Ripples on the brain

The opposition of Karunanidhi to the Supreme Court’s decision that laws under Schedule 9 are open to the scrutiny of the court and the recent outburst of a State Minister of Tamil Nadu, Arcot Veerasamy, against the High Court in the presence of the Chief Minister, accusing it of trying to usurp the power of an elected executive only reveals the discomfort of the Government over any kind of check on its functioning. Since the successive State Governments in Tamil Nadu have been so used to the absence of any semblance of opposition in the legislature, I think they get pretty insecure if there is a credible (as opposed to the frequent and feeble rants by the leader of the major opposition party) scrutiny of their decisions.

In fact, the current legislature boasts of the maximum presence of the major opposition party (70 odd seats) in the state legislature in the last 2 decades or so. The fact that the single largest party, the DMK, couldn’t get even a simple majority of its own was itself a victory of sorts for Jayalalitha in the elections. But the coalition partner of the DMK this time turned out to be the toothless Congress, which in Tamil Nadu has as many leaders as it has party members, and this worked out to be an advantage for Karunanidhi. The State Congress’ long term demand for a place in the government is not being heeded to even by its own party high command, leave alone its coalition partner (even though at the centre, DMK has a few ministers in the Congress government).

These dynamics have ensured that the ruling party has a free hand in all the decisions it makes in the legislature, mostly without even having a healthy debate on the bills initiated. This being the case, the role of the judiciary in scrutinizing the major decisions of the executive has almost become necessary for the proper functioning of the democracy. Actually, even if there’s a credible opposition, I feel the judiciary does not exceed its brief if it takes a peek into the decisions of the executive.

I don’t understand why any decision-maker has to be uncomfortable if his decisions are scrutinized. If he has a basis for the decisions and that has been made clear, he need not bother if his decisions go under the microscope. For example, in the case of 69% reservation or 27% reservation for the OBC’s, the government has to have proper empirical evidence that indicates the basis on which the percentage has been arrived at. The bill can probably mention a framework that can be used in case it is scrutinized. For example, the reservation bill can state that all data have been taken from the NSS (National Sample Survey), so that any public interest litigation on the law can go by that data and not quote any other arbitrary data for its opposition of the law. I understand that all decisions cannot have empirical evidence, but that shouldn’t absolve the government of its responsibility to rationally defend its decisions in case they come under the scanner. The only argument against court’s scrunity of government decisions can be based on the bandwidth of the courts itself, since huge amount of cases are pending with the judiciary already.

The current State government’s comfortable belief that “people’s mandate” gives absolute power to it is both absurd and ridiculous. If that was the case, why at all is a legislature (even though it is a dummy in the state) and a judiciary required? The Chief Minister can function akin to the King, taking up the functions of legislature, excutive and the judiciary.

Here’s the Hindu editorial on the same topic.