Bring back POTA
That sounds like a solution. In India that seems to be the problem. Not enough power for the police. With this law missing in their arsenal, they are rendered useless, the do gooders. Yesterday when I saw Advani saying that we need to bring back POTA, I went back to the archives and read some articles and user comments regarding POTA and people responding to POTA repeal. It actually scared and disgusted me at the same time. As a user says, " India is voted as the most tolerant country in the world" I don't know where he comes up with this claim but for sure it can be dismissed as hearsay right away. From my observation neither we are nor considered as the world's most tolerant country. And somehow people feel that their tolerance towards these people who don't pray like them is a virtue. I fail to see it as a virtue. Tolerance is a minimum requirement of a society if at all it has to consider itself a society. And in a day and age where people are standing in a queue to barter their liberty and freedom to a false sense of security, it is tough to see if they actually posses the very "virtue" they profess to champion.
In order to believe that this law actually works, you have to believe there are two kinds of people. Firstly people who consider that good and evil are clearly demarcated and they are and can be heaped as two groups either by region or religion ( it is scary that so many people who actually this idea) or you have to be one of those few who will actually benefit from this law and finally people who don't care about civil liberties and see them as dispensable and feel the need of an authoritarian governance. I think most of the people fall into first or the last groups and sometimes, to make things worse, in more than one group. Irrespective of what motivates their support to POTA, it would soon come and bite us in the rear. With respect to terrorism, it is not a problem that needs to be solved with iron fist but with a baby glove. The terrorism we see in India and around the world is fueled by the innocent blood and enough innocent blood spilled already.
In order to solve these sensitive issues, we need to have deeper understanding. How poverty, violence,neglect and inequality are turning normal people in to terrorists. How religious fundamentalism is brewing hate when every religion claims and bonifies itself to be the path to salvation. How a nation with aspirations to be a super power tends to neglect and rob its poor. How a cannibalistic economy measures prosperity by indicators which say nothing about the plight of the common folks and makes the world much dangers for powerless and the future generations and how people who were here for the past thousand years are still considered as outsiders and have to prove themselves over and over again.
In a land of fake encounters, subservient judiciary and highly corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, giving them more power is very very stupid. In addition to this, POTA failed last time around and so did TADA ( with less than 2% conviction rates). One of the axioms of modern day justice systems is innocent till proven guilty. If this is broken( which already happened with 2% conviction rates) there would be no hope for India being at least a mediocre democracy as it is now.
In order to believe that this law actually works, you have to believe there are two kinds of people. Firstly people who consider that good and evil are clearly demarcated and they are and can be heaped as two groups either by region or religion ( it is scary that so many people who actually this idea) or you have to be one of those few who will actually benefit from this law and finally people who don't care about civil liberties and see them as dispensable and feel the need of an authoritarian governance. I think most of the people fall into first or the last groups and sometimes, to make things worse, in more than one group. Irrespective of what motivates their support to POTA, it would soon come and bite us in the rear. With respect to terrorism, it is not a problem that needs to be solved with iron fist but with a baby glove. The terrorism we see in India and around the world is fueled by the innocent blood and enough innocent blood spilled already.
In order to solve these sensitive issues, we need to have deeper understanding. How poverty, violence,neglect and inequality are turning normal people in to terrorists. How religious fundamentalism is brewing hate when every religion claims and bonifies itself to be the path to salvation. How a nation with aspirations to be a super power tends to neglect and rob its poor. How a cannibalistic economy measures prosperity by indicators which say nothing about the plight of the common folks and makes the world much dangers for powerless and the future generations and how people who were here for the past thousand years are still considered as outsiders and have to prove themselves over and over again.
In a land of fake encounters, subservient judiciary and highly corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, giving them more power is very very stupid. In addition to this, POTA failed last time around and so did TADA ( with less than 2% conviction rates). One of the axioms of modern day justice systems is innocent till proven guilty. If this is broken( which already happened with 2% conviction rates) there would be no hope for India being at least a mediocre democracy as it is now.
posted by scrupulous at 3:00 PM
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