The Wheel of Justice

After much brouhaha over its failing judiciary, Indian government passed a law to give the defendant an option to decide the verdict by spinning a Wheel of Justice they designed (after much research). The idea being, if you (as the defendant) thought the case was too much stacked against you or you lacked the funds to pay the lawyers (simultaneously with your rent, weekly groceries, school fees, along with being fired from your job) you can opt for a trial by Wheel of Justice. A giant Wheel of Justice with multiple results listed was presented in the court and was spun by the defendant. Thus, they could pick their own luck.

Some of the options on the wheel were “lifetime in jail”, “x number of years in jail (where X varied from 2 to 20)”, “charge with sedition”, “take away citizenship” and “take away the property, there were very few options which would work in favor of the defendant like “3 weeks of participation in Clean India program” , “Watch PM’s address to nation and teach key learnings door to door”, a narrow strip was also “Free to go/Let go maybe”. It was hailed as a life saver by local press and ingenious and ultimate example of Jugaad system India had by foreign magazines.

Few months in, a trend came to light — depending on your social capital (said to be maintained in a blockchain registry implemented by one of the best professional services firm in the country) you were more likely to be charged with an unfavorable option. The most common result was that a chunk of your property could be taken away, the percentage having a complex relationship with your caste. Since upper caste rich people still relied on the traditional process (because why take a chance with a stupid wheel when the other way guaranteed success), this was mostly opted for by the poor.

A reliable (questioned later on by the media) leak suggested that the technology implemented in the fingerprint scanner in the spinner (to authenticate the user) actually pulled data from the national registry with records of everyone’s social capital in the country. Various inputs like your caste, your online history, your real world social history, your purchasing habits, any priors, your religion, party affiliations, economic inclinations, reading history, netflix history, meat preferences, color prefernces etc were fed into an algorithm designed by the top technological institute of the country (an online debate started after this on whether that was indeed the top institute with alumni of other institutes presenting comprehensive arguments to the contrary, two of them published in leading English dailies as well). It didn’t matter how the defendant spun the wheel; a hidden motor actually did the spinning taking feed from the algorithm which was triggered once the user was authenticated. This design leak caused a big uproar.

Huge protests broke out through the country. People from all factions (some more than others) came out on street against this wheel. The demand was for an impartial wheel without a motor. This is a rigged system they claimed. After a couple of days of tolerating the peaceful protests, the government asked the police forces to end all this so people can go back to buying things again. Police then started to beat the shit out of protesters while requesting them not to resort to violence. When they still did not resort to violence while being beaten halfway to death, police started using the national register of social capital to pull people out of their homes. That led to some violence, though some reports claimed it was staged by governing party’s youth wing.

Even though the internet services were shut down, the leaked images started to make rounds in popular American sites like Reddit. From there some international journalists and magazines picked it up and started to backtrack on their initial assessment of the great leader and the wheel program.

With much international backlash, to save the face, the government announced revisions to the judiciary prompting a halt to the protests.

So, after weeks of locking up and torturing thousands, killing dozens, and packing hundreds in hospitals, the prime minister came out and declared that starting tomorrow the Wheel of Justice system will be abolished. He claimed that it was always meant as a trial only to collect data for a new system and the new system will be launched from tomorrow morning. Not many details were disclosed about the new system.

The new system was the old traditional way of justice.

The dismantling of the Wheel of Justice was hailed as a victory for the people and the foreign magazines labeled it as the coming of new India under a modern leadership.

A modern and just India.

A new hope.

Originally published at http://freakverse.wordpress.com on December 25, 2019.