Former president APJ Abdul Kalam has exhorted the legal fraternity to play a balancing role so that the country’s technological growth could continue to be beneficial to the people and the nation, free from interferences or unfair practices by any party with vested interests.
Delivering the seventh convocation address at Tamil Nadu Dr Ambedkar Law University on the topic ‘Law, technology and the society’ here on Thursday, Kalam said that the industrially developed countries were trying to make laws and treaties to protect and promote their own national interests and priorities instead of working for a win-win partnership. “India should work towards a win-win situation in business and trade with ethics,” he said.
Praising lawyers and law-makers as belonging to the race that brought the nation its independence, he asked the gathering: “Will you bring purity in judiciary? Will you bring terrorism free India? Will you make judiciary accessible to all citizens? Will you be responsible, in your own way, to reduce the intensity of pendency of court cases?”
The former president said that considering the rapid developments in science and technology and their impact on society, there was an urgent need to re-look the system in an integrated way on the basis of science, law and ethics. At any social level, it was necessary to work for ‘Unity of Minds’. “The increasing intolerance for other’s views and increasing contempt about other’s way of lives and religion, or expressing these differences through lawless violence could not be justified in any context,” he said.
He said that new technology was arising due to nanotechnology, bio-technology and information technology. Since increasing application of stem-cells as a curative process involved ethical questions due to the use of embryonic cells, which have been found to cure diseases, the issue should be studied by legal or social organisations and medical community jointly for enacting appropriate laws based on Indian ethos. He also called for a scientific and legal debate on cloning and a re-look at the Indian Human Organ Transplant Act of 1994 to make it donor friendly and more patient-friendly. He suggested a revamp of cyber, sea and space laws to protect the national interests.
V Vijayakumar, V-C, TNDALU, said the State Government had granted Rs 59.27 crore for the development of a new campus of the university on a 15-acre land at Taramani. Governor K Rosaiah was among the dignitaries present.