HC stood up and held his own
MEN, MATTERS & MEMORIES

By M L Kotru

Less than two months ago a nephew of mine, an excitable young journalist-on-the-make, told me this story of the wizened old man seated in a comfortable chair, taking in the morning sun, some papers lying on the side-table, obviously absorbed in the reading his morning paper or may be even a book. My nephew was searching for a particular house in one of those plush South Delhi colonies where a house numbered 16 would be sitting adjacent to another numbered S-72. The nephew chose to inquire from the man standing at the gate of the old-man-in-the-sun if he could help him locate the house he was looking for. Curiosity did overtake my nephew and he inquired who the lonely man bent over his book or newspaper in the lawn of the house was.

The chowkidar, if that is what was, slightly disappointed on being asked about the identity of the man. "Aapko maloom nahein; yeh bahut hee prasid judge sahib hein, Inhoon ne Indira Gandhi ko thikane lagaya tha." (Don't you know; he is the famous judge who showed Indira Gandhi her place). "Yeh Justice H. R. Khanna hein". (He is Justice H R. Khanna).

Resisting the temptation to intrude, my nephew walked down the street to locate the house he was looking for. Little did my nephew realise that he had missed what might perhaps have been an enlightening encounter with a judge who was superseded from becoming the Chief Justice of India by Indira Gandhi because the man was too upright. That would perhaps also have been an "exclusive" for, Justice Khanna though always willing to speak at public fora was not particularly fond of interviews.

So, when last week news came of the nonagenarian judge's death my mind went back to the 70s when as a member of five-judge bench he heard what has come to be known as the habeas corpus case (ADM Jabalpur Vs. Shiv Kant Shukla). The question before the court was whether a petition for habeas corpus and other similar petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution were maintainable notwithstanding the suspension of the fundamental rights following the imposition of emergency by Indira Gandhi

On that fateful day on April 28, 1976 four judges decided infavour of the Government, holding that petitions were not maintainable. Justice Khanna a strict constitutionalist and a firm believe in civil liberties, held the contrary view; the petitions were maintainable. Indira Gandhi who had in any case had her way, with four judges having accepted his Government's view, did not approve of Khanna's dissent. And in 1977 Justice Khanna, the most senior of the Supreme Court judges, should have automatically become the Chief Justice. And on January 28, 1977 Indira had her revenge; Justice Khanna was superseded and Justice Beg was appointed as the new Chief Justice his dissenting judgement in the habeas corpus case had cost him the a job to which most Supreme Court Judges aspire to rise. Justice Khanna simply resigned.

Equally noteworthy had been his stand in the landmark Kesvananda Bharti case in 1973. In the 13-member bench, six judges ruled that Parliament's power was limited because of implied and inheret limitations of the Constitution, including those tagged to the Fundamental Rights. Six others held that there were no limitations at all on Parliament's power to amend the Constitution. There was a tie except that Justice Khanna had different ideas. He held that because Parliament had the power only to amend the constitution it must leave the Basic Structure of the Constitution intact. That was another landmark. Not for nothing had the pre-eminent jurist, the late Nani Palkhivala said once that Justice Khanna's statue must be installed in every street corner of the country as an acknowledgment of the services rendered by him to the cause of justice and safeguarding our civil liberties.

It was said that the habeas corpus case did go against the people but it was heartening at the same time that Justice Khanna's classic dissent was such as "deserved to be written in letters of gold," as the New York Times suggested a few days after the Supreme Court verdict and Justice Khanna's dissent became known worldwide. But then who would convince a powerful Indira Gandhi of the Emergency era that it is dangerous to suggest that a judge should be punished for deciding a case according to his lights.

It needs to remembered that even in the Supreme Court there is no unanimity on the rights of the State and of the citizen. After all, the Golaknath case which laid down that fundamental rights could not be abridged by Parliament was decided by a majority of one. The Keshvanand Bharti case, which laid down that the basic structure of the Constitution could not be tampered with by Parliament was also decided by a majority of one (Justice Khanna's being the decisive view).

