This blog is dedicated to youthful Bharatam Janam as a way of handing over the deepam of Bharatiya heritage to the younger generation; 70% of the population of Bharatam Janam is less than 35 years of age. This blog is theirs at the seva of Dharma.
dhanyosmi. Kalyanaraman
1 June 2006
Handing over a new polity to the 70% of population: youth among Bharatam Janam
This blog puts together some shades of opinion related to higher education, identity crises, Mandal II, behavior of political parties and the absence of Constitutional culture.
The debate should be joined to identify priorities for a Hindutva Manifesto.
Namaskar.
Kalyanaraman,
Sarasvati Research Centre, Chennai 600015
kalyan97@gmail.com1 June 2006
Universities Under Attack
Andre Beteille
Today, universities and other institutions of higher study are under attack by the authorities. The ordinary ones are attacked for their poor and falling academic standards and the better ones for being elitist and paying no heed to disadvantaged sections of society. Perhaps our universities deserve some of the opprobrium that is being attached to them. Many of them have become stagnant, except in a purely demographic sense, and are now no longer intellectually stimulating or challenging. Socially, too, many of them have abandoned the liberal outlook in favour of provincialism, casteism and factionalism. It is easy to forget that universities had played a very different role in earlier times. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries they took the lead in effecting the transition from a conservative and hierarchical society to a more open and progressive one. It was in universities and colleges that successive generations of Indians learnt to enlarge both their intellectual and their social horizons. Today, it cannot be said that universities are still in the forefront of social change, and narrowing of the social outlook has gone hand in hand with weakening of academic initiative. When did universities begin to fall behind, and what brought about their decline? They stood at the crossroads at the time of Independence. Jawaharlal Nehru had hoped at that time that things would go well with universities but he could not be certain that they would.
In his convocation address to the University of Allahabad in the very year of India's Independence, Nehru had said, "If the universities discharge their duty adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people. But if the temple of learning itself becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how then will the nation prosper or the people grow in stature"? Universities began to expand after Independence, but the expansion was unplanned and haphazard, and often under political pressure. The second half of the 20th century witnessed remarkable, not to say spectacular advances in knowledge worldwide, but it cannot be said that these advances provided the main driving force in the expansion of universities in India. the last few decades, our universities have grown not so much to keep pace with the growth of knowledge as to accommodate pressures from various sectional interests based on region, caste and community. T he accommodation of such sectional interests has brought to the forefront precisely the kind of narrow bigotry and petty objectives against which Nehru had warned. It can hardly be denied that government and politics have steadily intruded into universities and curtailed their freedom to grow in directions required by the growth of knowledge.
They have also vitiated the social atmosphere of the university and made it increasingly difficult for it to play the socially progressive role that it played in its formative years. The turnaround in the social atmosphere of universities came when politicians hungry for electoral support turned to them for their own use. At the time of Independence, caste consciousness was still widely present in the country, but in universities it was declining and not advancing. Where it existed in universities, it was diffuse and covert and not concentrated and open. What gave it a focus and brought it to new life on the campus was politics. Inter-caste marriages were not common, but they were beginning to take place, mainly as a result of conditions created by universities. The taboos on inter-dining, on which so much of caste exclusion depended, were definitely in retreat, and here too universities and colleges led the way. Finally, it was the products of universities who began to enter the new caste-free occupations, or occupations not governed by the rules of caste. If caste prejudice and caste discrimination were in decline in universities and colleges in the first half of the 20th century, how have they managed to re-enter them once again?
Wherever caste consciousness became a major instrument of electoral politics, it made its way into academic institutions and vitiated their atmosphere. Caste consciousness is the gift of the Indian politician to the university. Not all political parties have been equally active in spreading the virus of caste, but the Congress has certainly been in the forefront. The Left parties have now entered the field with the enthusiasm characteristic of neophytes. They have discovered that in India the road to the class struggle lies through caste quotas. Who says that Indians have contributed nothing original to the Marxian approach to society? Having injected the virus of caste prejudice into the universities, political parties now hope to control that virus by expanding caste quotas in admissions and appointments. Caste quotas will not reduce caste prejudice, but only give it greater room for play. The academic objective of universities, which is the advancement of science and scholarship, will be displaced by its ostensible social objective which is to negotiate the most profitable political balance between different castes, different communities and different districts. The size of the university will be expanded or contracted to accommodate changing political pressures, and without regard for its academic aims and objectives. Those who have set this mischief to work will then shed crocodile tears over the lamentable state to which the universities have reduced themselves. The writer is professor emeritus of sociology, University of Delhi.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1584038.cmsMeeting the challenge of Mandal II
Satish Deshpande & Yogendra Yadav
THE CENTRAL Government's move to introduce reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in elite institutions of higher and professional education — popularly known as Mandal II — seems to be heading towards a stalemate. In this article, we propose a possible solution that might take us beyond the debilitating standoff between `merit' and `social justice'.
This is clearly an ambitious and optimistic agenda, especially because Mandal II proves that some mistakes are destined to be repeated. Once again the Government appears set to do the right thing in the wrong way, without the prior preparation, careful study, and opinion priming that such an important move obviously demands. It is even more shocking that students from our very best institutions are willing to re-enact the horribly inappropriate forms of protest from the original anti-Mandal agitation of 1990-91. As symbolic acts, street-sweeping or shoe-shining send the callous and arrogant message that some people — castes? — are indeed fit only for menial jobs, while others are `naturally' suited to respectable professions such as engineering and medicine. However, the media do seem to have learnt something from their dishonourable role in Mandal I. By and large, both the print and electronic media have not been incendiary in their coverage, and some have even presented alternative views. Nevertheless, far too much remains unchanged across 16 years.
Perhaps the most crucial constant is the absence of a favourable climate of opinion. Outside the robust contestations of politics proper, our public life continues to be disproportionately dominated by the upper castes. It is therefore unsurprising, but still a matter of concern, that the dominant view denies the very validity of affirmative action. Indeed the antipathy towards reservations may have grown in recent years. The main problem is that the dominant view sees quotas and the like as benefits being handed out to particular caste groups. This leads logically to the conclusion that power-hungry politicians and vote bank politics are the root causes of this problem. But to think thus is to put the cart before the horse.
A rational and dispassionate analysis of this issue must begin with the one crucial fact that is undisputed by either side — the overwhelming dominance of upper castes in higher and especially professional education. Although undisputed, this fact is not easy to establish, especially in the case of our elite institutions, which have always been adamant about refusing to reveal information on the caste composition of their students and faculty. But the more general information that is available through the National Sample Survey Organisation clearly shows the caste-patterning of educational inequality. Some of the relevant data are shown in Tables 1 and 2.
