The Justice Dinakaran issue and caste

Among all the arguments that have been voiced during the Justice Dinakaran issue, one has stood out for its outrageous nature. The chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, Buta Singh – a man not exactly renowned for his fine judgement – detected an upper-caste conspiracy in the campaign against Justice Dinakaran’s elevation to the Supreme Court. He put the whole thing down to "anti-dalit and casteist elements in [the] Bar Council of India, Bars [in the] states and judicial activists who are known for having casteist attitudes towards the increasing strength of SC/STs in the judicial services of the country". So, the NCSC – through which the statement was released – would have us believe that Justice Dinakaran was ‘targeted’ because he was a Dalit and not because he encroached on nearly 500 acres of land. It didn’t matter that Kaverirajapuram village, the site of the alleged encroachment, is home mostly to Dalit families. It didn’t matter that ‘poramboke’ land – comprising the village’s lakes, pathways, canals, streams, and pastures – had been illegally seized. The fact that the Thalam Charitable Trust and the Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam – organizations that have spearheaded the agitations in the village – have always fought for the rights of Dalits and landless farmers completely eluded them. Even after the Thiruvallur district collector V.Palanikumar had conducted a detailed study of the area and confirmed the allegations against Justice Dinakaran, claims of caste bias refused to go away. M.Udhaya Bhanu, president of the Tamil Nadu Dr Ambedker Advocates’ Association maintained that advocates belonging to a certain caste were lobbying hard to have an advocate belonging to their caste elevated to the Supreme Court in place of Justice Dinakaran. “This dream of theirs will be shattered if Dinakaran goes to the apex court as only two persons can represent a State” he said. “That is why the [some]one like [the] lawyer Shanti Bhushan is being engaged to unleash baseless charges.” Let us assume for a minute that the charges against Justice Dinakaran are indeed motivated by a prejudice against his caste. Does this then absolve him of all his wrongdoings?

The judiciary has been a favourite target of all champions of caste-based reservation. In December 2007, over 10,000 people took out a rally in Delhi demanding reservation for SCs and STs in the judiciary, among other institutions. Dr. Udit Raj, the then National Chairman of the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations, addressing the rally, rued the fact that out of a total of 610 judges in the country, only 20 belonged to the Dalit community. The idea that all sections of society must have proportional representation in the judiciary is one thing but believing that members of a particular caste are best served by a judge from the same caste is a silly – not to mention incorrect – notion.

Have we, as a society, degenerated so much that we cannot see anything for what it is? Or has the rot set in so deep that our thinking cannot remain uncoloured by caste anymore? A good judge is a good judge and a corrupt judge a corrupt judge – caste has as much to do with it as blood type. Some of India’s politicians – and we all know what high esteem they are held in – have built entire careers on caste-based polarization. Let us leave the judiciary alone. Please.

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Illegal immigrants and US Healthcare

Barack Obama was well into his speech on health care reform to Congress. "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally", he said. The next two words uttered were by Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina – two words that propelled the Republican to heights of notoriety he probably never imagined. “You lie” he screamed, causing the President of the United States to pause momentarily while an aghast Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, looked around in disbelief.

Within an hour, Wikipedia had disabled edit options for his entry, citing vandalism. “Joe Wilson” became the most searched item on Google, and the most disparaged man on Twitter and Facebook. Users listed his website and his phone number, encouraging other users to attack him. His site crashed, and the “You Lie!” videos collectively received over a million hits on YouTube. Exemplifying the animosity was this site, generating a fresh hate-inducing ‘fact’ about the man for every click. Despite his apologies to Barack Obama, the anger refused to die down.
Although this incident doesn’t deserve to be dwelt on too much, it shows how thorny the issue of illegal immigrants – within the health care debate – has become in the United States. A survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2005 revealed that there were as many as 12 million illegal immigrants in the country at the time. The figure is estimated to be about 11 million today.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of the United States requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment irrespective of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. This act has come in for severe criticism, not least because it shifts the burden of healthcare for illegal immigrants onto taxpaying citizens. Healthcare is looked at as a privilege only a taxpayer is entitled to. Moreover, the cost of emergency care necessitated b y this act is not directly met by the federal government. This has left hospitals – especially those in states along the US-Mexico border (57% of America’s illegal immigrants come from Mexico) – overburdened and strapped for cash. Say No To Illegal Immigration, a website, reports the effect of illegal immigration on border states. Numerous clinics and trauma centres close down every year, unable to stay in business. San Diego County spends nearly $ 250 million a year that is unreimbursed. Every border county in New Mexico and Arizona has declared a state of emergency, asking the federal government for help.
California, home to more illegal immigrants than any state, is the worst hit, spending around $ 1.4 billion every year, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
USA Today reports that since 2000, counties along the Mexican border have been losing more than $800 million every year in health care services for which they were not paid; and about 25% of that went to care for illegal immigrants according to a report by the United States/Mexico Border Counties Coalition.