Mr. H. M. Seervai, former Advocate General of Maharashtra and a Constitutional expert of the highest order, even while he was around, was known to be forthright in his general as well as legal arguments. In his book "The Emergency, future safeguards and the Habeas Corpus", the late jurist made the point that in the habeas corpus case the majority (four to one, Justice Khanna being the lone dissenter) of the judges held in effect, if not in intent, that all laws concerning life and personal liberty had been abrogated during the emergency. The disastrous consequences of the judgement and the grave public mischief it produced, were known to a few and were suspected by many more. A draconian censorship backed by preventive detention - without any reason assigned and without redress - concealed from the public gaze the magnitude of the mischief caused by the Supreme Court judgement, Mr Seervai noted. These or similar apprehensions had been expressed by Justice Khanna in his dissenting judgement.

At another place Seervai asks what will the future historians say about the Supreme Court. "As the historians turns from the High Court to the Supreme Court, his task will be harder, for the history of Supreme Court during the Emergency is a history of two different periods: The first began a day before the emergency and ended with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's appeal in the election case; the second began with the habeas corpus case and ended with the revocation of the Emergency by a defeated Indira Gandhi, unwilling to put in the hands of her opponents the weapons she had forged and used against them.’’ ‘‘As the historian surveys the Supreme Court from this height : (declaring Article 329 (4) A invalid) and descends into the dark valley below where dwell the habeas corpus case and its numerous progeny - he will no longer hear the authentic note of Supreme Court.’’ In one of his public lectures, after resigning from the Supreme Court Justice Khanna had noted that the independence of the judiciary must be protected if we want to maintain the essentials of a decent society governed by the Rule of Law. If even 60 years after independence and despite the Directive Principles, men and women do not have the right to an adequate means of livelihood, or equal pay for equal work, or children are denied the opportunities or facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity, if children and youth are not protected against exploitation and moral and material want, the fault is not with the judiciary but of the executive and Parliament which together hardly measure up to the task laid down in the Constitution.

Justice Khanna once very strongly frowned upon ‘‘high sounding phrases masquerading to cover up what in essence is an act of self-abnegation on the part of judges and journalists. The grave danger of the judiciary playing to gallery is that sooner than we imagine it may be politically packed. The majority judgments of the past have created conditions for such a development, he warned. There can be no two opinions that our judges must be committed to the Constitution but references such as those of former Chief Justice Bhagwati that the Constitution is not a non-aligned patchment, what the judiciary has a socio-economic destination and a creative function, that a judge must be an activist, though noble in themselves, are capable of misuse by political operators who may on these very grounds, select judges wedded to their politics, not to the Constitution.

Justice HR Khanna was one such who stood by the Constitution and did indeed serve as a guardian of citizens' rights. As I conclude I wonder what stopped my nephew, a bright young journalist, from having stepped into that South Delhi house that day when he saw the wispy old man sitting in the chair, poring over the morning papers. I did call my nephew the day I heard of Justice Khanna's death and told him what an opportunity he had missed, by being content with speaking to the old judge's chowkidar and not to the man himself.

The impending food crisis

By Satyendra Pratap Singh

Food prices are soaring. The UPA government in Budget 2008-09 has provided Rs. 60,000 crore as out right dole out to the farmers to upgrade agricultural production by way of pay off loans. Who will benefit from this government generosity-small or big farmers or middlemen? All said and done it is time to launch a second green revolution, feed the world and make Indian farmers rich. When they get rich, farmers will dump that glassful of pesticide that they-or at least many of them-seem to keep handy and join the ranks of India's consuming classes, feeding sustained economy-wide growth.

A communist minister of Kerala recently urged all good Malayalis to eat less rice and more eggs, meat and milk instead, to meet a shortage of rice. Many compared him to Marie Antoinette, who had famously recommended cake to those who didn't have bread. This column finds him a bigger friend of the farmer than the queen was of French peasants-he is pushing up the demand for a variety of farm produce.