Table 1 shows the percentage of graduates in the population aged 20 years or above in different castes and communities in rural and urban India. Only a little more than 1 per cent of Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Muslims are graduates in rural India, while the figure for Hindu upper castes is four to five times higher at over 5 per cent. The real inequalities are in urban India, where the SCs in particular, but also Muslims, OBCs, and STs are way behind the forward communities and castes with a quarter or more of their population being graduates. Another way of looking at it is that STs, SCs, Muslims, and OBCs are always below the national average while the other communities and especially Hindu upper castes are well above this average in both rural and urban India.
Table 2 shows the share of different castes and communities in the national pool of graduates as compared to their share of the total population aged 20 years or more. In other words, the table tells us which groups have a higher than proportionate (or lower than proportionate) share of graduates. Once again, with the exception of rural Hindu OBCs and urban STs, the same groups are severely under-represented while the Hindu upper castes, Other Religions (Jains, Parsis, Buddhists, etc.), and Christians are significantly over-represented among graduates. Thus the Hindu upper castes' share of graduates is twice their share in the population aged 20 or above in rural India, and one-and-a-half times their share in the population aged 20 or above in urban India. Compare this, for example, to urban SCs and Muslims, whose share of graduates is only 30 per cent and 39 per cent respectively of their share in the 20 and above population.
It should be emphasised that these data refer to all graduates from all kinds of institutions countrywide — if we were to look at the elite professional institutions, the relative dominance of the upper castes and forward communities is likely to be much stronger, although such institutions refuse to publish the data that could prove or disprove such claims.
Although it is implicitly conceded by both sides, upper caste dominance is explained in opposite ways. The upper castes claim that their preponderance is due solely to their superior merit, and that there is nothing to be done about this situation since merit should indeed be the sole criterion in determining access to higher education. In fact, they may go further to assert that any attempt to change the status quo can only result in "the murder of merit." Those who are for affirmative action argue that the traditional route to caste dominance — namely, an upper caste monopoly over higher education — still remains effective despite the apparent abolition of caste. From this perspective, the status quo is an unjust one requiring state intervention on behalf of disadvantaged sections who are unable to force entry under the current rules of the game. More extreme views of this kind may go on to assert that merit is merely an upper caste conjuring trick designed to keep out the lower castes.
What is wrong with this picture? Nothing, except that it is only part of a much larger frame. For if we understand merit as sheer innate ability, it is difficult to explain why it should seem to be an upper caste monopoly. Whatever people may believe privately, it is now beyond doubt that arguments for the genetic or natural inferiority of social groups are unacceptable. If so, how is it that, roughly speaking, one quarter of our population supplies three quarters of our elite professionals? The explanation has to lie in the social mechanisms through which innate ability is translated into certifiable skill and encashable competence. This points to intended or unintended systemic exclusions in the educational system, and to inequalities in the background resources that education presupposes.
It is their confidence in having monopolised the educational system and its prerequisites that sustains the upper caste demand to consider only merit and not caste. If educational opportunities were truly equalised, the upper castes' share in professional education would be roughly in proportion to their population share, that is, between one fourth and one third. This would not only be roughly one third of their present strength in higher education; it would also be much less than the 50 per cent share they are assured of even after implementation of OBC reservations!
If the upper caste view needs an unexamined notion of merit that ignores the social mechanisms that bring it into existence, the lower caste or pro-reservation view appears to require that merit be emptied of all its content. While this is indeed true of some militant positions, the peculiar circumstances of Indian higher education also allow alternative interpretations. In a situation marked by absurd levels of "hyper-selectivity" — 300,000 aspirants competing for 4000 IIT seats, for example — merit gets reduced to rank in an examination. As educationists know only too well, the examination is a blunt instrument. It is good only for making broad distinctions in levels of ability; it cannot tell us whether a person scoring 85 per cent would definitely make a better engineer or doctor than somebody scoring 80 per cent or 75 per cent or even 70 per cent.
In short, it is only a combination of social compulsion and pure myth that sustains the crazy world of cut-off points and second decimal place differences that dominate the admission season. Such fetishised notions of merit have nothing to do with any genuine differences in ability. The caste composition of higher education could well be changed without any sacrifice of merit simply by instituting a lottery among all candidates of broadly similar levels of ability — say, the top 15 or 25 per cent of a large applicant pool.
But the inequities of our educational system are so deeply entrenched that caste inequalities might persist despite some change. We would then be back where we started — with the apparent dichotomy between merit and social justice in higher education. How do we transcend this dilemma? Is there a way forward where both merit and social justice can be given their due?
In this second and concluding part of their series, the authors offer a method to ensure both merit and social justice are taken into account.
THE ALTERNATIVE proposed here is rooted in the recognition that we need to go beyond a simple-minded reduction of `merit' and `social justice' to singular and mutually exclusive categories. In reality, both merit and social justice are multi-dimensional, and the pursuit of one does not require us to abandon the other. The proposal seeks to identify the viable common ground that permits simultaneous commitment to both social justice and excellence. It seeks to operationalise a policy that is morally justified, intellectually sound, politically defensible, and administratively viable.
Let us present the basic principles that underlie this proposal before getting into operational details. First of all, this proposal is based on a firm commitment to policies of affirmative action flowing both from the constitutional obligation to realise social justice and also from the overall success of the experience of reservations in the last 50 years. Secondly, we recognise the moral imperative to extend affirmative action to educational opportunities, for a lack of these opportunities results in the inter-generational reproduction of inequalities and severely restricts the positive effects of job reservations. Thirdly, it needs to be remembered that the end of affirmative action can be served by various means including reservation. The state's basic commitment is to the end, not any particular means. Finally, flowing from the experience of reservations for socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs), we need to recognise that there are multiple, cross-cutting, and overlapping sources of inequality of educational opportunities, all of which need redress. This is what our proposal seeks to do.
The proposal involves computing scores for `academic merit' and for `social disadvantage' and then combining the two for admission to higher educational institutions. Since the academic evaluation is less controversial, we concentrate here on the evaluation of comparative social disadvantage. We suggest that the social disadvantage score should be divided into its group and individual components. For the group component, we consider disadvantages based on caste and community, gender, and region. These scores must not be decided arbitrarily or merely on the basis of impressions. We suggest that these disadvantages should be calibrated on the basis of available statistics on representation in higher education of different castes/communities and regions, each of these being considered separately for males and females. The required data could come from the National Sample Survey or other available sources. It would be best, of course, if a special national survey were commissioned for this purpose.
