Tough tackle

As Uttar Pradesh’s minister for fisheries and for soldier welfare and rehabilitation, Jamuna Nishad, is sacked for his alleged involvement in a police constable’s murder, it raises pressing questions about crime and punishment in the state — and about when such actions will finally be followed by just consequences. UP has long been considered a cauldron of corruption, violence and political jiggery-pokery, where legal and administrative institutions were beaten down by its unruly, confrontational politics. But when the BSP won with the clearest mandate in 14 years, Mayawati promised sweeping changes in the state. She can, for the first time, actually govern on her own terms; and if ever there was a time when better, cleaner governance was possible in UP, it is now.

And to Mayawati’s credit, she has been prompt in sacking the minister and instituting a probe into the constable’s death. By refusing to shield her minister over the case of a Dalit girl and declaring that a criminal was a criminal, “irrespective of his caste, religion or influence”, she has signalled the right things, but the fact that Jamuna Nishad is the third BSP minister to be implicated in criminal cases proves the enormity of her task. Bringing cleaner governance to UP can’t be easy, given that in the state elections, 872 candidates, across political parties, were implicated in criminal cases, of whom 130 finally won.

In a state torn by bitter identity battles, political parties meant to mediate between state and society often cynically interpreted radical transformation as wresting what they could while they held office — leaving UP’s law and administration in shreds, eroding public confidence in them. The fact that the minister’s mobs would wreak vendetta on a police constable for allegedly changing the facts of a case, shows the degree to which the law and order machinery has been compromised — it is a statement on political thuggery as well as the manipulability of the police. Uttar Pradesh might change yet, but it will be a long, hard transition and needs all the single-minded political commitment its leaders can muster.