Besides, around 60% of America’s illegal immigrants are uninsured. This means that the cost of medical care for all of them is passed on to taxpayers.

The issue of anchor babies – babies born to illegal immigrants – is one that conservatives find deeply disturbing. FAIR estimates that there are nearly 300,000 children born to illegal immigrants every year. States spend approximately $ 5000 per baby in pre and post-natal care. Moreover, these babies become US citizens, automatically qualifying for all healthcare privileges.

Apart from all this, illegal immigrants pose a serious health risk to the rest of the population by carrying contagious diseases. Unlike people legally admitted into the country, they do not undergo medical screening. FAIR reports that the number of cases of tuberculosis and dysentery in counties along the Mexican border is several times the national average.

Another school of thought, however, suggests that illegal immigrants are not as big a drain on America’s resources as people imagine. According to a survey conducted by the University of California's School of Public Health, immigrants visited emergency rooms only as a last resort. Most of them did not have a regular doctor or visit clinics regularly, for fear of being deported. The survey goes on to say that they have more negative experiences with healthcare than other Americans.

In the past month, the US administration has been at pains to emphasize that President Barack Obama’s healthcare policy does not include illegal immigrants. However, Republicans still remain sceptical – Joe Wilson’s outburst being a case in point. They claim that there is no way of physically verifying the citizenship of applicants. So no matter how the bill is worded – Republicans maintain – illegal immigrants will continue to enjoy healthcare benefits. The administration, in turn, has announced that it will make verification compulsory every step of the way.
The issue, though, is unlikely to go away in the near future.

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Justice Dinakaran and the judges' assets issue

On the second of September this year, a single judge bench of the Delhi High Court ruled that the Chief Justice of India (CJI) was a public authority under the Right to Information (RTI) act, quashing an appeal by the Supreme Court against a Central Information Common Order. The Order merely questioned if judges declared their assets to the Chief Justice and if so, to what extent. While many jurists welcomed this decision, the consternation it caused the higher judiciary was amusing to behold. That someone had the temerity to ask them to establish their integrity, in the wake of numerous corruption charges, was unacceptable to them.


Is the judiciary’s aversion to transparency borne out of a sense of undeniable probity? Nothing could be further from the truth. The judiciary is as susceptible to corruption as any other organ of the state. This declaration of assets is important because there is no other means to fight judicial corruption. An FIR, on charges of corruption, cannot be filed against a judge without the approval of the Chief Justice of India. Attempts by private agencies to uncover corruption, in the past, have caused them much misery, like in the Y.K.Sabharwal case.


The Justice Dinakaran controversy has put the assets declaration issue in the spotlight. The Forum for Judicial Accountability submitted a memorandum to the Supreme Court Collegium that recommended Justice Dinakaran’s name, detailing the charges of land-grabbing, corruption, and abuse of office against him. Alarmed at the lack of action on the part of the Supreme Court, a few senior lawyers – Prashant Bhushan and Fali Nariman among them - visited the CJI, Justice KG Balakrishnan in person to bring it to his attention. The CJI then summoned Justice Dinakaran for a discussion on this issue. After Justice Dinakaran denied all allegations, the CJI ordered a discreet probe into the matter while a representation was made to the Prime Minister. The file is now pending with the Law Ministry. On October 5, Justice Dinakaran resumed his duties as Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court. This raises another question: If the allegations against him were serious enough for his elevation to the Supreme Court to be stayed pending an inquiry, how was he allowed to continue as Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court? To add to all this, there have been ludicrous allegations of caste bias from certain quarters.

All along, there have been protests against Justice Dinakaran by advocates in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

This situation could have been avoided had a framework for the declaration of judges’ assets been put in place. If declaration of assets is not made mandatory, it will only result in more such irregularities. The judiciary can no longer consider itself sanctimonious and beyond reproach. Although it is true that the judiciary must be free of all the mud-slinging and petty jealousies that have become commonplace in politics, wishing corruption away will not help. Since the judiciary has spectacularly failed to regulate itself effectively, asking for it to be kept beyond the reach of anyone’s criticism amounts to asking for permission to keep it unaccountable. The Justice Dinakaran issue shows exactly what lack of transparency can lead to.







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