Expanding the Idea of India

A new set of Fundamental Duties can go a long way towards instilling a reinvigorated sense of civic responsibility among citizens.

The Constitution of India, the longest written Constitution of the world, has envisaged a holistic approach towards civic life in a democratic polity. Certain rights have been guaranteed within the Constitution as Fundamental Rights. Since human conduct cannot be confined to the realm of Fundamental Rights, the Constitution has envisaged certain duties, which are correlated to the rights, and those duties have been described as Fundamental Duties.

The framers of the Constitution did not deem it appropriate to incorporate those duties in the text of the Constitution when it was originally promulgated. However, the post-Constitution civic life, for around a quarter century, did not portray a rosy picture, and therefore, it was thought fit to have a framework of duties in the Constitution itself. It may sound paradoxical that the preparatory work for the introduction of Fundamental Duties by the Swaran Singh Committee was done when the Fundamental Rights were under suspension during the Emergency.

> The full text of Justice Kurian Joseph speech

The Fundamental Duties 

The following ten Fundamental Duties were introduced by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 — Article 51-A: It shall be the duty of every citizen of India: To abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem; to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom; to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India; to defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so; to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities and to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women; to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture; to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures; to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform; to safeguard public property and to abjure violence; to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity, so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement. Subsequently, another duty was added by the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2002: for a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education of the child or ward between the age of six and fourteen.

Since then, the scope of Fundamental Rights under Part III of the Constitution has seen significant expansion through judicial pronouncements; the right to free legal services to the poor, right to speedy trial and right to live in a clean and healthy environment are just a few examples. As a result, an imbalance has been created between the current set of Fundamental Rights and Duties. Here is an attempt to examine if a few additional Fundamental Duties in the Constitution of this country could help in balancing out the rights of its citizens and further make them more responsible towards the country’s development.

Additional duties 

Duty to vote: Article 326 of the Constitution read with Section 62 of the Representation of People’s Act, 1951 confers the right to vote. However, quite often the question arises as to whether that right also implies an obligation. The voter turnout during the last general election amounted only to about 67 per cent. This voter apathy should be taken seriously and an attempt should be made to make voting a citizenship obligation.

The state can take several steps to ensure that this duty to vote is made operational and effective. One method through which this may be achieved is by developing a system of incentives for voters and conversely disadvantages for those who abstain from performing their duty to vote. A very large section of people can be motivated to vote this way.

Duty to pay taxes: The tax gap (the revenue that a government is expected to receive as against the revenue it actually collects) continues to increase every year. The greatest indicator of this is the fact that the size of India’s shadow economy as a share of the GDP reached 24.3 per cent in the year 2012. Research has found that tax evasion is a direct result of lack of trust among the people, in general, and the government, in particular. Citizens must believe that their taxes are bound to be used for public good. The incorporation of the right to pay taxes as part of Fundamental Duties in the Constitution will shift the onus onto the taxpayer to pay taxes rather than the tax department to collect them.

Duty to help accident victims: Every 60 minutes, 16 persons die in traffic accidents in India. According to the Law Commission of India, at least 50 per cent of fatalities can be prevented if road accident victims receive medical attention within the critical first hour after the accident. The Karnataka government’s decision to frame a ‘Good Samaritan law’ is a step in the right direction. With the increase in the number of accidents, it has become pertinent for India to recognise this duty as one owed by its citizens towards each other.

Duty to keep the premises clean: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Mission has received tremendous support from people from all walks of life. The most effective mechanism to tackle uncleanliness is to sensitise people about this duty. Therefore, it is imperative that a Fundamental Duty to this effect be added to the Constitution.

For a better society

Duty to prevent civil wrongs: It is not enough that a citizen refrains from committing wrong; he has a duty to see that fellow citizens do not indulge in the commission of wrongs.

Duty to raise voice against injustice: Today people seem to have stopped reacting to atrocities; they neither report crimes nor volunteer to testify in a court. The duties of a victim or a witness can be classified into two main categories, viz. duty to report a crime and duty to testify in court. The state must also on its part work to ensure that the fight to bring the offender to book does not become a Kafkaesque nightmare for the victim or witness.

