In India, jail bharo has become the only solution to crime (Sunday Times)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

Justice Verma and Justice Leela Seth at a press conference after submitting his committee’s report to the government in New Delhi on 23 January 2013. PTI uring the time when Richard Nixon was the President of the United States, began the acceleration of a policy within the US to prescribe "mandatory minimum" sentences for a variety of crimes, some as inconsequential as a pickpocketing or a sniff of marijuana. Some states brought in a "Three Strikes" policy, which locked up for life those offenders, who were found guilty of three separate crimes committed in serial order, no matter that the third infraction may have been minor. For four decades and more, the prison population of the US has soared, with its attendant financial and social costs. At the same time, crime in the country has consistently been higher than in locations such as Norway, which have a more forgiving attitude towards lawbreakers, and where a prison usually replicates the conditions of a resort hotel in other climes. Instead of prison being what it should be, the last resort of the state, when confronted with delinquent behaviour, it has become the first — and usually the only option — for the justice system in several presumed democracies. There was a presumption that India was different, but a recent Supreme Court judgement has made it clear that "life in prison" means precisely that. Life in prison. Such a verdict assumes there to be a zero possibility of redemption or a change in mindset, and creates an attitude of frustration and recklessness because no amount of good behaviour will make any difference. Back in those slightly more liberal years when "life in prison" meant 14 years or less, there was an incentive for the prisoner to improve his skills and seek to ensure a level of societal adjustment which would preclude a return to his cellblock. Now that it has been decreed that he or she will be divested of almost all human liberties and rights for the entire remaining duration of a life, what incentive is there except to face each day with catatonic numbness? Such a permanent sentence is akin to civil death in the guise of a "life" sentence. 21st century India is moving closer to the US from the time of Nixon, in seeing "Jail Bharo" as the solution to crime. The Justice Verma Commission's draconian punishments and loosely defined criminal acts seem tailor-made for misuse by a corrupt police force. Of course, it needs to be remembered that Justice Verma (retired Chief Justice Verma, in fact) is the legal genius who discovered what may be described as the "Invisible Constitution of India," which apparently mandated that the selection of judges and other matters pertaining to them be decided in-house, without any but a symbolic reference to the government of the day. Since that time two decades back, judges have policed themselves and chosen their successors, beating back any effort at wider accountability. Justice Verma can have the immense satisfaction of knowing that his innovation of basing verdicts on the Invisible Constitution has produced a judicial system spotless in its integrity and lighting fast in its work ethic. { Final judgements in India take just four or more decades to complete, rather than hundreds of years. There are less than 2 crore pending cases in the courts and only 90,000 rape cases . Final judgements in India take just four or more decades to complete, rather than hundreds of years. There are less than 2 crore pending cases in the courts, and only 90,000 rape cases, some of which linger on for so long that both the perpetrator and the victim have entered old age homes. There are thousands of laws that can be (mis)used to send an individual to jail. Justice Verma has created history in India by making the judicial system so perfect that even the media has been kept at bay, especially after the Rs 100 crore verdict in the Justice Sawant defamation case, when that (absurdly low) figure was decreed after a television channel showed a few seconds of the image of the wrong judge in a news report before correcting it in a grovelling manner over several hours and days. Had the latter penance not have occurred, the decree would probably have been Rs 1,000 crore. To those who believe that freedom of speech includes the right to find fault, India's Invisible Constitution provides an answer. By its ubiquity in 21st century India, art shows are being halted, garrulous sociologists are being silenced while sociopaths are being cosseted in juvenile homes. The exceptions to Article 19(1)(a) ensuring freedom of speech have become the norm, the way jail terms — for life, of course — and death sentences are being made the new norm in "liberalising" India, Richard Nixon would approve. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/in-india-jail-bharo-has-become-the-only-solution-to-crime

Can Rahul succeed against Modi? (Sunday Guardian)

M D Nalapat

Friday, February 08, 2013 - India knows very little about the woman who is the country’s most powerful politician,Sonia Gandhi. Her early life is almost undiscussed,save for a few biographies written by those who do not even make a pretense of being anything other than publicists. Although her two sisters and mother spend considerable amounts of time in India, staying either with Sonia at the sprawling state-provided mansion provided to her at 10 Janpath or at a farmhouse within the city limits of Delhi, the media is not allowed access to them,and their comings and goings go undocumented. Indeed,Sonia Gandhi enjoys the same level of privacy as does the leader of North Korea,the younger Kim,and this obsession with secrecy is respected not only by the Indian media,but also by the international media,which too treat her with deference by staying away from prying reports on her or her family members.

