India is fast deteriorating into a police state. Sounds like the ranting of a crazed mind, even if you take into account the increased number of police and security forces on the roads of the Capital. But how else would you explain the fact that the entire Cabinet passed a Bill which made it mandatory to maintain details of all visitors to cyber cafes and the sites they visit, and wanted to give the police the right to arrest people on the mere suspicion that a cyber crime is being committed.Or, that the fertiliser minister wants the CBI to investigate understating of capacities by fertiliser units due to a warped policy which allows fixed returns to plants on the basis of their capacity utilisation, this is a fairly big racket. Or, even that the urban affairs minister wants an inquiry commission to look into the activities of the land mafia.The point is none of these proposals offer solutions to the problem if they did, one can still endorse a police state. All that they do is, first to invade everyone's privacy, apart from giving people like Pramod Mahajan, Suresh Prabhu and Jagmohan (the ministers who made these proposals this week) a mistaken feeling that they have acted decisively.As infotech minister, Mahajan, for instance, should have known that policemen can't tackle sophisticated cyber crimes, so why even bother to maintain cumbersome lists of cyber-dhaba visitors. By contrast, the federal investigators in the US and other countries traced the origins of the Melissa and now the ILoveYou virus by tracing cyber footprints.Similarly, Jagmohan should know by now that judicial commissions rarely establish any crime, if only because they have no investigative machinery attached to them. Justice Chandrachud's clean chit to Indian cricketers in the match-fixing case, for instance, does seem a bit awkward when you see all the skeletons tumbling out of cupboards these days. In any case, Jagmohan doesn't need to establish that a builder gave a bribe to a chief engineer of one of Delhi's various municipal authorities and got his unauthorised structure passed. The very fact that the structure is unauthorised that it is encroaching upon public land, for instance should be enough for him to have it demolished. Who got a bribe to clear it is something which shouldn't bother him, since that isn't his job anyway.Nor is it clear as to why Suresh Prabhu wants the CBI to investigate the understating of capacity by fertiliser units. For one, this is a job best done by an industrial engineer who can study designs. Second, and more important, the real issue is not whether capacities are being understated the issue is whether fixed payments should be given at all, and whether firms should be given huge incentives for producing more than their stated capacities. And for that, Prabhu has access to several reports done by economists, including an expert committee headed by Hanumantha Rao. In fact, by asking for a CBI inquiry, Prabhu appears to be just deflecting the real issue apart from, of course, buying time before he is forced to take action.People like Mahajan, Prabhu and Jagmohan, are more a symptom of a disease rather than the malady. The more serious issue is that we still haven't developed a formal system of dealing with issues. That's why, for example, a water shortage crisis hits us suddenly though it is well-known that we have had a serious problem for many years per capita water availability has fallen 60 per cent since independence; from late last year, warnings of low precipitation have been coming in regularly; six of India's 20 major river basins have been at scarcity levels since 1991; of the total of 4,272 water blocks in the country, the number of `over-exploited' blocks has gone up by over 50 per cent between just 1984 and 1992. We know all of this, but still the crisis hits us.It's just that no one really paid attention to the evidence at hand. The minister of water resources, C.P. Thakur, sought to partly absolve himself of the blame by explaining that at least five ministries, apart from various state governments, were in charge of water resources so that's why no one really responded adequately.A typical response to a situation like this and there's a proposal doing the rounds in the Prime Minister's Office is to centralise things in one ministry. Thakur's recent interview to Business India speaks of the need to `restructure' his ministry, to `widen our responsibility, accountability and budgetary allocation'. One would, of course, be naive to believe that this will solve things remember the National Security Council set up to look at all aspects of India's security, but no one paid attention to reports coming in of Pakistani infiltration at Kargil? The need clearly is to utilise existing systems effectively rather than just creating new super-structures. Chances, however, are that in the surcharged post-crisis atmosphere, we'll probably settle for a mammoth water resources commission as a major initiative. It won't help, but by the time that's found out, it'll be next year at least.