Besides group disadvantages, this scheme also takes individual disadvantages into consideration. While a large number of factors determine individual disadvantages (family history, generational depth of literacy, sibling education, economic resources, etc.), we believe there are two robust indicators of individual disadvantage that can be operationally used in the system of admission to public institutions: parental occupation and the type of school where a person passed the high school examination. These two variables allow us to capture the effect of most of the individual disadvantages, including the family's educational history and economic circumstances.
In the accompanying tables, we illustrate how this scheme could be operationalised. It needs to be underlined that the weightages proposed here are tentative, based on our limited information, and meant only to illustrate the scheme. The exact weights could be decided after examining more evidence. We suggest that weightage for academic merit and social disadvantage be distributed in the ratio of 80:20. The academic score could be converted to a standardised score on a scale of 0-80, while the social disadvantage score would range from 0 to a maximum of 20.
Awarding social disadvantage points
Table A shows how the group disadvantage points can be awarded. There are three axes of group disadvantage considered here: the relative backwardness of the region one comes from; one's caste and community (only non-SC-ST groups are considered here); and one's gender. The zones in the top row refer to a classification of regions — this can be at State or even sub-State region level — based on indicators of backwardness that are commonly used and can be agreed upon. Thus Zone I is the most backward region while Zone IV is the most developed region. The disadvantage points would thus decrease from left to right for each caste group and gender.
The castes and communities identified here are clubbed according to broadly similar levels of poverty and education indicators (once again the details of this can be agreed upon). The lower OBCs and Most Backward Castes along with OBC Muslims are considered most disadvantaged or least-represented among the educated, affluent, etc., while upper caste Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Parsis, etc., are considered to be the most `forward' communities.
Disadvantage points thus decrease from top to bottom. Gender is built into this matrix, with women being given disadvantage points depending on their other attributes, that is, caste and region. Thus the hypothetical numbers in this table indicate different degrees of relative disadvantage based on all three criteria, and most importantly, also on the interaction effects among the three. Thus, a woman from the most backward region who belongs to the lower OBC, MBC, or Muslim OBC groups gets the maximum score of 12, while a male from the forward communities from the most developed region gets no disadvantage points at all.
Tables B and C work in a similar manner for determining individual disadvantage. For these tables, all group variables are excluded. Table B looks at the type of school the person passed his or her secondary examination from, and the size of the village, town, or city where this school was located. Anyone going to an ordinary government school in a village or small town gets the maximum of 5 points in this matrix. The gradation of schools is done according to observed quality of education and implied family resources, and this could also be refined. A student from an exclusive English medium public school in a large metro gets no disadvantage points.
Table C looks at parental occupation as a proxy for family resources (that is, income wealth, etc., which are notoriously difficult to ascertain directly). Since this variable is vulnerable to falsification and would need some efforts at verification, we have limited the maximum points awarded here to three. Children of parents who are outside the organised sector and are below the taxable level of income get the maximum points, and the occupation of both parents is considered. Those with either parent in Class I or II jobs of the government, or in managerial or professional jobs get no points at all. Intermediate jobs in the organised sector, including Class III and IV jobs in the government, are reckoned to be better placed than those in the unorganised, low pay sector.
Combining the scores in the three matrices will give the total disadvantage score, which can then be added to the standardised academic merit score to give each candidate's final score. Admissions for all non-SC-ST candidates, that is, for 77.5 per cent of all seats, can then be based on this total score.
Differences and advantages
While our proposal shares with the proposal mooted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) the commitment to affirmative action and the desire to extend it to educational opportunities, the scheme we propose differs from the Ministry's proposal in many ways. The Ministry's proposal seeks to create a bloc of `reserved' seats. Our proposal applies to all the seats not covered by the existing reservation for the SC, ST, and other categories. The MHRD proposal recognises only group disadvantages and uses caste as the sole criterion of group disadvantage in educational inequalities. We too acknowledge the significance of group disadvantages and that of caste as the single most important predictor of educational inequalities. But our scheme seeks to fine-tune the identification by recognising other group disadvantages such as region and gender. Moreover, our scheme is also able to address the interaction effects between different axes of disadvantage (such as region, caste, and gender, or type of school and type of location, etc.).
While recognising group disadvantages, our scheme provides some weightage to individual disadvantages relating to family background and type of schooling. Our scheme also recognises that people of all castes may suffer from individual disadvantages, and offers redress for such disadvantages to the upper castes as well. While the MHRD proposal is based on an all-or-nothing approach to recognising disadvantages (either you are an OBC or you are not), our proposal allows for flexibility in dealing with variations in degrees of disadvantage.
The scheme we propose here is a modified version of one that was designed for the selection process of a well-known international fellowship programme for higher education, where it was successful for some years. Thousands of applications have already been screened using this scheme. A similar scheme has been used for admissions to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The working of this scheme does not seem to offer any insurmountable operational difficulties, despite the vast expansion in scale that some contexts might involve.
In the final analysis, the most critical advantage of a scheme such as the one we are proposing is that it helps to push thinking on social justice along constructive and rational lines. One of the inescapable dilemmas of caste-based affirmative action policies is that they cannot help intensifying caste identities. The debate then gets vitiated because it concentrates on the identities rather than on the valid social reasons why those identities are used as indicators of disadvantage. Our scheme clearly links caste identities to measurable empirical indicators of disadvantage. It thus helps to de-essentialise caste and to focus attention on the relative progress made by these communities.
Thus groups such as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, etc., occupy particular positions in this scheme purely by virtue of the levels of educational advantage or disadvantage. The scheme allows policies to be calibrated according to the changing relative positions of different groups, and takes care of such issues as poor upper castes, `creamy layer,' etc. It reminds us, in short, that caste or community matter not in themselves, but because they continue to be important indicators of tangible disadvantages in our unequal and unjust society.
(This proposal has been developed in consultation with many social scientists.)
(Satish Deshpande is Professor of Sociology at Delhi University; Yogendra Yadav is Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.)
‘Instead of a vital link in a solution, NKC became part of the problem’
Posted online: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 0000 hrs
Yogendra Yadav responds to Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s letter of resignation on Monday from the National Knowledge Commission
Pratap bhai,
Let me begin by complimenting you on your letter of resignation to the Prime Minister, not just for its craft, but for the rare courage it displays. An intellectual upholding his convictions and standing up to political power fills me with admiration even when, as in this case, I don’t quite agree with the cause. Your letter enabled me to think more clearly than I would otherwise have; it gave me the courage to state my differences with you.