On the contrary,there are often gushing reports about her,such as the way in which she is apparently “holding the country together” or “wiping tears from the eyes of the poor” when not “striving for justice for women and the downtrodden”. The Congress Party slogan is that the hand of Sonia Gandhi is there to help the “Aam Aadmi”,the ordinary citizen of India,and it must be said to the credit of the party’s spin managers that millions of people still believe in this,despite the fact that economic growth has fallen to less than half of what it was before Sonia took over control of the country in 2004

In Uttaranchal,silent work creating a revolt within the BJP led to victory for the Congress,although in Gujarat the well-funded campaign of former BJP Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel against incumbent Chief Minister Narendra Modi failed to displace the BJP from office in the 2012 polls, although Keshubhai succeeded in keeping Modi’s tally to what it had been five years ago,thereby denying him the boost that would have occured,had this (now) fourth-term Chief Minister increased his seat tally despite the anti-incumbency factor.

Two months from now,the only southern state in the control of the BJP,Karnataka,will go to the polls to elect a new assembly.Political managers who avoid media attention have seen to it that the most popular BJP leader of the state, B S Yeddyurappa,has revolted against his own party and may succeeded in getting it defeated,to the benefit of the Congress Party. Ruling party managers in Delhi were given their chance to bring down the BJP because of the obsession of BJP patriarch L K Advani to get installed his favourite,Ananth Kumar,as Chief Minister by displacing Yeddyurappa. The powerful “Delhi Group” of the BJP,comprising of leaders who stay in Delhi and are expert not in mass politics but in the “durbar” politics of that city, worked to remove Yeddyurappa from the Chief Ministership,thereby giving an opportunity for the Congress Party,which seems on track to win back the state. There is only one way in which the BJP can once again emerge as a formidable challenger to the Congress Party,and that is by projecting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate. Hailing from a “Backward Caste” and thereby tapping into an immense vote bank,the Gujarat strongman has emerged as the most popular politician in India,especially i urban areas and in the rapidly growing middle class.

Should Modi emerge as the alternative,millions of voters are likely to shake off their apathy and go and campaign for him,the way millions did in the US for Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. Certainly the memory of the 2002 riots in Gujarat,where so many hundreds were killed,still hangs over Modi.Certainly he would be best served were there to be an acknowledgement of regret that such loss of life was allowed to happen. But 2013 is eleven years away from 2002,and the shadow of the riots is no longer potent enough to stand between Modi and public support on a scale that no other politician has.

By placing the spotlight on the future and not the past,by talking of the need for self-help and development rather than constantly promising sops in the Nehru fashion,Narendra Modi is energizing voters in a way that may make him unstoppable well before the end of the year.The Delhi Group in the BJP dislikes him,but in the face of public pressure and the hold he has within the party cadre,Modi seems unstoppable

The only challenger to the Gujarat strongman is Rahul Gandhi,whose approval ratings are second,far ahead of those of his mother Sonia or the hapless,helpless Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh. The problem with Rahul Gandhi is that he has made opponents of his mother his own opponents,thereby turning his face away from reconciliation with many of them. Also,he has repeated the populist line of his mother Sonia and grandmother Indira Gandhi,talking down to the Indian people by offering them freebies and treating them as indigents to whom a generous government will bestow favours.Modi in contrast talks of self-help and empowerment,and - most tellingly - never once mentions caste.In contrast,caste is always behind the calculations of the Congress managers advising Sonia Gandhi.

Unless Brand Rahul is seen as different from Brand Sonia, the 43-year old will face a struggle to capture the attention of the voters. Although he has a good team,thus far, Sonia’s men are calling the shots rather than Team Rahul. Back in the 1980s, Rahul’s father Rajiv was similarly brought under the sway of party hacks by 1983,a full year before he became Prime Minister,thereby killing any hope of reform. Unless Rahul Gandhi can emerge from the shadows of the party managers who cluster around his mother,the bag of tricks and tactics which has worked at the state level may fall flat at the national level,especially if the challenge is from an increasingly unstoppable Narendra Modi. Small wonder that countries whch once ignored him,such as the US and the UK, are now seeking to build bridges with the Gujarat leader. 

