Only 25+ of the world’s 2500+ living written languages are read from right to left. India’s citizens are forced to adopt this counterintuitive algorithm when reading our laws. The state reads laws from left to right (Acts to Rules) and has a blind spot about the punishable obligations it creates. Citizens read from right to left (Compliances to Administrative Instruments to Rules to Acts), and their blind spot is often Acts. The administrative state’s proliferation of Non-Act/Non-Rule instruments since independence defies the spirit of our Constitution and undermines a single source of truth for our laws. Three reforms are overdue and urgent. Our Constitution has a simple construct: Parliament makes laws that authorise the government to make rules that must be notified in the Gazette. It imagines only one level of fully transparent subsidiary legislation. The Supreme Court agrees.…