Court on farm laws
Judicial review is a powerful constitutional power conferred on the Supreme Court. After having entertained the question of the validity of the farm laws, which had been passed hurriedly without debate, and with the farmers’ struggle having gone on for more than a month, the Court should have decided on the validity of the law then and there and made the parties know where it stood in the scheme of things. This would have ensured that the government and the farmers negotiated on an even keel and resolved the problem. That way, it would have been a case of constitutional adjudication and the Supreme Court would have weathered the storm.
But bringing in a committee of known views amounts to constitutional abdication. The farmers have rightly refused to appear before the committee. Howsoever powerful the Court may be, there are always limits to power.
N.G.R. Prasad,
Chennai
Trump’s tenure
The banning of Donald Trump from social media, should be a lesson to all heads of state — that propagation of peace-threatening policies under the guise of nation building will not be tolerated, whether this is an era of free speech or not.
Sarah Rebello,
Bengaluru
Vaccine rollout
While the reservations raised by medical experts on the undue haste in approving the COVID-19 vaccines for use without proper trial and testing are justified, still, one must look at the larger picture. The enormous cost to livelihoods and the economy caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic cannot be ignored. At such a juncture, some amount of compromise has to be made if one is to get the lives of people back on track. Without an income you are only injuring him even more.
Sharada Sivaram,
Kochi, Kerala
