They maybe weak, but we are weaker still.

Whoever manages to become prime minister after general elections in May next year will be the weakest ever because "the power of the Indian state -- both administrative and moral -- is in the steepest decline since its birth in 1947", wrote R Saran. Politicians think they are in control but, "They pretend they can tame the rupee value when they can't. They want access to people's encrypted messages (for example on WhatsApp or Telegram) when they know they con't. They claim they can regulate petrol and diesel prices, but they fail to. They think they can threaten economic fugitives into surrender but are unable to." People are breaking the law or taking the law into their own hands because "there is widespread belief, not unjustifiable, among those committing crimes, large and small, that they will not have to pay for their crimes," wrote Prof S Mundle. It is not that laws against crime are lacking in India, if anything, we have too many laws. But, "We can have all the laws and rule we want but they will make no difference if they are not enforced, if those failing to comply with the law get away with impunity." Politicians have no interest in enforcing laws because they or their children may have to pay for their crimes. When 36% of Members of Parliament have serious criminal charges against them why should they encourage enforcement of laws? Despite promises of a clean administration without corruption Prime Minister Modi has not been able to, or perhaps wanted to, stop people taking law in their own hands. All political parties, including Modi's BJP, knowingly put up criminals as candidates in elections because they have the money to bribe voters and the goons to silence opposition. People vote for them because they can deliver services, because of their muscle power, which the state should be providing anyway. "It is the same when politicians undeservingly allot and then illegally occupy taxpayer-paid bungalows or when they grant themselves huge salary hikes with no link to productivity." In 2016, a politician's son shot dead a 19 year old boy for overtaking his car. The shooter was awarded life imprisonment along with his accomplices but may be freed on appeal because all witnesses retracted their testimonies, no doubt due to threats. In a landmark judgement in 2006 the Supreme Court gave "seven comprehensive directions out of which six were for state governments and one for the central government," wrote P Singh. But after all these year, "Seventeen states have passed Acts purportedly in compliance of the court's directions but essentially to circumvent them." The director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, our premier investigative agency, and his deputy have filed charges of corruption against each other. When third rate people grab power and make themselves VVIPs then people become their serfs. That is how they like it.