The National Anthem issue resurfaces

I had pondered over this subject last year and reading the old post http://blog.deepakmisra.com/2016/12/rambling-thoughts-on-playing-of.html will help to get the context of this post better.

Almost all people screaming vociferously on this issue are missing  what in corporate jargon we call the big picture. There are a couple of points to take into consideration before discussing  the act of  respecting the national anthem, if one should stand or sit when the national anthem is being  played.

Let us separate this discussion into 3 parts

1)     The appropriateness of a court asking theatres to play the national anthem

-         The moot point is whether courts can pass arbitrary and possibly illegal orders and usurp the job of the executive. It is absolutely shameful that the government and the parliamentarians are happy with the courts taking over their job. Passing laws is parliament’s job. It is not the job of an unelected body.  However it benefits the leaders when they can have unpopular decisions taken by someone else. Why do we need parliament at all if courts have assumed the role of law making?  My earlier blog mentions how the whole controversy started and why the court order is improper. So to sum it up, this controversy has started from an improper if not incorrect order.

-         Luckily the Supreme Court seems to have realized that they have bitten off a bit more than they can chew and are trying to deflect the whole controversy by pushing it to the government.  A correct approach would have been to admit that they, the court were wrong and rescind their order.  This turnaround by the lordships is bizarre particularly since one of the judges seems to be attacking his own order.

-         The puzzling part is why only cinema ? Why not before a court session starts ? Why not before a flight takes off?  Why not before offices, parliament …. Incidentally someone has asked for the anthem to be played before court starts and was told by the court “not to take things too far”.

2)     Patriotism and the national anthem

-         Patriotism cannot cannot be forced. I think by and large people are patriotic and the national anthem has been imbibed into us from early childhood. Hard boiled egg as I am, the anthem  brings a lump to my throat when I hear it on republic day. The same sentiment does not repeat when I hear the anthem in a cinema hall just before a movie starts. I do resent anything pushed down on me and while I will respect the anthem by standing up when played, the resentment of this forced patriotism will continue. The national anthem is a solemn “work” and in order to preserve the solemnness ,  we should restrict the frequency with which it is played and more important the forum in which it is played. The reason why it was stopped being played in cinemas a few decades back was the disrespect shown when people rushed out of the theatres when it started playing.

3)     Standing up when the anthem is being played

-         Now let us discuss the point on whether it is unpatriotic for someone not to stand when the anthem is being played. From my point of view, it is a sign of disrespect to the country not standing when it is being played. There might be a couple of reasons why someone does not stand up for the anthem

a)     He might have some genuine reason. This is a no brainer and does not need  discussion.

b)     He might oppose imposition of something on him and is not gripped with the same fervour that some people have.  Citizens of this country do have their rights and the absolute right to exercise them. If there is no law currently that mandates someone to stand during playing of the anthem,  we just have to respect the person’s right not to stand much as we disagree with it. If there is very strong public desire the government should make a law. Such a law would have to pass the test of not being against a fundamental right of expression and more learned minds than mine can comment on this.

c)      He might just not identify himself as a citizen of the country and might be an unpatriotic Indian.  Such incidents do  need to be condemned.

I gathered from some “debates” on TV that certain liberals, fiberals, pseudo secularists, commies are asking people not to stand when the anthem is played but could not encounter the identities of such people using  cursory google search. Anyway if some one is preaching such ideologies it needs to be condemned. The best way to deal with someone trying to start a controversy is to ignore him. You defeat his purpose in a simple way.

What is extremely dangerous is the polarization being created by politicians and worse certain news channels by trying to stoke up a controversy.  The distinction between cinema and news is slowly blurring and it would be most appropriate to play the national anthem before the news. As an afterthought, I would suggest to the right wing television channels to play the national anthem before office starts.

Dear Mr. Gandhi

Dear Mr. Gandhi,

Given your recent antics, history would not judge me harshly if I addressed you as Rahul-baba, but since this is a serious letter let us keep the communication formal. In spite of this aforementioned  formality let me jest by clarifying upfront that  I don’t anticipate any seismic tremors  from my communication.

