The Big Story: Breach of powers

On Tuesday, the Madras High Court decided to play an activist role to rescue farmers suffering from the acute debt crisis caused by the failure of the monsoons last year. A division bench directed the government to waive all farm loans given by cooperative banks and ensure that the farmers were not harassed by financial institutions to pay back their outstandings.

In the process, the court struck at the heart of a policy that distinguished between farmers by the size of their land holdings: in many previous instances across the country, small farmers have been given relief but those with larger holdings have been held to their responsibilities. The court said this distinction was “arbitrary” and ordered a blanket waiver of all cooperative farm loans.

The judgment will certainly receive popular support, given how farmer protests have become a major talking point in the state over the last two months. In particular, the agitation by a few Tamil Nadu farmers in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, where they have brandished the skulls of cultivators who were allegedly drive to suicide because of their debt burdens, has found support in several parts of the state.

While the court’s desire to help farmers is laudable, is seems to have indulged in a serious breach of constitutional propriety.

When framing the Constitution, the architects made a conscious decision to demarcate the powers of the three wings of the state – executive, legislature and judiciary. Law and policy-making were left in the domain of the first two. The duty of the courts was to ensure that the law of the land was implemented in letter and spirit and constitutional rights of citizens were not violated.

Lawmaking is the domain of the legislature because the elected representatives exercise the will of the people. The executive, in turn, is answerable to the legislature. The checks and balances are such that when the legislature goes against the will of the people, the citizens have the right to remove them from office through the electoral process. The people, on the other hand, have no say in the appointment of judges, who are not elected representatives.

Under such a scheme, the assumption was that the judiciary would know its boundaries and would respect them. But in instances such as judges ordering blanket loan waivers, when courts blatantly take up the role of policy making, jeopardise the functioning of the Constitution. In the Tamil Nadu case, the judgement comes just a month after the state passed its budget, where it made a decision not to announce an all-out farm loan waiver scheme after considering the position of the state finances. When the courts undermine against such considered decisions of the legislatures, they also runs the risk of their own authority being eroded as officials will find it difficult to implement these orders.

The Big Scroll

  • Shoaib Daniyal on why the Supreme Court’s orders are being consistently violated. 
  • Girish Sahane on yet another instance of judicial overreach. 

Pundity

  1. Arun Kumar in The Hindu explains why demonetisation was not able to unearth large sums of black money. 
  2. C Raja Mohan writes in the Indian Express on the needfor reframing the Indo-Bangladesh relationship by making Bengal the central feature. 
  3. Readthe Los Angeles Times’ scathing criticism of the Trump presidency in a series of editorial comments. 

Giggles

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Suryakant Waghmore explains the relationship between vegetarianism and caste.

“Why do vegetarians in India prefer social distance from non-vegetarians? A look at caste-wise food preferences could provide some insights. As is common knowledge, the ranking of castes is mostly influenced by purity of occupation and diet. In caste-society, to achieve purity of body and spirit, it is necessary to be a vegetarian and religious simultaneously – something best embodied by a Brahmin.”