AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        India today is a land of chaos, confusion and consternation in every walk of national life. This unhappy situation has been created by the irresponsible UPA minority Government which is only committed to the cause of communal and religious division of India with total focus on vote bank politics by a motley crowd of irresponsible politicians. There came the announcement of Quota Raj by our irrepressible and irresponsible Human Resources Destruction Minister Arjun Singh. This led to agitation by medical students and Doctors in several parts of Northern India. This agitation has been growing every day. It is understood that with pressure mounting on doctors to call off their strike, they have opened an alternative site. The fulcrum of the strike may soon shift from AIIMS to IIT. 'Many alumni are willing to join the strike because the government views the protests as being merely a doctors' movement,' said Tusshar Kumar from IIT, Delhi.

        The Supreme Court, while dealing with public interest litigation cases relating to this issue, has directed the students to end their strike or face contempt of court. The students, after seeking expert legal opinion, have decided not to give up their strike. It is reliably understood that they are getting expert advice not from legal novices, but from none other than a former Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti and former Solicitor General Harish Salve. The students have stated that 'since no order or notification has been received by us, there cannot be a contempt of court. Also, what works in our favour is the fact that there is no direct order issued by the SC specifying doctors.'

        The UPA government has threatened to cut salaries and terminate the jobs of doctors and faculty members participating in the strike. The threat by the Union Health Minister negates the assurance made on Sunday night by the Prime Minister that no action would be taken against those on strike. This again proves my standing point that the UPA Government is always divided in its approach and counsel in regard to all public issues and united only in continued folly, firmly decided only to be undecided, resolved only to be irresolute, adamant for drift and solid only for fluidity and finally all powerful to be only impotent.

        As a former civil servant and now as a private citizen of no significance, I am rather concerned about the larger question of the so called 'contempt of court'. Felix Frankfurter, one of the greatest names in the history of American Law, declared with judicial authority: 'The power to punish for contempt of court is a safeguard not for judges as persons but for the function which they exercise'. Felix Frankfurter has an immortal place in history as a Justice, not because of the results he reached but because of his attitude towards the process of decision. His guiding lights were detachment, rigorous integrity in dealing with the facts of a case, refusal to resort to unworthy means, no matter how noble the end, and dedication to the Court as an Institution. Because he was human, Justice Frankfurter did not always live up to his own ideal. But he taught the judges for all time that there is a sacred importance in the process. More important than the known public contempt of the three pillars of the State in India is the total and indivisible contempt of these three pillars of the State of India and its people. I am constrained to make these observations in the larger light of the general state of decadence in which all the pillars of the State in India now find themselves, the Legislature, the Judiciary, and the Executive.

        I derive my inspiration to give my comments, as an independent critic, from Lord Atkin of England who said in the course of a judgement in 1936: 'The path of criticism is a public way: the wrong-headed are permitted to err therein: provided that members of the public abstain from imputing improper motives to those taking part in the administration of justice, and are generally exercising a right of criticism, and not acting in malice or attempting to impair the administration of justice, they are immune. Justice is not a cloistered virtue: she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men'.

        Talking to any pillar of the State in India is like making love to a stone wall. God save India. Amen!