Outside,the few protesters braving a muggy London morning waved Jail Tony banners. Inside,Lincolns Inn lawyer and three-time British premier Anthony Charles Lynton Blair prepared to defend a brief he had himself written eight years ago: committing British troops to the invasion of Iraq. The farce was actually not the Chilcot Inquiry proceedings inside,but the placards outside. Section 2 of the Inquiries Act 2005 prohibits British inquiries from imposing civil or criminal liability. Like in India,inquiry commissions are not courts of law they cannot jail or fine. But what they can do is to inquire publicly,and that is precisely what Sir Chilcot and four other privy councillors did last Friday. The level of openness left us Indians,fed on a 17-year-old farce called the Liberhan Commission,wondering what lessons to learn.
In fact,the British Inquiries Act is less formalised than our Commissions of Inquiry Act,1952. While any British minister can set up an inquiry,in
India either the Centre (or state government) must decide,or Parliament (or state legislatures) can compel. Indian commissions are also vested with the powers of a civil court in summoning witnesses. Our inquiries are inevitably headed by retired judges,many of them having served on the Supreme Court. Still,and this is the irony,when was the last Indian commission whose recommendations were accepted in full?
Part of the Indian problem is unreal expectations. The bitter truth is that Indian inquiry commissions are utterly beholden to the state. The government appoints the judge,sets the mandate,decides on extensions,and chooses which part to implement. Dependence is then masked with pretence,the pretence that somehow commissions of inquiry are like courts of law. Appointing a retired Supreme Court judge and giving the commission civil court powers,only adds to the charade. But as many retired judges have found to their embarrassment,the harder-hitting their report,the less likely that they will be listened to. The hardest-hitting ones,like possibly the Henderson-Brooks report on the 1962 Indo-China War,are still to see the light of the day. In fact,commissions are the worst possible insult to a retired judges reputation. Brilliant expositions from the bench are,in public memory,muddied by allegations of political cover-up.
Better then that inquiry commissions in the UK and India are judged for what they are: public hearings that allow a wounded citizenry to participate. Judged by this humble standard,the credibility of a commission ceases to rest on its statutory powers or court-like pretence,but in public faith and participation. If we get the jail Tony bit out of the way,the Chilcot Committee actually fared fairly well. It asked Tony Blair the right questions,grilled him for six hours,and all on prime-time television.
If Indian commissions are judged this way,the government wont be able to pretend that every crisis has a commission,enabling ministers to grunt no comment in mock-seriousness. Crimes such as the 1984 anti-Sikh riots,or the 2002 Gujarat pogroms will be investigated the old-fashioned way; administrative and political accountability will be swiftly allocated,not excused by years of commission hearings. The committees only focus will then be on making the process transparent. It is no coincidence that the Chilcot Committee has both televised hearings as well as an accessible,constantly updated website. Name one Indian commission which had either?
Humbler inquires might also ask smaller questions on government policy,army manoeuvres or bureaucratic waste. The United States has a fine tradition of Senate and Congressional hearings in which bankers,politicians and army generals are publicly interrogated. In India,our Parliamentary Committee hearings are a state secret. Supporters of this opacity argue that: if televised,MPs will be encouraged to grandstand on partisan lines. Inquiry commissions,though,cause no such worry.
A less ambitious,more transparent inquiry commission opens up all kinds of possibilities. Irritated at an interest rate hike that hurts growth? Who better to question,on candid camera,than the RBI governor who made the call. Angry at the spiralling cost of sugar? Perhaps the agricultural minister has some answers,or needs to give some. Worried that the spools of evidence that our verbose politicians produce might find no media outlet?
For precisely such situations exists the state-subsidised Lok Sabha TV.
vinay.sitapati@expressindia.com
