Some months ago, the Kerala High Court laid down that there should be no political activity at the school level. Perhaps Kerala is the only state in the country where politicisation of that blatant kind is to be found in schools also. Student Unions are organised along party lines and almost every political outfit has a corresponding student wing.

The ruling party in Kerala has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.

However, it must be acknowledged that even within the ruling party, opinion is sharply divided.

Meanwhile, a somewhat disturbing verdict has been given by the Supreme Court in relation to another issue. In 1986, a group of students got into a confrontation with another group and one student was murdered. After the usual sessions trial, the High Court let off the students. Thereupon, an appeal was filed to the Supreme Court. The Court has sentenced two students to imprisonment for life and some others to comparatively minor punishments.

However, it has gone to say that Parliament and State legislatures should examine the question whether political activity is to be permitted in educational institutions or it may be banned. Both these judgments indicate a state of profound dissatisfaction with student politics.

The question is: Is student politics different from politics elsewhere? If our politics has got criminalised, this is bound to have a strong impact on students as well.

Obviously, courts cannot go into these questions. The forum for raising these questions is different. Would it not be more to the point of the courts, as and when they are inclined to, examine them a little more probingly? For instance, despite half a century of independence, legislatures have resolutely refused to codify their privileges.

If this is regraded as a relatively minor point, how often and how tellingly have the courts commented about the self-serving provisions under which elections are conducted? The Election Commission has repeatedly called attention to these problems. All kinds of sweet responses have been made by the various governments in power. But electoral laws continue to be as defective as before.

After all, should the courts not look into their own functioning? The murder at Kurukshetra was committed in 1986. The judgment of the Supreme Court came 11 years later. One of the lawyers tells me, ``This is quick work. It could as well have been another decade.''

All delays are not at the judicial end. Both at the investigation and the prosecution level, the situation is being grossly mishandled. Of course, it has a good deal to do with the way the police are functioning.

The courts are not directly concerned with this issue. At the same time, if the courts are inclined to be activists in their outlook and functioning, and one welcomes that, the minimum that they can do is to live up to their image.

One can go further and say that in a large number of cases, even the judges themselves do not show enough assertion. Even when people die in accidents, fires and civil commotion, the outrage lasts only for a brief period of time. As soon as a new incident takes place, the earlier one is forgotten.

At no stage does anyone choose to go and raise those basic issues which need to be raised. Indeed if anyone is in a position to raise those issues, it is the courts, and more particularly, the Supreme Court.

There are innumerable instances when the courts themselves have devised procedures which, through their cumbersome and lethargic procedures, defeat the ends of justice. In other Commonwealth countries, the judicial system is almost the same as it obtains in India.

To see the difference, one has only to compare the way a foreigner who committed a bank fraud in Singapore in 1995 was punished within one year with the freedom Harshad Mehta continues to enjoy.

The Supreme Court is welcome to assert itself. But it would do well to choose its targets more selectively than it is doing today.

The writer is a renowned educationist

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.