Wrong, your honour; not just grain at stake

The Supreme Court has erred by directing the government to distribute rotting food grains to the poor for free. This is so regardless of the government’s response that it would follow the court order. The court is, of course, entirely right to be outraged over grain rotting under government custody even as many people go hungry and some even starve. But this outrage should not allow it to upset the fine balance among the different organs of the state. The court should, ideally, stick strictly to matters of law, leaving policy and administration to the executive, held accountable by the legislature.

It would be wrong for the court to step in to fill the action deficit by the executive and the legislature. Nature abhors a vacuum. So it is with the division of responsibility for governance among the organs of the state, too. When one arm defaults on its responsibilities, others tend to step in, to make good the gap. A short-term gain might arise, but the long-term loss is likely to far outweigh the gain. For example, the Supreme Court suffers, silently, daily contempt when the medley of two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cars and buses that constitutes traffic in Delhi violates the orders of the court on a routine basis with regard to the respective lanes in which each type of vehicle should move.

The government has shown savvy in readily agreeing to comply with the court, and not oppose the directive on grounds of constitutional impropriety. Even if it would be entirely in the right to tell the court to kindly mind its own business while it tends to its, or pays the price for it at the court of the people, it would pick the wrong fight. It is unconscionable that grain is allowed to rot. Inadequate storage is no excuse. Why shouldn’t there be inadequate storage?

If the government, by policy, prohibits private trade from storing more than limited quantities of grain, it has the responsibility to build the requisite storage capacity, or to lease such capacity from the private sector. Failure to that is, indeed, egregious. The entire system of food security is in desperate need of thorough overhaul. How to do that is for the government to decide, not the courts.