The Age of Kalyug

The other day the Supreme Court ruled that narco, polygraph or brain mapping tests cannot be conducted on anyone without their consent. Lawyers and activists are overjoyed about this…. I don’t see the victims mentioned anywhere. In fact in one article a Lawyer was quoted saying that Narco tests are ‘simply unconstitutional and the Supreme Court has upheld the law.’ It seems that Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan and Justices R.V. Raveendran and J.M. Panchal described the forcible administration of these tests as an "unwarranted intrusion of the personal liberty" of a person accused of an offence. So what does that make murder, rape and assault? But we are civilized and therefore must protect the evil and allow the law of the jungle to decide the fate of the weak and the non media savvy.

It’s almost as if breaking the law is what is required for the system to take care of you. Think about it for a minute. You murder/rape/rob somebody and get caught by the cops. Now, please note, the rest of this hypothesis is based on the assumption that you or your act is high profile enough to generate sufficient media coverage, thereby drawing activists by the dozen. Petty crime will just get you slapped around. Activists aren’t attracted to events that won’t get them air time…. It just isn’t sexy enough… what in the world would they tell their Page 3 friends about? It’s such a waste of time if all your effort isn’t actively followed by thousands if not millions of people. So now assuming sufficient media coverage is available, the cops having caught you, are now under the media microscope and cannot so much as fart without some activist or the other screaming bloody murder – or in this case police brutality through excessive flatulence. So thanks to the many varied rulings of various courts that protect the accused, you are safe, well fed, mildly uncomfortable because of the ‘awful’ conditions in the jail (which is well maintained and regularly cleaned – quite an upgrade from the slums and abject poverty that most Indians live in) and as your court case will go on for years if not decades, you can maintain status quo ad infinitum. Of course there is the inconvenience of that sojourn being mentioned on your record and possibly affecting your employability, but then again the system being what it is, it probably won’t be too difficult to circumvent that as well. So now you’re in a nice settled routine and its time for the courts to give their verdict. If it goes against you, you appeal. Voila! Another decade spent in ashram like conditions. The law is absolute, while justice is relative…

If however you’ve been acquitted, well then, you’re in a bit of a quandary. If you want to stay you could just go right out and murder/rape/rob some other random character and go right back into the slammer for another decade…. Or… you could write a book about how you were wrongly incarcerated and had to suffer the ignominy of being in Jail! Missing out on the important things that signify freedom… like worrying about losing your job, struggling to keep said job, paying off a home loan, being able to afford a home, worrying about your next pay check or bonus, worrying about someone younger and better taking over your job…. Yeah…. Best seller material… stuff that the Page 3 types just lap up by the gallon. Nothing sells like misery. Even if it’s the story of a blood thirsty killer. In today’s convoluted system, its better to be unscrupulous and evil than it is to be god fearing and law abiding. Heck instead of spending thousands on a trip to the Himalayas, just bump off some well known bloke and you’re set for the next 30 years at least! The monk who sold his Ferrari, my foot! Your job, money, house and car are not going to go with you when you die, so why not embrace the ascetic life now itself?

Will reason ever prevail with the powers that be? Will the hand of God come down from the heavens and right all wrongs? Somehow I think not. Best thing to do, if you don’t plan on being a mass murderer, is to avoid being the victim. No one likes the weak, and no one protects the weak and there certainly aren’t too many activists fighting for the weak. Don’t believe me? Just go to the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra and hunt around for an activist. 200,000 farmers have taken their own lives since 1997. They were not murderers, rapists or robbers. They just couldn’t earn enough to pay off their debts. Guess no one told them that jail was probably far more comfortable than running a farm in rural Maharashtra.