Justice gets a Social Justice angle

We seem to have entered a phase where the amount of interest a national issue generates is inversely proportional to its importance.

The first one is the current lead story on the Times of India. This is one of the eight bills that passed recently in a record 17 minutes, taking advantage of a unique chaotic environment in the parliament. Manoj Mitta's absurd editorial adds completely irrelevant dimensions to the story, but to summarize: the Police can no longer arrest a person unless the offense for which the person is being arrested is likely to result in a jail sentence of more than seven years.

Instead, the perp will be issued a notice of appearance. Of course if the perp fails to honor the notice of appearance, he is liable to get arrested, but take a guess - how many do you think will show up?

It is fairly obvious that this law aims to blunt whatever teeth the UAPA bill got via the hastily added amendment after 26/11. In reality this will end up helping the most hardened career criminals just as it will help poorer criminals with no moorings. Also consider this: a very large number of cases are cracked because police arrests people on minor charges, get to detain them while they collect more evidence. This law will destroy that technique.

Of course there is a human rights angle to it but then again the provision of bail makes it a bit redundant, doesn't it?

The second one has not yet been committed into a law:

Suggesting new conditions of performance-based appointments and continuation of service, the ARC report - Refurbishing of Personnel Administration - said that all public servants should be subjected to two intensive reviews on completion of 14 years and 20 years of service, respectively. It said: "Their (civil servants) further continuance beyond 20 years will depend on the outcome of these reviews. It should be expressly provided that all new recruitments will be for a period of 20 years and their continuance beyond that would depend on intensive reviews". [link]

This is merely one of the slew of measures the UPA Government has undertaken to strengthen the executive at the expense of other branches of the Government as well as important institutions.

It is easy to see this rule will ensure loyalty over a longer time horizon, even when a party is not in power. This is also redundant, a public servant can be fired or transferred for poor performance anytime.