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=194958

People relate to Pranab with fondness (Sunday Guardian)

M D Nalapat

President Pranab Mukherjee poses for a group photo with artists who participated in the Republic Day Parade at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on 27 January 2013. PTI he last time this columnist met Pranab Mukherjee was during the Vajpayee era, at the residence of one of the most gracious hostesses in Delhi, Najma Heptulla. At that time, he was relaxed and cheerful, plainly expecting his then life of ease to continue into the indefinite future. That was not to be. Unexpectedly, and largely as a consequence of lucky choices in its coalition partners, his Congress party returned to power in 2004, defeating the BJP yet again in 2009. Being the individual with the least aptitude — or interest — in politics, it was natural that Sonia Gandhi chose the gentle Manmohan Singh to be the steward of the government, settling down for a spell of running policy from behind the veil. The two Cabinet colleagues of Manmohan Singh who had the most experience in politicking were A.K. Antony and Pranab Mukherjee, and it was no surprise when the UPA chairperson began using them frequently as fire fighters. Perhaps it would have done the Congress more good were Pranab Mukherjee to have been relieved of his governmental chores and anointed the Congress President. After all, since Indira Gandhi re-fashioned the Congress in her image during 1969-78, there has never been any doubt that no matter what her title (or absence of it), it would be Sonia Gandhi who would control the direction in which the Congress would move. Had she opted to rule through the immense moral force which her family commands within the Congress, Sonia Gandhi's reputation for sacrifice may have been further enhanced. However, Pranab remained within the Union Cabinet rather than preside over the AICC. As for his colleagues, no Prime Minister — least of all Manmohan Singh, who had a ringside view of events during 1992-96 — would have dared to repeat what Narasimha Rao attempted, which is to bring the Congress back into the atmosphere in the early 1950s, when leaders such as Sardar Patel, G.B. Pant and Rajendra Prasad fancied themselves to be Nehru's equal and were not hesitant to act as though they indeed were. Rao's attempt to box Sonia into the "Equals" corner failed, with Arjun Singh, Sheila Dikshit and N.D. Tiwari cutting him to size within the Congress vote bank, to the benefit of the BJP, which finally came to power in 1998 and rode on the Kargil wave to a convincing victory in 1999. Kargil was in fact a disaster made possible by the neglect of defences against the generals in Islamabad that began during the period when Morarji Desai was Prime Minister (to whom Indira Gandhi was much more toxic than an emollient Ziaul-Haq) and accelerated when Inder Kumar Gujral became Prime Minister and sought to render the 1947 border a nullity through unilateral concessions that were each followed by demands for more, rather than anything given back in exchange. Patriotic fervour masked the incompetence of the military, which allowed Indian posts to be taken over by stealth by Musharraf's men, and in the resulting atmosphere of jingoism, the Vajpayee government's neglect of border security was washed away in a medley of images of this country's superb troops taking back defile after defile, peak after peak and its air force pounding away at Pakistani positions despite the severe limitations on its operations placed by a South Block eager to pacify Bill Clinton. As a minister, Pranab Mukherjee was less impressive than he was as a troubleshooter for the AICC president. However, there were moments of glory, such as his standing firm that Vodafone ought to pay the exchequer the Rs 10,000 crore in taxes that was somehow not collected when Hutchison Whampoa sold of its stake to the UK company. Chief Justice Kapadia later on brought back the smile to executives in London by his decision that the then Finance Minister's order to the company to pay up was illegal. However, hopefully the last will not have been heard on this matter, in an era when the Obama administration is collecting billions of dollars in fines from banks doing the same sort of operations out of India without even a raised eyebrow within the RBI or the Finance Ministry. How he would have been as PM is a matter of conjecture. What is fact is that he and his family have brought a glow to the office of the President of India. Despite being the spouse of a serial VVIP, Pranab's better half retains the naturalness of the non-VVIP, as do his children, despite one of them being far more deferential at the altar of political correctness. This is no Royal House occupying Rashtrapati Bhavan but People Like Us. The less "Presidential" he looks and acts (and with a family such as his, this seems likely), the more will Pranab Mukherjee make those of us who have spent a lifetime outside the portals of power relate to him with fondness. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/people-relate-to-pranab-with-fondness

