Bleeding from Shylock's cut.

Byline: Jawed Naqvi

SHYLOCK is the big business, Antonio, the political parties. Let's throw in Portia, symbolising law and justice, but which mostly eludes Indians currently. The news is heart-warming in the interregnum though. A brilliant woman journalist won a tenacious legal battle with an alleged sex predator of a powerful social echelon. And octogenarian leftist poet Varavara Rao got bail too, albeit for six months.

But Rao's comrades, India's most brilliant and selfless souls, are cramming the jails. A battery of leftist intellectuals and lawyers along with a merrily self-effacing octogenarian Jesuit priest stand accused of plotting to murder the prime minister in a laughably bizarre plot. Others are facing sedition charges for orchestrating communal violence in Delhi, which their rivals actually waged under police protection.

An American newspaper has revealed how the dubious assassination plot was structured around hacked computers that were used to plant the 'evidence' of the purported crime. So, the victories here and there are welcome aberrations - happy aberrations - in a system that stands entrenched against equal rights and dignity for women and which ambushes dissenting citizens at will.

Being in penury, or near penury, is a good sign for the Congress party.

It's no secret that major political parties receive funds from big business, which becomes a fertile ground for quid pro quo. In fact, it's a curious rule of thumb that the parties whose leaders are in jail or face charges for alleged graft, are precisely the ones that the corporate lobbies shunned, and, therefore, did not favour with their largesse. It is also likely that the leaders didn't accept the implied quid pro quo and chose to suffer.

It's a bit like the movie industry. If one didn't pick the money from the usurious market the movie is likely never going to find a theatre to screen it. Mayawati and Lalu Yadav are a case in point of politicians who have been made an example of for seeking alternative routes of raising money, tainted money, to fight costly elections, and which they mostly won. Portia will have to be more innovative than leaning on her fabled court craft and throwing in a clever interpretation of law to tilt the argument. Today, she has to weigh the cases as presented.

Chara ghotala or fodder scam is up for public scrutiny and trial by media, a bail-less crime, but an opaque defence deal has to be decided for reasons of national security through...

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