Before I turn to the many differences, let me begin by noting one fundamental point of agreement with you. I share your despair about there being little room for thinking about social justice in a new paradigm. It is sad that political and intellectual advocates of social justice are simply not prepared to think beyond reservation as the only instrument and caste as the sole criterion. I also agree that the government’s proposed solution — phased introduction of a quota and expansion of the numbers of seats — sidesteps some of the most serious questions: substantial differences within different jatis belonging to the OBCs from different regions, relative disadvantage of women within OBCs and the disadvantages faced by non-OBCs.
I would have liked to extend this area of agreement, if only I knew what exactly you and your majority colleagues in the National Knowledge Commission stood for. In operational terms all we got was a cryptic verdict: continuing the practice of no affirmative action in higher education is better than caste-based quota. I know the NKC said it firmly believed in affirmative action. You say that you recognise the reality of caste. But I don’t know what to make of these statements as long as there is no scheme or proposal to give effect to these. As you know Professor Satish Deshpande and I have been involved in an exercise that addressed these concerns and have proposed a scheme of calculating disadvantage points that takes into account caste and other inequalities that exist in our society. The NKC could have given a more carefully worked out solution.
While agreeing with some of your criticism of the government, I kept looking for an equally searching critique of the other player in the game, the anti-reservation agitation that seeks to question the very idea of social justice. Here we have a protest led and sponsored by a small but powerful urban professional elite and lionized by the media (both of which are disproportionately dominated by the upper caste) that uses rather crude arguments and even more crass symbolism to stall a scheme threatening their privileges.
Your silence on this matter, not just in this letter but through your many interventions in the last few weeks, has worried me. You know that I have seen you as one of the intellectual leaders of this country; you can understand my agony when I see you being portrayed as the intellectual mascot for this agitation. Let me propose a hypothesis to you: this shrill and powerful campaign against the very idea of social justice is one of the reasons why there is so little space left for thinking about social justice in a new paradigm.
Let me turn to the more substantive differences.
You say that the government’s proposed measure goes against the freedom of academic institutions and the principle of diversity, that each institution should be ‘left free to devise their own programmes’ for affirmative action. Pratap, how many elite medical, engineering or management institutions in this country can you think of that have used their freedom to introduce any serious measure of affirmative action? I need not remind you of the number of times that the SC/ST Commission has documented the tales of how all these elite and not so elite institutions of higher education have dodged legal provisions of reservation for SC/ST. I can’t believe that you want to give these very institutions the freedom to decide on affirmative action.
Similarly, your stray remarks about alternatives to quotas suggest that you would like the state to play less and less of a role in affirmative action. I am surprised at this suggestion coming from a careful student of history like you. You know better than I do the lesson of the history of struggles for social justice all over the world: more often than not radical measures of social justice result from state intervention, that too from the top.
Initially I was baffled at your remarks about ‘politicisation of the educational process’. I thought this loose expression was not available to professional students of politics like you and me who know that democracy is and should be a political process, that politics is as much a source of good as that of evil. On second thought I have come to appreciate your point better. I think you meant to point to a deep malady in our educational institutions, namely their vulnerability to political masters with their narrow-minded agenda. But surely the Ministry of HRD formulating guidelines for implementation of a national policy on social justice does not fall in this category.
There was no doubt a good deal of ‘politicking’ involved in what the ministry was doing. No doubt, the ‘clever’ political move by Arjun Singh violated an institutional norm of parliamentary government and reduced the space for fine-tuned policy on this matter. But the same can be said about the ill-timed, hastily executed and unfortunately publicised move by the National Knowledge Commission. Far from tempering the debate and facilitating a solution, the NKC’s intervention added fuel to the fire, appeared as a partisan intervention and accentuated the artificial urgency that reduced the space for thinking afresh. To outsiders like me it appeared that instead of becoming a vital link in a possible solution, the NKC became part of the problem.
This is no reflection on the rest of the work the NKC has done, nor on the integrity of its members. This simply illustrates something your own work on public institutions in India has brought to our attention: the best of our institutions suffer from lack of self-restrain leading to institutional indiscretion. The NKC’s role in Mandal II was no exception.
Towards the end of your letter you remind us, and quite rightly so, of how critical ‘public reason’ is to democracies. This encouraged me to go public with this letter to you. I look forward to carrying this exercise in public reason,
I remain, your friend and admirerYogendra Yadav
(The author is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)yogendra.yadav@gmail.com
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/4984-2.htmlTop of Form
IN A BIND
- Miniaturization of the self
Beyond boundaries
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny By Amartya Sen, Viking, Rs 295
Identity and Violence is a characteristically lucid, cogent and humane critique of the concept of identity and the violence it generates. The link between identity and violence is intimate and plays itself out at many levels. Collectively, identity is sustained by a series of exclusions: to have an identity is to be one thing rather than another. But the importance we give to identity can easily slip into the more contentious claim that the world must recognize and acknowledge our identity as we do. But this claim issues in a desire to make the world conform to our identity, to expunge it of all that complicates our identity or is alien to it. Identity is like a pitiless sovereign: it demands that its claims be primary. But inwardly directed, the claims of identity can mutilate the self: it can abridge its possibilities, it confines it to being something less than it can be, it can bind its possibilities by restricting change. The argument of this book can be expressed well in two sentences of Nietzsche. The first is that “Love of just one thing is bad; even God.” And the second, “Only a historical being can be defined.”
Identity, in Sen’s resonant phrase “miniaturizes” the self; it excludes diversity by its emphasis on singularity, and change by its emphasis on fixity. And finally, Sen has a profound sense of Emerson’s claim that no society is as large as a single individual. To abridge choice, to tailor it to the demands of a collectivity is not only to limit one’s possibilities, it is also to abdicate the very idea of ourselves as a human agent, constantly making choices and judgments. To make the demands of a collective identity trump all else, is also to live vicariously. It is to give ourselves over to the illusion that our lives should be governed by the demands of moral claims that lie outside of us. Sen, of course, recognizes the role of identity in our lives, but these can be freely chosen, multiple, and above all subject to a concern for justice. Identity disables the claims of morality.
While Sen has a lot of incidental insights into the psychology of identity, often articulated wittily and poignantly, the real target of this book is intellectual constructions that valorize identity in different forms. The targets include, most obviously, writers like Samuel Huntington, whose thesis of “the clash of civilizations” casts a long shadow upon this book. Sen is at pains to refute this thesis both normatively and empirically. Huntington’s fallacy, according to Sen, is to construct the world through simple categories that are dangerous because they are self-fulfilling prophecies. Empirically, the lines of conflict do not match the boundaries of civilizations: civilizations are not what Huntington claims they are, his claims belie the facts of interconnectedness, and intra-civilizational conflict is more powerful than inter-civilizational conflict. I am not entirely convinced that the last two claims are incompatible with Huntington’s argument, but Sen is right to wonder how categories classifying people acquire authority in the first place.
