By Basava Prabhu S. Patil
Whenever there is any discussion about good governance. Lawyers speak of legality. Administrators speak of policy and implementation. Communication professionals speak of public perception. But the citizen, quite understandably, is interested in something much simpler: Was I treated fairly? That, in many ways, is where public trust in governance begins.
The expression “rule of law” may appear somewhat formal. It brings to mind constitutional provisions, courtrooms, judgments and legal textbooks. But for an ordinary citizen, the rule of law is not an abstract theory. The citizen experiences it at a police station, at a municipal office, in a government hospital, at a public-sector bank, in a school, before a development authority or, increasingly, on an online grievance portal.
For the citizen, the questions are very practical: Will the same rule apply to me as it applies to someone more powerful? Will I be heard before a decision is taken against me? Will I be told why my application has been rejected? And, if the authority has made a mistake, can it be corrected without my having to approach a constitutional court?
If every complaint has to travel to the High Court or the Supreme Court, then somewhere along the way, the grievance-redressal mechanism has failed. That is why I believe public trust is not built by one grand announcement, one successful campaign or one impressive presentation. It is built slowly, through the accumulated memory of fair treatment.
And this is also where public communication becomes important. In a gathering organised by the Public Relations Council of India, let me put it this way: reputation is what people hear about an institution; trust is what they experience from it. Communication can certainly explain governance. It can provide context. It can correct misinformation and help citizens understand difficult decisions. But communication cannot legitimise arbitrary action. Public relations can amplify trust, but it cannot manufacture it. The foundation must still be lawful, fair and accountable governance.
The first requirement of the rule of law is that public power must not merely have some legal instrument behind it; power must itself remain limited by law. There is an important difference between rule of law and rule by law. Rule by law may treat law as a convenient instrument through which power is exercised. The rule of law insists that the exercise of power must itself be fair, proportionate, reasoned and open to review.
The distinction is not merely academic. The Supreme Court’s judgment in the demolition matter (In Re: Directions in the Matter of Demolition of Structures) gave the principle a very contemporary expression. The Court held that the executive cannot assume the role of investigator, judge and punishing authority, and then proceed to demolish a person’s property without following due process. Notice must be given; the person affected must have an opportunity to respond. The final decision must record reasons.
The larger lesson is relevant to every branch of administration. Administrative speed is important. Citizens should not have to wait endlessly for decisions, but speed cannot replace legality, and visible decisiveness cannot substitute for fairness. To put it mildly, haste in administration can become rather expensive after judicial review. A forceful action may attract applause for a day. A lawful action creates confidence for much longer. This is also why natural justice remains so important.
In a recent judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in K. Prabhakar Hegde v. Bank of Baroda, (where I had the opportunity to appear and argue,) a Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra reiterated that the denial of natural justice is itself a serious prejudice. A hearing is not an administrative ceremony. It cannot mean: “We have already decided the matter, but you may now say whatever you wish.”
A genuine hearing requires a genuine openness to persuasion. And a reasoned order is often the best evidence that the authority did, in fact, listen. This protects not only the citizen.It also protects the honest public official.
Rule Of Law Is Not Red Tape
The rule of law is sometimes presented as an obstacle to efficient administration. In reality, clear rules, fair procedures and recorded reasons are often the greatest protection available to a conscientious officer facing pressure. They allow the officer to say: “This is not a matter of my personal preference. This is what the law requires.” Seen in that light, the rule of law is not red tape. It is a guardrail. It enables the machinery of government to move quickly, but without going off the road.
Public Office As A Trust, Not An Entitlement
There is another aspect of public trust that is equally important – “Public office is a trust. It is not a privilege.” In Sita Soren v. Union of India, a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that bribery is not protected by legislative or parliamentary privilege. The importance of this decision extends beyond the criminal offence involved. It affirms a simple constitutional truth: privilege exists to enable the proper discharge of public duty. It cannot become a shield for the betrayal of that duty. No office is so high that accountability becomes optional. In fact, the higher the office, the greater the obligation to exercise power with integrity and restraint. I understand that Spider-Man is back in theatres, which brings to mind the film’s most enduring line: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Citizens are often more perceptive than institutions assume. They may forgive an honest error, they may accept that administration is complicated, that resources are limited and that every decision will not satisfy everyone. What they find much harder to forgive is a double standard.
Trust disappears when rules are rigidly enforced against the ordinary citizen but quietly adjusted for the influential; when discretion becomes favour; or when access to government depends upon access to a particular individual.
