You don`t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
It is an interesting pattern. When non-Congress governments are in power at the Centre, which is not often, the Supreme Court comes into conflict with the executive. But when Congress governments are in power, it is the legislature with which it has skirmishes.
This was demonstrated once again last week in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation case. A 11-judge bench ruled that unaided colleges were under no obligation to have quotas dictated by the government. The MPs went on a verbal rampage once again against the Supreme Court, prompting the Court to say that the government could shut down all the courts, if it so liked.
Leader writers thanked allah, for here was an easy one in which you could write what is called a nuanced edit - yes, no maybe, but, and after all. My hopes were not dashed. Everyone lived up to expectation, choosing to generalise, rather than focus on the very specific issue, namely, can governments decide the disposition of private property, which is what unaided colleges are.
The first off was the Indian Express, which wrote two edits on the subject: one the week before the last, and one last week. The first one applauded the decision; the second one discussed the caveats to be applied to the first one. As they say in law, the two read together suggested warm feet growing colder.
Thus, the first one said, "The Supreme Court`s judgment that unaided and aided minority and non-minority professional institutions had rights to admit students of their choice is a step in the right direction… it is a good beginning… Merely denying institutions autonomy over some basic decisions achieved neither excellence nor greater access."
The second one said, "While the Court`s overall attempt to deregulate the admissions process is welcome, it makes two sets of associations that are conceptually unwarranted. There may be an independent argument against reservations, but it is too facile to suggest that reservations are, by definition an anti-merit principle. The fact that reservations entail a compromise with strict indices of merit, does not automatically entail that they are anti-meritocratic."
As Kishore Kumar sang long ago, arre wahwahwah, arre wahwahwah!
The Telegraph chose to discuss the general issue of Court vs Others, as did The Hindu. Neither had anything more than the obvious to say on the topic. The former wrote that "the balance of power between the government and the judiciary, or rather, among the executive, legislature and the judiciary, has long been less than perfect, with the court emerging often as the strongest voice." It added ponderous that "The correctness of law and the nuances of politics need not be placed contrariwise; there must also be a space where they meet. It might help preserve the balance of power."
Really? Who would have known?
The Hindu was also careful. But it did make the most important point, namely, that it was the responsibility of the state to provide for education to all and if it failed to do so in adequate measure, it could not muscle into what private capital was doing to meet the gap between demand and supply.