I am quite sure you would not  read my letter to you anytime, but I just do hope you would somehow chance upon it.

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is not important, but what is important is that I was a Congress voter on the few times I used to bother to vote. The reasons for this was not my love for the party or my admiration in the ideology. Face it that most political parties in India including yours  don’t have any recognizable ideology. My reasons for voting Congress was what was called in your fathers time TINA (There is no alternative). There was really no credible alternative for a long time. Disastrous experiments by Successive non Congress governments just reinforced this belief leading me on the path of “The Congress was the least evil of all the known devils”.

Being what many people would call a pseudo secularist, I watched  with great unease the rise of the BJP who worried me with their thought process. I was always hoping that the Congress would somehow counter this threat and keep the nation safe from these right wingers. My support was solidly with your spokespersons in the Arnab  days running up to the elections hollow as their debating might have been. 

However as the last days of the UPA approached, I watched with amazement at the kind of scams that kept coming up. We had a government which seemed  to be completely lost themselves  and also  lost the ability to govern. Now politics is known to be dirty and let us not fool ourselves that any party in India is “not corrupt”. However the nature and quantum of  scams that seemed to be coming in and kept  weakening  my resolve and I was left at some stage wondering if it is better to have some one who could govern the country irrespective of their position viz a viz their orientation to the center, left off or right off.

I finally cast my lot with the BJP in the last elections and I have not regretted it since. Let me be clear at this point I don’t support in any way the ideology of this party’s parent organization. However I have seen no evidence till now of the fascism from the BJP that many of us were worried about. To digress at this point, many people who use the word fascist don’t know the meaning of this phrase.

As far as Prime minster Modi is concerned, he has my solid vote behind him based on his actions after taking over leadership of this country.

I am just a social commentator and not a writer, journalist or general pundit and don’t know how one quantitatively measures a prime minister.

However from  a subjective point of view, he has shown himself to be a statesman and has put the country at the top of his mind. He has developed a vision for this country and managed to articulate much of it. India has got a leader the people can look upon. What is clearly visible is a gradual betterment of quality of governance and most important putting India on the world stage.  I can just give one data point (which is not data in any form)  which is the pride when I felt during a holiday in Cambodia when  the auto driver in a remote place mentioned to me how India has become so strong in such a short time. Let us face it, there was a lot of cleaning up to do from the era of coalition politics of UPA II and I atleast am not expecting some grand immediate results. Strangely most of my fellow pseudo secularists seem to be very polarized and the majority  seem to be against Prime minister Modi. This disturbs me since they seem to oppose the prime minister on principle and not on an issues base.   I don’t see this changing in the near future but then pseudo secualrists don’t change election results. 

To clarify,  I am not a blind supporter of Prime Minister Modi and am opposed to some of his governments decisions and actions. I am also aware that many of his achievements had been started during the time of the UPA and it would be unfair to credit it all to the prime minister.

Now at this stage let me give you some unsolicited advice.  

This advice is not from any altruistic motives but a selfish one since it impacts me. You see I am a strong believer in democracy and for a strong democracy we need a strong and responsible opposition. 

In India the role of the opposition is to oppose the government whatever they do irrespective if this opposition is in the country’s interests or not. While such an approach might keep you in the limelight temporarily, the long term effect would be detrimental for the country for sure and quite likely for you. Face it, the electorate of today is not the same electorate who kept your family in power for so many decades. In the age of the internet ideas opinions and information flows at a very fast pace and it is difficult to fool all the people all the time.

As much as I support the prime minster, I do get uneasy at the thought of his party becoming another Congress. At the national level yours is the only party which can play the role of an opposition and if you play your cards right may even be back at the government in the medium term. To do this, you need to increase your maturity and reduce your “antics”. Face it, your attacks on PM Modi will not get you anywhere. He has managed to sell his vision to the people (whom I belong to) and all  seem to be behind him. To shake this off , you need to:

      

      1)   Develop an ideology of your own. Being anti Modi is not an ideology. TINA has been demolished and replaced with TIAA.

