If people get the government they deserve, they also get the law and order system they are worthy of. Recent events, be it the gory killings of children in Nithari, the custodial deaths of poor labour in Kashmir, or the unfair incarceration of Tariq Ahmed Dar, all highlight the gross deficiencies in India’s policing and legal systems.

Development and social conflict are said to be the two ends of the same spectrum. Even an authoritarian Chinese regime reports over 70,000 agitations in various parts of the hinterland. In India, although there is a lack of data, the figure may not be very different. The intensity as well as frequency of subterranean conflict is only likely to grow. An economic measure of this trend would be denoted by the gap between inflation and growth. A 6 per cent inflation rate with a 10 per cent level of growth would indicate that the disparity between poor and rich will continue to rise.

Stakeholders in Indian democracy need to address the debilities in the system that are leading to disorder. In a modern state, a bureaucracy is immune to change from the top. The Right to Information campaign set in motion reforms to increase accountability of bureaucrats to the public, but it did not effectively pervade the law and order system. In the case of the law and order machinery, the feudal structure is both insensitive and inept. Thus the police serves the status quo rather than people, is not aware of the latest trends in intelligence collection and has not been able to exploit knowledge tools for the proactive prevention of crime. Worse, it still demonstrates a communal bias.The lower judiciary, whose role is no less significant, remains impervious to propriety. Simple caution exercised by the court in the case of Tariq Ahmed Dar to examine the veracity of the statement of an incarcerated ‘terrorist’ would have revealed that the aspiring model had no connection with any militant organisation. Civil society institutions, which could act as a bridge between the public and law enforcement agencies, have been effective in bringing succour to the needy. But only marginally so. The media is seen to play a negative role in some cases, acting as a handmaiden for the police and the powers-that-be, violating basic guidelines of ethical reporting. The conflict milieu faced by the country is getting increasingly complex.

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