Govt answerable to people

The institutionalisation of democracy in a newly independent country that had faced the horrors of Partition — displacement and destruction, loss of lives — was no easy task. The leadership was wary of further balkanisation of India. But it also realised that the country could achieve stability only when citizens were assured of their well-being. This was what the people, who had come through the trial of fire, were owed. Nothing less! They were entitled to all the rights that humankind had dreamt of in history — political, civil, social and cultural. This is the basic precept of justice: all share equally in the benefits and the burdens of society. There can be no discrimination. There is no trade-off between rights — for instance, the grant of a handful of foodgrains in exchange for civil liberties.

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The leaders of the freedom struggle had conceptualised social rights as part of fundamental rights since the beginning of the 20th century. In the Constituent Assembly, however, social rights became part of the non-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy. This was a major disappointment for many. Despite historical commitment and an enlightened leadership, despite demands for redistributive justice by radical workers’ organisations, and despite the personal commitment of Pandit Nehru to socialism, even primary education was not a fundamental right.

It was only in the second decade of the 21st century that civil society groups began to agitate for the upgrading of social rights to fundamental rights. The enactment of social rights followed civil society campaigns, public interest litigation in the Supreme Court, a new phase of judicial activism, and the 10-year rule (2004-14) of a pro-people government. In 2001, in response to a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the Supreme Court, after scolding the Vajpayee government for letting people starve, instructed it to provide food to vulnerable sections. The UPA government that came to power in 2004 enacted a targeted right to food, besides equally focused rights to work, information and primary education.

India did not experience a social revolution, but zones of poverty were catapulted to the forefront of the public agenda. Still problems remained. A right is a right to some good. It is the state that has to provide the good that citizens have a right to. In this sphere, successive governments have scandalously lagged behind, particularly in the domain of primary education and health. In democracies, civil society can press for the enactment of progressive legislation, and it can monitor the administration of policies. But civil society cannot provide the good to which we have a right. This falls within the provenance of state power. The dependence of civil society on the state has become increasingly visible in India. Above all, neither civil society activists nor the Supreme Court have shown imagination and called for redistributive justice. India remains one of the most inegalitarian societies in the world. The interventions of the court are piecemeal, meant to righten specific wrongs.

When the BJP came to power in 2014, it realised early on that it had underestimated the hold of entitlements on the popular imagination. It had also underrated generalised expectations that the State will look after its people. Subsequently, the government announced a number of pro-poor schemes.

However laudable these schemes may be, they have aroused scepticism. Social rights have been reduced to social policy mandated from above at the very time civil society activists have been penalised for fighting for the basic rights of the most disadvantaged. The foundation of social democracy that rights are a package and that the delivery of social goods cannot be at the expense of our basic civil liberties, has been demolished. Let alone egalitarianism, even equality has vanished from political languages. We no longer speak of social democracy but of ‘sufficientarianism’. This school of philosophy is best expressed in the adage — give the poor enough to eat, how does it matter if they are not equal?

This is not the time for dreaming grand dreams. The multiple crises that besets the country, from malnourishment to unemployment, calls for attention to well-being. In a country where millions of people live in absolute poverty, we need, at the least, universal entitlement to food, the generic right to work, the right to free and excellent unbiased education, and above all, the right to health. This lesson should have been learnt from the pandemic and lakhs of deaths.

There is one dream we must hold on to. Seventy-five years ago, Indians achieved independence from the British Raj. In 1950, the Constitution transformed us from subjects to citizens. From rights-bearing citizens, we, the legatees of men and women who fought for our freedom, cannot let ourselves once again become subjects of a power-hungry elite. We are owed much more than this. We are owed a life that is worth living. Elected leaders are responsible to us. We have the right to hold them responsible. This is the natural sequence of rights and responsibilities in a democracy.