    

       2)      Having a dynastic rule has the major problem that you tend to supress strong leaders. Most of your inner circle cannot face the people directly and have been elected from the safer havens of the Rajay Sabha. It is quite unbelievable  to have a prime mister, home minister and finance minister none of whom  could  directly face the electorate. This is clearly a result of dynastic thinking. If a political party has to depend on one person as leader based on his lineage, it cannot have an ideology. Please do reflect on this. To build a strong party you need to have people who will one day challenge you. If you think that you can politically survive by a sycophantic circle with no direct power base, I have some stocks in gold mines and oil wells that I would like to offer you at a bargain of a lifetime.

       3)      Have patience. Your rout in the last elections is the result of your party’s actions and inactions and recovery will take some time. You cannot build a castle from ashes overnight but if you start now you might recover at some stage.

       4)      My request to you is to have a broader vision for the country. Disrupting parliament and continuous attacks on the government is not going to get you any “equity” as a MBA would say. An easy way out for you is to say that the “BJP” did the same when they were in opposition. That is not a line that a statesman would use and if you hope one day to achieve the exalted status of a statesman you better abandon this line. Playing the role of a responsible opposition and keeping the countries interests at heart viz viz pandering to vote banks might get you some short term gains at the cost of the long term ones. However thinking of the country as a whole might get you the longer term benefits even though the process is slow. Your actions right now are diametrically opposite to all that I am advising, but if you read my communication with an open mind I am sure there will be a convergence of thought.

Once again, India as with any democracy needs a strong opposition which does not have to be you. If you do not fill this place, someone else will. I would like this to be you assuming you do show me that you have the interests of the country at heart.

Feel free to ask me for any clarifications or further advise.

Yours Sincerely

Deepak Misra

Citizen

Republic of India

P.S.  Next letter is to Prime Minster Modi which I might get around to once I recover from the effort   of writing this one and I will keep you copied.

Rambling Thoughts on playing of the National Anthem

The recent controversy about the national anthem got me  bit interested in researching and "opiniating" on this a bit further. There has been sufficient media coverage on this but I learnt from my almost lawyer daughter the importance of reading a judgement and not going by 3^rd party reports.

So doing a google search I downloaded, printed and studied the judgement and here is my analysis and opinion.

The judgement can be accessed here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzXilfcxe7yuRkFrMUZSdmExY3M/view

An excellent summary is here  https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/the-illegality-of-the-supreme-courts-national-anthem-order/.

This  write-up gives  a very good understanding but maybe a bit technical so my  layman’s analysis meant for fellow laymen. Much of the information is got from the above site which incidentally is also a very informative site on law in general.

The facts/history:

1)      This is not a judgement but an interim order.

2)      One Mr. SHYAM NARAYAN CHOUKSEY  a  [sic] Public Spirited person on 28^th October 2016  filed a writ petition before the supreme court. The basic request  which this  public spirited person had to the court  was “take appropriate steps to specify what would be constituting disrespect and abuse of the National Anthem. In the petition, reference has been made to Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971. It is averred in the petition that sometimes the National Anthem is sung in various circumstances which are not permissible and cannot be legally countenanced regard being had to the national honour.”

3)      The petition contained some “suggestions” to be followed.

4)      The court posted this case for hearing for 30^th Nov.

5)      The court passed an interim order on 30^th November. Highlights of the order are:

a.       There will be no commercial benefit from the national anthem

b.      There can be no “dramatization” of the anthem.

c.       National Anthem cannot be printed on any object

d.      All cinema halls will play the national anthem before the start of any movie

e.      The doors to the hall will be locked during this playing so that no one can create any disturbance.

f.        The national flag should be shown on the screen during this playing

g.       ….

The court felt that among other things:

[sic]The directions are issued, for love and respect for the motherland is reflected when one shows respect to the National 4 Anthem as well as to the National Flag. That apart, it would instill the feeling within one, a sense committed patriotism and nationalism.

