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Does the Supreme Court of India Have Nothing Better to do? Published on February 13, 2007 Two Justices of the Supreme Court of India, S.B. Sinha and P.K. Balasubramanyan in delivering a judgement over a dispute between liquor distillers and the Maharashtra government, have directed the Central and State governments of India to �reduce consumption� of liquor, �gradually leading to prohibition.� Are these men serious? Do they have nothing better to do? The Indian judicial system has shown itself as being utterly inefficient of late with it�s complete misuse last year by sundry thugs who manipulated it to publicly humiliate the Tamil actress Khushboo for a statement that she made about virginity and double standards between men and women in traditional marriages on this subject. Instead of throwing this frivolous lawsuit out, the Chennai High Court sat on it�s benches doing nothing while the poor woman had to run from pillar to post and then to different courts hundreds of miles apart to face sundry lower courts because her tormentors had cleverly filed lawsuits against her across the state. There is, also, the fact that for years there have been claims by successive governments and governments about reducing the backlog of cases in the judicial system in order to ensure speedy justice. And yet, after all this high sounding talk, this is what happens - either judges refuse to throw frivolous lawsuits out, or they waste valuable time and public funds in pronouncing on their pet, personal whims, grabbing at constitutional straws for support. The whole spectacle is one of a Kafkaesque society on the one hand and of a farce on the other. India is a country where thanks to British colonial laws and the far older and more restrictive Hindu religious laws, the state has immense authority. There is practically no way that people in power can be held accountable and if it is true that politicians can be voted out, it is equally true that judicial ineptitude cannot be countered in any way. Some years ago, the Supreme Court of India admitted a patently frivolous lawsuit against the writer Arundhati Roy by some policemen who said that she had attempted to kill them. When the charge was preposterous and would not have served to punish her, the court found her response to the charges �arrogant� and imprisoned her briefly after making her write an apology. An Iranian religious court publicly hanged a 16 year old girl at the time because it felt that she was rude and that her responses had been cheeky. It is obvious where the Supreme Court of India gets it�s inspiration from. And now, this moral policing from the very top. Two judges, both old enough to have seen what a horrible mess prohibition was under the Morarji Desai government across India during the Janata Party�s rule as well as in the localized prohibition in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states under Chandrababu Naidu and A K Antony respectively, would rather send the government and the law enforcement machinery on a chase to ban the drinking of alcohol. They would like to forget the fact that the already overburdened law enforcement machinery is barely able to do it�s job of keeping law and order in most of India and completely unable to do anything in other parts of the country especially when it comes to fighting the Naxalites who practically control huge swathes of India and run a parallel government. They would like to forget the fact that they preside over a system that has singularly failed in every attempt at doing it�s own duty in a timely manner over at least twenty five years and burden it with completely unnecessary new tasks presuming that they would want those manufacturing liquor to be prosecuted and punished once Prohibition is reintroduced. And, in India, they are supreme - nothing can be done but take note of their pronouncements and act on them now that they have spoken. Are they serious? Are they wise? Do they really have the wisdom to hold such a powerful chair and such immense authority over the nation? The more this kind of activity emanates from their courts, the more the term �Kangaroo Court� seems to resemble their office. In a country that touts itself as the �world�s largest democracy� this is beyond a doubt a candidate for the world�s worst disgrace. Grow up, gentlemen, this is simply silly.
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