Articles by A G Noorani

Rs 789 crore larger than the increase last year. In the result, the marginal investment-deposit ratio stood as high as 98 per cent as against 62 per cent in April-July 1982. The average ratio as at the end of July 1982 was 38.1 per cent which too was significantly higher than 36.6 per cent a year ago. The bill market scheme, which had been inactive for some time, seems to have altogether ceased to function. Bilk rediscounted with the Reserve Bank under the scheme, which had been introduced in November 1970, were a paltry Rs 3 crore at the end of July 1981. The amount has been nil since September 4, 1981. The decline of bills of exchange as an effective instrument of credit designed to even out liquidity in the banking system as also to monitor the end- use of bank credit is attributable to misuse by the instrument by the concerned parties and to the Reserve Bank's own apathy in devising measures to plug the various loopholes in the scheme.

CIVIL LIBERTIES Death Penalty and the Constitution A G Noorani IT is doubtful if in the annals of judicial decision-making there is any precedent for a dissenting Judgment being delivered two years after the majority judgment. But this is precisely what happened on August 16, 1982, when Mr Justice P N Bhagwati delivered his dissenting judgment in Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab. The majority judgment was delivered on May 9, 1980 by Mr Justice R S Sarkaria on behalf of himself and Chief Justice Y V Chandrachud, A C Gupta and N L Untwalia J J. Since then Gupta, Untwalia and Sarkaria have retired. As it is, the majority took about six months to deliver its judgment. That should have sufficed for Mr Justice Bhagwati also. The issue was of the highest importance

of unequal or unbalanced regional development, both because the state would like to Improve its own position in national ranking and because within the state interregional disparities have been the source of serious political and cultural tensions. However planning itself has not made a significant impact in rectifying these imbalances, and planning in India too has more often adjusted to the realities and logic of capitalist development rather than try to alter this logic in any important way. Seminars, such as the present one, place far too much emphasis on the role of planning in which econo- mists, technocrats and bureaucrats have an exaggerated notion of their impact and control on the course of events. The problem of growth is particularly tricky for the so-called 'agricultural states', such as Andhra Pradesh, which have not benefited from the 'industrialisation' of the 1950s and the 1960s. Having concentrated on agriculture at the time when industrial growth was of a high order, they want to diversify into industry now at a time when both nationally and globally capitalist industrialisation is passing through a recessionary phase. Thus, while the excessive reliance on agriculture has made diversification imperative, the possibilities for such diversification are limited in the present phase of 'inflationary contraction', In practice, this has has led over the last few years to desperate attempts by 8tate governments to corner the few new investments being made, vying with one another to offer all manner of concessions to private capital. Big business houses have made good use of these concessions.

CIVIL LIBERTIES Compensation for Police Outrages A G Noorani THE cynical Machiavelli Remarked that, a man will sooner forget the death of his beloved than the confiscation of his property. One would think that the best remedy against police outrages, fast on the increase, is to make the wrong-door personally liable in a civil suit to damages to the victim of the wrong as well as liable at his instance to prosecution in a criminal court.

embodied in the First Amendment It said, "without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press would be eviscerated. The core of the majority's ruling is that pressmen have no special privileges which other citizens do not enjoy. It noted that the press claim was first made as recently as 1958 and the great weight of lower court rulings wag against it.