Pointing to “disparities or no rehabilitation measures during implementation of various development projects”, including construction of dams, Baxi said, “Till today Madhya Pradesh, and even in parts of Gujarat and Maharastra, full rehabilitation measures have not been taken, if this is not cruelty then I do not know what else we can say.”

A professor of Law at the University of Warwick and former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, Dr Baxi, said, “First, there cannot be cost-free development. Some people have to bear the costs of development programmes. Must there always be those who are systematically impoverished.”

The professor delved into both normative and legal questions on “mass cruelty”, including the justifications for and against it, and the question of duty and obligation to prevent its occurrence. “Often it is said that oppressed people subscribed to their oppression,” said Baxi.

The professor extended the notion of mass cruelty within the Indian context to include polarising forms of development, caste and untouchability, discrimination against widows, and mass communal violence.

Raising questions on the “continuing legal justifications for capital punishment”, Baxi said, “‘India is the only major country in the world where the Chief Justice is the sovereign in constituting benches and panels of judges to hear capital punishment cases.”

Also pointing to “the inability of the Indian legal and political systems to uphold the UN Genocide Convention and the Convention Against Torture”, Baxi said, “Look at India in 1984-the Sikh massacre, the post-Babri Masjid demolition violence, and Gujarat 2002 pogrom. These incidents are covered by duties of international law as stated in the genocide convention.

“But legal luminaries and those entrusted with vast reservoirs of political power have found no time to implement the duties to prevent the pursuit of genocidal acts and punish them,” Baxi said.