adjustments over time, hardly any plot will coincide with its GPS mandated boundary. (Why GPS, this problem is evident whenever a SDM goes to a village and tries to conduct a textbook survey using presently used technology too.)  Hence, redefining the boundaries with absolute coordinates, instead of the current relative situational system can wreak havoc, with almost all plots being liable to relocation. However, we periodically do just that – in form of Consolidation exercises. To the uninitiated, Consolidation is an exercise similar to your Hard Disk Defragmentation. Chunks of land of a single tenant, spread across the village, are made into one solid plot or two, contiguously located, so that the holdings become more economical. In the bargain, the village also earmarks new public lands, for public purpose. It is done by tabulating all holdings, of all quality, and then calculating the weighted share of each tenant in the total village land. Weighted share simply means that the weightage is higher for higher value land, and lower for low value land, so that there is no instance of someone trading their inferior lands for superior lands. (That this weightage system is one off the most venality prone part of the exercise, leading to much strife, shall be the topic of another article, maybe after one has seen a Consolidation Court of one’s own). So, in the end, all the plot boundaries are erased, and a new map is drawn, with straight boundaries, and larger plots, proportionate to one’s weighted share. The tenants are then given possession of these new plots one by one. So, instead of making the new map on cloth or paper, suppose the new map is drawn by computer on a GPS based map. This electronic copy is named the correct copy, and its print outs to be just the copies of the real thing. Now, instead of giving possession by measuring out the land with rods and tapes, we give out possession based on GPS readouts. It is that simple. One village at a time, we can switch over to a new and much practical system, without any strife. I had pitched this idea once to a senior official (over lunch, after the official’s official work in the District was done!) and it had met a warm response. Let’s hope something comes of it in good time.

c.    The importance of possession under law – Our substantive property laws are all presumptive, rather than absolute, and they have multiple blind spots in them, which have been acknowledged by the “if no logical adjudication is possible” clauses in all procedures related to property laws. It is there in CrPC, it is there in provisions related to boundary demarcation in UPRC, and it is present in the procedure for plot distribution after a partition of holdings. Ultimately, it boils down to ground possession – obtained legally or illegally – for in the absence of a coherent body of evidence, the legality or illegality of possession  is very hard to prove. In fact, we have seen in Rule 22 (13) above, that in the default case, possession de facto would be recognized possession de jure. Countless court rulings also conclude the same, because our procedural / record keeping system does not allow an unambiguous record of the history of possession. Hence, it is very much in anyone’s interest to hold on to the possession they have acquired illegally, and take one’s chances in the court with the opponents’ records. There are always witnesses for hire, especially if the record keeping is not up to the mark.

How do we set this part right? To begin with, possession as a means for settling boundaries has to be removed from the statutes, in tandem with the provision for defining the boundaries with GPS coordinates. Possession can still be a ground in case of a whole property – whether a plot 1057 is in the possession of the person or not. There are papers for that – receipts of taxes, records of crops, receipts of rent, which can be used to build an evidence of possession. However, it cannot be allowed to be said that I own plot 1057, and its boundaries exist 10 feet to the south of the legally provided boundary, because I am ploughing it till there. In a GPS based system, such questions will never arise, because your boundary can be marked within a minute by the GPS station. However, till we adopt and shift to an absolute coordinates boundary system, we have another way GPS can be used to solve issues of possession quite easily. Almost whole of the world, including this country, is being mapped continuously by GIS satellites. We have accurate satellite photographic records of land use and buildings, updated continuously, sitting in the computers of our GIS operator agencies. While there has been a push by the government to use this backbone for mapping government services and works, or to do urban survey for raising more taxes, the real game changer use for this data would be as evidence to prove forcible changes in possession. Any bund which has been erased, any boundary wall which has been broken, unless substantiated by a legal reason, can be claimed to be a forced dispossession, and dealt accordingly. This can also be used to solve the disputes between cosharers of a large plot, at least to the extent that it is a case of overstepping, and not the all out seizure of a co sharer's land. Further, the coordinates, from the photograph cum maps that show the status quo ante, can be fed into GPS systems to find the boundary as it was, in minutes. This potential for prompt remedy will frustrate the boundary breakers. Coupled with criminalization of the act, this could minimize the everyday variety of long standing land disputes.

There are many persons, who have served in Revenue Offices at various capacities, who might scoff at the need for such changes. They may count how, in their days, they solved all the disputes sitting under the mango tree, and all was well. I would like to say that individual brilliance and application does not make a system. A system should be individual-proof. Regardless of who is manning the high chair, a system should give consistent results. Of course, the present system works – but working it is a very time consuming process. In the days the system was built, there were very few tenants in a village, and the Lekhpal used to free to devote a lot of time to work the old method. More importantly, the administration did not have to care whether the disputes were resolved justly – as the revenue extracted from A’s possession was equivalent to that taken from B’s possession. We may feel smug over how we camped in the fields and got the surveys done. (Even I have done extensive survey, and had brought the data on to compare the field observation with the village map, and the Google Maps. This was done for the reason that the complainant was pestering the Commissioner every few days. The comparison showed that the map was actually drawn wrong, and showed 30-40 metres lengthwise of land, along the highway, where none existed on the ground – as correctly corroborated by the Google Maps. The complainant’s land was non existent, although, on paper he had some very prime property on the Meerut Delhi highway. This example also serves as a bolster to my claim that we need to shift to GPS based land records!) However, for all the cases we indulged our personal attention in, to deliver justice, we ignored 99% other cases in which we did not visit the field ourselves. Let alone going to the field. We could not ensure that the system of measurement was followed as per textbook. Had we tried visiting every dispute site, we would have know there are not enough Collectors and SDOs, not enough Naib Tehsildars, not even enough Lekhpals to ensure we solve all disputes based on the archaic system. Unless we are contented, in the end, despite all our State paraphernalia, records, and courts, with just the consolation of a conciliation!