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Why is law-making in India in worse shape than West?


    Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Why law-making in India is in worse shape
  3. How can law-making be improved?


Introduction

The "law-making" means --- enacting a new law, editing an existing law or repealing an existing law. All three steps involve drating a text, and passing that text in the legislature. Why does a nation need to draft laws? For several reasons such as :
  1. Sometimes, not always, a new law needs to be drafted to keep pace with changing technology or with change in mind sets of the citizens.
  2. A new law needs to be drated so that new technology, or newaly discovered algorithm, can be used to solve an existing problem
  3. A new needs to be drafted to fix the short-comings that were discovered recently
Basically, a nation needs to draft laws for the SAME reason why a company needs to write software programs.

All in all, laws evolve in US/West at a much better pace than in India. There is no way to capture and represent this fact statistically. The evolution of law, and its pace, cant be measured by numbers like "number of laws passed", or "number of old laws repealed" or "number of words in new laws" or so forth. Efficiency and fairness of laws can be seen, felt, experienced, and sometimes enumerated on a case-by-case basis, but cant be measured by numbers. From my observations/experience, I have concluded that the citizenry of US/West is much much faster in incorporating newly discovered algorithms/technology in its laws to solve problems and improve its administration while India is slow, and gap is increasing. Why?

The purpose of this article is to enumerate and discuss ONLY
  1. those factors which worsen law-making, and are present in India and absent in West, and
  2. those factors which improve law-making, and are absent in India and present in West.
The purpose of this article is NOT to enumerate factors that are present/absent in BOTH countries. Hence a large number of factors, such as moral values, greed etc will get dismissed as non-issues. Why? Becuase greed is present in US/West as well as India. And moral values are at same level in India as well as West.



Reasons why law-making in India is so defunct compared to US

As far as I could see, there was ONLY one reason --- non-professional activists in west have more faith in laws, and spend significant time in drafting and campaigning for laws, while non-professional activists in India have more faith in education, hospitals, legal counciling in individuals cases, running employment schemes or running religious activities. This is NOT to say that activists in west do not involve themselves in running schools, hospitals etc, but a significant number of them also spend their time/efforts in improving laws, while this number is much much smaller in India.

To eloberate, I would explain how laws get drafted, and what motivates/compells law-makers to pass these laws in legislatures. In West as well as India, there are professionals who draft certain laws, and actively lobby before law-makers to get laws passed. These professionals are paid by certain companies/individuals. This process, which uses "professional activists" is efficient in India as well as US.

But this "professional activistism" does good to the companies or individuals from whom these activists get funding; if it does any good for commons, it can only be an accident. The professional activists seldom take up the cuases where there is no one to give any funds.

In any country, there are non-professional activists as well --- i.e. individuals who are part-time activist for NO career, fame or money, or any motivation except improving public safety, justice and commons' well being. This where difference between India and West comes. In West, many of these non-professional activists take active interest in drafting laws that would reduce injustice etc and lobby for them. Whereas activists in India confine themselves to charitarian activities like education, health etc and legal activities like providing free counciling on individual cases in police/courts. This is the MOST important reason why law-making in US/West is in better shape.



How can law-making improve in India

Non-trivial.

A fast paced and fair law-making will indeed become TRIVIAL, but AFTER citizens/activists have successfully forced MLAs, MPs and District Panchayat Members to pass laws in Assembly etc to create procedures that would enable citizens to register YES/NO in Assembly etc (please see LM.01 , LM.02 and LM.03 for details.)

But till that happens, it will be extremely difficult to improve non-professional law-making in India. Why? The non-professional activists, as of today in India, are NOT enthusiastic about changing laws; they are more interested in running schools, hospitals, giving legal assistance on individual casews etc. The non-professional activists also do not have any economic motive behind their activities. When a person has some economic motives, and if his viewpoints/actions are not fully consistent with economic motives, the person can be convinced to change his viewpoints. But when a person, such as a non-professional activist, has no economic motives, it will be exteremely difficult for anyone, including myself, to produce a change in viewpoints of non-professional activists.

One way that I have tried, to take a non-professional activists' view-point in favor of law-making is by informing them about the threat of re-enslavement that India faces, if citizens/activists of India do NOT improve the laws, and make the laws of India as fair/efficient as West.

What is the threat of re-enslavement?

The threat of re-enslavement

Consider two groups of 100 carpenters each. Say first group has advanced tools like electric drills, electric saw etc and the second group uses out-dated tools. The productivity of first group will be significantly higher. The variation in the goods they produce will be lower, and consitency wrt specification will be much higher. Eventually, the carpenters of second group will be out of job.