A trustworthy institution is one in which a person can rely upon the office without needing to know the officer. That is the real meaning of equality before law. It is not merely a provision in the Constitution. It is the moral language in which the State communicates with its people. Every time the same rule is applied consistently, the State communicates fairness. Every time influence produces an exception, the State communicates something equally powerful, and far more damaging.
Secrecy Should Be The Exception; Transparency The Rule
This brings me naturally to transparency and public communication. In the Electoral Bonds judgment, Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India, the Supreme Court emphasised the importance of information in a functioning democracy and the ability of citizens to make informed choices. Now, transparency does not mean that every government document must immediately enter the public domain. There are legitimate areas of confidentiality – national security, investigations, personal privacy, sensitive commercial matters and internal deliberations.
But secrecy must be the exception that can be justified. It cannot become an institutional habit. Every significant public decision should, at the very least, be capable of answering four basic questions: What has been decided? Under what authority? For what reasons? And what remedy is available to the person affected? These questions are important not only for lawyers.
A press release should explain a decision; it should not have to invent the justification for it. A dashboard is useful, but only if the data behind it is accurate. A consultation is meaningful only if the objections received are genuinely considered. And an online grievance system that merely generates a ticket number has not necessarily resolved the grievance. Sometimes it has only digitised the citizen’s frustration.
Rule of Law Postulates Inclusiveness
There is one final dimension that must not be overlooked. The rule of law must be inclusive. A system cannot claim to enjoy public trust if it works efficiently only for citizens who are educated, well-connected, digitally fluent or physically able. In Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that a minimum, non-negotiable standards of accessibility cannot be postponed indefinitely in the name of gradual implementation.
The wider principle is very important: Access is not charity. It is equal citizenship. A portal that a visually impaired person cannot use, an official order that the affected citizen cannot understand, a welfare scheme accessible only through an unreliable digital interface, or a hearing conducted without adequate language assistance may all appear administratively complete on paper.
But each of them may exclude the very person whom the institution was created to serve. Technology has immense potential to make governance faster, more transparent and more efficient. But digital governance must not become governance only for the digitally comfortable.
A system is truly citizen-centric not when it is convenient for the administrator, but when it is accessible to the citizen, particularly the citizen who has the least influence, the least information and the fewest alternatives.
Rule of Law As Experienced In Everyday Life
Citizen centric urban governance, sustainable water leadership, ethical policing and inclusive education are not subjects separate from the rule of law. They are the rule of law as citizens actually experience it. The rule of law is visible when water is distributed according to transparent and rational priorities. It is visible when police power is exercised firmly, but fairly. It is visible when education reaches persons who have historically remained outside the system. And it is visible when a development authority treats grievance redressal as an institutional duty rather than as a favour to a persistent applicant.
Before concluding, may I suggest a simple test for public decision-making. Whenever an important decision is to be taken, an institution may ask itself five questions:
1. Do we have clear legal authority?
2. Are we applying the same standard to everyone similarly placed?
3. Can we explain our reasons and support them with evidence?
4. Have we heard the person who will be affected?
5. And can we communicate the decision truthfully, clearly and without exaggeration?
Where the answer to all five questions is yes, the institution will rarely need an elaborate campaign to persuade citizens that it is trustworthy. The process itself will communicate trust.
Good governance does not fear reasons. It does not fear scrutiny. It does not treat review as an insult to authority. And it understands that correcting an error is not a sign of weakness. An institution that can acknowledge a mistake and correct it often commands greater respect than one that insists upon defending the indefensible.
Public trust cannot be commanded by designation, manufactured through messaging or sustained by spectacle. Governments and public personalities may trend for a day. Institutions must endure for generations. Trust is earned in thousands of ordinary encounters between the citizen and the State: when a complaint is acknowledged; when a hearing is real; when a deadline is respected; when an intelligible reason is given; when the same rule is applied to the powerful and the powerless; and when an error is corrected without forcing the citizen into years of litigation.
The rule of law is, therefore, not a brake upon transformative governance. It is its steering mechanism. It allows the State to act with strength, but without arbitrariness; with speed, but without unfairness; and with innovation, but without leaving citizens behind.
—Basava Prabhu Patil is Advocate General, Sikkim and Senior Advocate, Supreme Court
The post Rule of Law Isn’t Red Tape Or Hurdle To Growth appeared first on India Legal.