It was a conflagration-the emergency imposed by Mrs Indira Gandhi in June 33 years ago. In 19 months, the period for which it lasted, every institution got scarred. The constitution was mutilated. Personal freedom was forfeited. The press was gagged. The judiciary was shackled. Parliament had its tenure extended. The largest democracy in the world put under detention more than 100,000 people without trial. And, as the then Attorney General said, the state could kill anyone with impunity.

The institutions have regained their health but the scars are still visible. What has probably been lost for ever is the people's sensitivity. They do not react to the abuse of power. I thought that those brutalities would never revisit the country. I see all of them coming back with a vengeance: false encounter killings, custodial deaths, kidnappings, violations of human rights and detentions under the security law.

What has probably happened to the people is that once Mrs Gandhi wiped out the thin line dividing right from wrong, moral from immoral they do not mind or feel where they stand. There is no compunction in hitting below the belt or committing even the gravest wrong. In fact, the wrong itself has undergone a change in the meaning. It has become a relative term.

The Manmohan Singh government has five ministers whose hands are tainted with the excesses committed during the emergency.  They are: Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj, Heavy Industries Minister Santosh Mohan Dev and Tourism Minister Ambika Soni. They should quit giving face to morality and ethics.

The judiciary has been the biggest casualty. Mrs Gandhi transferred 16 judges. President Pervez Musharraf when he clamped the emergency in Pakistan dismissed some 60 of them. But there had to be a difference between a military dictator and a civil dictator. Judges in India were restored to their positions. But in Pakistan the dismissed judges have become victims to the politics of behind-the-scenes bargains.

The Shah Commission which went into the excesses during the emergency in India warned: "The state owes it to the nation to assure that this vital limb (the judiciary) of the government will not be subjected to strains which might even indirectly operate as punitive." But this has had little effect. Chief Justices in India are vying with each other to oblige the government on transfers or, for that matter, appointments. Judgments are generally at the asking. The highfalutin phrases like the independence of the judiciary are primarily on paper. Corruption was inevitable once the standards came to be compromised.

Mrs Gandhi regretted "certain mistakes," but never the emergency and brought back the officers who were instruments of tyranny during her rule. Not only did she punish those who had pursued cases of excesses against her and her son Sanjay Gandhi, who was an extra-constitutional authority, she divided the bureaucracy into "ours" and "theirs." The civil service is now a set of sycophants and supplicants who allow themselves to be used by politicians. There was one Sanjay Gandhi at the centre then. Now every state has a chief minister's son or a nephew emulating him.

And it was no surprise that she threw out even the recommendations by the National Police Commission to reform the force because the police were used by her indiscriminately. She preferred to stay with the Indian Police system, structured on an Act of 1861 and rejected the draft bill which the Police Commission had recommended to release the force from the stranglehold of politicians.

Since the baby was thrown out with the bathtub, even the recommendations to make police accountable were not implemented. The Supreme Court has picked up the thread and made it obligatory for the states to implement the recommendations. The states have not done so. Even the centre has not asked the Union Territories to fall in line.

The illegal power, to which the police have got used since the emergency, is hard to withdraw now. What is seen in Kashmir, the northeast or elsewhere in the country is a cumulative effect of unbridled authority given to the force. It does not know, much less cares about normal, acceptable methods to deal with a situation.

The IB and CBI are loaded with assignments which are not really theirs. Keeping track of opposition leaders and critics of the government, intercepting their mail and taping their telephones is not what the two agencies should be doing. Nor should they be checking the credentials of candidates and weighing their chance of winning at the polls. But this is the practice started during the emergency and continued by government of all hues. The agencies remain unaccountable.

The worst fallout of the emergency has been that the public servants have invariably become an instrument in the hands of ministers at the centre and in the states. The ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour have become generally dim and in many cases beyond the mental grasp of many of the public functionaries. Desire for self-preservation has become the sole motivation for their action and behaviour.

Manmohan Singh who has been a top civil servant should have devised some steps to retrieve them. Anxiety to survive at any cost forms the keynote of approach to the problems that come before public servants. The training academies live in an ivory tower because their elitist approach makes them too distant from aam aadmi (common man). It should be obligatory for the trainees to work with NGOs at the grassroots. They may learn, if not imbibe, the qualities of humility which officials lack.

And there has to be a mechanism to punish the errant civil servants. None was even demoted or sacked for deliberately flouting laws and harassing those who were against the emergency. Some of them occupy key positions today: N.K. Chawla, the hatchet man Lt. Governor Kishen Chand is a member of the Union Election Commission.

Journalists' role was pathetic. They were afraid to join issue with the government. L.K. Advani said aptly: You were asked to bend and you began to crawl. In contrast, the Pakistani media came out on the streets when restrictions were imposed on the telecast of lawyers' agitation.

True, at present, there is no visible dictation in India. But it looks as if it is not necessary. The different pieces are beginning to fall into place without anyone making an effort. Already there is a tendency to go along and not to question. If without the emergency people start "behaving" there is something wrong with the system. Once the desire to act according to what is right goes, there may be no realization of what is wrong. This is precisely what is happening.