Modi’s barb on ‘five-star activism’ finds its target
Angry voices from expected quarters are being heard over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s caution to the judiciary to guard against being influenced by perceptions that “five-star activists” create on issues before the courts. The Prime Minister was addressing a joint conference of Chief Justices and Chief Ministers in Delhi on Sunday. Mr Modi’s critics are holding the remark to show that the Prime Minister is ‘opposed’ to public interest litigations and other cases that can put the Government on the mat, and also to demonstrate that the Government he leads is intolerant to dissent. The reality is less sensational and even less outrageous. Mr Modi was referring to a spate of cases that were and are being pursued in the courts by parties whose only interest has been to somehow throw a spanner in the legitimate process of Government decision-making and emerge as champions of the lesser privileged. Such individuals and non-Government organisations have an agenda of their own, which will not always stand up to bipartisan scrutiny. The Prime Minister has merely underlined what is rampant, and the judiciary knows it well enough, which is why Chief Justice of India later remarked that a mechanism existed to handle such instances. Judges, like other people, are exposed to opinions that well-connected activists — either misguided or having knowingly taken on a negative programme — manage to create in the public domain. With a 24x7 media hungry for breaking news, these activists — ‘five star’ because they operate in the rarefied environs of influence although they claim to be connected to the grassroots — often succeed in shaping completely misleading and mischievous perceptions in people’s mind. Judges can feel the pulls and pressures which result thereafter. While it must be acknowledged that our judiciary has, by and large, remained immune to extraneous influences, propaganda has worked at times.
Just as it would be wrong to infer from the Prime Minister’s comment that he is against people-friendly activism, it would be erroneous to assume that Mr Modi has cast aspersions on the integrity of the judiciary. On the contrary, he had remarked that the judges were engaged in a “divine” task, and that, being the last hope of the aggrieved, they must rise to the challenge. He was right in saying, “If the Government commits a fault, we have you to correct us. But you cannot be afford to be seen in the wrong.” The Prime Minister had only re-phrased the ‘Caesar’s wife should be seen as being above suspicion’ maxim, and one fails to understand where the intent of interference in the judiciary is. His call for a greater level of scrutiny, transparency and accountability in the justice system can be viewed in two ways, and both are not to the exclusion of each other. The first is to do with the Government’s commitment to the new mechanism for the selection of judges, which will replace the collegium system. The second aspect is that the political class, through the Election Commission of India, the Right to Information and other forms of checks and balances, is perhaps more ‘regulated’ than the judiciary. It’s a gentle hint, and none should take umbrage by misinterpreting the thought as a idea to ‘rein in’ the country’s free and vibrant judiciary.