For those of you who have forgotten, there was an instance of a bus being burnt with commutes inside some years ago. Three college-bound students were burned to death. The arsonists-cum-murderers were caught and brought to justice. Death penalty was imposed. As required by law, the case came up before the Supreme Court of India which affirmed the sentence. This affirmation, based on the rarest-of-rare case paradigm, should have deterred similar incidences.
Were death penalty truly a deterrent, why did we have a rather similar incidence just a couple of days ago? Two buses had a run-in on the road, to capture as much revenue as possible. The gang of one bus set fire to the other bus, with the passengers inside. A few got burnt to death.
Having asked the question, I would pro-actively answer it. It happened in Madhya Pradesh, half-nation removed from Tamil Nadu. It had commercial competition, not politics, as the background. No institution of governance was involved; therefore, there was no one to be sent a message. In an increasingly liberalized world, it would become less and less rare that ordinary people will be sacrificed at the altar of economic growth. The case is NOT rarest-of-rare.
“Death penalty, you see, deters only if the situations are literally identical. If they are not, the claim that death penalty is a deterrent is void.” That is, to discern the deterrence effect of death penalty in this case, it must have happened in Tamil Nadu, must have had political undertones, having an institutional basis. And more importantly, it could not have had any commercial basis.
Raghuram Ekambaram
The Ur of the sequence is situated some years ago. It happened in Tamil Nadu. It had a political basis. The Supreme Court had pronounced a judgment of guilty of corruption on a powerful politician. The acolytes of the political party took it upon themselves to send a message to the Supreme Court and the via media were the three students.
Were death penalty truly a deterrent, why did we have a rather similar incidence just a couple of days ago? Two buses had a run-in on the road, to capture as much revenue as possible. The gang of one bus set fire to the other bus, with the passengers inside. A few got burnt to death.
Having asked the question, I would pro-actively answer it. It happened in Madhya Pradesh, half-nation removed from Tamil Nadu. It had commercial competition, not politics, as the background. No institution of governance was involved; therefore, there was no one to be sent a message. In an increasingly liberalized world, it would become less and less rare that ordinary people will be sacrificed at the altar of economic growth. The case is NOT rarest-of-rare.
“Death penalty, you see, deters only if the situations are literally identical. If they are not, the claim that death penalty is a deterrent is void.” That is, to discern the deterrence effect of death penalty in this case, it must have happened in Tamil Nadu, must have had political undertones, having an institutional basis. And more importantly, it could not have had any commercial basis.
Raghuram Ekambaram