Duty to protect whistle-blowers: With the coming into force of the Right to Information Act, 2005, every citizen has become a “potential whistle-blower”. While the state has a great deal of responsibility in providing for their protection through appropriate legislative instruments, the responsibility to protect torchbearers of transparency vests on each one of us.

Duty to support bona fide civil society movements: Citizens have a moral duty to organise themselves or support citizen groups so that the gaps in governance left by the executive can be filled and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are made available to every citizen. Therefore, it is proposed that there must be an addition to Part IV-A of the Constitution to that effect.

Reinvigorating civic responsibility: In the modern context, it has become increasingly important to instil a reinvigorated sense of civic responsibility among Indian citizens. This can be achieved by adding new duties to the existing list of Fundamental Duties while also laying emphasis on the performance of the existing ones. The significance of Fundamental Duties is not diminished by the fact that there is no punishment prescribed for not following them. Fundamental Duties constitute the conscience of our Constitution; they should be treated as constitutional values that must be propagated by all citizens.

It appears our polity is not even aware of such a noble part of our Constitution. This should be included in the curriculum of high school students at least.

Justice Kurian Joseph is a sitting judge of the Supreme Court. This article is adapted from a speech he delivered.

Source: The Hindu, 15-07-2016

> The full text of Justice Kurian Joseph speech

Indiscriminate discrimination

The tools of prejudice, once unleashed, do not differentiate one community from another

U.S. President Donald Trump, in his address to Congress, may have denouncedthe killing of Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas, but it is hard to ignore that his own polarising presidential campaign has directly led to the current intolerant climate in the U.S.

On the surface, this killing may seem like a case of mistaken identity. In a misguided stab at self-preservation, some NGOs have recommended to the Hindu community in the U.S. that they should appear more “assimilated” or highlight their identity. But doing so would be to ignore a crucial lesson from this tragedy: the tools of prejudice, once unleashed, can be indiscriminating in choosing their targets.

Historical persecution

The first Indian migrants to reach the U.S. understood this lesson well. Arriving in the beginning of the 20th century, they faced severe persecution and bigotry. For decades before their arrival, American society had been perfecting the mechanisms of oppression against various communities: the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, African-Americans and Native Americans. Now these tools could be turned against the Indians.

The first wave of Indian migrants to the U.S. was a few thousand in number, consisting mostly of unskilled farmers from Punjab and former soldiers of the British empire. Making their way via Canada, these migrants first arrived in Washington where they found work in the lumber industry. Just months after their arrival, they became the target of resentment from white workers who were afraid of cheap Asian labour. On September 5, 1907, a mob of several hundred white people rounded up about 700 Indian workers and forced them to leave the town of Bellingham. Two months later, 500 Indian workers were similarly driven out of the town of Everett. Indian workers in Tacoma were attacked by another mob, although in this case they managed to fight back.

The total number of Indians in Washington could not have been more than 2,000, which was hardly an economic challenge to the state’s population of over one million at the time. Yet the xenophobic mob was quick to act and could do so with impunity because it was an established practice in the state for over two decades. It had begun in 1885, when 500 Chinese workers were similarly driven out of Tacoma.

Marginalisation of Indians was widespread. They were not allowed into local unions or churches. In many towns, local real estate agents refused to sell them property. Collectively referred to as Hindus — although most early migrants were Sikh — they were mocked by the media. Several local politicians and officials openly endorsed violence against them to keep “the East Indian on the move”. Immigrants from other parts of Asia had been facing such persecution for many years; Indians were just added victims.

By the turn of the decade, most Indians had been driven out of Washington. Along with new immigrants, they made their way to California, where the Indian population reached close to 3,000. However, here too, the forces of racism greeted them. A pre-existing ‘Japanese and Korean Exclusion League’ was quickly renamed as the ‘Asiatic Exclusion League’ and its members trained their guns on Indian immigrants. “Wholesale landings of large number of Hindoos” was widely decried.

