Union Law and Justice Minister M. Veerappa Moily said on Friday that an overarching law premised on the “right to justice” could soon be a reality. He said the first draft of the Bill was ready though it was still to be circulated for feedback.
Mr. Moily's promise of a new law on justice came at a seminar, “Towards knowledge, development and peace,” organised by the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) as part of its silver jubilee celebrations.
The Minister recalled at the function that in 2006, as the chairperson of the Second Administrative Reforms Committee on the Right to Information, he had recommended that Ministers be administered an “oath of transparency” instead of the customary “oath of secrecy,”
“The government has not accepted my recommendation but I'm still pursuing it”, he said.
Mr. Moily said India was on the threshold of a great opportunity that required the country to democratise and universalise the spread of knowledge.
“We need a paradigm shift for the transfer of power from a few to all, and knowledge is the key to this development,” he said, adding that knowledge and excellence could not be individualised but had to be based on inclusion.
“Expansion, inclusion and excellence” must be the slogan, Mr. Moily said, rejecting the theory of inherited merit. He said merit was not a privilege but could be inculcated through nurture. “We don't want one Sachin Tendulkar to win. We want India to win.”
Chairman of IOS Mohammd Manzoor Alam sought a re-examination of the view that there was necessarily a positive correlation between knowledge, development and peace. He said the only way the three could be correlated was through equity and social and political justice.
The celebration of knowledge society and knowledge economy would be incomplete without social enlightenment and similarly without inclusion, growth and development could further disadvantage the “weakest of the weak, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.” Equity and a just economic order were similar pre-requisites for peace.
