A couple of phone calls

How is your country run, you want to know? Is it via Parliament, or in various Cabinets, or do the courts sometimes issue directions, or are the bureaucrats involved in some way?

Well, sometimes things happen over the phone. Read on.

"The TADA court refused Sanjay [Dutt] bail. Just about then, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of TADA and suggested review committees to ensure that the law was not misused against the accused. The committees were to study each case and submit recommendations to the government every six months.

Once, I was having dinner with Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray ... Thackeray asked whether there was any way for Sanjay to get bail. I told him the state government hadn't yet set up the review committee. He immediately called up the then chief minister, Manohar Joshi, asking him to form the committee within 24 hours. ...

Then Thackeray, in my presence, called up then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and suggested that [a central review] committee be set up. Accordingly, it was done."

That's Satish Maneshinde, lawyer for Sanjay Dutt in the bomb blast trial, in an interview with the Hindustan Times, July 31 2007.