This essay describes and compares Parliament and the Supreme Court and examines the relationship between them. Parliament may still be a great institution, but its members are no longer great men. How long can a great institution remain great in the hands of small men? The SC has held its place in the public esteem rather better than the Lok Sabha, despite the occasional allegation of financial impropriety. Parliament, the...

The joint committee for drafting the Lokpal bill has, among other things, brought much attention to lawmaking itself. What indeed is the process of enacting a law? And what therein are the points of engagement with citizens and civil society? A government bill may be introduced by a minister, and a private member bill by any member of Parliament. We focus here on government bills, as private member bills have rarely...

The two most important national level committees responsible for wildlife conservation in India are increasingly being turned into rubber stamps for whatever officialdom wants done. The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) has become a forum to greenwash a host of ‘development’ projects that threaten wildlife habitats, while the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) continues to steamroller a blinkered model of conservation. In both, civil society members have been reduced to either...

Joint drafting panel on Lokpal Bill holds second meeting; public consultations after agreement on basic principles In the second round of discussions in the joint drafting committee on the Lokpal Bill here on Monday, members of civil society invoked the United Nations Convention on Corruption to stress that the underlying principle of the anti-corruption law should be to have an independent body that covers the highest executive and the judiciary. The...

The Lok Pal (anti-corruption body) Bill has generated widespread interest in the past few days. The Bill is an attempt by the government, under massive pressure due to corruption charges, to gain some of its lost ground. However, civil rights activists, including Anna Hazare, Swami Agnivesh, Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal, have termed the draft legislation as weak and demanded that fifty per cent of the members in the committee drafting...