Tavleen Singh writes: Unfinished, urgent business

I was brooding upon these gloomy thoughts when I heard the Prime Minister’s speech in Japan in which he invoked his old mantra ‘reform, perform, transform’. Exactly right. If he had not forgotten this mantra for so very long, we would have been in a stronger position to face up to the big bully in the White House. Reform, reform, reform should be the new mantra. There is much to do.

In the opinion of your ever humble columnist the most important reform must be of our justice system. It is scandalous that despite the grandiose assurances of successive Chief Justices there has never been a serious attempt to speed up the bullock cart speed at which our justice system works. Reform is not complicated as I discovered from a lawyer friend who is a member of the Law Commission of India. Hitesh Jain spelled out for me his ‘3-2-1 formula.’

“Three years to resolve all legacy cases clogging our courts. Two years to ensure that new cases are decided conclusively. One year for disposal of appeals with strict discipline and focused judicial management.” Something like this needs to be done urgently because one reason why it is so hard to do anything in our ancient land is because the justice system works so slowly it may as well not work at all. Getting justice for even the most heinous crimes not only takes too long, it is unaffordable for the average Indian.

Side by side with judicial reform should come reforms in our hopelessly outdated and shambolic education system. It produces graduates who end up unemployed not because there are no jobs but because their ‘education’ leaves them barely literate, linguistically challenged and unemployable. I am constantly running into young people who cannot speak a word of English despite having studied in ‘English schools’. English is vital in today’s world no matter what the RSS chief believes.

From the time that tariffs have been weaponised by Donald Trump, our Prime Minister has said in almost every other speech that he will never betray the interests of our farmers and fishermen. Great. But in the past 11 years, there has been too little done to improve the infrastructure that farmers and fishermen need to be able to access new markets. The farm bills were opposed by farmers but instead of finding out what it is that farmers really need, every attempt was made to make them sound like traitors and terrorists. Unwise because since then the subject has remained taboo.

The Prime Minister told his audience of Japanese businessmen that he has got rid of hundreds of regulations to make it easier to do business. What he seems not to know is that the officials, high and low, who run this country manage somehow to delay things anyway by coming up with some new rule or regulation. This is without mentioning the corrupt practices they deploy to harass honest citizens who do not wish to bribe them. It is on harassment they spend their energies instead of on governance and all you need to do is to drive around India to see the consequences of this. It is not a happy thing to admit but vast tracts of our beloved Bharat Mata are now in such a state of degradation and decay that I sometimes feel that we have turned our beautiful country into a gigantic slum.

My apologies for writing such a gloomy piece this week but it is hard to write a cheerful column when India has been humiliated, bullied and threatened by a man we thought was our friend. Political pundits, wiser than me, predict that in the end it is the United States who will pay for what Donald Trump has done. But that time is not now. The only way that India can continue to grow and prosper despite the hostilities and humiliation inflicted upon us is to reform and reform. With a vengeance.