Topic – Parliament and State Legislatures – structure, functioning, conduct of business, powers & privileges and issues arising out of these.
3) The outcomes of laws need to be analysed before enactment. Discuss in the context of the need for legislative impact assessment in India.(250 words)
Why this question
Governance is a complex process and hasty law making creates several problems or is inadequate to meet the desired objectives. It is therefore important to discuss about the meaning and scope of legislative impact assessment.
Directive word
Discuss- this is an all-encompassing directive which mandates us to write in detail about the key demand of the question. we also have to discuss about the related and important aspects of the question in order to bring out a complete picture of the issue in hand.
Key demand of the question.
The question wants us to write in detail about the legislative impact assessment and how it measures outcomes before enactment of laws, its advantages etc.
Structure of the answer
Introduction– write a few introductory lines about the reasons behind hasty lawmaking- emergency situation; under public pressure; empty reforms etc.
Body-
- Discuss the problems of hasty lawmaking e.g the ‘rush towards law’ results in policies and legal frameworks that are mostly reactive and seek to offer quick-fix solutions to complex problems. As a result, both lawmakers and citizens are frequently blindsided by the unanticipated impact of these moves and the laws often run aground on issues of implementation; Ultimately, the time and effort it takes to undo and resolve the issues caused by such hasty lawmaking can compound the problem that the law was intended to resolve, making the entire exercise of ‘fixing’ the issue futile etc.
- Discuss the concept of legislative impact assessment and elaborate it further. E.g laws and rules need to be comprehensively analysed prior to their enactment so as to minimise such negative externalities, or at the very least, to identify them; allow us to identify optimal law and policy changes and ensure that preferred options are those that are economically feasible, operationally viable, and socially acceptable, among several other considerations. Above all, such a framework would promote transparent and democratic law-making in the country and allow citizens to understand and debate trade-offs created by such laws even before they are formalised etc.
Conclusion– based on your discussion, form a fair and a balanced conclusion on the given issue.
