With the growing passage of time, particularly in the last ten years, amid the clamour of roaring, unprecedented success on the economic front and the reciprocal patting both in domestic and international spheres, two very minor issues went unnoticed by the majority of people: the fastest crumbling core administrative infrastructure and financial-social equity.
The second issue calls for a separate deliberation because of its immensity, thus leaving us with the other core issue — the crumbling administrative infrastructure — more alarmingly at the central administrative and higher judicial levels. I had already raised concerns about the rapid deterioration of the direct tax administration system, which is reaffirmed by unanimous data on the spiral of wealth inequality and the unprecedented circulation of cash in the domestic economy, currently no less than ₹3.40 lakh crore.
Now, another deadly danger is grappling us quite visibly — the non-existent criminal justice system. Let us take stock of the nation’s highest investigation agency, the CBI. The recent performance history of this premier security agency would move even the dead in their graves with pain and concern. From the high-profile R.G. Kar doctor murder, the murder of a senior judge in Jharkhand, the gruesome Nithari child murders, to recent High Court orders — every corruption case it has handled is now an international showpiece of the highest aberration.
Levels of incompetence and non-performance that were unthinkable a decade ago now appear to be the norm. The performance of the ED speaks for itself, evidenced by the sea of unaccounted cash circulating in the domestic economy.
Now the big question is: how did these twin premier investigation agencies become completely ineffective in just ten years? How did they lose their minimum efficacy and public trust? The most bona fide and trustworthy answer is that they have not lost their lustre — they are being made to withhold their true potential by their political masters, mostly for political gains and the rest for monetary ones.
One most well-established truth nowadays is the unanimous mental acceptance by a significant percent of common people in India that laws are functional only for the poor and the hapless, irrespective of the field of operation. The independence of vital investigation and administrative agencies has been so meticulously circumvented by political masters for selfish gains that the hard-earned international credibility and respect, painstakingly built over the last 70 years, is now being self-inflictedly eroded — so much so that a great nation is fast turning into a playing field for superpowers, both politically and economically, including our close neighbours.
Things are turning so savage that even the most faithful domestic media is unable to hide the rapidly manifesting cracks in every aspect of this poor nation — although the real rainy days are still a few steps away.
Apart from these, the lingering glory of this rainbow nation is further tainted by the flip-flops of the higher judiciary — the protector of the nation and the Constitution — which appears no less circumvented than the hapless executive. There is rampant assumption of unethical jurisdiction and the imparting of irrelevant considerations and interpretations unheard of in jurisprudential principles — giving leeway to the rich and powerful in lieu of monetary or other unethical considerations.
The constant clamour by a few remaining voices of conscience, particularly from the legal fraternity, about rampant corruption in the higher judiciary in recent years is self-affirmed by the decisions, orders, and stays that are strangest to jurisprudence, laws, and the Constitution — along with the nabbing of a few black sheep caught red-handed, though these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Obviously, it is the clarion call of a nation heading toward abrasive hardships on different fronts of governance.
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