Post-independence India’s democratic experiment — its only major achievement of the past 68 years — is slowly unravelling. Because of the reckless indiscipline and private agendas of the country’s politicians of all ideological hues, the parliamentary democracy system is dissolving before our very eyes. Both houses of Parliament are not being “allowed to function” by opposition Congress party MPs trooping into the well of the houses and chanting slogans, making any debate — the raison d’etre of Parliament — impossible. Likewise, the once much-admired judiciary is also in a condition of permanent decline. The reluctance of their lordships of the bench and learned counsel of the bar to rewrite the archaic criminal and civil procedure laws has slowed the wheels of justice to a crawl. Moreover, there’s a newly emergent tendency within the judiciary to pander to vindictive and corrupt politicians, policemen and bureaucrats, even when they blatantly abuse their office to harass law-abiding citizens. A case in point is the persistent CBI hounding of indefatigable human rights activist Teesta Setalvad for technical violations of the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act, 2010. Instead of passing severe strictures against the agency and the Union government for frivolous and vexatious litigation, high and apex court benches are lending patient ears to them. Similarly, in Karnataka instead of sternly chastising bureaucrats of several government departments who have filed a rain of frivolous cases against the Bangalore Club, whimsically disputing its land title 150 years after it was established, their lordships are carefully weighing the vindictive persecution of its members (your editor included). Indeed, slowly but surely, the pillars of Indian democracy are crumbling. RIP Comrade Perhaps the only people who believe India’s communist parties — the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and the Communist Party of India (CPI simpliciter) — have a future, are their delusional leaders stuck in a cold war time warp and given to emoting the imported class struggle rhetoric of a bygone era. These ruminations have been prompted by the tragic demise of journalist Praful Bidwai, one of the most articulate advocates of the lost Left cause in the country, who choked to death while dining in distant Holland on June 23. Although on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, I knew Praful well and gave this IIT-Bombay dropout his first job as assistant editor of Business India (BI), the country’s first business magazine and champion of private enterprise and free markets. Even though without previous journalistic experience, Praful learned the ropes quickly, and indeed brought BI international recognition when he wrote a detailed cover story exposing gross management negligence in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay, which had resulted in workers suffering grave radiation injuries. Of course, he didn’t last long in BI and when asked to balance a lead feature on the pharmaceutical industry which he wrote entirely from the workers’ perspective, he went AWOL at the last minute, leaving your editor to pick up the pieces. Subsequently he moved to Delhi and emerged as a well-respected columnist…
