Thread by @svickram

1/n - Indian State, the band-aid state : Confused read on - a 25 tweet thread :) - judiciary / uniform civil code and muddled property laws

2/n 40 CRPF personals died during a mass convoy movement. 26/11, 26/09 and many many such dates. The lists keep on building up. Any other country having such list? Yes there is sheer intelligence failure or rather SYSTEM failure?

3/n But what is done after System failure? How many top bosses sacked ? Or SYSTEM got overhauled?

Whenever it happens, some short cut solutions are thought of! A high end committee or fixed tenure for sleuths or similar short cuts or in another word - band-aids

4/n Is Intelligence system only failure?

Look at Judiciary ?

Some 58,000 cases are pending in Supreme Court as of today

5/n - However a bench including Chief Justice of India was listening a PIL on "Banning Wearing of Red dresses in India"

6/n A 3 judge bench of milords of Supreme Court of India, devoting precious time in listening to merit of banning Red Dress in India.

Dismissed, right but how did it reach the bench, that too not a single judge but a three judge bench including CJI
and Supreme Court of India

7/n Wonder how many cases are admitted in US Supreme Court?

Issue is not that cases are pending? Issue is that they are just piling on and on with no clear strategy to sort them out.

8/n Every new CJI tries to take some measures or talk about it and also public talk about it ie as whether to reduce holidays or change timings or ban leaves - in nutshell short term measures in words - a band-aid without addressing the real issues ie accepting real cases

9/n Are Intelligence bureau or Judiciary only crumbling parts of our country

10/n Look at state of traffic all over country - Bangalore is bad but a far outskirt Sohna road ? Or Davangere! Or Bareilly - all have 10x lower density than Hong Kong or New York but much worse traffic condition ? Solutions - some short cut measures like road diversions etc

11/n but no fundamental designs suited for native conditions again lot of band-aids every where

12/n Death by drunken driving, ban liquor vends on highways! And counter solution is rename the highways as municipality roads or change the entry gates to hotels! While real problem of drunken driving remain as it is

13/n Overall if one reflect at the state of affair in this country, even thing seems a function of such lop-sighted or short cuts. Too much political interference, make the post have a fixed tenure? Any remedy of fixed tenure no? Any accountability - no

14/n Indian establishment which is basically its all four pillars - executives, judiciary, media and political class is in love with simplicity and in rush to fix things without bothering to go deeper and fix the deep malaise.

15/n While the challenge is that all problems need deep counter unitive insights and heavy work to solve fundamentally, while nation seems to love intuition or solutions driven by MDS syndrome ( my drive says or as per my maid)

16/n Take a simple case of property titles in India. Property titles remain in mess & there is no clarity among lenders about validity of some of the property titles in court of law. This causes uncertainty. Uncertainty adds to the cost as lenders want to account for uncertainty

17/n So what’s the solution? Interestingly roots of property law disputes are driven by lack of uniform civil code. Property law dispute and Uniform Civil code ( before roll up your eyes and label me as sanghi troll read on). .

18/n Like any other civil society, India has full religious freedom and that is freedom to choose ones’ religion. Now, every religion has different property and inheritance laws and that muddles the water

19/n e.g. think about challenges posed by scenarios like rights of children of inherited property where parents have changed religion through multiple marriages.

20/n There are multiple scenarios which emerge if you deep dive but challenge is deep dive. If as a nation, we remain obsessed about band-aids, understanding surgery or deep diving into any issue is impossible

So why and how we became band-aid nation!

21/n Look at our guiding book: the Constitution of India - which is biggest band-aid. The constitution of India has its roots in 1919 & 1935 reforms and maintains lot of British era rules which were designed to rule natives and protect Britishers & safeguard Empire

22/n If there is all pervasive lack of accountability for executives / judiciary or political class, look no further and stare at the book which had sole aim of protecting the empire while keeping natives in check and this doctrine has continued,

23/n if one look at the extra privileges enjoyed by the present day executives / police / judiciary / political class. India will not leap frog to league of developed nation or have better quality of life till this band-aid approach to fix things is done.

24/n In a tech lingo, build a system with focus on future rather than maintaining legacy features. Till its done, India will be more of a failed opportunity with greatest inequality, pollution, mis rule and chaos.

25/25 - Time to do deeper surgery and starting from zero is already past us and if we do not wake up this chaos will continue and we will be more of a band aid nation than a real democracy with rights for all and privileges for none!