Mideast fears Syria crisis spillover (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  Kuwait City | 2nd Feb 2013

MASS GRAVES: Syrian mourners wave the pre-Baath Party flag, now used by the Free Syrian Army, over the bodies of civilians, who were executed and dumped in the Quweiq river, during their burial at a park now renamed “Martyrs of the River” park in the Bust ifty nine countries from Australia to Kazakhstan congregated at Kuwait on 30 January to come up with cash for the swelling tide of refugees from Syria, now that the civil war in that country has intensified. Although estimates are sketchy, some place the number of those fleeing Syria as crossing 400, 000, to Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Interestingly, Turkey (which is hosting nearly half the total of evacuees) refuses to acknowledge them as "refugees", preferring to call them temporary "guests". Ankara and Doha led the charge against Bashar Al Assad in 2012, enthused by the speedy fall the previous year of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Unfortunately for them, the Syrian regime had not followed the Saddam-Gaddafi precedent of unilateral disarmament before being attacked, with the consequence that the Assad regime has the ability to deploy vast stocks of chemical and other mass killing weapons, besides a store of modern missiles from Russia. Consequently, there is no appetite within Nato to get engaged in the Turkish-Qatari battle against Assad, except by facilitating assistance to those fighting his forces, the overwhelming majority of whom are from outside Syria. There are multiplying reports of the foreign fighters "marrying" unwilling Syrian women for short periods of time, or otherwise treating them as war trophies, reports thus far ignored by their Nato allies, who see the foreign fighters as the only way they have of getting rid of the Assad regime. However, this plus other actions of the "freedom fighters" that are opposed to the secular traditions of the Syrian people have resulted in most of the country's Sunni population rallying behind Assad. "We dislike him, but fear the foreign fighters now in our land much more", a Syrian Sunni whose family has escaped to Kuwait said. The minority Alawites, other Shias, Christians and the Druze back Assad out of fear for the Libya-style chaos that would result were the regime to fall. At the International Humanitarian Pledging Conference, several speakers warned of the dominance of extremist groups among those fighting the Syrian military, and of the spillover effect of this on the region. Both Jordanian and Saudi delegates warned of the growing role of extremists (including Al Qaeda) in the civil war now raging in Syria. At the International Humanitarian Pledging Conference, several speakers warned of the dominance of extremist groups among those fighting the Syrian military, and of the spillover effect of this on the region. Both Jordanian and Saudi delegates warned of the growing role of extremists (including Al Qaeda) in the civil war now raging in Syria.  Helped by a donation of $300 million from host Kuwait, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE stepped forward to provide matching grants. The final total by the end of the day was $1.5 billion, with around $400 million more in the pipeline. This has, in the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, made the Kuwait conference the best performer among the many conferences organised by the UN to collect funds for refugees across the globe. The European powers, although vociferous in providing advice to those in the region, proved to be very parsimonious where actual donations were concerned. The US contended itself by providing only half of what tiny Kuwait has donated. India, which was represented at the conference by Minister of State E. Ahamed, gave a token contribution of $2.5 million, thereby showing themselves to be in the same league as the EU member-states when it came to putting money where the vociferous protestations of concern were. The expectation among those seeking the fall of the Assad regime is that Russia will pull on the plug on the current Syrian President. A diplomat from the anti-Assad coalition said that they have been "heartened by private messages from Prime Minister Medvedev that Russia would change its policy" of backing Assad. However, should Beijing and Moscow continue to back Damascus, the fighting will continue into to indefinite future, thereby blocking the joint Turkey-GCC-Nato effort to replace the Assad regime with one that shares their hostility to Tehran. "After Syria, it will be the turn of Iran", a senior diplomat revealed, stating that "plans are already under way to ignite street protests there once Assad is finished". Given that President Assad is aware that the fate which awaits him in the event of defeat is what befell Muammar Gaddafi, it is unlikely that he will surrender in a hurry. Meanwhile, there are anxious looks among the delegates from the GCC-Turkey-Nato bloc. The estimate of NGOs is that the tide of Syrian refugees crossing the country's borders will cross a million before six months are out. Hence, the calls from within the anti-Assad coalition for Nato to "do a Libya" in Syria. However, the WMD stockpiles in the possession of Assad's forces make this unlikely if not impossible. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/mideast-fears-syria-crisis-spillover

