I am sure that most of us would be reading newspapers or listening to news on radio or TV. And more often than not, one of the headlines these days cover a scam or corruption conducted by the very people who have been entrusted with a responsibility to make or protect the laws of the land. And sadly, the extent of such transgressions is increasing with each passing day. In the wake of such woeful commentary on the state of affairs in our country, I am bound to be one with the fact that “Law Makers are now Law Breakers”.
The rot of our society has been going on for years and we kept looking the other way. Power started acting as a catalyst or disease, transforming simple human beings of honest backgrounds into demons devoid of honor. They started eating up our ethos and we still looked the other way. Criminals supported these corrupt public servants to get their raunchy ways covered up. But now criminals have stopped stooping over such people. They themselves are now becoming law makers. And the sorry state is that we have started living with this disgracive turn of events. BUT for how long. Isn’t it time we put down our foot and stop this before it eats up our society.
The below data could cause shivers amongst most of us. Of the 545 current Lok Sabha MPs, over 30% have criminal cases against them – 67 of them facing serious charges of murder, rape and extortion. Out of approx. 4000 sitting state MLAs over 31% are muddied with criminal cases against them.
And the story doesn’t end here. A survey on Asian officialdom notes that Indian bureaucracy is the worst in Asia. More and more bureaucrats are getting indicted in gross misuse of power for their ulterior motives. The number of complaints received against police officials in 2011 stood at a whopping 61700 (that is over 170 complaints every day).
The Term Paper on William Stuntz the Pathological Politics Of Criminal Law
William Stuntz "The Pathological Politics of Criminal Law". INTRODUCTION While many factors that make positive sentencing reform rather problematic remain, different factors have come together at the beginning of the new century which made such reform more possible than it has been for a many years. On the other hand, as these critical factors are not likely to remain in adjustment for a long ...
Needless to say, only 18% of these complaints were converted to registered cases.
So the question now is – Have all law makers become Law Breakers. The fact sadly is that perhaps not all but WAY TOO MANY. But what’s the solution. Is there any??? Perhaps not…at least not till WE reform ourselves.
The fact is that we, Indians, have lost the virtue of truth and honor in ourselves, More often than not, we have adopted our famous “chalta hai” culture – whether it is in driving on roads, or filing our IT / Sales Tax returns or filling up a simple application form for a new job. We have lost the value of truth. We have lost the value of LAW. If we do not value integrity and honesty in ourselves, we will not value these qualities in our Law Makers. We will keep on electing such corrupt and tainted representatives and hence choose this “Law Breaking” tendency to permeate in our society.
In any job, even to get appointed as a teacher in a private school, a reference check is conducted to ensure that no person with a tainted or criminal background is recruited. However no such check is conducted by our political parties while finalizing its list of its candidate. The main criteria, there, is not their ethics or morale, but their “ability to spend money” and “their ability to win”. This has to be changed and fast. Kudos to the Supreme Court in India, it ruled that any person convicted should be immediately debarred from his parliamentary seat and also from contesting elections. I hope that political parties would see great sense in it and apply this in letter and spirit. And in case our leaders do not see value in this judgment, we should force them to see it. We should STOP casting our vote to such people which checkered backgrounds.
We all, have to take some affirmative steps to stop this rot of Indian ethos. We have to vow to stand up, in whatever small way we can, against this rapidly flourishing weed of “Law makers becoming Law breakers”. We should STOP giving and accepting bribes. We should STOP hiding our true income. AND we should STOP accepting flouting of laws by anyone. We should STAND UP and RISE, against anything that is unethical and unlawful. This is not easy and may take more time than what we might assume. But, believe me, this is the ONLY way to stop the degradation of our rich past and our righteousness.
The Term Paper on A critical evaluation of the use of “stop and search” by the police
A critical evaluation of the use of “stop and search” by the police Introduction Police officers have a fundamental function to maintain law and order in the society (Smith, G. 2001: 372). They deal with crimes and arrest offenders. They are supposed to be vigilant all the time and monitoring any potential criminal activity and prevent its occurrence where possible. According toHess, K. M., ...
