A government which lacks iqbal invites lawlessness

If the government does not command respect, the law will not be respected either. I haven’t heard any discussion of the prevailing lawlessness in this election

Once again an election is going by without any discussion of one of my obsessions, the weakness of governments. All party leaders are glibly making promises, but they will lack institutions and administrative bodies robust enough to turn policy into practice effectively. They will have difficulty in fulfilling their basic duty to uphold the law.

I put much of the blame for the weakness of governments in India on the failure to reform the government structures and systems inherited from the British Raj. I was therefore fascinated to meet a distinguished retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who believes India needs to revive one quality of the Raj government. Moosa Raza served in the IAS for 35 years eventually as chief secretary to the government of Jammu and Kashmir, secretary to the government of India, and advisor to the governor of Uttar Pradesh. For 25 years thereafter he served on government committees, task forces, and similar bodies, and has more than 30 years of experience. He told me an important reason for the weakness and ineffectiveness of governments was the loss of their “iqbal”. By iqbal, he meant the respect governments used to command, the aura which used to surround them during the Raj and for decades afterwards.

Moosa Raza then went on to illustrate iqbal with the story of a farmers’ agitation in Mehsana district where he was sub divisional magistrate (SDM) in the 1960s. The collector, being of a nervous disposition, had summoned almost the entire district police force to defend his office. When the young SDM and his sub-divisional police officer found themselves faced with six or seven hundred angry farmers, many of them carrying lathis, they had just four constables to control them. The young and inexperienced Moosa Raza sensibly relied on the advice of his police officer, a very experienced man who had risen through the ranks. Relying on the government’s iqbal, the police officer announced that the demonstration had been declared an unlawful assembly. To pretend this was so, he told the SDM to wave a nondescript piece of paper in the air, and the farmers dispersed . Nowadays, a similar situation would probably become a riot perhaps ending with a magistrate ordering the police to open fire.

Moosa Raza explained that iqbal was maintained by making sure the izzat, or self-respect, of all government officials was preserved. An official, no matter how senior, would always refer to a lowly thesildar as Khan Sahib if he was a Muslim and Rao Sahib if he was a Hindu. Nowadays, the boards in collectors’ offices listing past holders of the post show that the izzat of many of them has been undermined by premature transfers engineered by politicians. Politicians don’t hesitate to rebuke officials of all ranks in public. There was the case of the foreign secretary, AP Venkatashwaran, who Rajiv Gandhi sacked during a press conference.

When he was young, Moosa Raza said, officials were told never to undermine the government’s iqbal by making false promises which would not be fulfilled, or threats that could not be carried out. Nowadays, the iqbal of the government is undermined by countless regulations which are not enforceable and should have been rescinded years ago. For instance, the craze for taking photographs set off by mobile phones has made the railways look stupid by their failure to implement the obsolete ban on photography at stations. There is no respect for traffic police who, no matter how many challans they issue, are unable to instil respect for red lights in two-wheeler riders, control parking, prevent overloading, and punish those guilty of numerous other traffic offences.

Then there is the vexed subject of corruption. It would not be so prevalent if governments retained iqbal so that there was respect for the laws against giving and taking bribes, and fear of punishment.

A government which lacks iqbal is a government which invites lawlessness. If the government does not command respect, the law will not be respected either. I haven’t heard any discussion of the prevailing lawlessness in this election.

The views expressed are personal