#dnaEdit: Move past tokenism

The renewed attempt at repealing antiquated laws in the upcoming winter session of Parliament is welcome. At the moment, it appears to be the turn of inconsequential laws, rendered obsolete either by technological change or Independence in 1947, or superseded by new legislations or subsequent amendments, to face the chopping block. Already a Repealing and Amending Bill to repeal four Acts in their entirety and another 32 Amendment Acts whose changes have been already incorporated into their principal Acts is pending before the Lok Sabha after introduction in the monsoon session. Now the government, through the law ministry, has announced that it intends to repeal as many as 287 obsolete laws. Addressing the NRI crowd at Madison Square Garden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a typical rhetorical flourish, said he would be happiest if he could scrap one archaic law a day. He is not far off the mark as laws like the Ganges Tolls Act, 1857, Acting Judges Act, 1867, Lepers Act, 1894, Vaccination Act, 1880, and various other legislations continue to exist on paper regulating aspects of industry and public life that have no resonance with present times.

The Law Commission of India’s 96th (1984), 148th(1993) and 159th(1998) reports focussed entirely on the repeal and amendment of archaic central laws. In 1998, the Justice PC Jain-headed Commission on Review of Administrative Laws recommended the repeal of a whopping 1,300 of the 2,500 Central laws in force. These included 166 Central Acts, 315 Amendment Acts, 11 British statutes and 17 war-time permanent Ordinances, 114 Central Acts on State List subjects, and 700 Appropriation Acts which sanction expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India for a limited time period. The Vajpayee government responded by repealing 357 of these laws. The Modi government’s decision to resume this process after a decade-long hiatus is clearly a reflection of its strength in Parliament. However, this effort cannot be dubbed a success unless the states follow suit. Many of the laws that affects the lives of citizens are state laws framed on entries in the State List like policing and education. It can be reasonably expected that every state would have around 1,000 of these laws. The dangers posed by archaic state laws to individual freedoms was evident in the manner in which Mumbai’s moral policing cop Vasant Dhoble and others of his ilk relied on unused sections in the Bombay Prohibition Act, 1949, and the Bombay Police Act, 1951, to bust parties, raid bakeries that stocked alcohol used for making rum cakes, and harass young couples with obscenity charges.

In the end, repealing “dead laws” has only symbolic value. Where PM Modi can make an enduring difference to the lives of citizens is by amending the colonial-era and regressive provisions in laws that undermine the fundamental rights of citizens. The Indian Penal Code is replete with many such provisions. Recently, the UPA government reversed the 120-year-old discrimination in the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, which empowered the State to acquire private land if it served the vaguely-phrased “public purpose”. Similarly, the Indian Penal Code has provisions intruding and criminalising aspects of personal lives like Section 377 (homosexuality), Section 497 (adultery), and Section 309(attempt to suicide). But reversing the hegemony that the State enjoys over citizens does not appear to be the end goal of this repeal and amend process. Rather, it is the chaos engendered by the multiplicity of laws and the harm this poses to business interests which has been oft-mentioned as the rationale.