The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in India is suffering from a resounding crisis of credibility. Having been re-elected in 2009, with the Congress, the main partner, winning an unexpectedly high 206 seats in the general elections to the Lok Sabha, in the two years since it has squandered the goodwill that propelled it to power. Massive corruption scandals have diminished the UPA. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, long regarded as a man of high probity, is now perceived as a leader who averted his eyes while his ministerial colleagues – both from the Congress and its coalition partners, particularly the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) – engaged in widespread loot.
Amidst the plummeting credibility of the UPA and politicians in general, there is one wing of government that has stood relatively tall, the Supreme Court of India. Over the past several months, since the details of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam first began to come out, the court has relentlessly kept up the pressure on the government on the twin issues of corruption and 'black money'. This has prevented the government from using the time-tested tactics of stalling and putting the brakes on investigating agencies. As a result of the court's efforts, we currently have the unprecedented situation of three stalwarts all being housed in Delhi's Tihar jail: A Raja, the Union telecom minister from the DMK, and Kanimozhi, both arrested for alleged involvement in the 2G scam; and Suresh Kalmadi, senior Congress member and chief of the CWG organising committee.
Keeping the pressure on, in early July, the Supreme Court constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to investigate black money stashed by Indian citizens in foreign banks, castigating the inaction of the government committee established to look into the issue. The court's close supervision of investigations has energised statutory bodies such as the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Central Bureau of Investigation, which have been pursuing corruption-related matters with a zeal rarely seen before. As skeletons continue to tumble out of the closet, more heads are expected to roll – as happened in the case of Dayanidhi Maran of the DMK, the telecom minister before A Raja, who was forced to resign from the cabinet on 7 July in the wake of a CBI investigation.
The Supreme Court has also recently gone into vital constitutional issues, delivering judgements that have strengthened democracy and human rights. In a landmark judgement on 5 July, the court directed the Chhattisgarh government to disarm and desist from deploying the Special Police Officers (SPOs) – part of the Salwa Judum, an armed vigilante force of Adivasi youths set up by the government to combat the Maoist insurgency in the state. In a widely lauded judgement, the justices came down heavily on equipping barely literate youngsters with firearms and employing them to combat rebels, holding that this not only endangered the lives of others but also deprived these young men of their dignity. While agreeing that combating the armed insurgency remained an important concern, the judgement pointed out that using these young men as cannon fodder was not the way to go about dealing with the problem. Any measure to combat Maoists, the court reminded the government, must be within the limits imposed by the Constitution.