It is entirely right that the Supreme Court should remain inflexible in its stand on the sealing of illegal shops in Delhi’s residential areas. It is also promising that the Central urban development minister, together with some of his colleagues, has decided to abide by the court’s orders. Yet, there is something profoundly disturbing in the alarmed hesitation with which this acquiescence was expressed by the government and administration. Two fundamental issues are at stake here, both with a direct bearing on the relationship between democracy and governance. First, the relationship between the ‘empowerment of the people’, one of democracy’s great principles, and intimidatory violence. Three people were killed in the previous attempt to seal shops; schools have been asked to remain closed this time. Second, the relationship between the ‘rule of law’ — what the Constitution lays down and the judiciary decrees — and its implementation by the executive: the crucial question of governance.

What the apex court has made resoundingly clear this time is that it would not tolerate its own undermining by the government and administration. The subversion of the rule of law can happen not only in the hands of an ungovernable mob, but also by the ineptitude (and even complicity) of the government, police and the Delhi municipality. The court’s rejection of the government’s plea on the grounds of law and order problem is therefore a sharp rebuke to the government as well. Such a failure of nerve, founded on a whole web of vested political and commercial interests in the situation, is to let the law be determined “on the streets”. It is significant that the Supreme Court compares such a show of “helplessness” to deadlier instances of the State being unable to control the violence on the streets during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and those in Gujarat and Mumbai more recently. Politicizing the issue (as the Bharatiya Janata Party is doing), seeking the prime minister’s intervention, or legalizing the illegal establishments according to the Masterplan 2021, would all lead to a dangerous compromise. This would not only reduce the dignity of the judiciary but also damage the balance between democracy and the rule of law, between the authority of institutions and the rights of the people, which alone guarantees the proper functioning of a democratic polity and society.