But the book is also a clear-eyed refutation of an assortment of seemingly more benign uses of identity politics, of the sort that you find in multiculturalists, advocates of inter-faith dialogue and alliance for civilizations. These claims share more with the clash of civilizations thesis: they assume that identities have clearly delineated boundaries, and Sen spends great efforts deconstructing a range of oppositions, between West and non-West, between Islam and the Rest.
Multiculturalists, while they speak the language of peace and often justice, do not often liberate individuals from the shackles of identity. Sen would rather, as his previous work suggests, speak of expanding the range of our effective freedoms, including the freedom to have many identities, to become something different or more than what we are. As always, Sen carries his learning lightly; but the accessibility of the argument should not belie the radicalness of the claims being presented.
There will be some quibble with Sen’s attempts to create a more usable past for a range of communities. But there are points at which Sen’s argument really leaves you wondering. First, we know, and Sen acknowledges, that the allure of identity often arises as a response to perceived injury: nationalism is a perfect example. We also know that there have rarely been forms of collective action that do not rest upon forms of identification that place exactly the sort of overriding demands on individuals that Sen describes.
Is it possible to imagine forms of politics that do not rest on such identifications? Is it simply enough to gesture at such possibilities? What are the conditions under which a politics can arise that does not run the risks inherent to identity? A second and related question: is Sen too much of an Enlightenment thinker to really be able to explain identity politics. The explanation, insofar as this book has one, is largely cognitive: it is something of an intellectual mistake that leads us down the path of identity politics; on this account clear argument and right education can do the job. In a chapter on “Globalization and Voice”, there is also a hint that forms of exclusion and inequality need to be more urgently tackled. But is this all there is? At one level, the intellectual fallacies of the claims of identity politics are easy to unravel. At another level, this unravelling only deepens the mystery about why so many are in the grip of identity politics, why people even kill for classification. Perhaps in the end, Sen is too nice to be able to fully fathom the moral psychology and allure of identity politics. As the critics of Enlightenment had charged, the greatest theorists of freedom are not always the greatest readers of the vagaries and inconstancies of the human soul.
PRATAP BHANU MEHTA
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060428/asp/opinion/story_6139186.asp 28 April 2006 The Telegraph, Kolkata
Op-Ed
‘Perhaps I trust society too much, perhaps you trust the state too much’
Posted online: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 0000 hrs
Dear Yogendra Bhai,
My letter is redeemed by the fact that it prompted you to write. Minor points first: The NKC statement carefully did not take a categorical stand against all reservations; it merely was a plea that quotas not be extended till alternatives had been explored. If we had not taken an interim position we would have been accused of ducking the issue. As for politics, if misrepresenting the Constitution, deciding seat enhancement solely for the sake of quotas and not on other rational considerations, and leaving decisions to politicians, is not politics of the bad kind I do not know what is. Mr. Arjun Singh himself linked the decision to the prospects of the Congress party.
I want to clarify two important things. My argument on diversity and freedom leaves substantial room for the state to enact radical policies; like you I believe it will have to do so, but more intelligently. But should policies in all institutions necessarily have to follow the same model? And in a country where even people who agree on the objective of social justice are deeply divided over the means to achieve it, is not draconian homogenising going to exacerbate social conflict? I think genuine pluralism requires that we find a modus vivendi to balance different and equally important values: social justice, diversity, autonomy, freedom, creativity, efficiency. Perhaps I trust society too much, but perhaps you trust the state too much, and good historical sense requires being wary of both in appropriate measure.
Second, I did not intend to be an icon for any movement; how people use images and ideas is beyond my control. I just hope my arguments are taken for what they are. But we have to move beyond demonizing any caste or class, upper or lower. Some of the symbolism used by the protestors display a lack of sensitivity to India’s social realities and, as my letter suggests, I do not buy the binary of social justice versus merit that their arguments are based on. Yes, these kids are comparatively privileged; but in a competitive world, with short supply of institutions, they also face an anxious future. Their
anxiety is sometimes misdirected and misarticulated, but that is an intellectual and moral vacuum this society as whole faces. I have written about the indignities of caste elsewhere. But I do not believe that virtue is distributed by caste or class, which you letter implicitly suggests. Perhaps I worry too little about the absence of social justice issues in some discourses (though hopefully not about social justice itself). But I think you worry too little about how a mere reference to social justice can itself disable all critique, and excuse all kinds of ineffective and non-sensical policies. And I hope India has space for both of us.
With great admiration,Pratap Bhanu Mehta
POLITICAL PARTIES Tackle disarray, factionalism
Pratap Bhanu MehtaThere is a currently fashionable view that India’s diversity will necessarily entail a large number of political parties. In this view, a two- party system is a product of peculiar historical circumstances that may not be applicable to India. Rather than lament the fact that we do not correspond to a classic two-party model, we should recognise the fact that India’s diversity will entail a party system that is truly its own.
But the core assertion, that the number of political parties has some relationship to India’s diversity, bears more critical examination. We have lots of political parties and a good deal of social diversity. But it is too quick to assume that one causes the other. Indeed, as we shall argue below, the internal organisational weaknesses of our political parties make our democracy less effective.
If we were a little self-critical about our democracy, the proliferation of political parties would strike us more as a paradox than as a necessity. The paradox is that the number of political parties has no bearing on the diversity of views represented. Most observers think that most political parties in India are more like each other on many measures. The ideological differences between most parties are minimal and they are likely to adopt the same mix of policies when in power.
FINDING STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY: Parties must ensure that elections are contests over different ideologies. — Photo by Mukesh Aggarwal
Even on secularism, the one defining difference between political parties, the differences are less stark. The Congress in Gujarat is less different from the BJP in Gujarat, and when it comes to Shivaji and Savarkar, the Congress and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra can band together. Ninety per cent of the legislators in any party could, by their ideological leanings, be in any other party. Except for the left parties, none of the smaller parties have real ideological compunctions about allying with anyone else, if their interests require.
Diverse views
It is true that the political parties represent different social cleavages, but even here, it is easy to exaggerate their differences. No political party will openly oppose populist policies like reservations and their agendas for different social constituents end up looking the same. Therefore, the proposition that the diversity of parties is either entailed by India’s diversity or entails an expression of diverse views is simply not tenable.
