‘Small is Beautiful’ is the title of E F Schumacher’s famous book published in 1973. He was an economist and in his seminal work, he talked about fairer economic policies with smaller and appropriate technology. Lakshadweep, to a good extent, embodied his philosophy. The island is unique and wonderful—ecologically, culturally, geographically and economically. As an archipelago of 36 islands with a total extent of only 32 sq km, this terrain is India’s smallest Union territory. Its literacy rate is 91.85%, very close to that of Kerala where it is 96.2%. It has 10 village panchayats. Only 10 islands are inhabited, and the total population is only around 70,000. People are in general not very rich. They were, however, happy for there has been less poverty and much less any destitution in their homeland. The crime rate is very low according to the National Crime Records Bureau. There was not even a single Covid-19 case reported in 2020. The health index is generally better.
The island is now very much in the news. The nefarious schemes formulated by the Lakshadweep administration have turned the euphoria about it upside down. As history shows, bad politics often manifests through bad laws and the island too is no exception. It has no Legislative Assembly. Article 239 of the Constitution says that Union territories are to be administered by the President through an administrator appointed by him, if there is no law to the contrary. Laws are proposed and promulgated by the administration.
The Centre, through the administration, has come up with four draft regulations this year: The Lakshadweep Development Authority Regulation, The Prevention of Anti-Social Activities (PASA) Regulation, The Lakshadweep Animal Preservation Regulation and The Lakshadweep Panchayat Regulation.
The so-called “development” regulation fails to honour the people’s basic rights over land. The draft law proposes “town planning” for which a Planning and Development Authority (PDA) will be constituted, as per Section 7. The development plan will be imposed upon the people, from the top. This is dramatically opposite to the system of the village panchayat having a pivotal role in designing the future of the island. Wajahat Habibullah, a retired bureaucrat who was the administrator of the island during 1987-90, said in a recent article that the Union territory had a decentralised system by which “the Island Development Council, at the apex of the local government, was mandated to advise the administrator on development”. As part of the development plan, the whole terrain comes under the control of the authority as per Section 18. The land allocation, its use, demarcation of zones, constructions, reallocation of people, control of almost everything from architectural features to agricultural land, all become the prerogative of the government or the authority. Section 71 gives power to the PDA for removal or demolition of buildings in the areas covered under the scheme. Section 72 empowers the District Magistrate to summarily evict the occupants in the scheme-covered areas. Section 119 is drastic as it contemplates imprisonment of the “obstructers” of the scheme for a period up to two months, apart from a fine.
The right to property is no longer a fundamental right in India. Article 19(1)(f), which promised this right, was deleted with effect from 20.06.1979. But for the indigenous tribes in a natural habitat, right to land is a fundamental right. This proposition was laid down by the Supreme Court in Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh (1997). About 95% of the island’s population are Scheduled Tribes. About 94.8% of the small land holdings belong to these tribes, according to the Census reports. Therefore, going by the geographic, ethnic and environmental features, the draconian regulation, despite its legal rhetoric on development, cannot pass constitutional muster.
The penal provisions in the PASA draft regulation are also worth examining. Perhaps, the very purpose of this is to suppress the protest that the administration anticipates while proposing the anti-democratic laws. The draft contemplates preventive detention, by way of Section 3. Detention based on a vague, nonexistent or irrelevant charge is sought to be validated by Section 6. When the fertility rate in the island is much less than the country’s average, the disqualification of those with more than two children to get elected to the panchayat does not make sense, though it would serve a communal agenda. So is the case with the anti-cow slaughter proposal.
The island is ecologically fragile. A recent study by scientists at IIT-Kharagpur says that the rise in sea levels between 0.4 mm and 0.9 mm annually might lead to coastal erosion and even submergence of some of the islets. Climate change impacts the island ecology more quickly and manifestly. Coral reefs are already destroyed immensely due to the mindless “developmental” activities. An appeal by a group of scientists said that the development plan in the island ignores India’s basic environmental legislations like the Environment Protection Act (1986) and the Biodiversity Act (2002). The idea of Environment Impact Assessment for major projects has its genesis in the 1986 enactment. The report of the Justice Raveendran Committee appointed by the Supreme Court is also crucial for the island. It contains a plea for conservation of the corals, lagoons and other habitats. The report puts forward a comprehensive plan dealing with topics like coconut plantation and deep-sea fishing. The change of land use and provision for a new pattern of development now proposed go against ecological sanity.
Legislation is too serious a matter that it cannot be left to the legislators and much less to the administrators. Consultation with the local people only improves the law’s democratic legitimacy. For that, we need statesmen rather than politicians. The pity, however, is that sometimes, we don’t even have politicians, but only traders at the helm of affairs.
Kaleeswaram Raj
Lawyer, Supreme Court of India
(kaleeswaramraj@gmail.com; Tweets @KaleeswaramR)