Apex court needs to reappraise access
The Supreme Court’s March 19 order resuscitating the writ petition filed by Delhi-based advocate Sandeep Parekh and two students challenging the February 5 order of the Union ministry of human resource development slashing the annual tuition-cum-residence fee of the Indian Institutes of Management by 80 percent to a uniform Rs.30,000, has offered a glimmer of hope that the globally reputed IIMs will retain their much-prized autonomy.
However given that on February 27, the apex court had upheld the fees-slash order of the ministry, none of the actors in this drama enacted on the national stage which has outraged right-thinking citizens who grasp the implications of incremental government interference in institutions of academic excellence, has acquitted himself creditably. The burden of the petitioners’ case is that the fees reduction order of February 5 is the thin end of a thick wedge which will prise open a window of opportunity for levelling-down bureaucrats of the HRD ministry to create their own fiefdoms within the IIMs.
But it’s perhaps a sign of things to come that during the February 27 hearing Chief Justice V.N. Khare opined that the Rs.1.5 lakh annual tuition-cum-residence fee payable by IIM students restricted admission only to the elite. Quite evidently the learned judge had not read large swathes of the petition which highlights that long-term loans are easily available to students admitted into the IIMs and that these graduates command start-up salaries of Rs.6-8 lakh per annum. Nor did the three wise men on the bench accord any weightage to the dicta of the 11-bench judgement of the apex court in the watershed T.M.A Pai Foundation Case (2002) which observed that merit ranks in competitive public exams are usually bagged by students from rich urban families who can afford top-rung English medium schools and private tuitions from professional coaching classes which prepare them for competitive public examinations. One hopes these arguments will be pressed.
And since the issue of accessibility hurts the judicial conscience of Chief Justice Khare in particular so deeply, he might do well to look into the mechanics of the moribund judicial system over which he presides. For one, the law’s delay in India is unmatched by any professedly democratic nation. Secondly, India is perhaps the only nation worldwide which levies a tax on justice by way of court fees in civil litigation. Third, despite decades of talking about it, the poor have no access to legal aid in a system in which the lawyers’ fraternity is complicit with a bribes-hungry bureaucracy and (a judicially admitted) corrupt lower judiciary, in ripping off the public. Instead of breast-beating about the prospect of poor but meritorious students being denied entry into the IIMs — a remote possibility — the learned chief justice would do well to look into his own fiefdom where the denial of justice to all but the very rich is an open, uninterrupted and continuous scandal.
Robust example of cricket greens
The competitive yet sporting spirit in which the historic Indo-Pakistan one-day international test matches are being played in Pakistan provide an object lesson not only to sportspeople and students, but also to squabbling politicians on both sides of the border. In this age of television which tempts talented and therefore well-remunerated sports personalities to assume demigod status and play to populist galleries, the thus far exemplary conduct of players in both squads is a timely reminder of the virtues of the olympian ideal of hard on-field competition and off-field respect, if not camaraderie.
Indeed the current tour of the Indian cricket team to Pakistan — the first in 15 years — lays many myths rooted in the demonisation of the other propagated by politicians and sleazy arms merchants who derive considerable mileage by keeping Indo-Pak relations on the boil, to rest. For one, it is possible for the two nations not only to play but also to parley, and do business with each other to the mutual benefit of their people. After all it was the ping-pong diplomacy of the 1970s which broke the ice and precipitated the thaw in Sino-American diplomatic and trade relations resulting in the quantum growth leap of the Chinese economy to current super-power status.
Likewise half-a-century after the two nations wrested independence from British rule while suffering the bloody aftermath of partition, it is high time that their people — among the poorest and most deprived in the world — enjoy the peace dividend. This requires the diplomatic and trade negotiation teams of the two nations to exhibit the same mutual respect which the Indian and Pakistan teams have for each other on the cricket greens. Though they may — and indeed should — negotiate hard for national advantage, the rules of the game(s) have to be scrupulously observed in a spirit of give and take.
In effect President Musharraff’s contention that Kashmir is a core issue has to be accommodated in the Indo-Pak diplomatic parleys which have been resumed recently. It has been often argued in these columns that the 600 sq. km Muslim majority Kashmir Valley does not warrant the annual arms and armaments expenditure aggregating Rs.100,000 crore which has cut social sector spending in the subcontinental neighbours to the bone, and has resulted in the continuous immiserisation of more than a billion people. It’s absurd to argue or believe that a mutually acceptable solution of the Kashmir conundrum cannot be negotiated given respectful accommodation and out-of-the-box thinking on both sides. Indeed as the larger and economically more powerful nation, India should be willing to be more accommodating on the Kashmir issue.
The significance of the current indo-pak cricket series is that it demonstrates that it is possible for representatives of the two nations to do business with each other. The cricketers’ lead needs to be followed by the overrated and hitherto ineffectual diplomatic and trade negotiators of the two nations whose severely short-changed people need to harvest the peace dividend.