The government of India stonewalls almost every RTI query filed by concerned citizens with the standard rebuttal “We don’t have any data”. “No such records are maintained.” Whether it was the number of migrants who died last year, how many Covid relief trains were run or who the progenitor of the ‘Arogya Setu’ app was, the Centre has not at all been forthcoming with answers. In a welcome move the Supreme Court and the High Court have taken up the cudgels on the citizen’s behalf, slamming the sarkar left, right and centre; the SC has categorically mentioned that it cannot remain a silent spectator if constitutional rights of citizens are infringed by executive policy, it has also demanded a detailed explanation of how the Rs 35,000 crores (another jumla most probably) earmarked for vaccines in the budget is being spent.
The apex court has of late been extremely critical of the government’s vax policy for the 18 to 44 year old age group castigating it as arbitrary and irrational. Everything the Centre does reminds you of the Stasi and Schutzstaffel, dissent is anathema; consider that it recently put out a gag order on retired security and intelligence personnel commenting critically on current policy, journalists are being arrested at the slightest pretext; ailing and near death 80-year-olds are being slapped with sedition charges and jailed if they speak anything which in the government’s opinion is ‘anti-national’. The Sarkar has made attempts to intimidate social media platforms for calling out the former’s machiavellian tactics employed to discredit opposition parties, laughably under the garb of protecting Indian’s right to free speech.
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Consider also the vindictive, devious and petty nature of the Centre in L’affaire chief secretary, West Bengal; it is nothing but vendetta politics, never in the history of independent India has the chair of the Prime Minister been so denigrated. The High Courts of the country have also waded in by calling out this clueless (non) government on various issues including widespread Covid mismanagement, allowing the superspreader Kumbh and conducting election rallies in the midst of a raging pandemic.
The SG of India habitually spins a false narrative by filing false affidavits in courts to hide the incompetence and criminal non-action of the government, also a Union cabinet mantri who is not the Health Minister patently lies that all Indians will be vaccinated by December, this when there is no visible push for vax production or procurement. Despite the government’s naked attempts to exercise brute power and crush dissent there seems to be some semblance of a pushback courtesy our courts.
We fervently hope and pray that all judicial observations/directions/judgements and action are taken to their logical conclusion in the interests of democracy. India is already at no. 66 on the ‘failed state’ index thanks to factionalism, group grievance, economic decline, brain drain, (non) rule of law, misgovernance and crushing of dissent; let us not fall any further. If India were a person, it would have definitely cried out “I can’t breathe,” a la George Floyd.
