Clashes between self-styled ‘gau rakshaks’ and meat traders took a violent turn at the Margao market on Saturday after a gang of vigilantes descended on the SGPDA market, allegedly armed with weapons in a bid to ‘check’ the meat being unloaded at the market for the presence of ‘illegal’ meat. In the ensuing clash, two people both belonging to the group of vigilantes received injuries, none of which were life-threatening, while the police registered offences based on complaints filed on both sides.
The meat market, meanwhile, remained closed after the sellers gathered at the Fatorda police station demanding action against the vigilantes for harassing the meat traders during the hectic festive period.
The presence or existence of vigilantes is typically an indication of a collapsed state that is ineffective at enforcing the law prompting citizens to appoint themselves, without any legal authority and take the law into their own hands. The trend of lawlessness has caught on, and ordinary citizens have begun taking the law into their own hands without any consequence. Private citizens accosting and restraining other individuals is an offence that is frowned upon by various sections of law. Yet here, unlike in the past, they are being allowed to run amok.
Justice Gautam Patel, a retired Judge of the Bombay High Court, at a lecture recently is reported to have remarked: “There is, first, the accountability of the individual to the law, and, second, the accountability of the enforcers in the implementation of the law. The individual must be answerable to the law for his daily conduct. The State must be answerable to the law for the manner of its enforcement. When we believe that we are unshackled from the law — that the law, whatever its form — does not apply to us as individuals, and, second, that there is no one to enforce it effectively, that is when we begin to witness the breakdown of the rule of law. We begin the dismantling of the republic; of a society governed by, and only by, the rule of law ....”
This is precisely what appears to be happening in Goa and India at large with the government going soft on such groups and allowing them to run amok in the name of enforcing the law while coming down heavily on others by even unofficially declaring them ‘enemies of the state’. It is exactly this attitude that has emboldened private citizens to take up weapons upon hapless traders who already face arbitrary application of the law towards their legitimate trade.
The state needs to reassert its primacy and stature when it comes to enforcing the law. That will not happen in an atmosphere where the law enforcing agencies -- in this case, the police are themselves fast losing credibility in the wake of several incidents and instances of misuse of power to their benefit, and the government and the ministers themselves show no regard for equal application of the law, citizens truly believe they are left to fend for themselves.
It is in this position that Goa finds itself presently, and needs a careful, deliberate and urgent return to the rule of law and accountability. If not the cliff drop towards anarchy is closer than it might appear.