Kuwait: Democracy by decree (PO)

M D Nalapat

Friday, February 01, 2013 - Nothing is an undiluted good or evil. After a point, the one may change into the other, confounding both admirers and critics. Kuwait has had a written constitution for fifty years, a document which formalizes the contract between the ruling Al Sabah family and the people of Kuwait. Today, this city-state is easily the most democratic in the region, because of two factors. The first is the high level of conacientization of the Kuwaiti people, who are much more individualistic than their counterparts elsewhere. The second strand in the democratic foundation of the Kuwaiti polity is the adherence of the Al Sabah family to the constitutional compact signed between the then head of their family (who was automatically also the Head of State) and the people. Unlike in some other parts of the region, where members of the ruling family separate themselves from the rest, in Kuwait the Al Sabahs mix and mingle freely with the rest of the populace. In a conference room, it is often difficult to distinguish them from others. Unlike much of Asia, where there still exist feudal traditions, in Kuwait, some aspects of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled is almost Scandinavian in their informality.

Interestingly, many of the reforms that have been introduced in Kuwait owe their origin not to the elected assembly but to the Amir and his closest advisors. An example is the expansion to women of the right to vote and to stand for elections. Kuwaiti women are far less tolerant of patriarchy than their sisters elsewhere. Only in Syria are the women quite as overtly independent as they are in Kuwait. In contrast to Saudi Arabia, where women cannot travel by themselves or take up many occupations or even drive a vehicle, in Kuwait (and to a considerable extent in the UAE, Jordan and Oman), they enjoy a status that is co-terminus with that of their male counterparts.

This is to be welcomed, for human progress accelerates sharply the greater there is gender justice. Those societies which treat women as second-class citizens are usually those where discoveries, inventions and innovation are conspicous by their absence. A better-educated woman means children who have a better chance of success, It means better health, because of the increased awareness of the need for proper nutrition and to avoid some of the factors which cause disease, such as unsanitary surroundings. Those who take a linear and monochrome view of democracy will be surprised to know that the giving of the power to vote and to run in elections to women was finally given only after the Amir of Kuwait decided that enough was enough, and that he would ignore the opposition of a large number of legislators to the move.

In India, for many years, there has been a demand that a third of the seats in Parliament and the state assemblies should be reserved for women. As is usually the case, those tasked with drafting a law for the purpose have come up with a construct that rotates “women only” constituencies, thereby creating huge instability in the political system. It would have been far better to increase the number of seats by a third, and make a third of (the expanded number of ) constituencies in India those where only a woman can contest. That way, existing constituencies would be spared, although even in the unreserved seats, there may be women candidates, some of whom may win in the polls.

Given the abysmal standard of school education in several parts of the world, each democracy has within it huge numbers of people who favour policies which would harm rather than help the national interest. The (non-military) population of the US has more guns than the combined militaries of NATO, including weapons such as assault rifles, that of use only in the commission of mass murder.However,millions of voters in the US insist on their right to buy the firearm of their choice, forgetting that the right to bear arms was created during a time when the US had a militia rather than an army, and every able-bodied citizen was expected to participate in battles involving first the British colonial masters and later, the American Indians, who were ruthlessly hunted down by a society as heavily armed then as it is now, at a time when the British are no longer the masters of the US but are regarded - a trifle uncharitably - as an American “poodle”.

The surfeit of guns in the hands of US ctizens is at a time when it was more than a hundred and fifty years ago that the American Indians put up any sort of credible defense to the war of European-origin settlers against them. The persisting power of the US gun lobby is testimony to the fact that views may not be right, even if they be held by millions. Across both West Asia as well as South Asia, pressure from the more extreme and less enlightened segments of society is resulting in the passing of laws that should have no place in a genuinely free society.

