Swarajya, May 9, 1964
Between ourselves, honest voter, these private monopolies created by the pernicious system of permits, licences, quotas and controls (to be extended now even to foreign capital which voluntarily comes into the private sector) make the Congress Party's rich friends richer, and the poor poorer. It is a close conspiracy; we have a battle between money and liberty, between dharma and atheism, between freedom and communism clothed in Congress robes.
More than one leading organ of non-partisan public opinion advise calm reconsideration and deprecate hasty procedure in respect of the Seventeenth Amendment. Under the caption, “Accidentally Right,” the Hindustan Times wrote editorially on April 29: “The objection which has been taken (to the 17th Amendment) is not so much to land reform in principle as to the range of the protection given to legislation struck down by the highest judicial authority *** That members were busy outside recording their votes in elections to various important committees was no justification for absence from the House when a Bill to amend the Constitution came up for voting. That the justification was in fact offered reflected a cavalier approach to the process of Constitutional Amendment which should cause concern. The result however is that members, and particularly those on the Government benches, will now have plenty of time to take a close second look at the Bill and see if it is really necessary”.
The Hindu, pre-eminent daily paper of the ryotwari region in India, devotes its editorial on the 30th April to the collapse of the Seventeenth Constitutional Amendment, in the course of which it says: “Millions of honest farmers all over the country will rejoice over the fact that temporarily at any rate, this obnoxious measure has been snuffed out”.
Like the Hindustan Times of Delhi, the Hindu also hopes that “this opportunity for re-examining the Bill will be availed of by the party (Congress) to manifest … respect for the opinion of the Opposition and of the interests concerned”.
While the independent press of the country is expressing anxiety that “members in Parliament should take a serious attitude towards constitutional or other measures which have far--reaching implications for the welfare of the people and the basic rights of citizens”, the ruling party seems bent on getting a simple majority vote of the House for suspension of rules in order to rush the constitutional amendment, taking it through all the prescribed stages, during the present session of Parliament. While the Constitution-makers deliberately laid down special hurdles to make such amendments not too easy, the ruling party seeks to misuse its majority to suspend even the normal provisions of procedure, which obtain in all democratic parliaments to restrain hasty reversals of verdicts once recorded after full debate. Instead of all this dilatory procedure, our eminent Law Minister may bring in a simple Bill, viz., an amendment of Article 368 itself, so as to get it enacted that when the President issues a prescribed certificate on the advice of his ministers, a vote less than the ratios prescribed in Article 368 shall be deemed, with retro-active effect, to be a vote satisfying the provisions of that Article. Such an amendment would not be less scandalous than the proposed suspension of the ordinary rules of procedure to enable going through all the stages of passing a law on the strength of the dead Amendment’s past history. A dilatory rule prescribed for even normal legislation should in principle receive greater respect where a constitutional amendment affecting fundamental rights is involved. The Hindu points out that 1,36,000 protest representations were received by the Select Committee on the Bill and asks how many members of the ruling party cared to find out the import of these protests. “Above all,” says the Hindu, never too much in a hurry to find fault with the ruling party, “the preposterousness of the procedure of extinguishing a whole series of rights in every category of land by the semantic trick of widening the definition of ‘estate’ to cover everything from waste land to zamindaris does not seem to have disturbed the conscience of most members of the Congress Party. Unless the party looks upon Tuesday’s unexpected debacle as a providential opportunity far doing genuine rethinking on the whole question of how to harmonize land reform with the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution and without doing violence to basic canons of fairness and justice, it may be acting like the Bourbons who learnt nothing and forgot nothing”.
Responsible organs of public opinion have given sound advice. But it remains to be seen what weight it carries with a party which appears to have resolved on obtaining drilled votes by compulsion and doing away with rules of procedure as well as fundamental rights on the strength of such whip-driven votes. Mysindia winds up its editorial with these strong words: “It was hoped that the set-back to their plans would induce the High Command to give the matter a second thought. But it has been announced with the minimum of delay that they intend to bring in the Bill again. This is in line with the budget, which seems to express a desperate determination to destroy the system of private property as quickly as possible. In view of the stagnation of the economy, as a direct consequence of the earlier steps in that direction, desperate is the right word. Whom the Gods intend to destroy they first make mad”.
[After the front page article was set up, it transpires that the Government has decided not to ask for a suspension of rules but to re-introduce the 17th Amendment at a special session of Parliament to be convened in the last week of this month. It is a small mercy for which some thanks are due. But the main offence remains.—C.R.]