The simple reality is that Indians today consume a whole lot of high value foods: eggs, milk, fish, chicken and meat. This means diversion of food to feed the animals that yield these high value foods. Corn is the preferred feed for poultry. (The common fowl has the uncommon ability to convert the starch it eats into protein in the form of chicken.) Thanks to American attempts to produce large quantities of ethanol from corn, corn prices have zoomed. So coarse grains are replacing part of the corn in poultry feed. Oil seeds are in high demand not just for the oil but also for the cake needed to feed livestock. The global shortages of wheat and rice have added to the upward pressure on food prices in general.

The European Union has reduced its subsidy on milk. Europe's export of milk has fallen. India has suddenly started to export a lot of skimmed milk powder. Milk has emerged as a great white hope for agribusiness in India. Global demand creates an incentive for greater production of milk by raising milk prices for local producers.

Higher prices for food represent a huge opportunity for the farm sector. The point is to grab this opportunity, raise output and market efficiently.

This is a huge challenge that cannot be left just to the forces of the market. The reality is that a host of institutional arrangements and perverse policy act as barriers to the working of market forces. The government has to, at the least, remove these obstacles. Ideally, it should also do more, to get things going in areas where individual initiative will not suffice-such as farm R&D, building large dams, unfashionable but unavoidable, and irrigation systems and drainage.

Rising food prices hurt consumers but benefit farmers. How can this conflict of interest be managed? If you thought the challenge before the government is as simple as this, you don't get it. In India, the farmer sells his produce for about one-third the price the consumer pays. In other words, only one-third of the rise in prices goes back to the farmer. To increase the benefit of rising food prices to the farmer and to minimise the cost to the consumer, this huge margin between farm and consumer prices must shrink.

How can this done? Abolish mandi taxes. Allow direct sourcing of farm produce by agribusinesses and organised retail-obviating several rounds of transportation and loading and unloading costs, apart from intermediary margins. Organise farmers into bodies-companies or cooperatives-capable of leveraging the opportunities afforded by the market. Encourage initiatives such as ITC's e-Choupal and DCM Shriram Consolidated's Haryali stores that offer farmers a host of inputs ranging from seed, fertiliser, tractor parts and diesel for pump sets to agronomic advice and soil testing.

Some of the needed things are already underway: building rural roads, rural telecom and rural electrification. These need to be accelerated and coordinated. If a village local body understands that a road being built under the aegis of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is also part of a new political initiative to provide a national/global market for the produce of local farmers, the allocated funds might actually transform into mud, rubble and tar for a road rather than into yet more filthy lucre for the local neta-babu network. Farm subsidy amounts to about Rs. 1 lakh crore. The sector is better off if this were to be spent as investment. Subsidy for fertiliser has starved the sector of investment and created severe shortages, for example.

Why a political initiative? Shouldn't this be a supra-political, administrative effort?

Change of this nature has to be driven by politics. Political parties must mobilise farmers, put pressure on the bureaucracy, and dismiss silly opposition to futures markets in farm produce (how can farmers hedge their risk if there are no speculators to take on that risk?). Without politics, we'll just have another food crisis on hand. INAV

Gender justice through education

By Dr. Vishiesh Verma

March 8th is set aside as International Women's Day - to remember women and their fight for greater equality in all walks of life. The United Nations officially signed a charter in 1945 to proclaim, Gender equality as a fundamental right. As early as in 1912 there was a strike by women textile workers at San Francisco for equality. They demanded "Bread and Roses". "Bread" is freedom from hunger and "Roses" for satisfaction of wants.

Women are biologically stronger of the two sexes. They are psychologically also tougher and bolder to bear the tensions and chaos than men. Modern Indian woman with her place on earth earned by the sweat of her brow is reaching the skies. Examination results have shown that girls score more than boys do. In the last hundred years a quiet metamorphosis has occurred, women walk shoulder to shoulder with men. They are able to wield broom as competently as the management baton. They are turning out in large numbers in the work force.

In 2003, when 800 years old Cambridge University appointed a woman its first Vice Chancellor, it was an international news.

English University system started in India in 1857. First woman was admitted in Calcutta University in 1877. Chennai and Mumbai Universities opened their doors for women in 1881 and 1883 respectively. In 1918, a women's University of its kind (SNDT) was established by Maharishi Karve. Presently we have 5 women's Universities, 1600 women's colleges. There are 11 women Vice Chancellors, 13 directors, 3 registrars and 66 women deans.

