Tyrants in Uniform

School bullies rob younger and weaker children of whatever catches their fancy, be it their lunch, toys or money. The weak merely surrender whatever they have to avoid a beating or other forms of torment.

A majority of citizens are timid and therefore face the same situation. Hapless citizens are incessantly bullied and tormented by the entity of the faceless and nameless government supposedly for ‘the greater good of the people' or some other nonsense.  The notorious brigade include tax officials, policemen, various inspectors, most bureaucrats and politicians. 

We can’t paint everyone with the same brush, not all officials are bad or evil. Unfortunately the bullies now form the dominant majority.

___________________________

Nowadays no social interaction is complete without a reference to corruption. Everyone grumbles but few do anything, to free us from the heavy yoke of our own government's corruption and apathy. 

Confined within our homes most of us are mere armchair activists.  Complaining and finger pointing, we merely talk and talk. Talk after all is cheap and assuages us of our feeling of guilt and inaction. Talk is not completely useless because it primes individuals for action, waiting for someone to light the match. 

An assistant commissioner of police of Mumbai ACP Dhobale is now in the middle of a media and social storm. Only the courts and time will tell if this man with a controversial past is an overenthusiastic law enforcer, or an inquisitor-tyrant on a rampage to fulfill a hidden agenda.

However the actions raise some important issues, which should serve as a call for fixing many things gone wrong in our society and what needs to be done to control the corruption of power.

Mere outrage and anger will result in the occasional flare up only to fizzle out. Powerful change can only occur when well conceived strategies and plans are implemented sincerely by committed people. 

Napoleon once remarked, "Evil things happen not because of the deeds of a few bad men, they are the result of the apathy and silence of the majority of the people." 

________________________________________

People have exhausted themselves, fruitlessly attacking the symptoms rather than the disease. The root cause of the disease of corruption is the massive number of laws vesting dangerous punitive powers in almost every officer in the government. Even the junior-most officer can put in jail any member of the public with a snap of his or her fingers. 

The constantly demonstrated ability to obstruct normal life whether personal, social or professional is more frightening than any physical weapon. The harried citizens have to spend huge resources of money and time in legal fees, bribes and the courts just to prove their innocence or to get what is rightly due to them as envisaged in our constitution.

To make matters worse there is no effective system to redress complaints of the people. Where and to whom can the frustrated and exhausted citizen turn to?

In addition to throwing the legal book at citizens, many government officials cruelly leverage the media to their advantage and hammer the oppressed people by issuing malicious statements in the newspapers and television about the person being charged with some offense or the other.

Often destroying reputations and lives thoughtlessly, the media's focus unfortunately has shifted from providing balanced news to entertainment, and nothing entertains more than the whiff of scandal.

Preventing corruption is better than trying to cure it. Here are some ways to mitigating the menace of corruption;

•        Reduce by 95% the discretionary and instant punitive powers of individual government officers.

•        Introduce an effective system to redress complaints of the citizens and this should form part of the senior officers duties and action taken must be open to public scrutiny.

•        Form panels headed by eminent citizens consisting of experts from various professional bodies including respected and competent lawyers. These panels must review ALL laws within the next five years, withdraw, modify or add laws that are needed. It is estimated that more than 90% of the laws are either irrelevant or outdated and mostly unduly complex and sometimes even convoluted. Laws passed by colonialists to oppress the native people and monopolies benefits for a privileged few, are still in existence, empowering new indigenous tyrants to perpetuate misery.

•        Introduce guidelines that, unless genuine and valid objections are raised by government officials applications to government departments and officers should be deemed to be automatically sanctioned.

•        Hold to serious account by law,  government officers for misuse of their position and also for dereliction of their duties.

Reduce the powers of government and other officers to bully, to act arbitrarily to arrest people, to hamper their livelyhood, etc. for most matters and instead follow a system of due process of law. 

Barring exceptional circumstances alleged offenders should be given notice and permitted to defend themselves before a court of law before being condemned by the authorities and the media.

A man in uniform now represents something not to be respected but feared and even despised. Let us return to the time when the badge sported and the uniform of a government official was something that provided us the people a sense of respect, support, security, and justice. 

Bullies are impatient people and pursue instant gratification. Deny them this right to bully, harass, obstruct and destroy and most of the frivolous or mischievous cases of harassment will die a natural death.

True, a few offenders may escape the net of the law but surely countless innocent people will also escape the harassment of corrupt officials.