Commentary/Ashok Mitra

Bihar farmers need SPG cover more than certain New Delhi VIPs

It is an increasingly sorry situation we find ourselves in now. The distinction between politicians indulging in gross criminal activities and professional criminals who have donned politicians's clothing is getting obliterated with each passing year. Public interest litigation, and the judiciary's positive responses to these, have partly redeemed the situation. The tribe of sleaze-sodden politicians have been inconvenienced no end by the active interest the judges are taking now. Not surprisingly, we have seen much waxing of righteous indignation from career politicians and their friends.

It looks as if a new code of reciprocity is being laid. If odd members of the judiciary are discovered to be corrupt, politicians too have every right to go astray, haven't they? A few politicians even maintain that the way things are developing, a grisly confrontation between the government's legislative and the judicial wings is well on the cards. And this, they claim, will certainly cause irretrievable damage to Indian democracy -- all because of a handful of wayward judges!

Public litigation cases continue to be filed against politicians for legions of evil doings; reluctant official agencies are often sternly instructed by judges to speed up investigations and, where prima facie evidence is convincing, to file charges. The politicians involved engage slick lawyers and seek bail. They may have been accused of defalcating hundreds of crore of public funds, or of receiving huge bribes, or of any number of other heinous criminal offences. But they are soon out on bail, and persist in behaving as if the world owes them a realm.

Much worse, they continue to be showered with special privileges -- such as blanket security cover -- at taxpayers's expense, from the Special Protection Group. Especially in the capital, the concept of threat perception and the grant or non-grant of SPG cover have in course of time emerged as an aspect of social status and stratification.

The SPG list has accordingly emerged as the authorised social register, the equivalent of Debrett's in Britain. In case you have secured entry into the list, you strain hard to ensure that your name is not dropped out at the next revision. Alternately, you try to get promoted from a lower-category, entitling you to enjoy increasingly more ostentatious and elaborate forms of protection.

Meanwhile, other things may happen. For instance, because of the idiosyncrasy of an overactive judge, you may be chargesheeted for a criminal offence. A bizarre circumstance then ensue. You are facing prosecution; but since the authorities have earlier conceded that a threat exists against your life, your SPG cover continues.

The absurdity may not stop here. To make your security 100 per cent fool proof, the SPG may insist that you need to move into a huge official bungalow in the national capital with lush, leafy surroundings, a well-laid expanse of a lawn and a long drive-way.

Such a bungalow will be arranged for you again at taxpayers's expense. Should you ever feel the urge to enjoy a drive in the balmy spring or autumn weather through the regal avenues of New Delhi, a fleet of cars would form an impressive retinue, and all civil traffic would come to a halt along the route. You may, a la Kalpnath Rai, be any day judged guilty under this or that provision of the criminal procedure code and sentenced to 20 or 30 years of hard labour. So what? For the present, threat perception is threat perception, and your SPG cover is secure.

Now, assume that an Z-category security recipient has been sentenced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment and appeals to the highest judiciary fail to reverse the sentence. What happens to the SPG cover?

Let us refer to an even more absurd situation. According to the existing legislation, if you happen to belong to a former prime minister's family, you are entitled to a number of special security prerogatives. The particular statute, however, does not say whether, in case someone from such a household is packed off to prison, the SPG cover would continue inside or not. One cannot blame those who drafted the stature; they could not insert sections and sub-sections in it to take care of all hypothetical developments.

But what about non-hypothetical situations? Take, for instance, several hundred thousand landless agricultural workers in Bihar's Jehanabad district. Every day, they are under threat of attack by private armies financed and organised by the upper caste landlords. Scores of incidents have taken place in recent months when these private hordes such as the Ranvir Sena, aided by the local police, massacred helpless bataidars and farm workers. By all accounts, the threat to life and limb of each sharecropper and each landless farm worker in Bihar is inordinately high.

Such being the reality, these hundreds of thousands of rural poor are entitled to SPG cover the same way occupants of certain privileged addresses in New Delhi are. The cost involved in offering adequate protection to the workers ought not to be a consideration at all. Actually, Article 14 of the Constitution bars any such extraneous consideration: All citizens, this Article says, are equal before the law. If VIPs in New Delhi qualify for SPG protection, there is absolutely no ground for denying it to the landless multitude in Jehanabad.

These rustic people, perhaps the excuse will be lamely trotted out, have not formally prayed for SPG cover. But several of the dubious eminence currently being taken care of by the SPG did not formally apply either. In their case, the threat, the authorities will maintain, was adjudged to be so great that no special requests from the prospective victims were felt necessary. Is the threat to the Jehanabad lower peasantry any less? Played into an awkward corner, the authorities will no doubt draw attention to Parliamentary provisions pertaining to the rights and prerogatives of a former prime minister's family members.

The debate will still not be resolved. Parliament can modify the provisions in the Constitution if circumstances so warrant. It cannot, however, change the basic character of the Constitution. To provide security of a certain specification to a select number of citizens, which is denied to commoners, despite an identical perception of threat to their lives, does not jell with Article 14. Besides, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

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