The order goes on to state with some reasoning in-between:

“Be it stated, a time has come, the citizens of the country must realize that they live in a nation and are duty bound to show respect to National Anthem which is the symbol of the Constitutional Patriotism and inherent national quality. It does not allow any different notion or the perception of individual rights, that have individually thought of have no space. The idea is constitutionally impermissible.”

 The above are all factual Here are my comments in no specific order:

1)      If you can understand the last sentence, please enlighten me. I have read it a couple of times and don’t understand what this means. I might be wrong, but it seems to me  that the learned lordships state that individual rights have no place. Hopefully I am wrong.

2)      The judgment seems to have accepted all the suggestions of the petitioner. There  is no logic as to why this applies only to cinemas and not to any other place and also asks the question if citizens can start making their own laws by filing a public interest litigation and requesting the courts to accept the same

3)      Someone has since requested  modification of this order to include singing of the national anthem in courts which has been rejected on technical grounds and a statement to not take the judgement too far [HAHA].

4)      This gets  a bit interesting.  There seems to have been a similar case filed in Bhopal against the move Kabhi Khushi Khabi Gham  before (hold your breath) the same judge who had ordered a stay on the film on account of the national anthem being played in the film. Details here https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1836522/ (Warning: A lot of “learned” and “honourable” people are mentioned in this document and it is not light reading. I gave up after 2 pages).  This judgement was subsequently quashed by the supreme court https://indiankanoon.org/doc/862307/.  So part of this new judgement about not allowing dramatization of the national anthem is an old story which was found to be not in order and it seems it being reopened.

Some thoughts:

1)      This is one more example of judicial activism which I had written about earlier and which seems to getting more and more dangerous with time. The courts seem to be wanting to take over legislative functions.

2)      It is shocking that the government along with various politicians seems to be supporting this order. This is a complete abdication of their duties. 

3)      As a citizen of this country, I am shocked that the highest court of this country spends time listening to such issues.  As per my understanding the role of the supreme court is to adjudicate largely on constitutional issues and ensure that fundamental rights of citizens are not violated. The constitution of India guarantees me the freedom of speech and expression within reason and this judgement seems to say the opposite. I just hope my understanding is wrong

Why dont they get it about linkedin ?

I don’t have any quantitative data to prove or disprove my hypothesis that  a vast user base of linkedin don’t get it. They don’t understand the purpose of linkedin and how to use it effectively. Let me try and list out the major annoyance that affect me.

• Confusing linkedin and social networking sites like facebook

Maybe in some industries the distinction between social networking and professional networking is blurred but it is certainly not in my industry and I would assume most of my network.  Posts on politics, sports etc. really have no place on linkedin. I would go one step further and say that is  downright annoying. The problem is that if one your connections “likes” the post, it comes up in the news feed.  It is not a very big job to unfollow the perpetrator but then what is the purpose of being connected?

• Cryptic “I would like to add you to my professional network”.

This actually belongs as cardinal sin one. Now if I don’t know you why would I want to add you to my network unless I know something about how this connection would be beneficial to me. If you are trying to tap my network, you are not going to succeed since this is hidden. I initially used to not add anyone I didn’t know personally but had to abandon this after realizing that I forget names of people who resurface after years and decades. Now there is no algorithm to decide which invitations to accept and which ones to reject and it is quite random.

Glancing through this post a bit, I thought this is a good excuse to start cleaning up the connection list and removing people I personally don’t  know but had  to abandon this  planned action seeing the amount of work involved.

So how does one use linkedin in  way to get benefit. ?

I don’t fully don’t know the answer to this one. I find the noise to signal ratio just to high.

My rough cut estimate is that 10-20% of my connection list post something of interest to me. So what works now is that as I am glancing through my connection list, I just unfollow the remaining 80% as when I see some posts.  Another technique is to use tags constructively.  I add a tag as soon as I add a connection. I have not yet found out what to do which this tagged information but assume it will help me at a later date.

If anyone reads this post and can comment on how they use linkedin effectively and get some benefit out of it –  it would be appreciated.

