Ironically, Law!

My recent studies into the finer points of our country’s polity revealed me some appalling facts that I felt sharing with everybody else. One thing in the start I would like to mention is that polity is not politics. Polity is Political Science, the study of realm of Legislature that has been making the written rules by which this country is ruled. These are Laws that govern our freedoms, our livelihoods, our businesses and our rights to a fulfilling life, so basically something not to be messed with. But since Legislation or Law making is the ‘Job Profile’ we assign to our beloved (sic) politicians, they do bring in an element of politics in the polity, which so to say have introduced some very weird situations in some spheres. Another actor in the stage I would like to mention is our Hon’ble Supreme Court which is like monitor of the class that constantly does the function of making sense of the laws that Parliament makes and it has been doing a commendable job in its sphere so far.

Starting with the a very queer sounding policy called Policy of Carry Forward made in year 2000 through a Constitutional Amendment act, is one example of how impractical the things can go. Most of us would know that reservation in recruitments cannot go beyond 50% of total seats as per the constitutional guidelines. But this policy says it can be violated. In a nutshell it says that for SC/ST quota in Govt jobs that remain vacant after the recruitments, the vacancies will not be shifted to other categories like General or OBC. Rather they will be carried forward to the next year’s recruitments. That means if every year for a 100 total seats, 22 (15+7) are reserved for SC+STs and out of these 6 (4+2) remain vacant, then next year the vacancies would be 106 and reserved being 28 (22+6). This ratio here goes to 51.8% of seats reserved (also adding 27 of OBC seats to 28 here). Now this trend shows that if it continues every year, the seats of reserved categories will increase, by the year every year. It seems to be a worrisome trend for sure. And from what I came across, it has shown its colours. For a particular post in DU Faculty, there was a case where the number of SC/ST seats for one year equalled those for General Category seats…………totalled for 10 years!!!

In the pursuit of providing equal opportunities to the socially and economically backward sections, this seems to be a well done effort as provided as a Constitutional directive. Well ironically, one of the five considerations the Constitution mentions that Government has to take while reserving seats is, “Reservation policy shouldn’t affect the overall efficiency of the administration”, (stated Indira Sawhney v/s UOI, 1993 case) But at the same time mentions special provisions that exclude super speciality institutes like R&D institutions, military and medicine. Talking about double standards.

Another very interesting law is one given by SC & ST Atrocities (Prevention) Act, 1989 which has a little flaw. In one case there were two magistrates that were booked under this act for not taking due action on an application to remedy a person belonging to SC category, which was seen as an atrocity against him. That said, one of those magistrates was let off, simply due to the reason that he himself belonged to SC category, and according to the act, atrocity can be only committed by a non-SC person to a SC person and not by one SC to another SC. It seems hard to believe such a law being made at the first place, but yes it is there. Hon’ble Supreme Court pled the Parliament to review this act and make suitable changes, though.

I conclude by saying that reading through the various acts, articles, bills, etc I feel that as a part of nation building, painstaking effort has been taken to make a written compilation of rules that give is so many freedoms and opportunities to live a dignified, prospering life but sadly the spirit of letter has got left on the paper itself. I mentioned here only two acts that seem out of place but there are 2000 more that give us the law and land in pursuit of a civilized society. Laws are not the same as applied out there, we know. And even the Constitution isn’t a PDF document. It can be amended, re-interpreted and re-applied. Therein lays the hope that we can change where we started this nation from: The Constitution of India.

Ironically, Law!