The supreme court last week gave several headline-making verdicts, at least one of which has set off a debate. The verdict itself, asking Chhattisgarh to disarm Salwa Judum, is not the matter debated, but the comments the judges have made in their written judgment. Several editorial commentators have focused on the judges’ diagnosis that “neoliberal policies” were feeding the rise of Maoist violence. This analysis has been trashed as “having the intellectual depth of a JNU postgrad” or compared to a poorly written editorial in ‘People’ Democracy’, the mouthpiece of CPI-Maoist.

However, are not the judges well within their ambit to present a backgrounder to place their judgment in the proper perspective? As for the economic reforms fuelling unrest in some pockets, that too is a well-established viewpoint with which one may or may not agree. So, why the brouhaha?