My experience with Emergency

Does a five-year-old child have memories of things that happened some 39 years ago? Don't know what scientists have to say about this, but I always remember the first and last national internal Emergency India experienced. Today, 39 years ago the late prime minister, Indira Gandhi, imposed Emergency, without doubt a perilous phase for democratic India. As a five-year-old, I don't remember even where I was at that point of time; it is a period of life I have absolutely re-constructed through others' memories.

I feel as if I lived through that period. And the two things that always connect me intensely to that period:  the abolition of right to property as a fundamental right and addition of fundamental duties that include the duty to protect the environment, both through the now historic and infamous 42nd amendment to the Constitution.

Why do I get into this meta-physical sense of living a time I don't remember? Why do only two developments give me into that sense? As newspapers and debaters on TV will irritate you all day today on their memories of Emergency, I want to remember the bad phase in contemporary time.

Land acquisition: history repeats itself
Being an environment reporter, it is almost routine now to report land acquisition. Also, we see the same pattern in all land acquisition: government has the ultimate power to acquire private lands. Protests are also equally ferocious and consistent. And in all such incidents, I bet, one will recall the helplessness people experienced in losing a fundamental right 38 years ago: the right to property.  Land acquisition is now hot, mainstream news and top political priority. Perhaps, this incessant imposition of government right over people whose fundamental right to property was snatched has created a illusion of me remembering emergency so closely, and vividly.

More so, as I read more stories of land takeovers, I do ask the question: why didn't the government that came to power after Emergency restore the right? After all, the country's first non-Congress government promised in its manifesto to restore the Constitution by striking down all changes made through the 42nd amendment.  It did roll back many amendments, but strangely ignored the fundamental right to property. Why?

This juggle further perpetuates my link to the emergency era.

In the backyard of Delhi, in NOIDA and its expanding universe, land acquisition has become an immediate preoccupation. Starting from the National Green Tribunal to the Supreme Court, there are ongoing cases contesting the land acquisition using a century old law (now changed). All debates boil down to the same point: would it have been possible with the fundamental right to property intact? Many say that the right would have made impossible such blatant land acquisition. Does this mean governments, whether the Congress or the ones after Indira Gandhi, conspired against its citizens to make land acquisition easy? In hindsight, it is clear there was a deliberate attempt to not make property right fundamental under the Constitution. It is not a coincidence that property right has prompted many constitutional amendments, including the first amendment to the Constitution in 1951. It is a contentious issue that political leadership has not been comfortable with for various reasons.

“Right to property is a constitutional right: Supreme Court”, ran a headline in a newspaper on April 18, 2011. The mere use of the phrase “constitutional right” again gave me that strange sense of reliving the Emergency era. For people of my generation, this headline was enough to jostle memories.

"Court should not adopt a pedantic approach, as has been done in the present case, and decide the matter keeping in view the constitutional goals of social and economic justice and the fact that even though the right to property is no longer a fundamental right, the same continues to be an important constitutional right and in terms of Article 300-A, no person can be deprived of his property except by authority of law," Justice G S Singhvi said in a judgment. It came while quashing the acquisition of 205 hectares of agricultural land in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Budh Nagar by the state on behalf of the Greater NOIDA Industrial Development Authority for business entrepreneurs in March 2008. After this order, I had many similar experiences. The link to emergency is getting further strengthened.

Damned for performing fundamental duty
Now, the other emergency time addition to the Constitution: constitutional duties that include the duty to protect the environment. I am told it is not justiciable; so if I violate such duties I will not be punished. But, again as an environment reporter, this is a constitutional provision that is emerging as a tool to fight environmental injustices. There are many cases where individuals go to courts against many projects with adverse environmental impacts, citing this constitutional duty to protect the environment. In recent times, when the government started acting on an Intelligence Bureau report on NGOs opposing development projects thus impacting country's economy, environmentalists cited this duty. As a journalist with inbuilt bias in favour of the environment, I often justify myself reporting on such projects with high investments and equal amount of adverse impacts on environment.

But I end up with other questions: why do I perform my constitutional duty to be condemned? Isn't it a violation of right to life of a tribal citizen by not giving back him or her the right to property? It equally applies to a resident of Greater NOIDA as well. It is an emergency situation where both rights and duties are condemned.
 

Right to property Indian Constitution