By P Chidambaram
Change is the law of nature. India, today, is not the India of the 1200s or the 1600s, it is not the 17%-literate India when it attained Independence in 1947, it is not the India that swore by the state ‘occupying the commanding heights of the economy.’
One adjust can drastically alter the course of a nation. In 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh, as Finance Minister, did what till then was unthinkable. He abolished almost all specifications for licenses and permits. As Commerce Minister, I announced the new Foreign Trade Policy that began with the unprecedented (for India) declaration that ‘Imports and Exports shall be free’. Along with the two-step devaluation, the 3 policy announcements set the nation on a new and irreversible financial path.
Some adjustments take place more than a period of time and are noticed only when the adjust gathers a crucial mass. There are several examples: can any individual recognize the date when the ubiquitous STD/ISD/PCO boards vanished? Or the date when listeners stopped tuning into All India Radio (or Aakashvani) to ‘listen to the news’? Or the date when each and every college-going girl, even in the conservative South, abandoned the half-sari and switched to a pair of jeans or a salwar-kameez?
Surge of pride
Every adjust ushers in a new standard. Some new normals are uplifting. When 17 % of Board positions in listed businesses are occupied by females when an India-issued credit card payable in rupees is accepted in each and every foreign nation when 1 can dial and speak to any 1 in the planet with no going by way of the agony of ‘booking a trunk call’ when 1 can invest in a car or truck, truck or two-wheeler on EMI when 1 can order meals to medicines to garments on the web and have the goods delivered at one’s door when 1 can invest in healthcare insurance coverage and recover most of one’s expenditures of hospitalisation or surgery when sportspersons from rural India fill several locations in the Indian cricket group and when Indian origin executives head Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Nokia, Cognizant, MasterCard, Xerox and Reckitt Benckiser, there is a surge of pride in our hearts.
Some new normals make 1 uncomfortable. For instance, I am not but completely convinced that courts should really develop into virtual courts and conduct all hearings by way of video. Routine applications and minor instances may well be heard in virtual courts, but when important inquiries of law or complicated information are expected to be argued and analysed, there is no substitute for a physical hearing. Eye make contact with of the lawyer with the judge is critical. And if the court is a multi-member bench, the body language of the judges affords beneficial guidance to the counsel.
Chilling information
Some other new normals send a chill — of anxiousness or worry or desperation.
The new standard in India seems to be that —
-the Prime Minister will comprehensive two terms as head of the government with no addressing a single press conference
-the proper to speak in Parliament or at an all-celebration meeting will be controlled (and denied) by a finger on a button that will ‘mute’ the microphone
-a senior bureaucrat will openly speak of “too much democracy” and will not be admonished
-the Special Marriage Act that permits inter-faith marriages will be repealed by stealth and replaced by a law that will punish the man amongst the inter-faith couple
-the government by the majority of elected legislators will turn into majoritarian rule
-the media (or the bulk of it) will be taken more than or tamed into submission by the ruling celebration
-the institutions made to act as watchdogs will be hollowed out by leaving vacancies unfilled or by appointment of loyal servitors
-some are more equal than other people below law and in the access to justice
-election contributions will be controlled and directed to the ruling celebration
-non-government and non-profit organizations will be suppressed or driven out of the nation
-investigation agencies and anti-sedition laws will be utilised to intimidate and incarcerate political adversaries, social activists, writers and poets and
-monopolisation of financial energy will be encouraged and actively supported.
Are you proud?
Read all of the above examples in 1 go, discount some adjectives as biased, location your hand on your heart, arouse your conscience and ask your self the query: am I proud of the ‘new’ standard to which my country is heading?
Take the UP Ordinance against the so-referred to as adore jihad that was promulgated on November 28, 2020. Within 11 days, 5 instances had been registered. In 1 case, the girl’s loved ones told the police that the two households had resolved the matter, the girl had married an additional boy and the loved ones had not filed a complaint. Yet, an FIR was registered against the boy. In an additional case, following an FIR and a non-bailable warrant, the police have threatened to attach the home of the boy’s loved ones if he did not respond to the police’s summons. One can conclude that the most rampant crime in UP is two young persons falling in adore and marrying! Hence it is engaging the consideration of the chief minister and the complete police force, more than the increasing quantity of instances of murder, rape, assault or theft to which the persons are apparently accustomed as ‘normal’ in UP.
The ‘new’ standard for UP may well develop into the new normal for India. That is scary.
Website: pchidambaram.in
Twitter @Pchidambaram_IN