On Golden Handcuffs, First

My first read of this morning, and an excellent read it was too, was an article by James Ostrowski on LRC today titled “American Justice?”

The article tells how the US justice system has been perverted. At the core of the discussion is the idea of a judicial monopolist – that is, a The State that appoints all judges, and they alone can settle disputes. The article begins:

It is taken for granted that, for the sake of peace, justice and order, the courts must have a monopoly on judicial power within the boundaries of their jurisdiction. Yet, the ability of today’s courts to achieve any of these values with the monopoly power they possess is subject to serious doubt. Even if justice implies a court system with the monopoly power to do justice, the converse is not true. The mere existence of monopoly judicial power does not imply that it will be used justly. Whenever that monopoly power becomes unhinged from true justice, as it did, for example, in Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany, that monopoly judicial power thereby becomes a great evil. One suffering under Hitler’s or Stalin’s “judicial” edicts would have wished to have recourse to some judicial competition, to say the least.

Do read the entire piece here – and reflect on the fact that all is not well internally in the USSA either.

As I went through our newspapers, I stumbled upon something in ET that is truly shocking: that 31 out of 45 MLAs in the Jharkhand Assembly have criminal cases pending against them. This includes the chief minister. The news report says:

The politician-criminal nexus in India is alive and kicking. Proof of this was provided by the profile of the newly elected MLAs in Jharkhand. As many as 31 of the 45 legislators backing the JMM-BJP-AJSU coalition government, which will be sworn in on Wednesday, have criminal cases pending against them.

It’s not just the ruling coalition which is afflicted with this malaise. The Opposition benches in the state too have several MLAs with criminal antecedents, making it clear that the process of criminalisation of politics is proceeding unhindered. The chief minister-designate, Shibu Soren, who had to quit the Union council of ministers a few years ago after being convicted in a murder case, leads the contingent. Besides him, 16 of the 18 JMM MLAs have criminal cases against them…

Now, Jharkhand is a Bhateeja State affected deeply by the Maoist-Naxalite insurgency. So we must conclude that there are criminals on both sides – all using unjust force on others, mainly the common people, with impunity. And we expect Justice from this very same monopolist State. Great expectation, indeed.

So I do believe that we have much to achieve internally, and that too, politically, than Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi has managed so far, what with his “education” and NREGA. Jharkand surely needs something very different from this dole. These are just money transfers from the Chacha Centre to the Bhateeja State that go into the pockets of those thugs who run the Bhateeja State.

It is also not true that the common people are crying out for doles or schools. They are crying out for bijli, sadak and paani, like the rest of us. [Electricity, roads and water.]

They are also crying out for Justice; for Property. And they are heading towards Communism. In the meantime, our monopolist socialist judiciary has banned liberal parties from the fray, from the civilizing processes of politics itself.

Where is India headed?

Well, while the law and order front is terrible pan-India, and nothing can be predicted, the economic indicators are quite clear. The RBI should be tightening monetary policy soon – for inflation looms ahead, the result of the “stimulus.”

I also found Manas Chakravarty’s column noteworthy: he and his associates say that gold has outperformed both commodities as well as stocks this last decade. Onwards to a gold standard, as I had written in Mint.

I say: Let us stay focused on the economy. There are parts of India that are still OK. Let them take the lead and show the others the way to go – internal peace, economic freedom, and sound money. Let us not sacrifice sound money and the budgetary limits it implies at the cause of all this Chacha-Bhateeja “politics.”

Golden handcuffs on the finance minister!

First that - then ordinary handcuffs for the rest.