Law Before Law

West Bengal government's proposed legislation on pre-litigation conciliation boards is definitely a praiseworthy move. If at all an official provision is made in this regard, it is certain to speed up the otherwise long-drawn-out and cumbersome judicial litigation process. The enormous time and also money involved in getting the final verdict from a law court are often the factors that discourage people to resort to legal remedies of certain problems. But even this otherwise good move has to pass through the acid test of the state's murky political atmosphere. Moreover, if the provision is at all actually made, the rural political be-alls-and-end-alls are there to bypass its wise motives and use it for their own betterment, which often run at cross-purposes with the interest of the people, whom they are supposed to represent and whose good they are supposed to look after. Chief Minister, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has a boggy road ahead, which is all the more unfavourable for progress because of the red party's virtual monopoly over rural Bengal's state of being, as also over the state's bureaucracy.