Editorial 'SHARING SOVEREIGNTY' in Law Animated World, 15 August 2009 issue. Volume 5: Part 2, No: 15

SHARING SOVEREIGNTY

Courtesy: Reliance Industries Ltd. British North Sea Oil Platform; Courtesy: Wikipedia
on acceptable lines and satisfactory terms between the States and the Union is quite essential if even the quasi-federalism as existing now in our country is to survive and continue without calamitous crises. It is to be regretted that once Pakistan was a certainty, our constitution framers, in an over-reaction, adopted a basically centralist constitution ignoring the federal sentiments prevailing among other sections of the people of India. As a result of the current constitution, the States are left with nothing but sand and small stones to feed their mouths with all major minerals allotted to the Union share. All the residual powers which were originally intended to reside in States were taken away to strengthen the Union. And Article 297 vests all powers over the territorial waters and resources thereof exclusively in the Union and the Apex Court has also opined that natural gas in any form is an exclusive central subject, even overriding the item 25 of the States List. There is nothing akin to American federalism where Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas up to 3 nautical miles is the exclusive preserve of the State of Texas. The dispute over the natural resources in territorial waters is raging in Britain too and no wonder if the Scottish demands for independence over North Sea Oil disputes alleging that England is depriving her of billions of pounds of oil and gas revenues, to the tune of £2300 per a Scot per year, and that Scotland would be happier and better developed if freed from the clutches of the Union, also crop up in our country in no distant future though it is not sure how democratically our Union would deal with such demands. The present controversy about the Krishna Godavari Basin Oil and Natural Gas reserves and the injustice being done to the State of Andhra Pradesh in not paying any royalties and not allocating needed volumes of gas for its industries and domestic supply purposes is but an indication in that direction ...

India: Teachers who gang-raped their own students linked to Modi government

India: Teachers who gang-raped their own students linked to Modi government

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People invent a new magic weapon: the shoe

People invent a new magic weapon: the shoe

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Editorial, 'MACAULAY'S MEN', in the 31 July 2009 issue of LAW

MACAULAY’S MEN

Even Thomas Babington Macaulay, an avowed imperialist, who worked for the creation of “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect,” through the introduction of English education in India, was careful to state the compulsion: “We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language.” And he considered English better suited than Arabic/Sanskrit for the purpose and proceeded – that resulting in the formation of the English educated baboodom in India as faithful servant of the British Rule. We know what enormous sufferings and humiliations we had to undergo in the struggle for our independence and how thousands of freedom fighters had sacrificed their tan-man-dhan for the cause. Since no self-respecting country or nation can/would ever develop without shedding the colonial/foreign domination trappings and all the developed countries have so progressed due to literature and education prospering in their own mother tongues, it was presumed that once we become free, our national languages will take the place of English and that would be a sure way to success of our collective striving for social justice and all-round development. But, alas, that has not come to be because of the machinations of Macaulay’s Men entrenched in the country’s elite – that despite the constitutional mandates to promote Hindi and other regional languages and ‘restrict’ the use of English. Now it is sad to note that in making an unwarranted observation recently, hinting that if the kids are not taught in English medium, they would eventually be not fit even for clerical jobs, even our superior judges have degraded themselves. They ought to have remembered at least Gandhiji’s outburst: “To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them. The foundation that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. … It is we, the English-knowing men, that have enslaved India…” if not the more reasoned and widely accepted opinions of Tagore, Zakir Husain, Radhakrishnan, and so many other eminent persons who guided our country’s ‘tryst with destiny’. §§§

Editorial, LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME, in 15 July 2009, Vol. 5, Part 2, No. 13 issue of LAW ANIMATED WORLD.

LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

has at last been judicially recognized, albeit by only one High Court in India, and approved as part of a person’s right to live with personal liberty and privacy. Socratic love was said to have incensed God who poured down fires of hell and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah according to the conservative version and, ever since, the same sex love came to be shunned and banned in the Western world. There is no instance of explicit prohibition of the same in the Hindu culture though certain punishments have been prescribed for same sex practices in Manu Smriti, which Code, incidentally, is reviled by many of the dalit and downtrodden sections in our country. Scholarly studies did not find any plausible grounds to substantiate the Biblic or Islamic versions of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and even indicate the possibility of natural catastophes behind it, but right from the Justinian prohibition up to the incarceration of Oscar Wilde the Western world did not seem to recover from this trauma. Wilde was but one champion of the gay rights movement we may say, and ever since the Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights movement has gained currency first in the West and slowly all over the world, and liberal sections of the society are more and more coming to view these ‘deviations’ as but ‘natural variations’ of sexual urges and manifestations in human society. In India replete with superstitions and blind hatreds between communities, the third sex, as they are called, have always been subject to much social revulsion and ostracism, which course needs correction – especially, in the mindsets of a majority of the people. Already we see conservative religious, communal and political sections up in arms against this salutary decision promoting the fundamental right to life and gender equality and the ball now seems to be in the Supreme Court. We have all the confidence in the humane and liberal essence of our apex court and hope it would surely not reverse but affirm this much-needed liberal, humane correction to a superstitious legal cum socio-political blunder.   §§§

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Editorial: 'LALGADH: A 'LEFTIST' LETDOWN in Law Animated World, Vol. 5, Part 1, No. 12, 30 June 2009 issue

LALGADH: A ‘LEFTIST’ LETDOWN

A basically political animal he is, this editor has been keenly enquiring about the socio-economic developments, and the pros and cons of the left front government, during his frequent trips to Bengal ever since 1985. It was appalling to find that save for the initial radical measures to better the deprived share-croppers and empower rural masses to an extent, no other welfare/construction schemes were taken in a big way there. For instance, there have been no large-scale housing schemes for the poor and lower middle classes and whatever low/middle income group colonies exist are all conceived, planned and built during the good old B.C. Roy era. Even the prestigious Salt Lake, which the leftists so vociferously opposed those days but so luxuriously populate these days, was the vision and work of B.C. Roy. The public distribution system there is woeful. So, the plight of the more distressed rural masses and tribals could be easily imagined and all said and done, the non-communist southern states’ governments were administering better, in a more social welfarist manner. No wonder the Left Front began to rapidly lose support among the urban masses first and now, due to its about-turn-policies of supporting the LPG policies, even in rural areas. The recent rebellion in Lalgadh, once a left front stronghold but now considered a Maoist citadel, illustrates the tragic consequences of this ‘leftist letdown’. But, beware Maoists, their glee at the predicament of the parliamentary left there may also not be conducive to people’s real interests. More distressing is that by such precipitation of events, and due to their violent armed actions – and that unmindful of the recent international developments, especially the debacle of the LTTE and the crisis in Nepal – they have given occasion to the central government to outlaw them all over India and this would certainly damage their prospects considerably, though not totally. Their belligerent actions and attitudes may not win them the hearts and minds of the masses at large and would in noway further any common leftist ideal of establishment of democratic socialism in the country either.   §§§