Racial theories

At first, Indians proved to be a challenge to the half-baked racist ideologies prevalent at the time. South Asians were believed to be of “Aryan descent”, the same as Europeans. But this obstacle was quickly overcome. Racist propaganda admitted that the Americans were distant cousins of northwestern Indians. However, “our forefathers pressed to the West, in the everlasting march of conquest, progress and civilisation. The forefathers of Hindus went east and became enslaved, effeminate, caste-ridden and degraded,” one exclusionist leader wrote. Partly due to such propaganda, by 1917, immigration from India and other Asian countries was practically barred.

These absurd racial theories reached their crescendo over the struggle for naturalised citizenship. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “white persons” eligible for American citizenship had to be of the Caucasian race. The decision was aimed at excluding the Japanese. Indians, hoping to circumvent the ruling, made the case that “high-caste Hindu, of full Indian blood” were, in fact, Caucasian. In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that intermarriages between Aryan invaders and “dark-skinned Dravidians” over the centuries had destroyed the purity of Aryan blood in India. Hence, Indians could not be considered as “free white persons” and given American citizenship. In 1926, the Indian central legislature banned Indian citizenship to American citizens in response. However, it was little more than a symbolic gesture.

Over the next decade, the U.S. government used the Supreme Court ruling to strip citizenship of many Indians who had been naturalised. The ruling was reversed only in 1946, allowing a hundred Indians to immigrate to the U.S. every year. But it was not until 1965, when American immigration laws were reformed, that the second wave of Indian migration to the U.S. could begin.

Tools of prejudice

The hostility that early Indian migrants to the U.S. faced was not due to their actions or the history of their country of origin. It was a mechanism already in place, actively oppressing other communities for decades. Given the circumstances, it was almost natural that the hostility would turn on Indians when they reached American soil. It is ironic that discrimination, when choosing its victims, can be highly indiscriminate. In early 20th century U.S., the same forces of oppression that targeted Indians were also persecuting other communities. It is this history that’s in a way, tragically, illuminating today.

Sandeep Bhardwaj

Sandeep Bhardwaj is with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Source: The Hindu, 6-03-2017

Eternal Hide and Seek

K P RASTOGI





I've nursed a deep desire since childhood to see truth, face-toface. I knew that truth would remain elusive unless I learnt to recognise the true nature of my own self and the world around me. But bookish knowledge did not take me any closer to this goal. Knowledge derived with the help of the senses is not entirely dependable, for our senses can deceive us.Dejected, I turned towards `Gyan Marg', I read a lot. The result? I became an atheist. There is no God, there is no power that controls the universe, I told myself. Evolution is at the root of all that has evolved and that is evolving at present. All the mysteries of the universe are the result of evolution, including even consciousness and self-consciousness. God is not the creator of man; man is the creator of God.
Perhaps a purified, controlled mind can do what an unpurified mind cannot do. But had it been so, Buddha would not have kept silent when he was asked three times by a renowned saint, “Do you believe in God?“ Newton, too, knew that his knowledge was shallow, “I am picking up pebbles on the sea shore,“ he remarked.
Where the mind fails, can the heart succeed? `Prem Marg' could well help us achieve what `Gyan Marg' has failed to do. I followed this path for a while but remained unsatisfied. Sometimes, I ask myself, “Suppose I had more than five senses, say , 20 or 30 -how would the universe appear to me?“ What will happen to my idea of reality, to present-day science and mathematics, and to the arrogance of man?

