The Supreme Court has become the chief executive of India, the operating officer, forcing policy in the realm of social activity. This is dangerous because it could order anything ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous and it would require a two-thirds majority in Parliament to overthrow an absurd or inappropriate order. That is not the role of the judiciary in a democracy and, it is disturbing to see the courts usurping the role of the executive because the executive only has failed miserably in its mandate?to govern with integrity and honesty. The mixing of these two functions can only lead to political, social and economic anarchy.
Visionaries, leaders with passion, are desperately needed to structure and determine fresh rules for India and Bharat. Alas, there are no such entities visible on the horizon. As new social sagas unfold each day and our courts rule on all conceivable issues, disquiet is aroused about motivations in the sacrosanct realm of the judiciary. Correctives must be made now. Fears must be allayed.
For this process to resume, Parliament must stop the ongoing nonsense of boycotts and dharnas, yelling and screaming, day in and day out. It has become shameful and farcical. Elected representatives must make sure that they compel the courts to stay out of areas not within their jurisdiction. Courts are not mandated to govern. They cannot make policy. They are there to ensure that the laws of the Indian Union are upheld, and that their implementation is conducted honestly and with integrity by the administrative authority. Those are the issues they should be addressing? the corruption of the authority that administers the laws wrongly.
The Supreme Court should be asking the corrupted municipalities to come up with their blueprint for urban growth and development in relation to the master-plan of each city, within a time-bound period. Once done, those norms must be adhered to and any deviation must be punished. If the administration does not do its duty in specific instances, the court must rule. For the Supreme Court to rule, arbitrarily, against street vending without thinking of alternatives that could make sense and allow for street vending on new terms is unwarranted. To demolish kirana shops in residential colonies is silly. Residential colonies should be self-sufficient for daily needs.
• SC has become India?s chief executive, dictating policy in social activity fields • It?s time elected representatives forced courts to stick to their jurisdiction • For, courts are not mandated to govern, they cannot make policy |
What is required is some thoughtful planning by specialists who have seen the best and the worst worldwide, to come up with innovative solutions and not leave ideating to bureaucrats. That is a disaster and we are paying the price for this error of judgement. We must try and conserve, restore and recreate tested traditions of urban planning and living rather than be pushed into aping a western reality that is incongruous to us and our living needs and styles.
Indian cities were planned long before the western world comprehended the need for ?planning.? From the Mughals to the British, Delhi, as one example, grew in a systematic fashion, with the required infrastructure. Free India, post-1947, established in this ancient Capital a haphazard system of building and construction. It was the CPWD and the DDA that began the destruction of our inherent sense of aesthetics, design and urban spaces. We lost all the assets we had, the building skills, the local workmanship, as we brought glass and steel into play, killing the cool interiors of our earlier homesteads.
Government intervention with a dictatorial stance, in the area of housing, in determining the look and feel of our public spaces, in instructing us on what is good or sub-standard living, has created over the past many decades dirty slums with the poshest of addresses, alongwith numerous unnamed, unliveable, inhuman habitats. People come to India, from across many seas to admire our cities of the past. They do not come to modern India because modern India has nothing to offer. We come nowhere in the list of international contemporary cities.
These ad hoc ?correctives? by the administrative machinery and the courts will only cause more anarchy, allowing for multiple loopholes and a plethora of fresh avenues for corruption. Will the political leadership begin the cleansing of the bureaucracy and the administration? Will the corruption nexus of the political class, the administration, the police, the underworld and, in some cases, the judiciary, be broken?