Indeed, our political parties seem to also be similar in their style of functioning. Most are based on loyalty to leaders rather than loyalty to causes or institutions. Very few have properly institutionalised norms of recruitment and membership. And none has any real intra-party democracy. We ought not to worry about the number of parties, but we should worry about the manner of their functioning.
Democracy performs its most salient functions through parties. The selection of candidates, the mobilisation of the electorate, the formulation of agendas, the passing of legislation—are all conducted through parties. Parties are, in short, the mechanisms through which power is exercised in a democracy.
But lack of intra-party democracy produces adverse outcomes for Indian democracy. The criteria for the basic decisions any party has to take, ranging from candidate selection to party platform, remain either unclear or are left to the discretion of one or a handful of leaders. The more the discretionary power vested with leaders, the more a political party will depend solely on its leaders for renewal.
This is so for many reasons. First, one of the most important functions of democracy in any setting is epistemic: to allow the free and uninhibited flow of relevant information. The less internally democratic a party, the less likely it is that the relevant information will flow up party conduits. The Congress leadership’s spectacular failure to be attentive to local conditions during the 1970s and 1980s is a recent instance of this phenomenon. Second, if the criteria for advancement within the party are unclear and whimsical, newly-mobilised social groups or leaders are less likely to work within existing party structures and will be more tempted to set up their own. If there are no formal mechanisms to challenge entrenched party hierarchies and regulate conflict within parties, they are more likely to fragment.
Suppose you are a newly mobilised social group and want to pursue the path to power, you can do it either by forming a new party, or through existing parties, by moving up the ladder. In most countries, groups opt to do the latter for a number of reasons. Becoming a dominant player requires an ability to reach out to broader social constituencies and joining existing parties enables this. But new groups will remain in parties only if there are clear and fair rules that allow their advancement. Intra-party elections are one such mechanism. They allow a group or a candidate to say, “If we can convince this group of voters within the party of our views, we get to determine its policies”. But if these rules are not clear, and dependent upon the whim of the top leadership, new and ambitious entrants that carry a social base are more wary of entering parties.
So there are no ideological obstacles to a Mulayam or a Mayawati being in the Congress. But their being there puts them at the mercy of someone else’s leadership. There are no institutional guarantees of fairness. Their prospects become more uncertain because there are no clear rules. Therefore, new constituencies prefer working through new parties rather than joining old ones. Once we got a significant number of parties, it changed the political equilibrium. Now parties have an added incentive to cling on to their little enclaves. With the prospects of coalition governments high, the bargaining power of smaller parties, which might otherwise have been irrelevant, increases. In short, the proliferation of parties has more to do with institutional pathology within parties than with ideological diversity within the country.
Poorly institutionalised intra-party democracy produces more factions. In circumstances where the legitimacy of contending groups within a party is not dependent upon a clearly verifiable and open mandate from within the party, the survival of political leaders depends more on political intrigue than on persuading their followers.
Accountability
There is no argument against the proposition that we should cherish our diversity. And we should be open to different institutional forms to express it. But the idea that our current party system is about representing diversity is a piece of wishful thinking. The fragmentation of the party system and the prospect of perpetual coalition governments; the weakening of democratic accountability despite high turnover of incumbents; the fact that political parties are unable to transcend their narrow social bases and become parties of principle; the diminishing quality of public deliberation in our politics—all have their roots, less in the failure of the Constitution than in the party structures that have grown under it. These outcomes are, to a considerable degree, produced by poor institutionalisation of intra-party democracy.
If the ethnification of the party system is to be overcome, parties will have to ensure that elections are contests over ideas that voters can critically assess. There is a good deal of deserved self-congratulation about the fact that in recent decades Indian democracy has produced an unprecedented mobilisation of Backward Castes and Dalits. But this self- congratulation has occluded the fact that there is relatively little serious, open and protracted discussion of policy issues. Our political parties resist such discussion; most party leaders are unembarrassingly unaware of their own manifestoes; most members of Parliament seem not to have the foggiest idea about the Bills they voted for or against; and legislative agendas, with the exception of a few high profile and often merely symbolic issues, are seldom the object of contention in electoral politics.
I cannot see any other way of remedying the lack of public deliberation on these issues other than through changing the culture of political parties in India.
In most democracies, parties perform crucial educative functions. Political leaders used to accepting the discipline and sanctity of democratic procedures within their own parties are also less likely to circumvent democracy when in government. Moreover, protracted intra-party primaries have a profound impact on party members. If the party platform is put up for serious contestation within the party, it is more likely that party members will know why their party takes the positions it does. It is also more likely that the battle within parties will become something more of a battle of ideas rather than a race for patronage.
The simple reason for the poor quality of public deliberation in forums like Parliament is this: the rise of leaders within political parties is not, in a single instance, dependent upon persuading party members of the cogency of your ideas. This is partly a result of the fact that within parties there is no such thing as an open and fair contest at almost any level of the party hierarchy. Election campaigns are both too brief and enormous in scope to act as proper forums for protracted deliberation.
In most democracies the groundwork of political education is done within political parties and the more open and democratic their structure the more likely it is that politicians will be better educated on the issues. More effective forms of accountability and deliberation require a pluralisation of the sites at which politicians are held accountable and parties are essential to this process. The current state of our parties is schooling our politicians in arbitrariness, haphazardness, uncertainty and lack of deliberative purpose.
All our political parties are in internal disarray. They are either beholden to individual leaders or they descend into factional fighting. But they have no settled institutional devices for settling crucial issues.
Lack of intra-party democracy impedes proper representation rather than enhances it. By their non-transparency, parties have restricted voter choices rather than increased them. The reasons for the lack of proper intra-party democracy are not hard to understand. Parties are endogenous institutions that adopt certain norms and procedures. The question is under what conditions do parties choose to create democratic rules and procedures in the first place?
Power struggle
The answers turn out not to be very encouraging. Leaders like as much control over their parties as possible. They like to set agendas, select candidates who are beholden to them, and maintain themselves in power. Most leaders have an incentive not to institutionalise settled procedures for challenging their power.
Comparative evidence suggests that even parties of long-standing authority reform themselves very rarely. It took decades to reform the British Labour party’s internal procedures. The Democratic Party in the US stumbled into reforms only in the late 1960s. Since the democratisation of parties is tied to power struggles within, it is not surprising that there have been very few attempts. But this does not mean failure is inevitable. The rank and file will have to insist that it is in the long-term interests of the party to institutionalise procedures. Or, alternatively, the internal configurations of power within parties need to be propitious.