More than half of under-5 kids in India are anaemic

Subodh Varma





In a stark and chilling reminder of the reali ties of life in India, the recently released fa mily health survey (NFHS 4) results show that over 58% of children below five years of age are anaemic, that is, they suffer from insufficient haemoglobin in the blood, leaving them exhausted, vulnerable to infections, and possibly affecting their brain development.The survey , which was carried out in 2015 16 and covered six lakh households, also showed that around 38% of children in the same age group were stunted, 21% were wasted and 36% underweight.
While all the internationally accepted markers of children's health have improved since the last such survey in 2005-06, the levels of undernourishment, caused mainly by poverty , are still high and the improvement too slow.
Based on the 2011 Census data, the total number of children under five in India in 2015 is projected at 12.4 crore. So, around 7.2 crore children are anaemic, nearly 5 crore are stunted, around 2.6 crore are wasted and 4.4 crore are underweight. These numbers are not too different from those in 2005-06. Since popula tion has increased, their share is down.
The World Health Organisation says high levels of these markers are clear indications of “poor socio-economic conditions“ and “suboptimal health andor nutritional conditions“.In short, lack of food, unhealthy living conditions and poor health delivery systems. The WHO defines wasting as low weight for height, stunting as low height for age, and underweight as low weight for age.
The survey also found that just over half of all pregnant women were anaemic. This would automatically translate into their newborn being weak. Overall, 53% of women and 23% of men in the 15-49 age group were anaemic.
There is wide variation among states. The data for UP has not been released in view of the ongoing polls, according to Balram Paswan, professor at Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences which was the nodal agency for the survey done for the health ministry . But poorer states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Assam, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have higher than national average rates on all markers.
More advanced states like those in the south, Haryana and Gujarat have slightly better numbers but are still at unacceptable levels. In Tamil Nadu, 51% children are anaemic while in Kerala it is over one-third. In many states, stunting has declined but the share of severely wasted children has increased. These are clear signs of an endemic crisis of hunger in the country that policy makers don't appear to be addressing.

Source: Times of India, 6-03-2017

Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the celebration of World Wildlife Day 2017 under the theme "Listen to the young voices"
3 March 2017

The stakes are higher every day.
Crimes against wildlife have been increasing over the past years, fuelled by conflicts and the trafficking of wildlife and wildlife products. The impact is devastating on the populations of both iconic and lesser-known species. Despite a range of decisions and actions, UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and Natural World Heritage sites have not been safe from these crimes.
This calls for a new commitment by everyone to prevent these crimes and promote justice. Young women and men have a special role to play here, as change-makers today and future custodians. We must listen to them and nurture their engagement, to craft new forms of action to conserve and protect wildlife on the basis of solidarity.
This is the meaning of the 2017 World Wildlife Day, under the theme of “Listen to Young Voices.” We must support young people in connecting the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ for more effective wildlife conservation. This has never been so important at a time when Governments are working all-out to take forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement, to build a world that is more resilient, inclusive and sustainable and to forge new ties of harmony between development and the planet.
For this, we need young voices. We need young people to speak out, to join hands and to collaborate in shaping new paths to sustainable development in ways that conserve wildlife and protect the shared wealth of biodiversity. This is UNESCO’s message today.

Irina Bokova

DG/ME/ID/2017/11 – Original: English

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy

Table of Contents

: Current Issue

Volume 5, Issue 1, April 2016

Editorial

Gender Relations and the Changing Agrarian Political Economies in the South First Published January 16, 2017; pp. vii–xii |  |  |

Articles

Gender, Land Tenure and Agrarian Production Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa Dzodzi  Tsikata First Published November 15, 2016; pp. 1–19

Adivasi Women, Agrarian Change and Forms of Labour in Neo-liberal India Archana Prasad First Published November 29, 2016; pp. 20–49

Social Reproduction and the Agrarian Question of Women’s Labour in India Sirisha C. Naidu, Lyn Ossome First Published November 21, 2016; pp. 50–76

Farm to Factory Gendered Employment: The Case of Blue Skies Outgrower Scheme in Ghana Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey, Joseph Awetori Yaro, Joseph Kofi Teye First Published January 3, 2017; pp. 77–97

Women’s Agential Power in the Political Economy of Agricultural Land Govind Kelkar, Santosh Kumar Jha First Published November 15, 2016; pp. 98–122

Book Reviews

Book Review: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo (Ed.) (2016), Land Rreforms and Natural Resource Conflicts in Africa: New Development Paradigms in the Era of Global Liberalization Walter Chambati First Published January 16, 2017; pp. 123–125

