The constitution of India was promulgated as the governance charter of free, independent India on January 26, 1950. However November 28, the day on which the final draft of the Constitution was approved by Parliament in 1949, is celebrated countrywide as Constitution Day. In the last session of Parliament, on its 75th anniversary, the Constitution was the subject of an orderly debate in an otherwise unruly Parliament. Unusually, there was unanimous agreement in the House that the Constitution is a wonderful, near sacred document. Yet the ruling BJP/NDA government and the opposition I.N.D.I.A alliance led by the Congress traded charges as to whether BJP or Congress has inflicted greater damage to the Constitution which since promulgation has been amended 106 times.
Undoubtedly, during the past 75 years considerable damage — in terms of thwarting the collective will of the Constituent Assembly — has been inflicted upon the Constitution. For instance, the right to own and dispose property is no longer a fundamental right; the fundamental right to do business and practice and carry on any occupation, trade or business has been substantially vitiated by licence-permit-quota raj. In general, while political freedom by way of substantially free elections and freedom of speech is a constitutionally guaranteed reality in post-independence India, people’s economic freedoms have been eroded by discretionary State controls and official corruption which has spread unchecked within government. As a result while the Constitution confers impressive fundamental and other rights upon citizens, it has conspicuously failed to protect the dignity of the overwhelming majority of citizens who are obliged to suffer pervasive poverty, insolence of office, the law’s delay and the proud man’s contumely.
The root cause of failure of the Constitution to protect dignity of individual citizens, is failure of the country’s law, order and justice machinery. Burdened by the world’s heaviest judicial case load of 55 million pending cases, the justice machinery has failed under every metric. In terms of ratio of police to population, judges to population, number of courtrooms, prolixity of process, contemporary India is at the bottom of every global league table. Ways and means to revive the law and order machinery and especially the comatose judicial system, have often been proposed on these pages — greater budgetary allocation, improving judges-population ratio, appointment of external management consultancy firms to speed up the justice system, and establishment of a national legal aid fund.
These are not rocket science solutions. Oriental fatalism, middle-class inertia and lack of official and societal will to transform the Constitution from an intellectually satisfying document into a live charter that enhances the dignity of citizens, need to be overcome.