In India, for example, it is laughably easy to get a book or a movie banned, or even an art exhibition. All that is needed is to collect a few dozen people and create a ruckus. So nervous is the government of the public mood that the demands of the troublemakers are usually conceded in full. Rather than the enlightened having a veto over the wishes of the obscurantist, it is the other way about. Sadly, for much of its modern history, India has had to endure leaders who dance like puppets to what they perceive to be the “public mood”, which is usually that of the group which shouts the loudest. Sometimes, such “voices of the masses” have to be ignored in favour of implementing policies that may lack popularity but which are necessary, such as the many reforms implemented by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, reforms that cost him his job, but which made Germany the powerhouse it is today.

In Kuwait as well, needed reforms - such as giving women the vote or ensuring that each elector has the choice of only a single candidate - have often come through the Amiri Diwan rather than through the legislature. It has been a case of democracy by decree, rather than by the consent of many of the legislators. Hopefully, Kuwaiti society will evolve in a way that ensures moderneducation to all its citizens, so that they can shake loose from those who seek to regress into the past in an era when modernity is the key not just to achievement but to survival.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=193933

If rules subvert justice, they need to be set aside (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

The accused in the 16 December gang rape in New Delhi. ne of the many lessons taught to the nation by Mahatma Gandhi was that outcomes do not matter, procedures do. To paraphrase his words on means and ends, "means are after all, everything". Repeat, everything. Even if the ends are not served by means seen by votaries of the Mahatma as being the proper ones to be used, it does not matter. The use of specific means is much more important than any outcome or lack thereof. India has been blessed with the British colonial administrative and legal system, both of which continue seven decades after flagposts in government compounds replaced the Union Jack with the Tricolour. So long as the British were in charge, the system chugged along at a reasonable clip, because of the spirit of improvisation of the colonial authority. They were happy to keep to the rules, so long as their broader purposes were served by doing so. However, in case robotic adherence to procedure resulted in a weakening of the colonial authority, rules were either ignored or changed, much as they are in India once a sufficient bribe has been paid. The 16 December 2012 rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi failed to shake the Delhi Police from their smug lethargy, an ennui that was favourably remarked on by the Union Home Secretary himself, who regarded the national capital being one of the least safe locations in the country for non-VVIPs as proving the superlative performance of the Commissioner of Police, Delhi. It cannot have been easy to have discovered such a forgiving mindset among the army of babus milling around various offices in the national capital, and Dr Manmohan Singh, who holds charge of Personnel, must be given credit for his choice of the top bureaucrat in the Home Ministry, an individual who seems blind to ground reality, but who clearly has uses other than running his department efficiently and with accountability enforced. The Union Home Secretary is, doubtless, a votary of the Mahatma's doctrine that process is what counts and not outcome. That procedure trumps performances. { Despite their own desire that the name of their courageous daughter be made public, some obscure corner of the law has been seized upon by rule-toting functionaries to prevent the mass media from revealing her name. Only such a view would have led to decisions such as the use of provisions of the Juvenile Acts to "protect the identity" of the helpless youth who bludgeoned a young woman to death after violating her in the most inhuman way. The laws of India may allow this creature of the dark to escape any but the most nominal of punishments for his appalling actions, but society has a right to know his name, so that those in his vicinity may be warned the next time he entices a young woman into a vehicle with intent to slake his desire for blood. Preventing society from knowing who he is, is in effect facilitating a repeat offence. Assuming, of course, that the 16 December incident was his first rape and murder. Given the calculated way in which he — literally — impaled his prey, it is very possible that there have been other victims in the past, who have been denied justice because of the quality of policing in non-VVIP Delhi. Rules and procedures, as indeed the force and majesty of the law, are intended to ensure Justice, with a capital "J". Should such constructs do the opposite, and allow deadly criminals to escape back into society almost without punishment, they would be subverting the very purpose of law, which is justice. Despite their own desire that the name of their courageous daughter be made public, some obscure corner of the law has been seized upon by rule-toting functionaries to prevent even the mass media from revealing her name. It is as though a woman from the lower economic depths of society does not even have the right to a name, all she deserves is the facelessness of anonymity. And now, the depredator who violated her and tarnished the global image of an entire nation is going to escape the full force of the law, because of a piece of paper that is likely to be fraudulent. If rules subvert justice, they need to be set aside. The sixth perpetrator should have his identity removed, and share the fate of the other five. Of course, after the decades that will elapse before a "fast track" legal process can deliver justice. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/if-rules-subvert-justice-they-need-to-be-set-aside