Book Review: Ndèye Sokhna Guèye (Ed.) (2015), Mouvements sociaux des femmes au Sénégal Rama Salla Dieng First Published November 25, 2016; pp. 126–128 Book Review: Lorenzo Cotula (2013), The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System Alexandre Cesar Cunha Leite, Maria Eduarda de Andrade e Sousa First Published January 16, 2017; pp. 128–130

Amartya Sen errs on Modi

Criticism of the Modi government while sparing erstwhile Congress-ruled governments does little for Sen’s stature

Amartya Sen is back in town. As usual, when he visits, a new book follows. In this case, Prof. Sen is here to promote an expanded version of his 1970 book, Collective Choices and Social Welfare. Sen, 83, a former Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, now teaches at Harvard. In recent years he has been involved in a bitter war of words with the Narendra Modi government over his role as former Chancellor of Nalanda University. Sen makes no secret of his distaste for Prime Minister Modi’s style of governance. Under the BJP-led NDA, Sen says dissent has been stifled, autonomy of universities compromised, and institutions of governance subverted.

Some of this may well be true. But Sen misses the bigger picture. Universities in India have always been subjected to governmental interference. When the Congress-led UPA government was in office between 2004 and 2014, it passed the Right to Education (RTE) legislation that has not helped modernise the Indian educational system. Its implementation has been severely criticised by educationists.

Sen rarely critiques this failure or the appalling state of government-run primary schools where the educational foundation among the rural poor is laid. Who is responsible for the abysmal state of our schools? The three-year-old Modi government or 55 years of Congress governments under Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh? Sen’s trenchant criticism rarely extends to them, opening him up to the charge of intellectual flexibility. It is important to criticise the Modi government – on my part I have done so in several columns across a broad spectrum of issues. But visceral one-sided criticism traduces the critic, not the target of the criticism. A man of Sen’s acuity should know that.

Dissent is the life-blood of democracy. Sen is saying little original when he emphasises this, as he frequently does. But he errs grievously when he calls the Indian government a “minority government” as he did in one of his interviews last week. This is what Sen said: “Anti-national is a peculiar term to come from a minority government. It shows that there is a level of arrogance there. A 31 per cent vote share certainly does not allow you to label the remaining 69 per cent to be anti-national.” Sen’s comment represents a misstatement of facts. Every government in India since Independence has been, by Sen’s own definition, a “minority government”.

Even in India’s first general election in 1952, the near-monopolistic Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru won a “minority” 45 per cent national vote share. In 1957 it won 47.7 per cent vote share. In the 1962 Lok Sabha elections, the Nehru-led Congress won 44.7 per cent. In her “landslide” 1971 Lok Sabha win, Indira Gandhi captured 43.6 per cent national voteshare. As Indian politics became more fractured in the 1990s, voteshares declined. Narasimha Rao won 35.9 per cent in 1991. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi accounted for 26.5 per cent national voteshare in 2004 and 28.5 per cent in 2009. None of these governments were branded “minority governments” by Sen. Such selectivity does him no credit.

At nearly 40 per cent, the NDA’s voteshare in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections came close to Nehru’s victories (when the Congress had little opposition) and is higher than Indira’s 1971 win which Sen would be mortified to categorise as having led to the formation of a “minority government ”. Promoting his book last week, Sen told The Economic Times: “But I am also worried that people are feeling less free and less confident to express their points of view. That decline has been quite prominent in India.” That flies in the face of facts. Ever since the Modi government took office, college campuses, TV panelists, newspaper op-eds and opposition leaders have engaged in more dissent against this government and more criticism of its actions (as indeed in democracies they should) than the silent Manmohan Singh and stentorian Sonia Gandhi ever had to endure. Freedom of speech has never been so robust. Albert Einstein used to say that the clever simplify complicated things. Those attempting to be clever complicate simple things.

MINHAZ MERCHANT 

The writer is author of The New Clash of Civilizations: How The Contest Between America, China, India and Islam Will Shape Our Century.

Source: DNA, 2-03-2017