Justice in Crisis - https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/justice-in-crisis/
It is rather ironic that at a time when the CJI is addressing students at New York on democracy and senior Justice of Supreme Court D.Y.Chandrachud is speaking at King’s College,Cambridge on human rights and civil liberties,a vacation bench of SC here has administered an unexpected and rather uncalled-for blow to noted human rights activist Teesta Setalvad,prompting Gujarat Police and ATS to clamp umpteen charges on her and arrest her,leaving all decent citizens in shock.
The current debased American notion of democracy is merely limited to popular elections at set intervals,and civil rights be damned.Which India is of course is duly observing with a tamed EC running its programme as it suits the rulers’ interests.ALL independent institutions created over decades to check the outreach of overweening power have been similarly disarmed,and consultations ensuring informed consent of the citizens in decisions affecting their lives have now been effectively choked off.That mainstream media with one or two notable exceptions pose no challenge to rampaging power of that kind is an unacknowledged shame.And this is the democracy that is being drummed up all around the world by cock-a-hoop drummers.The world listens, but not in a daze but with a smothered snigger.
The twenty-one month Emergency declared in 1975 is often recalled like a faded memento to celebrate escape from the “greatest ever danger to democracy’ while something far more sweeping and far-reaching is being imposed irreversibly with relentless steps and brutal method on the entire structure of the democratic state.
by Hiren Gohain
28/06/2022