Play within the court

Polemics has never been Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s forte. He is known to measure his words. So, when he “respectfully” submitted that “the Supreme Court should not get into the government’s realm of policy-making”, it naturally raised a few eyebrows. But on reflection, they, too, realised that circumstances had forced him to upbraid the Judiciary for stepping into the domain of the Executive. The Constitution clearly defines the roles of the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature, which have to function within certain specified limits. Of late, an impression has, willy-nilly, gained ground that the pivot on which the constitutional scheme of things revolves is the Judiciary.

Such a supposition is patently wrong and is not validated by any of the provisions of the Constitution. What provoked the PM is seemingly some orders the apex court has issued in the case pertaining to ‘rotting of grains’. Photographs of ‘rotting grains’ in open warehouses of the Food Corporation of India were indeed shocking. They spoke volumes about the callousness and insensitivity of the government, which definitely deserved a rap on the knuckles. But the solutions the court found for the ‘failures’ of the administration bordered on the whimsical. The very thought that ‘rotten grains’, which can even be toxic, are good for the ‘poor’ is obnoxious, to say the least. Besides, distribution of grains free of cost has consequences for both food production and public distribution.

Similarly, the order that the government should limit ‘procurement’ to the storage capacity available with the government would render the farmer susceptible to the machinations of the traders affecting food production. Similarly, to exclude all the so-called Above Poverty Line ration card holders from the purview of the public distribution system will actually push them into the Below Poverty Line category without the attendant benefits. Policy-making involves a whole gamut of issues discussed at different levels by different people for which the court is simply not equipped. If the policies so evolved are against the grain of the law, it is for the Judiciary to step in. In the instant case, the court’s intervention would not have occurred if the government had addressed the problem of ‘rotting grains’ on its own. While the prime minister’s lament is justified, the Executive’s growing tendency to leave complicated issues to the court for a decision also needs to be assailed.