Does the remoteness of the prospect that political parties will undertake to reform themselves mean that intra-party democracy should be legislated into existence? Certainly, comparative evidence again suggests that state regulation is often necessary for party reform. In Germany, parties have been required to meet certain conditions in nominating their candidates. Candidates have to be chosen by a direct secret vote of members of the party at both constituency and federal levels. If the party’s management committee objects to a list so chosen, a second vote is held and the results are final.
In the American case, first, laws were enacted that required the use of secret ballots in intra-party elections. Laws laying down the qualifications for party membership followed these, in turn followed by statutes specifying the administrative structure of parties, till finally the direct primary was instituted. It is true that in the American system, in some states, minor parties are not required to comply in the same way as major parties with the legal structures imposed upon them.
If there is legal mandating of intra-party elections in India, we will have to carefully examine the advantages and disadvantages of different nominating procedures. There is a whole range of procedures available that would repay careful study which cannot be undertaken within the confines of this paper. It may be the case that parties can be given wide latitude in setting up their own voting procedures, so long as they are recognisably democratic. But the bottom line is that you cannot have a genuinely democratic polity without democratic parties.
— The writer is President, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/specials/tribune_125/main3.htmSept. 24, 2005 The Tribune, Chandigarh
Constitutional Culture? Where is it?
Here is a scintillating and brilliant account on the state of affairs in relation to what Pratap Bhanu Mehta calls, 'constitutional culture'. Is there a possibility that Substitute PM will ponder over what Mehta ji has to say, even though Mehta ji is no longer with the National Knowledge Commission?
More importantly, let us hope that Mehta ji's impassioned statement will be read by the judicial officers of the land. Will they introspect on the state of the 'constitutional culture' or the absence of it?
Who will bell the cat for a new Constituent Assembly and a new Constitution which is likely to find acceptance by the youth of Bharatam? The new Constitution has to reflect the asipirations of 70% of the population who are youth, less than 35 years of age (2001 census).
In my view, the Constitution has become an aged document and irrelevant to the times with a set of 93 Constitutional Amendments so far (the last one was in December 2005) to denigrate the sanctity of Article 14 and 15 by trying to overturn the Supreme Court's opinion on Inamdar case.
All political parties are in the same boat; they unanimously passed the 93rd Amendment (with only one lone dissenting voice, that of Chandan Mitra). They did it because, as Mehta ji, notes they got away with it.
The youth of Bharatam Janam resent this behaviour of the politicos who have made themselves to be men and women of straw, uncaring about the national of bharatam, unified in culture and vibrant in her progress to Developed Bharatam 2020. Yes, it is time to rethink the entire basic structure of the imported Constitution and render it in tune with the Bharatiya ethos and traditions with true respect for Dharma, taking the Government off the backs of the people, instituting true Swarajyam by handing power back to the Janapadas, the Panchayats, leaving the Centre to be responsible only for two subjects: National Defence and Policing.
\n \nWho will bell the cat? Will the Supreme Court take suo moto notice and call the full Bench to deliberate on the serious issue highlighted by Mehta ji? Yes, it is time for action. The very existence of the Supreme Court is premised on a Constituion, supremacy of law as perceived by the people. The youth have lost faith in the Constitution and the institutions which have perverted the Constitution and reduced it to a parchment.\n\n \ndhanyavaadah.\n \nkalyanaraman\nSarasvati research centre,
kalyan97@gmail.com\n \nChecks and imbalances \nPratap Bhanu Mehta, Indian Express, June 1, 2006\nPresident Kalam\'s return of the Office of Profit Bill raises three questions. First, are his apprehensions justified? The answer is a categorical yes. The bill is a constitutional travesty that licensed and exonerated the flouting of law. Indeed, the degradation of our constitutional morality is now so deep that the bill did not even pretend otherwise. The only justification offered for it was to prevent a political crisis, as if a political crisis that arises from unlawful actions should be remedied by retrospectively changing the law. The bill also violated many canons of public reason: the list of offices included was done expressly to let current incumbents off the hook, not on any rational criterion. The president did not exercise due diligence in the Bihar case, and he is right to do so now. \n",1]
);
//-->
Who will bell the cat? Will the Supreme Court take suo moto notice and call the full Bench to deliberate on the serious issue highlighted by Mehta ji? Yes, it is time for action. The very existence of the Supreme Court is premised on a Constituion, supremacy of law as perceived by the people. The youth have lost faith in the Constitution and the institutions which have perverted the Constitution and reduced it to a parchment.
dhanyavaadah.
kalyanaraman
Sarasvati research centre,
kalyan97@gmail.comChecks and imbalances
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Indian Express, June 1, 2006
President Kalam's return of the Office of Profit Bill raises three questions. First, are his apprehensions justified? The answer is a categorical yes. The bill is a constitutional travesty that licensed and exonerated the flouting of law. Indeed, the degradation of our constitutional morality is now so deep that the bill did not even pretend otherwise. The only justification offered for it was to prevent a political crisis, as if a political crisis that arises from unlawful actions should be remedied by retrospectively changing the law. The bill also violated many canons of public reason: the list of offices included was done expressly to let current incumbents off the hook, not on any rational criterion. The president did not exercise due diligence in the Bihar case, and he is right to do so now.
\n\nSecond, in enacting the bill, the government has conceded many legislators were violating the office of profit norms. But if that is the case, why has the EC not proceeded against them with the same alacrity that it showed in the Jaya Bachchan case? Independent constitutional agencies cannot be assertive selectively, and the EC\'s backing off raises some concern. \n\nBut perhaps the most important question is this: why does the UPA government get into a constitutional embarrassment with alarming frequency? Perhaps this is the wrong question. The UPA\'s problem in matters of constitutional morality is not that it does the wrong thing. It is far deeper: it has lost any sense of the distinction between the right and the wrong thing. No wonder it faces strictures from the court, skepticism from the president and the country is left at the mercy of non-elected institutions which are just about managing to plug the dike. Perhaps it is not an accident a government that routinely violates constitutional norms cannot understand even basic distinctions between enabling legislation and legislation that obliges you to do something. \n\nThis state of affairs calls for a deeper diagnosis, whose roots perhaps lie outside politics. The Congress spokesperson\'s defence of the bill was revealing: Parliament had the right to do it, so it did it. But a constitutional morality requires the exercise of a right in this respect be justified, and the government seems immune to offering cogent justification. It thinks, perhaps in tune with the party\'s own modus operandi, that will, not reason, makes law; reasoned justification be damned. But the crisis of constitutional norms has wider sources. Pramod Mahajan famously remarked once, "Most MPs see the Constitution for the first time when they take an oath on it." The operative word is \'see\', not \'read\'. There is a genuine crisis, especially among the educated, of what might broadly be called constitutional literacy, an understanding of what the Constitution is about. Understanding the Constitution does not always mean parties will honour it; but not understanding does mean that there is no line of resistance. When the legislator is ignorant of the principles of legislation, it is a short step to thinking that the letter of the law and the animating spirit behind it are irrelevant forms, to be twisted at will. \n",1]
);
//-->
Second, in enacting the bill, the government has conceded many legislators were violating the office of profit norms. But if that is the case, why has the EC not proceeded against them with the same alacrity that it showed in the Jaya Bachchan case? Independent constitutional agencies cannot be assertive selectively, and the EC's backing off raises some concern.
