Lalit Sethi
Laws made by man, including legislatures as well as Parliament, and those laid down by the courts, including the Supreme Court, or holy edicts of god men, are honored more in the breach than in the observance. Yet diseases desperate may need remedies desperate. Both laws’ enforcement and remedies desperate lie in the realm of wishful thinking because neither the courts nor the law enforcement agencies, nor god men, spiritual healers and doctors for that matter, have immeasurable power or resources to achieve the desired results, except in some cases. The action in a few cases is regarded as exemplary, though not always adequate.
Yet every State government or agitator of substance or lack of substance wants the intervention of courts at the highest levels and Parliament to make laws as if by their arrival on the scene the problems will vanish, but they would be able to claim at the next electoral battle that they fought for the voter, whether they will be impressed by their claims or not. Everyone with a cause, grievance or protest against a scam wants a judicial inquiry by a Supreme Court judge or retired one to find the guilty, no matter how long it will take to reach a conclusion or whether any action will ever be taken on the final report, if there is one.
The Supreme Court of India has just ordered the release of Kaveri waters –a certain amount of it—by Karnataka for use by parched lands of Tamil Nadu. This is not the first time it has done so, but there are parched lands in Karnataka as well, which are not and cannot be served by the Kaveri river system. But that is not precisely the point. The point is one of politics, which crosses the party lines in both States.
Karnataka may have other grave political problems, including the revolt against the BJP by its former Chief Minister, Mr. B.S.Yeddyurappa, but the problem uppermost in his mind is not the survival of the people who may be starving in his own State, but his own effort to reinvent himself. In the process, he may have brought down his own nominee as Chief Minister a couple of months earlier. Right now he would like to send the present Chief Minister, Mr. Jagdish Shettar, again his own nominee, packing even if the Karnataka legislature has to be dissolved and new elections ordered.
The new elections may cause the defeat of the BJP, but so be it, according to him. He would like to float his own political outfit and he may vainly hope that he could win the Assembly elections and return to power even if for a short while because he is already on bail in scam upon scam, be it land, mining and what have you. Yeddy thinks it is his divine right to rule Karnataka like the kings of old because he belongs or rather leads the Lingayats, a caste predominant in Karnatka, but the present Chief Minister is a Lingayat, but that is not a point of any importance. It is he himself who matters. The rest is oblivion.
The Supreme Court has time and again ruled about the cleaning up of the Ganga and Yamuna and several other rivers across the length and breadth of the country. The Chief Minister of Delhi may have some years ago picked up a broom and a basket and led a brigade or band of party men or sanitation staff for an hour or two to clean up a lane or a pavement of Delhi. That is the best tribute she could pay to Gandhian ethos, but cleaning up of the Jamuna or Ganga?
God forbid! Ganga is far, far away from Delhi, but the Jamuna? It is far beyond the field of her vision and governance. It is domain of the Government of India and some other Chief Ministers whose holy lands it runs through; not her baby any way. So, as one might say, “Krishna, teri Yamuna maili” even as it flows through Himachal, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh”.
Tens of thousands of crores of rupees have been “spent” or mis-spent, but Ganga and Jamuna remain dirty and get filthier by the day. A Ganga Development Authority exists or used to be in existence, with plush offices in barracks in Man Singh Road on New Delhi with a senior IAS office as the boss with excellent paper work on his work or lack of it. But that is how authorities work, with their perks, be it tea in porcelain and tours around the world to learn how to clean up rivers: nothing more, nothing less.
There are obvious limits to any human endeavor in spite of the best will in the world. Man or woman is known to have crossed barriers and frontiers in land sea, air and space where no one before could or would tread. Lion hearts, penguins or Polar bears may survive in ice caps or the Arctic and the Antarctica and science and technology may have learnt to cross the sound barrier and space barrier. Yet the possible is often impossible, given the human psyche.
It is in this light that laws remain on paper and remain unimplemented from time immemorial; until they become time barred and irrelevant and new circumstances create a new set of laws even as old ones are amended or repealed. Yet the clamor for action continues from self appointed guardians of public interest. These are the people who point to the frailty of governance institutions beyond national and other boundaries and invoke even international authorities with occasional success, but normally the lack of it.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel