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Business Commentary/Ashok Mitra

Roadblock to social and economic advance

The Constitution was not deviant. It had set out a Directive Principle of State Policy which was as explicit as it could be: within 10 years of the Constitution's coming into force, the state must ensure that all children in the country in the age group of five to 14 were imparted free primary education.

The Directive Principle has remained a dead letter. Not just one decade but five successive decades have passed since the Constitution became operational. So what, easily one half of the nation's children are still bereft of the opportunity of elementary education.

The proportion of girls deprived of this constitutional prerogative is much higher, 70 per cent or thereabouts. The situation is no better -- actually worse -- with respect to initiatives to render literate the millions and millions of the country's adult population who continue to be without letters.

The Constitution, therefore, cannot be faulted for this major roadblock to the nation's social and economic advance. To add, as has been suggested, a fresh entry -- primary education -- to the list of Fundamental Rights to be guaranteed by the Constitution will not help matters. It will merely supplement the supposed right of our children to receive elementary education to the already-enshrined-in-the-Constitution duty of the State to impart them this education.

The State has, over the span of 50 years, flouted this particular Directive Principle of State Policy. Other things remaining the same, if the proposed amendment is inserted in the Constitution, then the State would deny the nation's children a fundamental right as well. It would be regarded as of small moment.

Trade union bodies and students and youth organisations have campaigned for years on end for a constitutional provision guaranteeing the right to work. The powers that be have not bothered to respond to the demand. Even if they did -- and it is provided in the Constitution that obtaining gainful employment is a fundamental right of a citizen -- the face of reality would not have changed one bit thereby.

The huge reserve army of labour the Indian working class and peasantry constitute would not experience any erosion in its ranks. The nation's economic structure would remain stubbornly retrogressive in its overall characteristics. Huge chunks of our countrymen would continue to be unemployed.

Economists and statisticians, who love to make a display of their skills and sophistication, would persist with their logic chopping on whether the phenomenon of joblessness in this or that sector is an aspect of disguised unemployment or frictional unemployment or structural unemployment.

It would make no difference to the plight of the victims of joblessness and their families; the constitutional amendment would be allowed to rest in peace. Exactly identical would be the fate of any amendment to the Constitution proclaiming the right to elementary education as a prerogative of every child in this country.

No shivers would slither down the spine of the authorities concerned that a fundamental right was being breached. One can go through the roster of Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy enumerated in the Constitution; almost each of them has been, and continues to be, violated in the country.

It would be altogether outlandish to consider in this connection to seek judicial redress. The judicial system is currently grappling with the load of 30 million odd pending cases at various levels. For quite a number of years, public interest groups have been pursuing the goal of expanding the frontiers of human rights through the intermediary of the judiciary. They have little to show for their efforts.

To imagine that because of their intervention, the judiciary would be goaded into activism and sternly see to it that in every instance, the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy are observed to the letter, is a pipe dream of an extravagant order.

Coping with obiter dicta emanating from distinguished quarters is a social obligation. Their bona fides are not to be questioned, as long as it is simultaneously recognised that sermons are no solutions. If the prerogative of elementary education or the right to work is denied to India's overwhelming majority, it is not on account of lack of resources. The tragedy has occurred because those who wield power and are in command of resources are allergic to the idea of a society marked by either universal literacy or full employment.

The prime factor responsible for the non-enforcement of the constitutional provision for primary education is a genuine fear of the unknown: those who have been lording over the system are apprehensive that spread of literacy might raise the level of awareness and consciousness of the mute masses by several notches, helping the process of acceleration of class-based mobilisation in town and country.

That would herald the demise of the millennium of exploitation and social oppression India has been famous for. An ambience of full employment would have a similar impact once every able-bodied citizen is absorbed in gainful occupation. Labour would become scarce, and the trade union movement, including peasants' bodies, would emerge as an irresistible political force signalling the doom of entrenched groups. Let there be no illusion, the deprivation of the right to either education or work is a manifestation of class war.

Polite society will be scandalised by declamations of this nature. Its members will prefer to escape from such wild talk and instead dilate on, for instance, the noble gifts which democracy bequeaths. A topic much discussed of late in this context is the asymmetry between India's supposedly successful tackling of food shortages in the post-Independence period and China's inability to prevent famines in the 10th year following the revolution.

India, distinguished by multi-party democracy, did not suffer from famines, because, it is hinted, Opposition parties were alert and the media carried detailed reports on lack of availability of food in clusters of towns and villages in certain parts of the country.

The political party in power, fearful of losing votes in the next elections in the affected areas, had immediately rushed food, and voila, the spectre of famine disappeared.

In a one party system, in contrast, information is allegedly suppressed and no opposition party hollers about the prospect of impending food shortages in this or that part of the country; famines are therefore difficult to avert in regimes that are non-democratic as per the West.

Some riddles, however, refuse to dissolve. How come in multi-party open democracies -- where the flow of information is free and opposition parties are tireless watchdogs of public interest -- citizens cannot be provided with the boon of primary education and hundreds of millions of men, women and children continue to suffer from acute nutritional deficiencies? If democracy and famines are non-compatible, why should democracy and universal lack of education and democracy and widespread malnutrition turn out to be compatible categories? Would someone kindly speak up and furnish the reason for this failure of the magic of democracy?

There is a parallel dilemma that clamours for an explanation. China's one-party system has been eminently successful, even according to hostile American scholars, in making the entire nation literate within 20 years of the revolution. If the development reports annually released by both the United Nations and the World Bank are to be lent even minimal credence, China also far outstrips India in the matter of ensuring nutritional standards for its population and taking care of the basic health needs of women and children. How is it that absence of Opposition parties and media of the Western sort has not prevented China's progress in these spheres, its abject failure to prevent famines notwithstanding?

Ashok Mitra

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