Uttar Pradesh is the largest and most populous state in India. This year, this very poor corner of this most racially bigotted country in the world has been given USD360million by USAid , an aid agency, to implement a population control policy that calls for the sterilisation of 930,000 people. The poverty has been a high level of crimes against humanity and a strong siege mentality among the rich. The government of Uttar has some interesting ideas on how to meet its target of sterilising the poor while parlaying the insecurty of the rich: Anybody who wants a handgun should submit 3 people for sterilisation; 5 people for a shotgun.
So one rich farmer invited 5 of his workers for a meal. Thereafter, they felt dizzy and fell asleep, only to wake in great pain and distress. The five returned to the farm, glad that they still have a job to do because they have families to feed. One of the men is unmarried and without child. He will never father any of his own. Cradling his shotgun, the farmer says "There has been an investigation. The case is now closed".
Few social critics, economic analysts, and policy wonks consider the reinforcing effect that the rule of law has on the prevalence of poverty, disease and ignorance around the world. In India, forcibly castrated people cannot get justice from the state because their castrator is powerful enough to rise above the rule of law. The rule of law can oppress nations just as severely as persons. Next door to India, countries are invaded because an invading set of countries are powerful enough to rise above international law.
Perhaps, it is high time that poverty, disease and ignorance are classified as weapons of mass destruction. They certainly destroy the masses of the people even more effectively than even the bullets and bombs of the countless wars. It is estimated there are some 30,000 poverty-related infant deaths daily in Africa. Many children and women die yearly Africa from preventable diseases. Many women and children will live their lives in painful ignorance of basic hygiene, energy production or food preparation techniques. Yet, even as they scratch out such as squalid living within the constraints of the law, the poor must wonder how the hell of their lives can exist alongside the heavenly plenty of their compatriots.
"Surely it is one law for us and another for them" goes the muttering. Disenfranchised people and deficient countries express this same feeling, the basis of which lies in the structure in which their daily affairs are governed. Had the rich Indian not been protected by the governing law in Uttar Predash, he would been properly "dealt with" by the retributive justice of his victims. Their poverty and ignorance prevented their ability to marshal the rule of law to their cause. Totalitarianism, feudalism, unrepresentative democracy and communism are forms of top-down government that accentuate the ability of the powerful to place suppressive binds on their people. The binds are drafted as the rules of law. Not to be disobeyed by the people. At pain of punishment by the ruler of law. In this manner, it becomes a crime to steal even if working your fingers to the bone does not yield sufficient income to feed your family. It becomes treason if you criticise an incompetent, corrupt and akotileta government.
The shotgun quells mutinious ideas in farms across Northern India, just as the bullwhip silenced dissent in slave fields across the New World centuries ago, and structural adjustment policies dampen queries in many struggling households across the "developing" world. The rule of law made it lawful to use the shotgun, the bullwhip and the poverty-policies, and thereby permitted rulers to kill or cripple the prospects of those whose actions produce the wealth of their tormentors. In Africa, people are now becoming immune to destructive laws: it may be time for a severe dose of civil disobedience.
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