T N Ninan: Tragedy as farce

One of Marx’s more commonly quoted aphorisms is that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”. There are few countries where that could be more true than India—as the Bhopal case shows. But Bhopal is not an exception, only a pointer to what happens all the time. Indeed, the substantive Bhopal case was killed and buried a long time ago, which is one reason why the sudden media anger over the farcical denouement raises uncomfortable questions. In any case, the problem is much larger than Bhopal, because in case after case over the decades, the bigger scandal in India has been what happens after the first scandal hits the headlines.

That was true of Bofors, where the sustained effort to prevent the truth from emerging and the culprits from paying a penalty was a more serious indictment of the system than the initial pay-offs. It is true of the manner in which the Gujarat pogrom cases have been handled so that justice has been denied to victims for eight long years. And it is true of the 2G telecom scandal, where the minister concerned continues to hold office and brazen it out although it is evident that he cost the exchequer thousands of crores of rupees of lost revenue—many multiples of what was involved in Bofors. It is also true of Ayodhya—where no one till date has been brought to book. As for Harshad Mehta, only one of several cases had been settled when he died in late 2001, nearly 10 years after his stock market scam was exposed; even today, the courts are busy trying to assess his assets and liabilities.

But synthetic anger by TV anchors will not change what is a shameful reality. That needs careful analysis, and sound reform. The primary problems in all the cases are two-fold: political interference, and judicial delays. It is easy to argue that criminal investigation should be insulated from political pressure, and the Central Bureau of Investigation made truly independent, but is there any method for achieving this other than through creating public opinion? And public opinion is an unreliable safeguard—look at how cases against state-level politicians get activated and de-activated, depending on whether they are in favour in New Delhi—without it even attracting much public notice.

It has been suggested that investigators should answer to magistrates and not the political executive, as is apparently the practice in France. The argument has some merit in India too, since it is the Supreme Court which has tried to ensure that justice is done in the case of Gujarat, that automobile manufacturers clean up their act, and so on. But then, it is also the Supreme Court that diluted the Bhopal charge, from culpable homicide to criminal negligence, and which settled the limit that Union Carbide would have to pay, at under half a billion dollars. In any case, given the level of corruption that exists in the system, can the magistracy be trusted to do better than the politicians? A better way of de-politicising the criminal investigation system would be to have a bi-partisan commission (appointed jointly by the government, the leader of the opposition and the chief justice, and armed with suo motu powers) oversee the handling of all cases that have a systemic resonance, properly defined, and simultaneously to have all such cases handled by special courts, with procedures so laid down that no one can deliberately delay a verdict. The task is urgent because political systems can deal with tragedy; it is farce that undermines legitimacy.