Daily Mains question – June 8/2020

1. Discuss the rise and fall of PILs in the context where courts are increasingly being asked to intrude into the elected executive’s domain.

In the News

• In traditional mould, a court adjudicates disputes between parties and in that context examines the context brought before them. The constitutional courts opened their doors to causes brought before them – where there were instances of violation of constitutional rights of the underprivileged.
•  This was extended to apathy in enforcing environmental law. The court took on the task of examining the cases and thus PIL was born.

Evolution of PIL:

• With time, the growth of this kind of intervention by the court gave birth to organisations whose objective was to file PILs to champion public causes. As intervention of courts increased, PILs increasingly became at times a vehicle for eminent members of civil society to clothe their point of view in a constitutional garb and seek its enforcement.
•  Undeterred by the consequences of monumental failures of court monitored investigation such as Jain Hawala case and the 2G case, petitions continue to be filed seeking court monitored investigations into all and sundry.
• 2009-14 saw a dramatic rise in such PILs – as governance shrank, the remit of the courts’ power seemed to grow. The need for a course correction was apparent as justice is not a cloistered virtue and judgements of the court must be open to public debate.
• This course correction by the court had upset those who got used to using the judicial system to dictate their philosophy to the elected executive. A constitutional court is always making choices of what causes it takes on.
• To suggest that court lacked the courage or human values to take on the matter when it was first presented, that they capitulated before the executive is not only contemptuous but destructive of the edifice on which rests our fragile democracy.

Way forward

• Our judges do a thankless job and for them silence is the only option – they speak through their judgments. Relentless attack on judiciary is designed to warn judges that those who do not conform will be condemned.
• If this tendency is not curbed, it would erode public faith in an institution that burns the midnight oil to serve the citizenry.

2. IT spawned a new middle class for India in the 1990s. Healthcare can be the new IT. Explain.

In the News

• With healthcare receiving utmost priority from policymakers like no other period in recent Indian history, an opportunity to replicate the IT sector’s success beckons. Healthcare offers entry points for capital and labour at various levels.
•  It encompasses hospitals, pharmaceuticals, medical education, biomedical research and development, grassroots health workers, health insurance and even medical tourism.

Healthcare – the new IT

• This sprawling field can create millions of skilled jobs when employment elsewhere is fast drying up. But the pandemic has bared huge gaps in healthcare infrastructure. At 1% of GDP government spending on healthcare has been a huge disappointment.
• India has just 0.7 beds per 1000 population against an average of 2.4 beds in middle income countries. Many backward districts still don’t have medical colleges and are underserved by doctors.

Remedying gaps:

• Addressing the gaps in rural healthcare apparatus and hiring more doctors, nurses and training auxiliary health workers who can work as contact tracers, phlebotomists, vaccinators and health data aggregators will create lakhs of jobs.
•  There is also growing need of medical professionals globally that India can meet through ramping up medical education. On the manufacturing side, reduced input costs can regain lost “atmanirbharata” in APIs.
• Only further expansion of India’s middle class can break the rut that consumption is long stuck in. A double strike for both health & wealth is within reach. Intelligent shifts in health and industrial policies are the need of the hour.