When the Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, defended some of his actions on the grounds that he was “only implementing the laws of the land”, his critics may well have wanted to quote a character of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist who thought “the law is an ass” because of its wrong presuppositions. Any minister or official of the government would be entirely right to defend her actions on the grounds that such actions amounted to no more than an implementation of existing laws. That is why it is important to draft laws carefully and precisely. Normally a Bill brought before Parliament or a state legislature goes through several stages of drafting and vetting that ensure that the final draft would stand the test of time and implementation. A draft Bill originates in a particular department or ministry and then is vetted by the law ministry and the law officers of the government. It is only after their approval is given that the draft Bill is sent to the Union Cabinet for its approval and final placement in Parliament. This cumbersome process is meant to ensure that Bills presented to Parliament are not deficient in any manner.
However, the experience of the past few years suggests that at every stage in the preparation of a Bill, the quality of manpower engaged in the exercise is rapidly declining. Not only are bad Bills getting drafted, but they seem to secure the imprimatur of the law ministry all too easily, with very little professional vetting. They then manage to sail through a Cabinet meeting, with few ministers actually reading the Bills placed before them, and finally get voted in Parliament with hardly any clause-by-clause discussion. The lackadaisical manner in which laws are increasingly drafted and passed may be creating more problems than solving them. That is why few informed persons are any longer willing to accept the kind of defence that Mr Ramesh puts up for his actions when he says his ministry is merely implementing existing laws. It is in their implementation that many laws often get exposed for the inadequacies of their drafting. Indeed, as has recently been shown, badly drafted laws can sometimes not even be implemented because few are willing to act under their ambiguous protection. Consider the case of the nuclear liability Bill. The minister concerned and officials involved in drafting and re-drafting that Bill pretended that in its final shape the Bill had met all the objectives it was meant to. However, after several months of self-congratulation, on the one hand, and below-the-radar marketing of the Bill, on the other, there seem to be no takers because no one likes the badly drafted Bill. Those responsible have deeply embarrassed the government which has so far been unable to find a customer among any of the nuclear powers, who are unwilling to take the word of the law at its face value, and are seeking a variety of clarifications.
An increasing number of Indian laws are marred by such ambiguity because of the incompetence of the law-making machinery. Given this context, few would feel comfortable with the ministerial assurance that what a good government would do is to blindly implement the law. If laws don’t make sense in implementation, they must be changed, not blindly implemented. Rather than proclaim a “rational” offender as a “law-breaker”, it is better for the “irrational” lawmaker to make amends.