Judicial activism, in the sense of excessive judicial interference in the working of a democratic polity, is a basic and undeniable truth in India. Judicial overreach is a living reality, making lament formal and protest ornamental. From the monkey to the dog menace, from corruption to cleaning up cities and rivers, from the comic to the divine, and from the useful to the banal, India has all varieties of judicial activism on offer.

Recognition of judicial activism’s widespread use avoids waste of endless time and energy spent on debating its existence. Instead, we go to the second basic truth, that is, the existence of even greater executive abdication, legislative apathy and inactivity and a general decay of different organs of governance. Some may continue to kid themselves that Parliament is not inferior to courts: public perception definitely holds it to be so. It is on the back of this perception, discontent and disillusionment that judicial overreach flourishes. No amount of debate is going to change this unless and until we strengthen and ameliorate other organs. An increase in public esteem qua other organs will operate as an automatic check on judicial adventurism, something which no amount of external prescription can achieve.

The larger question remains: can the admitted inefficiency or inactivity of one organ justify over-adventurism by another? Can two wrongs make a right? Since the body politic is in general decline, public perception reposes greater faith and promotes a greater role — even unauthorised — by the judicial organ which is seen to have declined less than its counterparts. Doubtless, the criticism applied qua other organs — inefficiency, corrupt practices, internal dissension — can apply equally to judicial institutions as a whole. But, in the inter-se evaluation of competitive decline of institutions, the judiciary is perceived as having decayed the least.

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