Bengaluru: "No court takes up a suo motu case if a scavenger dies. If there is a court of justice, how can manual scavenging still take place," was the searing question asked by Ramon Magsaysay award winner Bezwada Wilson during the centenary celebrations of late Prof B. Sadashivaiah, who was the principal of University Law College.
Mr Wilson gave a torrid account of the trauma that manual scavengers go through and how they lose their right to dignified life once they become manual scavengers. “In an independent country, a nine-year-old girl in Jharkhand dies after futile attempts by her mother to get her food! The PM and President should call a session and declare that nobody in this country will ever die of hunger," Mr Wilson said, as the student crowd went into rapture.
Former Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachalaiah, commenting on Mr Wilson's fiery speech, said that the very idea of someone being made to lift night soil is abhorring. “During my tenure as chairperson of the human rights commission, I suggested to the central government in 1999 to make manual scavenging a central subject which was till then a state subject. But it took 12 years for them to implement it.”
He said that though people speak disparagingly of the Indian judicial system, the Supreme Court of India registers over 1,000 cases a week, while its counterpart in England and US register 60 and 130 cases respectively, per year. Former Law Minister Veerappa Moily, paying tributes to the late professor, talked about a case of a boy who landed in jail for stealing Rs 200, but could not get because he could not pay the bail amount. “When I was the law minister, I was talking to different chief justices and came to know that the country had 8 lakh undertrials. I asked the CJs if all the cases could be resolved within six months, and, hats off, they did it! Within six months, 8 lakh undertrials were acquitted," he said. Advising society to keep its moral values intact, former Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde said that one should to be content with whatever one has and imbibe humaneness which is disappearing in our society.
“There has been a moral downfall in every strata of our society. Nira Radia tapes exposed corruption prevailing even in the Fourth Estate. I always tell a the young crowd to be content and to have humaneness," he said.
Both Mr Moily and Justice Hegde were students of late Prof B. Sadashivaiah,
