Great Laws, Not In Practice Though
Besides having played pivotal roles in India’s freedom struggle, Mahatma Karamchand Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, have one thing in common. They were all law graduates. For a nation which became Independent with the help of legal luminaries of such stature, the benefits of law should have trickled right down till the common man.
Today, six and a half decade later, on India’s 65th Independence Day, the common perception being the law being followed is yet the British law, which is “obsolete and impracticable” and “should have been changed years back,” going by popular urban feel. Back in rural India that comprises a huge three-fourths of India, the law and its changes just haven’t been able to make contact leave aside achieving expected results.
Back in the interiors of vibrant, ‘rich’ Gujarat – in the impoverished Panchmahals and Dangs, zamindari and the ignoble caste system continue to rule the roost. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 that prevents the practice of untouchability and prescribes “a punishment of imprisonment for a term of not less than one month and not more than six months and also with fine which shall not be less than one hundred rupees and not more than five hundred rupees,” is unheard of in these quarters. A law created in post-Independent India exists and for all practical purposes too but simply fails in execution for want of will.
Immediately on the heels of “Kem Cho?” that translates into “How do you do?” follows a customary “Tame Shi Naath Na,” which translates into “What caste do you belong to?” Sadly, caste plays a pivotal role in Western India especially in Rajasthan and Gujarat where the extremes in socio-economic strata are unsightly and too far to bridge. Identifying one’s caste is the pre-requisite to any kind of communication or interaction – verbal or otherwise.
In urban India where the rule of law seems apparent to the extent of being obvious, it’s oddly…the educated who continue to break the law offering lame excuses too. Female foeticide and female infanticide, arguably the most heinous of crimes stemming from a barbaric urge for the male child and a socio-economic compulsion to avoid the female child to dodge dowry-linked expenditure, continues to persist throughout India despite laws to stem it, well in place.
Rajasthan has registered cases of female infants found suffocated to death in upturned earthen pots filled with sand submerged below the ground. Why, just recently, a newly-delivered baby girl was abandoned in a hospital in Mumbai by a mother who refused to accept the baby as her own. She claimed that she had delivered a baby boy and that the boy had been replaced with a girl.
Now, despite the hospital having undertaken DNA tests of both the baby girl and the mother which matched setting the issue to rest, the mother refused to accept the child. The deplorable situation was sparked by the fact that the child born was a female. For a mother to refuse to accept her own new-born would require a lot of social baggage and blackmail to push her into a denial mode as drastic as this.
Post-colonial India has the laws to prevent female infanticide that include even a Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act that may have officially been put into place but sadly still needs public acceptance.
India, known then as the land of snake-charmers and elephants, has hurtled ahead in economic spheres but continues to lag behind where socio-legal changes need to be effected. Social welfare legislations and amendments to set the statutes right and ‘plug’ loopholes only exist on paper. The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954 notwithstanding, the host of advertisements claiming all kinds of magical cures and remedies to diseases of all sorts continue to make their appearances on the walls of railway compartments, bus-stops, public places, toilets, newspaper columns, online forums et al., with wild abandon.
There have been a string of laws, judgments and amendments that have shined in their sheer brilliance…on paper though! At grass-root level though, things are quite different. Corruption continues to grow at a rate that matches growth in post-Independent India.
The Environment Protection Act notwithstanding, huge stretches of tree-cover and vegetation are razed to the ground to accommodate the surge in commercial activity. At the grassroots level, ‘Development’ isn’t perceived in as holistic a manner as the law-makers do. Legislation apart, the common man’s immediate needs are given preference over his larger needs. Like, for instance, if a green-belt has to be replaced with a concrete structure, right from the corporator down to the civic authority everyone will work around-the-clock to bend the law, find the loophole and get the job done.
There are usually no attempts to work within the parameters of the law in full faith that it has been enforced keeping the wider public interest in mind. The tendency has led to the extinction of green patches all over the city that have been replaced by a concrete jungle devoid of fresh air for ventilation and the normal cool otherwise available. Temperatures have risen and so have costs of concrete structures offering ‘natural environs’ which have become a rarity and subsequently a high-priced additive for home-buyers.
Going by legends of Ramayan wherein birds and monkeys assist Lord Rama in his battle and subsequent victory against Ravana, and fables wherein God is perceived to be in animals and birds, we shouldn’t have needed The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act to stem violence against animals. But the Act apart, there are innumerable incidents of cruelty to animals that include physical cruelty to stray cats and dogs; using animals for the purpose of road tricks; displaying ‘freak’ cows with extra limbs to eke out a living and more.
In a paradox of sorts, with the number of cases that continue to challenge and re-examine the statute, the laws in free and independent India have got honed and polished over the years, courtesy the surge in precedents and brilliant judgments that occur around the clock, but don’t reach out to the millions who actually ‘need’ them.