My unease with the NJAC judgement

I type this as I am watching the news of the Supreme Court striking down the NJAC enacted by parliament. Following current events with knowledge of elementary civics since many many years, I am slightly more informed than most even if this is a self-assessment and this self-assessment may not pass the pomposity testrder on.

Now I might be in a minority in my views but I do  think that this is a judgement which has far reaching consequences which might conflict with our democracy.  Whether it is correct/legal or not can be better opinioned by experts in this field and I cannot claim to be one. But I can claim to have some  amount of common sense and at the end of the day, law is largely common sense. There are some aspects which are slightly more complex than can be  obtained by common sense but this can easily be understood by  some reading on the subject.

As was remarked in an earlier blog entry, democracy has 3 + pillars:

-          The legislature – who make laws

-          The executive who administer the laws

-          The judiciary who interpret the laws and protect the rights of citizens and the constitution on which our society is based.

No one organ is above the other and these pillars are like a three legged table. If any one leg is of unequal length, the stability of the table is affected. This is the exact situation we are in today.

For a little historic perspective in a highly compressed form:

In the 60s and 70s, the governments of the day were very strong along with a strong backing of a strong legislature. This made pushing laws quite easy. The judiciary abrogated it role of protecting the rights of citizens during the emergency, for example by ruling that fundamental rights were not so fundamental during an emergency.  A strong prime  minister then ensured that the judiciary remained sympathetic to the government cause and there was a clear executive interference in the judiciary and which compromised the integrity .  Post emergency saw a resurgent judiciary determined to regain lost ground. It would take volumes to  explain this in detail but the resurgent judiciary along with weak collation governments and a fractured parliament saw what is called “judicial over reach”.

One milestone was ruling about the basic structure of the constitution. While this cannot be explained in brief, the basic points that arose was:

1         Parliament was a creation of the constitution and could not do anything to alter the “basic structure of the constitution”

2         The supreme court was  the final authority on deciding what was the basic structure of the constitution.

Another milestone was changing the method of appointment of judges. Till then, Supreme court and High Court judges were selected by the executive in “consultation” with the chief justice of India. In the name of judicial independence and interpretation of “conulatation”,  the supreme court changed the system  and took over the role of appointment of judges and made a system of collegium. The collegium has no basis in law nor the constitution and this in my opinion was a  case of overreach.

Another  milestone was the concept of Public Interest litigations.  The intent was a noble one and was meant to protect the rights  of undertrials and that section of society which was not aware of their rights nor had the means to protect the same. The PIL allowed not stake holders to file cases. More on this a few paragraphs later.

What Changed:

Subsequently weaker governments and a lack of accountability from the judiciary saw a lop sided situation in our democracy. The system of judges appointing judges remained unprecedented and is unique to India. As has been widely reported there is no country in the world with such a system. The NJAC was an attempt to restore some balance by making the executive a stakeholder in the judicial appointment process.

Now the constitution has placed law making the prerogative of the legislature.  Parliament is accountable to the people who have voted them and it has to be assumed that they reflect the will of the people.  While this might be not be realistically true on many occasions, we have to go with this assumption or acknowledge that democracy has failed .  The role of the judiciary viz a viz laws  is to check whether laws are in line with the constitution and they cannot get into either the law making process or policy/administrative domain.

The NJAC has been held to be against the basic constitution. The judgement runs into a bit more than 1000 pages so it is difficult to get into the reasoning behind the judgement. However going by media reports the following are the points with my comments:

1)      The new law alters the basic structure of the constitution by giving the executive a primacy in judicial appointment thereby impacting judicial independence which is a basic structure of the constitution.

-          As far as I can see, there is no primacy given to the executive with the NJAC. It is quite a balanced  body with enough checks and balances. There are members of the body from the  judiciary who have veto powers and an undesirable candidate. Executive involvement should not be confused with executive primacy.  Executive/Legislative participation in the appointment process is something established all over the world and we do need to look inwards if we think it is wrong in the Indian context.

2)      The collegium system is a good solution and can be improved.

-          There are 2 parts to this point.

o   Which system is better ?

o   Does it make any difference from a legal perspective ?

