POLITICAL MANOEUVRES
Narendra Modi was chief minister at the time of the Godhra incident. Six years after the incident, most of those accused of having burnt the passengers in the bogie in Godhra are in jail without trial. The Nanavati Commission, which the Gujarat government appointed to investigate the incident, reconstructed it plausibly, if not convincingly. But even after years of labour, it did not identify the arsonists. It contradicted the conclusions of the Banerjee Commission, but was too lazy, neglectful or disingenuous to address the contradictions. The Gujarat government is clueless about the culprits, and has kept suspects in custody for years without proof. Cluelessness is not evidence of incompetence; there are crimes that even the best police forces in the world cannot solve. But to keep suspects in custody without evidence is unjust, and in this case, suggests prejudice. Narendra Modi’s example is the most compelling evidence against a law like Prevention of Terrorism Act. But it is also evidence that his government has been able to keep people of its choice in jail indefinitely without Pota.
Further, Narendra Modi’s government has systematically avoided prosecuting killers of Muslims in the riots subsequent to Godhra. The Central government has prosecuted a few; but it has got the cases transferred out of Gujarat. Clearly, it thinks that judges in Gujarat are prejudiced or have been suborned. This also is an adverse comment on the Gujarat government.
For these reasons, I have an extremely poor opinion of Narendra Modi. I see him as hopelessly prejudiced against Muslims, and I regard his claims that he is chief minister of all Gujaratis as hypocrisy. I see the influence of his prejudice on the investigation of the riots and subsequent punitive action. He is not only anti-Muslim, but he is an unworthy chief minister; he has sabotaged the rule of law in my state — in a state I am proud to belong to. He has shamed me and the fifty million Gujaratis. That those Gujaratis have elected and re-elected him makes no difference to me. Those who voted for him made a mistake, and served Gujarat ill.
But I am not sorry that Ratan Tata took the Nano project away from West Bengal and to Gujarat. States rightly or wrongly compete for industry, and industrialists take their investments to states that offer the best terms. Gujarat offered better law and order than West Bengal.
It is ironical that Singur’s law-and-order problems should have led Tata to the state which has an execrable law-and-order record in respect of the post-Godhra riots. States keep some kinds of law and order better than others, and Ratan Tata decided that Gujarat is likely to keep the kind of law and order that matters to his project better than West Bengal.
The police supply a free service; and every free service leads to excess demand. So the police must decide whom and in what conditions to supply the service. They work out rules about this. For example, they do not waste effort on cases where the chances of detection or conviction are low. They give priority to crimes against themselves, and act quickly and forcefully against challenges to their own authority. They give priority to serious crimes such as murder and robbery. In the US, they give high priority to traffic violations, which yield rich fines; in India they give them low priority because they collect bribes from drivers of public vehicles that are in the nature of violation insurance.
Demonstrations require large forces to deal with. So most police forces would prefer to nip them in the bud. But if they cannot, they are tempted not to interfere. Countries vary in their practices. But by and large, it is a custom in countries that call themselves democratic to allow demonstrations. The police “regulate” demonstrations: they issue permits, define the time of the demonstration and the roads and grounds they may use, and accompany the demonstration to keep it orderly.
A riot is a demonstration where participants do not accept the rules of the game set by the police. To maintain their authority, the police should put down riots with an iron hand. But impartiality may require more effort. If the riots are between two unequal communities, restoration of law and order is less costly if the police favour the stronger community; it takes less effort to put down the weaker community. If, as is generally believed, the police in Gujarat were soft on Hindu rioters in 2002, that may have been due to prejudice. But it was also economically rational, in the sense that the riots could be ended with less effort if the police acted in concert with Hindu rioters.
In disorderly democracies like India, the police are kinder to demonstrations of ruling parties than of the opposition. This suits ruling parties extremely well, and opposition parties poorly. It makes the latter try harder to get into power. But there is another, more durable strategy — to fill up police forces with party supporters. This tactic is effective, but it can work only if a party stays in power for a long time, like the CPI(M) in West Bengal. If parties in power alternate often, they have to try something else. When they get into power, they create posts in the police and fill them up with their supporters. Mulayam Singh and Mayavati recruit thousands of their supporters into UP police when they get power. And the logic does not stop with the police; they pack all departments with their supporters. That is how one gets the extremely overmanned governments, full of unqualified hangers-on, which are characteristic of India.
This may also happen in states ruled by a single party for long periods. But there the ruling parties have a choice. They can overman services and pack them with hangers-on. Or they can reprofessionalize services and earn brownie points for running good governments.
The chief ministers of both West Bengal and Gujarat are trying to earn those brownie points, because both governments have a bad reputation and improving it can bring the two states rich dividends in the form of industry and employment. Both offered Tata land. Land in Bengal was encumbered with untidy acquisition; land in Gujarat was not. Bengalis would like to believe that it is because Gujarat is an arid semi-desert and has much land for which it has little use. This is not true of the land Tata got; it is green, agricultural land. If the price Narendra Modi quoted is right, the land is at least four times as expensive as in Singur. Most of the established industry in Gujarat is in the fertile south, whose agriculture probably earns more per acre than in West Bengal because it grows commercial crops.
But what is remarkable about Gujarat is not that it made a better offer, but that it is exceptional for the Gujarat government to offer land to any industrialist. Some do take land from the Gujarat State Industrial Development Corporation. But most buy land directly from farmers and other owners. The difference is that there is a broad, thriving land market in Gujarat, and none in West Bengal.
