April 5, 1999

Codify the privileges of the legislature. The future of democracy is at stake.

Aside from a history of incendiary behaviour -- he was once charged with throwing bombs into the house of a rival politician -- R. Thamaraikani is hardly the type of character who could be expected to trigger a constitutional crisis. Nondescript as the AIADMK MLA may appear, his physical assault on the DMK Government's agriculture minister in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on March 22 was an act of unpardonable infamy. It took the decline of parliamentary decorum in India to a new low. Unfortunately, it also took the burlesque nature of Tamil politics to reduce what should have been a sombre matter, an outrage actually, to a joke. Amid the judiciary and legislature reaching an uneasy truce and AIADMK leader J. Jayalalitha comparing Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to Idi Amin, some questions have been left dangling. It is not just appropriate that they be answered -- it is imperative.

While nobody can condone Thamaraikani's behaviour, the manner of his arrest was congenitally flawed. First, the Speaker ordered his arrest. Even before the court upheld a habeas corpus petition and freed him, ruling party MLAs passed a resolution in the Assembly sentencing him to 15 days imprisonment. This led to another spell behind bars and renewed judicial intervention. The sheer cussedness of the Speaker succeeded in obscuring Thamaraikani's crime. It diverted attention to whether the treasury benches should be allowed the unfettered right to imprison members of the opposition. From a legislative outlaw, Thamaraikani became a constitutional cause. It is unclear as to who should be more embarrassed: the culpable MLA or the hapless Constitution. Aside from doing wonders for the reputation -- to be honest, it has never quite been edifying -- of Tamil Nadu's politicians, the lesson to be learnt is that the legislature's privileges have to be codified. For too long they have been left undefined. That sort of arrangement works among gentlemen -- not Indian politicians.

Rape of Sensibilities

Are obnoxious schemes GIC's only to competition?

If proof were still needed of the unfeeling ways of an over-bureaucratised system, the Rajrajeshwari Mahila Kalyan Bima Yojana readily provides it. The General Insurance Corporation (GIC) scheme -- introduced with the Government's blessings -- is a born public relations disaster. It seeks to insure women against rape, charge them an annual premium of Rs 15 and pay them graded amounts depending on the physical suffering. In one move, the trauma of rape has been quantified by the actuary's calculator. In effect the state has abdicated responsibility, told womenfolk it can't protect them from carnal assault -- but has promised compensation as per user-friendly financial packages. This would have been dismissed as the idiocy of a single company had the prime minister not put his stamp on the scheme and sought to present it as a women's development measure. To think this is the Government that only a few months ago advocated the death penalty for rapists.

Reams have been written about the incidence of rape in India, of how incest, rural oppression and the fear of social stigma silence a majority of its victims, of why rape is about power rather than sex. No doubt many of these arguments will be repeated in the battle to get GIC to withdraw the scheme. There is a larger point that merits attention though -- of the market and morality. In a strict business sense GIC's judgement is probably correct. Perhaps there is a clientele -- for lack of a more sensitive word -- for the new scheme. Nevertheless, it is in bad taste; that is the more substantive issue. GIC's knee-jerk reaction to an impending opening of the insurance sector is a bad advertisement for liberalisation. It would be pertinent to recall that modern economics began as a branch of philosophy, of working for the human good. Capitalism is not so soulless a system as to sanction even rape insurance. GIC will have to retreat.

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