-          Which system is better can be debated at length and there will be no common ground found. The second question is the more important one – viz – Does it matter?. The question here is not which system is better but which is legal.  Parliament’s job is to make laws and judicial scrutiny is to check whether the laws passed are against the constitution. This is the major point which is getting diluted with the question of which is a better system. The case should just dwell on the aspect of who makes laws and not get into how to improve the current system. It makes absolutely no difference as to which is the better system from a constitutional point of view. Parliament is elected by the people and is finally accountable to them. If parliament does not reflect the will of the people, the voice of the people will be heard during elections. We deserve the government we vote !!! I am not sure why this line of reasioning is followed by so many luminaries participating in this discussion.

3)      A unwise choice by the NJAC would have far reaching conseqeunces and the damage from such an act cannot be easily undone.

-          This is a risk and hence there should be enough checks  and balances. A  law cannot be struck down because there is a fear that it will not work. There have been stalwarts appointed under the old system who had the courage to take on the establishment on occasions. There have been mediocre and bad  appointments under the collegium system so it is childish to assume that a collegium would make a better choice than a diverse body. The collegium system is shrouded in secrecy with no accountability to anyone. Food for thought: Todays times of India reports that 99 judges of the high court and Supreme court are related to other judges.

4)      The government is the biggest litigant in the country and hence having the law minister as part of the NJAC would compromise its integrity

-          This is debatable and I am not sure of the answer. However by this same logic, the NJAC case is being heard by a bench of the supreme court who are also stakeholders and hence the quality of judgement could be compromised. Also by the same logic a frivolous view could be that  judges should not be allowed to vote since they are indirectly involved in the selection of legislative members.

So to summarize, my opinion is  this is a very unbalanced judgement and is more about distrust between a strong institution and an emergent one.  My fear is thar the democratic process will be the casualty. There might be short term benefits in terms of holding in a non working legislature but the long term damage is too large to ignore.

Remember the three legged table.

Journalism, Medicine and the change from mission to business

Since the last year or months, the following which I can easily remember used to hog the television prime time 24 x 7.

 

1)      Arvind Kejriwal waving some papers in front of television camera’s accusing Rovert Vadra of some land fraud .

2)      The whole Tarun Tejal incident

3)      The Devyani incident. The Indian government had asked the USA embassy about details of people working in the US school. Prima Facia there was some suspicion of visa fraud.

4)      A prominent TV anchor  screaming that “India needs to know” and this channel will not rest until ....

None of the above has come remotely close to a logical closure. All have been replaced with some new topic that can hog headlines and  grab viewer attention.  Before the days of television, the newspaper was the main inputs for news and commentary.   There was a clear separation of editorial integrity and business needs  and rarely was there any compromise between the 2.  Editors were celebrities in their own right. 

 It is true that the prime  goal of any business is to do business, but by and large this is intertwined with some other objective.  The 4^th estate is  one of the pillars of democracy  and once this missions is forgotten, a part of democracy is compromised.

 

It is something akin to whay is happening in medicine. I don’t know if this is related or unrelated to my above point.  My friend and physician Dr. B C Rao  sums it up very well in his blog http://badakerecrao.blogspot.in/2012_05_01_archive.html

 

 

Maidgate, Vienna Convention and a search for a balanced view

This post was written a few weeks back just when the “diplomat incident” was hogging all media time and headlines. I did not post it then but am doing so now. However  some of the facts may be somewhat incorrect since recent developments have not been taken into account.

The news have been mostly around the diplomat incident for the last few days and till date I don’t see very few balanced opinions on this subject. I personally feel a sense of outrage and think that this cannot be taken lying down. I do hope that this issue does not die down with any conclusion like so many of the recent issues. (ed: it has died down since I wrote this post)

Being curious of other points of view I did read a couple of non Indian journals and see a very wide gulf in our view of this whole incident versus that of Non Indians.

