Demolition probably isn’t anyone’s idea of justice, but how else do you establish the letter of the law in a country where corruption regularly washes everything spotless?
A bulldozer being used to demolish illegal structures during an anti-encroachment drive in New Delhi. PTI
Indians are used to living with a sense of jeopardy. Which is why they always try befriending the law before listening to it. They believe it is better to be in cahoots with those who orchestrate the pilfering of public resources than side with the few who want people to stop it. These relationships have been normalised to the extent that they are considered generational handovers, natural sidebars to life within the Indian ecosystem. The amount of grease on your palms is considered directly proportional to your influence within the socio-political system native to your neighbourhood. It’s precisely why the shock and awe of the bulldozer, compared to the sleepy administrative nudge, has in recent weeks stunned the country into waking up. The JCB might have earned a notorious reputation in the midst of it all, but maybe it can serve a purpose that is beyond its functionality.
Encroachment, let’s be honest, is a national habit. The urban poor might do it out of need, but even in India’s cities, illegal constructions are rampant courtesy of a nifty nexus between local policemen, corporation officials and opportunists trying to make the best of a broken system.
In rural areas, the situation is worse. Forest land and government-owned natural resources are the first victims of illegal expansion and in the hinterland, it is comparatively easier to hide vices under the garb of cultural rhetoric. The rude fact is, encroachment is a generational problem and it has continued to be so because political representatives are hands-in-gloves with miscreants. Happy to provide them with a safe passage through the corridors of our justice system, or whatever little of it can be imposed. The anti-encroachment drive in Delhi most recently was hotly rebuked: While its motivations can be debated, there is no denying encroachment is a malaise that cannot be solved by polite addendums to already existing laws. Sometimes you just need to punch through the wall rather than hang notices on it.
Bulldozing structures might seem like an extreme step in retrospect, but the machinery of corruption within Indian bureaucracy and politics has put on the kind of muscle weight that can’t be negotiated with or pacified. It can probably only be fought against, with the knuckled approach of a boxer way past making moral points. Even persistent corruption is a form of extremism that, maybe, requires more than just a rap on the knuckles. Maybe it needs a wholesome fist to the jaw. And while we are at it, let’s not just make this about civilians. Point this bulldozer in the direction of corrupt bureaucrats, barons, corporate mafias or mantris who have racked up a CV of scams longer than the many foundation stones they inaugurate every other week.
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Our view of the law, as a people, is subjective to our circumstances. Good as long as we evade it, bad as soon as we are confronted by it. From police check-posts to the private security guard in our society just trying to do his job, we’d rather trample over the process at the cost of mild inconveniences. Rules, therefore, are for everyone else to follow and us to walk over. But this is, of course, possible from the heights of privilege. Climb down the ranks of class, and the nature of corruption is based on mutiny or survival. The tacit need to survive, to manufacture dignity out of nothing, is often the cause behind the imprudence of the poor. It does not, however, make it any less illegal. These problems require better solutions than the weighty fist of the law punching down front doors of pretty much everything in sight. But maybe the echo of the sound of one such door falling to the ground can do the trick. Not to mention this reactive solution should be fashioned and recycled for everyone, regardless of power, ethnicity or stature.
For those opposed to the idea of demolition and pervasive measures that at least to the naked eye look violent, what else can really be done? Snail-paced legal methods destined to outlive the structures in question? Clammily-typed legal notices? Or sincere appeals to the good-hearted descendants of a Gandhian state? The problem is that life isn’t a Munna Bhai film. And in this version of reality, Lage Raho Munna Bhai translates to Munna Bhai continuing to eat at the expense of the state, of its honest tax-paying citizen.
In reality, Munna Bhai isn’t the Gandhian reformer but the corrupt, malignant presence in an otherwise humble ecosystem that can no longer be appealed to but only swatted away like a fly. So everyone watching on either side of the legal barrier can for once understand the price of criminality and corruption, however cheap or subtle. Because sometimes you just need to do a Gadar and maniacally pull that hand pump out of the dry earth in the middle of a city. It’s the symbolism of it all that might work because the actual machinery hasn’t. JCBs Against Corruption anyone?
The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal.
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