The women played a significant role in the revolutionary movement for the independence of India also. Pritilata Waddedar died fighting, Kalpana Dutt Joshi was given life imprisonment. Bina Dass took everybody by surprise in 1932 when she fired at the Governor while receiving her degree at Calcutta University.

Indian Women More Empowered

The Global Gender Gap Report 2006, a survey of 115 world economies ranks India 20th in a list of politically empowered Indian women with 8 percent in Parliament and 3 percent in ministerial posts.

Besides, political awareness is now made possible for women at the local levels through 73rd and 74th Amendments of the constitution. It has brought a million women opportunity to participate in the decision making at the village, block and district levels as also in the urban municipal corporations. At the same time the country is at the bottom of the table when it comes to their participation in economy and educational achievements.

Women in Jobs

According to a survey in the year 2004 the total employed force in the public and private sector was of the order of 264.43 lakh of which the number of working woman was 49.34 lakh. Women working in organized sector constitute only 10 percent where as 90 percent are in un-organised sector.

In 2003, the number of women in Central Govt. employment was 7.51 percent.

The live registers of educated women have shown increase in their numbers from 50.2 lakh in 1991 to 81.6 lakh in 2000. The percentage of educated women seeking employment has shown an upward trend from 68.7 percent in 1991 to 78.1 percent in 2001.

Women constitute 48 percent of Indian population. They work more than men in absolute terms but large part of their work is not monetized. Indian census defined work as economically gainful activity, as a result in the census reports of the states ninety percent of women are recorded as non workers.

Gender inequalities are pervasive in Indian Society to the maximum but women survive all this right from the birth. Majority of women with little or no literacy and low incomes speak vernacular language of their region have mostly been left out at the national and international opportunities available to them. There are 99 percent of our women without access to computers and English language.

Eighty percent women population in rural areas is physically active but being poor and illiterate they face enormous problems in labour market. High fertility puts restrictions on their mobility. Lack of transferable skills, lack of knowledge of markets and access to assets and tools continue to keep them poor.

A low cast poor woman from under privileged area has to fight a tough battle against caste class and regional differentiation and gender discrimination to find a little place for her in the social order.

In the poorest regions of the country woman are locked into a circle with illiterate mothers bringing up illiterate daughters who are married too early into yet another cycle of poverty, illiteracy, high fertility and early mortality.

Empowerment of Women

Power is not a commodity to be translocated nor can it be given as alms. Power has to be acquired and once acquired it needs to be exercised, sustained and preserved. From the institutional perspective, empowerment is the process of setting the right environment and structure and creating the circumstances where the people can use their faculties to fully actualize their potential.

Empowerment as an active multidimensional process enables women to realize their full identity and powers in all spheres of life. Women need to be encouraged and facilitated to lake personal responsibility for improving their achievement. They should get access to their modes and mediums of expression, of their self actualization and through that they can achieve empowerment.

The percentage of educated people in our country was 18 in the year 1951. Out of them the percentage of male and female literacy was 27 and 9 percent respectively. In 2001, the percentage of educated persons increased to 65, of them the educated male percentage and educated female percentage was 76 and 54 respectively.

Considering the grave situation of illiteracy among women, Govt of India implemented various policy measures to promote women's education both at the central and state levels. Several incentive schemes have been adopted like Sarve Shiksha Abhyan, Mahila Samukhya, Mid-day meals scheme etc. A high priority had been accorded to education sector in the 10th Five Year Plan (2002-07) with an allocation of Rs. 43,825 crore as against Rs. 24,908 crore in 9th Five Year Plan registering an increase of 76 percent.

Mahila Samakhya Scheme was introduced for the education and empowerment of women in rural areas, particularly from socially and economically marginalized groups. The scheme is being implemented in 9 states, 12000 villages and 59 districts.

Another "Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level" of (NPEGEL) was launched in the year 2003-04 with the objective to provide support to education of girls, Rs. 150 per girl per year in the form of stationary, uniforms and other locally felt needs.

(The writer is a former Reader Co-ordinator of University of Jammu)

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