Now "laws" are essentially tools that citizens of a nation to ensure that disputes amongst each other eighter do not occur, or get resolved if they occur, so that each citizen can move ahead, and waste only the minimal time in disputes. Now compare US and India. US is a nation of 25cr citizens, and India has some 100cr citizens. US uses far better tools i.e. laws, which reduce the nuimber of disputes and enables the citizenry to resolve them speedily and FAIRLY. While India uses out-dated laws, in which probability of disputes happening is much higher, and resolution is slow-paced and very unfair. As a result, the "first group of 25 cr individuals", namely US, is progressing at a much much faster pace than "second group of 100cr individuals" namely India.

In international politics, such imbalance in progress can mean death. To understand international politics, I will give two analogies --- the analogy of ocean, and analogy of Bihar.
  1. The ocean analogy to understand International phenomenon :
    Consider a ocean withh 1000s of fish. Say each fish is equally big - 1 feet long. And each fish has two options - it can feed grass or other fish. But since each fish is equally strong/big, each fish will feed itself on grass and avoid violence, as far as possible. Now say some fish start grown --- some become 10ft long, some become 5 ft long, some become 3 ft long amd some remain 1ft long. Now peace will break.
    The 10ft fish will start devoring other small fish. It would avoid battle with 5ft or even 3ft fish, as those fish may be defeated, but can do substantial damage to the 10ft fish. But a 1ft fish is now toast --- the 10ft fish will devor it without second thought. No exception, no mercy, no tears.

  2. The Bihar analogy :
    Say you are in Bihar. You have a house, a car, some jewels, some cash etc etc. But you dont have a gun. And your neighbour has a gun. Then your house, car etc belongs to your neighbour. No exception, no mercy, no tears.
How do these analogies explain international politics? Basically, due to fast/fair laws, the industries in US/West are growing rapidly. And so their citizens' engineering skills are much much higher. Due to fast/fair taxation laws, the govt has huge amount of funds, and due to fast/fair laws, siphoning of those funds, or diversion to low priority areas is much less compard to India. Huge funds, less siphoning and engineering skills --- this has created a huge military in US/West. IOW, US/West are the fish that have grown too too big.

In contrast, due to our slow/unfair laws, the industries are moving at snail pace, and practical engineering skills remain low. And due to slow/unfair tax laws, the collection is low, and agains thanks to slow/unfair laws, siphoning via corruption and diversion via lobbying is high. As a result, the military of India is highly under-equipped compared to West.

What happened in Iraq can be easily explained by ocean-nanalogy and Bihar-analogy. In terms of military, the US is 100ft long fish while Iraq was just 1ft long. Despite all the oil and money, Iraqies never built advanced weapons that can deter a 100ft long fish. So it became lunch. Now what happened in Iraq, can also happen in India, unless India also harvests a powerful military, which is pssoible ONLY if India's laws become fast/fair, at least as fast/fair as those of US/West.

A comparison with history may be worthwhile. In 1600s, there were several significant changes in UK's democratic setup (namely Jury System) due to which political inequality reduced, and fairness/speed of its court and administration increased. And with that, UK's industry and military also started growing. And it started waging wars with France, Spain etc. But by 1700s, those countries too had become strong enough that UK could no longer defeat them. As the rule of ocean goes, a 10ft fish may drop the idea of devoring 5ft fish, and instead prey on 1ft fish. UK dropped the idea of defeating France, Spain, Germany etc and started taking over weaker nations like African countries, India, Middle Eas countries, South East Asian countries etc. By 1700s, UK had become so strong, in terms of discipline, advanced weaponery and taxtics, that mere group of some 5000 to 10000 soldiers of East India Comoany could defeat an army of 500000 of Siraj-ud-Duala.

Basically, that gap between speed/fairness of English law and the then Indian laws (of 1700s) had grown so wide, that while UK was progressing at a frantic pace, India was moving sluggishly. As a result, UK had become a 10ft fish, while Indian states were just 1ft fish. UK devored India.

The history is repeating itself --- India's laws remain slow/unfair while those in US/West are much faster/fairer. Hence, higher progress of US/west and far far stronger military. Unless India makes her laws faster/fairer, the possibility of re-enslavement is now real, given the Iraq example.



Using above speech, I have had limited success in convincing some, though not all, non-professional activists that they should focus also on improvement of laws in India, not just confine themselves to running schools, hospitals, self-help groups and providing legal counciling on individual cases. But in general, I would say that my success is very very limited.



If you have any other question, please mail it to MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com. Thousand thanks in advance.