The Indian state is used to treating the country’s citizens as its captives, to be dealt with as arbitrarily as anyone in authority wishes. Regardless of which party is in power – at the Centre and in the states – the predatory nature of the state is the same. Consider just three pieces of evidence. First, more than two-thirds of the people held in India’s jails have not been convicted of any crime, they merely face court processes that go on for years if not decades. Sometimes they die while waiting, as Stan Swamy just did.
Second, the tax
Second, the tax
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