Mr Prime Minister, Did you sleep well last night ?

Mr Prime Minster,
Did you sleep well last night ? If you did , was it because you stopped watching television? Was it because the Indian media chose not to highlight the plight of families of over 4000 workers detained in Dubai ? Was it because these 4000 odd people were not accused of terrorism and therefore did not deserve to have their share of your sleepless nights ? Was it because these poor workers had no articulate English speaking wives, to explain their viewpoint to media?


ps : Is it surprising to see that the BBC does not seem to report that any one was detained. It has a bland news item. What a contrast to its coverage of the Gurgaon Honda Strike

Regional Parties Bachao Front

There has been a call from the highest level for a two party system in the country. This has set alarm bells ringing in the head quarters of the regional parties. They have now united under a single banner to safe guard their interest.

The Regional Parties Bachao Front ( RPBF) have been strongly opposed to the unrestricted entry of national parties in elections. Meanwhile several national parties have entered the election frey and are expanding their operations aggressively. These developments in the regional politics are having an adverse impact on a large section of people who are represented by regional parties across the country. In this backdrop the Regional Parties Bachao Front is putting forward a proposal to adopt stringent regulations on the entry on national parties in various states.

• The RPBF proposes that a system of licensing should be introduced for national parties. Any national party contesting more that a specified number of seats needs a license from local licensing board.
• A dedicated committee/board/department should be set up by the local bodies, with representation from regional parties, which should be empowered to grant licenses to national parties.
• Licenses should be given on the basis of a population criterion, i.e. not more than X number of national party candidates per Y population. The criteria may vary between states and cities depending upon the nature of the elections and the votes needs.
• Besides a system of licensing for national parties, a number of steps need to be taken by the Government to prevent the emergence of monopolies of national parties in elections. A single national party should not be allowed to capture a large vote share share. For this it is important to restrict the number of candidates that a single party can field in a city, state as well as region.
• In order to prevent the development of big national party monopolies, it is also important for the Government to ensure its presence in the elections. Several regional parties have become defunct , which need to be revived. Government should fund these parties. Partnerships between existing regional parties can also be considered, in areas where synergies exist.

I can already hear screams from my fellow country men that this restricts the choice that our voters will have. My fellow country men would also argue that the intelligent Indian voter can be trusted to keep the regional parties alive, just to keep the national parties in check etc.

So my question to my fellow country men is, if the above proposal sounds ridiculous from the voters view point why is not this proposal ridiculous?. This restricts the voters ( and non voters) economic choice. Why are we slow to condemn proposals that restrict choice in the economic space, but are quick to condemn restrictions of choice in the political space?

Water Woes

The Cauvery tribunal took 16 years to reach a verdict and as expected it hasn't satisfied all the parties concerned. Karnataka feels let down, so does Kerala. So far Tamil Nadu seems happy with the verdict but I expect in the coming days they too will feel cheated ( or at least pretend to feel cheated). The verdict is in, but the issue has not gone away and it would be a miracle if it goes away. At the root of the dispute, is the question of how the water in river should be shared.

My take on the issue is that there are two different questions in this issue and resolution is possible if they are separated. The first question is who owns the water ? The second question is who should be allowed to use it ?

The answer to the second question is simpler. People who are willing to pay get to use the water. There are broadly two types of users. Those that use the water for navigation, fishing, recreation etc and those that use for irrigation,industry and domestic purposes. The first set of users do not lessen the quantity of water by their usage. The second set do lessen the quantity of water by using it. The first set should probably be pay an annual fixed price and the second set should pay in proportion to the usage.


The first question is more complex. Going forward, we can expect water to become a sufficiently scarce commodity. The aim of defining the ownership of water, should be to encourage increasing the amount of water that is available in the river. The main contributors to increasing the amount of water in the river would be communities in the catchment area & communities in the flow area. These communities should own the water in the river. They should be allowed to manage the flow ( through Dams etc ), use the water & sell the water. Land ownership in these areas could be used as proxies for arriving at water ownership with higher weight given to lands in catchment areas.

End of Legislative Majoritarianism ?

The judgement of the nine judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, regarding the acts in ninth schedule, has now opened the acts that were beyond judicial scrutiny to judicial challenges. The Bench held that all such laws included in the Ninth Schedule after April 24, 1973 would be tested individually on the touchstone of violation of fundamental rights or the basic structure doctrine.

From what I can glean, the land ceiling acts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh,Karnataka, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Assam (or shall I say every state's land ceiling act ? ) is now open for scrutiny. So too are the urban land ceiling acts (ULCA) . The fifty year saga of curtailment of property rights now has some hope of being reversed.

Also it opens up for scrutiny The Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act,The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act,The Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act,The Essential Commodities Act. It also potentially nullifies Tamil Nadu's law to circumvent the 50% reservation limit. Here is a complete list ( Word Doc) of acts in the ninth schedule. My interpretaion is that all acts, starting with 67. The Andhra Pradesh Land Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings) Act, 1973, would be open for scrutiny.

The worst acts in India, in terms of curtailment of freedom have always found their way into the Ninth Schedule. Any one remember the dreaded MISA (The Maintenance of Internal Security Act) ? It was under this schedule that it found sanctuary. So too the The Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act, 1976, which attempted to curb the freedom of the Press.

This judgment taken along with the famous basic structure of the Constitution judgement ensures that the Constitution of India will be not be subject to legislative majoritarianism. It adds some welcome rigidity to the Constitution as far as guarantee of Fundamental Rights are concerned. If this judgement were not there, nothing really stops, say a fundamentalist party with a brutal parliamentary majority, from changing India's constitution to make it less secular & hiding that piece of legislation under the ninth schedule.

Just as the abrogation of property rights has come back to bite the very people it was supposed to help [ Refer earlier post on property rights ], any attempt to undermine the spirit of these judgements, will come back to bite at a later date.

Singur Row & Fundamental right to property

The Singur row is interesting not just because of the strange set of bedfellows it is producing ( Tatas, Sitaram Yechury & Co on one side ranged against Medha Patkar, Rajnath Singh & the BJP, Arundathi Roy, Mamta Didi et al ) but because of where this whole ability of government to usurp property comes from.

It started with the First amendment to the Constitution in 1951 which inserted article 31A. This article allowed government to take over any estate/property by passing laws. The underlying idea for this was to introduce the Land Ceiling acts. Better still was the article 31B, which created the ninth schedule and stated that acts placed in that Schedule(i.e the Land Ceiling acts) would not be open for judicial review.

All would have been hunky dory, only the courts intervened on the ground of inadequacy of compensation. So various amendments were tried till in 44th Amendment, the right to property was altogether dropped. Instead you got Article 300A which stated that persons are not to be deprived of property save by authority of law. This article does not mention that such deprivation can only occur for public purpose or that compensation should be paid.


So what started as attempt to take away from the rich and give to poor has come a full circle. What is the way out of the mess ? Bring back fundamental right to property. Let people decide if they would rather sell their land or continue using it as they deem fit.