Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Supreme Court should not step into the realm of policy formulation. He said this in a meeting with select editors, a week after the Supreme Court directed the government to distribute food free to the poor rather than let it rot. Few would disagree with the prime minister's assertion that it is not the job of the judiciary to formulate policy. 

Technicalities aside, though, the Supreme Court's directive came months after it became clear that the government was doing precious little to save food grains from rotting in the open even as millions of Indians continued to face the scourge of hunger and malnutrition. In fact, it was only after the Supreme Court's directive that the central government decided to release 25 lakh tonnes of additional food grains to the state governments. So, even as the prime minister lamented that there was no way the government could distribute food free or at subsidised prices to the estimated 37 percent of the population living below poverty line, his government did finally act after the Supreme Court intervened on behalf of the starving millions.

Given this specific context, then, was the Supreme Court justified in advising the government on rotting food grains? Perhaps the larger question here is whether an inactive government is indeed more desirable than a proactive Supreme Court. After all, we have only the Supreme Court to thank for getting the central government to act in this instance, just as it has done in several other similar cases in the past.