Are Law & Order problems plaguing our society a design feature or a defect

Sriram J
3 min readApr 16, 2021

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I did a content analysis of the Indian constitution to see how many times the phrase “public order” appears and in what context it is used .

Turns out it appears 9 times out of which 7 are used to justify restrictions on our rights . 6 of the 9 occurrences appear in part 3 of the constitution which deals with the fundamental rights granted to us .

First three occurrences are in Article 19 Right to Freedom
which was amended as part of the famous First Amendment.

Here is the first one.

Here we can see both clause one and the restrictions imposed on the same .That comes to a total of 3 restrictions on our fundamental right to freedom all due to the threat of public order being disturbed .

#4 on the list are the restrictions placed on the freedom to practice and propagate your religion .

#5 on the list is Freedom to manage religious affairs .

#6 does not deal with restrictions of rights due to threat to public order .

#7 is clause 15 of the 6th schedule of the Indian constitution . Please note the phrase “prejudicial to public order” .

The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution provides for the administration of tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram to safeguard the rights of the tribal population in these states. This special provision is provided under Article 244(2) and Article 275(1)

#8 is the list of laws which come under the State List . This one also does not restrict our freedom on grounds of threat to public order

#9 is point 3 in the concurrent list . This one does take away our freedom in the name of maintenance of public order .

After reading this I wonder if I can state an #UnpopularOpinion -> “it would appear that it is by a feature and not a bug that no attempts have been made to reform the law & order situation despite the fact that we have so many law & order problems plaguing us daily”

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