Krishna Iyer on .....err....nothing

Krishna Iyer's column today extolls the virtues of an 'ideological' law reforms commission for Kerala. This op-ed has all the hallmarks of his regular columns, in particular, the use of lofty language to convey repetitive and stale messages of his 'socialist swaraj'. I will not repeat my criticism of his views which I made in my previous post on the subject; it suffices to note that all of them apply here with the same force. One additional point about this piece is its utter lack of substantive content - he does not cite a single specific aim or achievement of this body which he says he chairs. When he is not railing, he is simply moralizing. An example:

I beseech the Prime Minister, and the president of the ruling Congress, not to jettison the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. The imperative perspective of the Preamble obligates pragmatic legal engineering to validate the substantive constitutional propositions beyond vain verbosity...

Hindu op-eds have traditionally offered analytical perspectives coupled sometimes with concrete recommendations for change. Iyer's writing is little more than simply an articulation of his worldview with absolutely nothing new to add in column after column on why people ought to be persuaded towards adopting it. The fact that he gets so much space here reflects the paucity of good columnists writing regularly for its pages.