But perhaps the most important question is this: why does the UPA government get into a constitutional embarrassment with alarming frequency? Perhaps this is the wrong question. The UPA's problem in matters of constitutional morality is not that it does the wrong thing. It is far deeper: it has lost any sense of the distinction between the right and the wrong thing. No wonder it faces strictures from the court, skepticism from the president and the country is left at the mercy of non-elected institutions which are just about managing to plug the dike. Perhaps it is not an accident a government that routinely violates constitutional norms cannot understand even basic distinctions between enabling legislation and legislation that obliges you to do something.
This state of affairs calls for a deeper diagnosis, whose roots perhaps lie outside politics. The Congress spokesperson's defence of the bill was revealing: Parliament had the right to do it, so it did it. But a constitutional morality requires the exercise of a right in this respect be justified, and the government seems immune to offering cogent justification. It thinks, perhaps in tune with the party's own modus operandi, that will, not reason, makes law; reasoned justification be damned. But the crisis of constitutional norms has wider sources. Pramod Mahajan famously remarked once, "Most MPs see the Constitution for the first time when they take an oath on it." The operative word is 'see', not 'read'. There is a genuine crisis, especially among the educated, of what might broadly be called constitutional literacy, an understanding of what the Constitution is about. Understanding the Constitution does not always mean parties will honour it; but not understanding does mean that there is no line of resistance. When the legislator is ignorant of the principles of legislation, it is a short step to thinking that the letter of the law and the animating spirit behind it are irrelevant forms, to be twisted at will.
\nBut this crisis extends beyond politicians, not to just citizens but professionals as well. Indian law schools banished or marginalised jurisprudence, an intimate supplement to constitutional law. The number of people who can contribute intellectually interesting but principled discussion of the law is small; I suspect even the tribe of great constitutional \n
\nlawyers is diminishing. Our Constitution is, paradoxically, effective only in a fit of absentmindedness or if it can be put to strategic uses. We discover its clauses after the fact. \n\nAlthough the Supreme Court has been a great custodian of constitutional values, it has, ironically, contributed to the decline of constitutionalism. Just as a coincidence I happened to be reading \nP.K. Tripathi\'s great essay, \'Mr Gajendragadkar and Constitutional Interpretation\'. While positively evaluating Gajendragadkar\'s legacy, he chastises him for two things. First, he takes him to task for decimating the sanctity of the constitutional text, albeit for good purposes. Once the judiciary decided that its uses of the Constitution were going to be purely instrumental, rather than disciplined by canons of interpretation, it was a short step to thinking that a constitution is purely instrumental. If it is purely instrumental, if words can be plucked out of thin air, if the judges define the content of the law, and if the meaning of the Constitution can be changed easily and at will, the text does not carry much authority. The only thing that matters is what you can get away with. We are in a situation where each institution, from the courts to Parliament, from the speaker\'s office to the election commission, is jostling to see what it can get away with. This jostling produces a certain balance of power, which is still protecting our liberties, but it is not producing a constitutional culture. Second, as Tripathi presciently warned, a time may come when institutions will exercise more power over the Constitution than acknowledge its authority. In a way the ease with which Parliament amends the Constitution or the courts arbitrarily decide what it means are two sides of the same coin. The Constitution becomes nothing but a parchment when we all treat it as such. \n",1]
);
//-->
But this crisis extends beyond politicians, not to just citizens but professionals as well. Indian law schools banished or marginalised jurisprudence, an intimate supplement to constitutional law. The number of people who can contribute intellectually interesting but principled discussion of the law is small; I suspect even the tribe of great constitutional
lawyers is diminishing. Our Constitution is, paradoxically, effective only in a fit of absentmindedness or if it can be put to strategic uses. We discover its clauses after the fact.
Although the Supreme Court has been a great custodian of constitutional values, it has, ironically, contributed to the decline of constitutionalism. Just as a coincidence I happened to be reading P.K. Tripathi's great essay, 'Mr Gajendragadkar and Constitutional Interpretation'. While positively evaluating Gajendragadkar's legacy, he chastises him for two things. First, he takes him to task for decimating the sanctity of the constitutional text, albeit for good purposes. Once the judiciary decided that its uses of the Constitution were going to be purely instrumental, rather than disciplined by canons of interpretation, it was a short step to thinking that a constitution is purely instrumental. If it is purely instrumental, if words can be plucked out of thin air, if the judges define the content of the law, and if the meaning of the Constitution can be changed easily and at will, the text does not carry much authority. The only thing that matters is what you can get away with. We are in a situation where each institution, from the courts to Parliament, from the speaker's office to the election commission, is jostling to see what it can get away with. This jostling produces a certain balance of power, which is still protecting our liberties, but it is not producing a constitutional culture. Second, as Tripathi presciently warned, a time may come when institutions will exercise more power over the Constitution than acknowledge its authority. In a way the ease with which Parliament amends the Constitution or the courts arbitrarily decide what it means are two sides of the same coin. The Constitution becomes nothing but a parchment when we all treat it as such.
The public debate has also contributed to this foot-looseness about the Constitution. Just think of how we have bought into the distinction between the PM's office and the rest of the government, as if government as whole is not responsible for what it does. In a small way, this too is a sign of the decreasing hold of constitutional norms, where exonerating individuals has become more important than the principle of collective responsibility. It is important to grasp this point because it would be too easy to blame everything on the venality of the UPA, the incompetence of its legal advisors, and the intolerance of politicians. When the honourable Speaker of the House devotes energy to muzzling reasonable criticism outside the House, you know there is something awry about our constitutional culture. When the Constitution becomes too unimportant to be studied and too instrumental to be kicked around at will, the President, who should be a voice of last resort, becomes our only resort. But he cannot, like the courts, save us forever.
pratapbmehta@gmail.comhttp://indianexpress.com/story/5505.html