To make this very simple we need to acknowledge the fact that there are 4 different issues here

1)   The alleged crime committed by the diplomat

Now the facts are not very clear so it is difficult to form an opinion. It seems that the diplomats maid has made a complaint based on which the arrest was made. There is no evidence to suggest that the diplomat was questioned or asked her opinion or what evidence was examined to arrive at the conclusion of a crime. There could be 2 crimes here, one of paying less than minimum wages and one of “lying” to a USA federal agent.  Further discussion on this subject is not very productive without any of the facts and some knowledge of USA law. The  line of argument that “everyone does it” is not a defense. However  the facts around granting a visa to the maid and her family and the hurry and timing  with which they flew out of India is something without precedent.  It is a complete mockery of Indian law and I wonder what Americans would feel if India spirited out an American Citizen against whom there was a criminal case pending.

2)   The manner of her arrest and subsequent treatment

This is a difficult one. I briefly glanced through the Vienna Convention and am convinced that there has been a gross violation

Article 41 is quite clear on this:

PERSONAL INVIOLABILITY OF CONSULAROFFICERS

1. Consular officers shall not be liable toarrest or detention pending

trial, exceptin the caseof a grave crime and pursuant toa decision by the competent judicial

authority.

2. Except inthe case specified in paragraph 1ofthis Article, consular officers shall not be

committed toprison orliable to any other form ofrestriction on theirpersonal freedomsave in

execution of a judicial decision offinal effect.

As a layman, this seems quite unambigious and should be the focus of all further discussion. This is really the crux of the issue and deviating from this dilutes the crux. Unfortunately a lot of discussion is going on about the diplomats background, her connections. All this might be true but still does not justify her arrest.  As has been pointed out by many people, this is not an attack on Devyani but an attack on India.

3)   Indian Media Response

The Indian media have provided  a stellar service in ensuring that the news get maximum exposure.  Much  of the reporting since  is quite inaccurate and portrays wrong perception.  In general the quality of journalism has been on a rapid decline which is a result of a battle to capture viewers. More of this on a later post. The interesting comments are from  western columns. They feel that India is over reacting on this. One reason of course is the dilution of discussion on the core issue as pointed out above. Indians certainly have an issue in expecting VIP treatment for celebrities and “VIPs”. The word VIP is a very Asian concept.  One thing I found interesting in discussions with some Americans on some new channel was the fact that they did not seem to be aware of international law or felt it was subservient to American law. I am not making any editorial comment on this for now.

4)   Indian Government response

For once, the Indian government has done absolutely the right thing. The opposition has strangely behaved in a responsible way by uniting with the government on this front. Reciprocity should be followed by us strictly. We by and large have a servile attitude to non nationals which galls me at least. I have personally seen (15 years back) Indian security staff at the US consulate at Chennai beating up auto drivers who drove by slowly waiting to pick up passengers and have always wondered how this was tolerated.  Any sensible person would know that while it is important to assuage a furious public, real diplomacy happens through back door channels. Both are important.  It would help if the media and public on the real issue at hand, viz apparently a false arrest and a clear violation of international law.  The steps taken by the Indian government are in the right direction but should certainly by upped. It is gratifying that India is following reciprocity very strongly as is evident from the withdrawal of privileges to USA consular staff.  Some papers have reported that the US Ambassador to India cancelled her vacation after removal of certain airport privileges, a fact that has not been confirmed. However  it is certainly very plausible.

5)   Closure

An interesting point is what would be closure in this case.  I think there would be 3 points for closure

a)    Respecting the rights of an Indian official. If there is a strong case that American laws were  willingly  violated, then she should be deported.  The USA  diplomatic community who don’t have immunity  should be ready to expect the same treatment in India in case they break any law.

b)    An apology for the wrongful arrest.

Given that the USA has not apologized for killing civilians in Pakistan, it is very doubtful that this will be acceded to.

c)    An assurance that this will not be repeated

 

d) An immediate return to India of the maid who is legally absconding..

Not sure about whether any of this will happen

What in most likelihood is going to happen is some “behind the scence” negotitions which are diametrically opposite to public posturing  and waiting it out till something new grabs mind share.