Remembering the Maitra Committee

Posterity must remember S.K. Maitra.  Once Joint Secretary and Legislative Counsel, Ministry of Law & Justice, he was extremely powerful.  His views stood him in good stead.  He wrote (in a report we will soon mention), “It was the genius and foresight of the then Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, which were responsible for the enactment of the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1956, whereby a uniform system of weights and measures, namely, the metric system, was adopted in India.” 

There were two doses of bank nationalization, 1969 and 1980.  The first was originally done through an ordinance in July 1969, subsequently formalized through Parliament.  That ordinance was passed on 19th July 1969.  Legal scholars (including Granville Austin) have told us, on the evening of 18th July, PMO instructed S. K. Maitra to draft the ordinance nationalizing fourteen banks.  S. K. Maitra featured in the prelude too.  Earlier, in 1968, Banking Regulation Act (1949) was amended to increase “social control” over banks.  To draft the Bill, Lok Sabha formed a Select Committee and in that, S.K. Maitra, still JS, was “legislative counsel”.  True, that was a different age.  Even then, the average JS does not wield that kind of clout.

            There must be standards for weights and measures.  We have Legal Metrology Act (2009), which repealed Standards of Weights and Measures Act (1976) and Standards of Weights and Measures (Enforcement) Act (1985).  The current 2009 Act used to have imprisonment provisions for offences, until Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill (yet to become an Act) removed them.   Before the 1976 statute, there was the 1956 one, attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru’s genius and foresight.  Before 1956, standards varied throughout the country and other than the metric push, the 1956 statute unified these and didn’t exceed that brief.  Specifically, 1956 mentioned nothing about offences and penalties in the main body of the statute, that being left to State-level Acts, enforcement by States, and rules.  Late 1960-s and 1970-s were a period when the visible and heavy hand of the State manifested itself, not only in economic policy formulation, but also legislation flowing from that interventionist policy.  FERA (1947) and FERA (1973) illustrate this contrast in stringency, as do Essential Commodities Act (1955) and Essential Commodities Special Provisions Act (1981).  1976, matched against 1956, mirrors that pattern.  Invariably, there were learned committees that provided ammunition for tightening up.  MRTP Act (1969) fed on Hazari Committee (1967) and Dutt Committee (1969).  In similar vein, Standards of Weights and Measures Act (1976) fed on Maitra Committee, which is why, S.K. Maitra deserves greater recognition by posterity, more than bank nationalization alone.

            This Committee, on Weights and Measures (Law Revision) was Chaired by S. K. Maitra (still JS) and submitted its report to Commerce Ministry in 1972, with a Bill that would become the 1976 statute.  This incorporated meticulous research, harking back to Kautilya’s “Arthashastra”.  But since that was an era of Jan Avishwas, there was also detailed research on the unscrupulous.  Sample the following.  “Most of the sellers of sweets have developed a practice of weighing sweets along with the card board boxes in which they are delivered to the consumer across the counter.”  The weight of a cardboard box is 1/10th that of sweets.  That was the Committee’s finding.  One kg of sweets, back then, cost between 80 paise to 1 rupee and 20 paise.  With that 10% norm applied, an average sweetmeat shop made unwarranted profit of Rs 5 to 10 per hour.  Extrapolated to an entire year (of 300 working days), the range of unwarranted profits was a colossal (at the time) Rs 18,000 to Rs 36,000 per year.  This could not continue.  “The shopkeeper who makes an extra profit by such sharp practice is not ordinarily expected to give up such lucrative practice unless the law provides for deterrent sentences for its violation.  In the circumstances, the Committee feels that it is essential that the punishment for the contravention of the laws should be so deterrent that a person may not be tempted to contravene the law for the second time.  It has, therefore, been provided that although the first offence relating to short weightment or short measurement will be punishable only with fine, the second or subsequent offence would invariably be punishable with imprisonment, to which fine may be added.  The Committee hopes that the provision for imprisonment for a second or subsequent offence will prove to be a real deterrent.”

            That last sentence says it all.  In any event, fines are measly amounts.  Who takes them seriously?  To borrow an expression associated with Kautilya, “danda” means the staff of chastisement through imprisonment.  In fairness to the Maitra Committee, this was the flavour of the times.  “Such need is greater in a developing country like India where the progress made by developed countries in centuries is sought to be achieved in decades.”  Posterity has a different take on what decades of 1960-s and 1970-s meant for India.  They were lost development decades, precisely because of legislation like the 1976 Standards of Weights and Measures Act.  In documenting that loss, let us not forget the Maitra Committee.

(Bibek Debroy is Chairman, and Sanjeev Sanyal, Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister)