A New Idea of India: Individual Rights in a Civilisational State

by Harsh Gupta 'Madhusudan'

Between 1990 and 2015, India’s GDP per capita (2010 US dollars) grew from $581 to $1,751, more than doubling the Nehruvian era growth rate to 4.5 per cent.

Creating an environment that allows people to pursue excellence in a field of their choosing is what makes for a prosperous and happy society.

Palkhivala, despite his distaste and indifference towards the former royals, was against the abrogation of the privy purse on the principle that India should not go back on its word. By going back on a commitment as fundamental as the privy purse guarantee, Indira Gandhi signalled that any commitment can be broken on political grounds and that everything was up for grabs. Nothing was sacred anymore.

In 2014, India had two mobile phone manufacturing facilities, and by 2018 the number had increased to 268.

Given that in large parts of the country, Indians did not have a State for centuries, we understandably forgot the art and science of statecraft. The last seven decades have been a time of re-learning. Hence, focusing too much on the foibles of individuals, families and parties, while important for introspection, should be seen in the broader historical context. Some mistakes in economics, law and foreign policy may now seem obvious, but often that is because we, looking back decades after the republic was forged, have the benefit of hindsight. Some mistakes were avoidable but many were inevitable. Importantly, a few gargantuan tragedies were avoided.

The UPSC examination which selects civil service officers for the IAS, IPS, IFS and around twenty other central government departments, needs a complete overhaul. The recruitment process needs to be more aptitude-based and less content-based. After selection, there needs to be specialised training in public administration and public policy (for the IAS), law and policing (for the IPS), diplomacy and international affairs (for the IFS) and so on. Once in the service, there must not be any automatic promotions—they must be performance based.

Economist Sanjeev Sanyal has opined that India needs a ‘Transparency of Rules Act’ so that all rules and procedures are notified in real time on the website of the relevant government agency or department, in one coherent document, rather than as a series of circulars.26 Sanyal is spot on. Transparency of rules would not just make life easier for all citizens as they go about their business, whether it is obtaining a driving licence or registering a new company. Transparency of rules would be a meta-reform that could catalyse new debates on what rules are needed, and how existing rules may be expanded or curtailed. Greater transparency would also significantly improve the existing Right to Information (RTI) Act.

While the Union government’s annual budget is analysed threadbare, state government and local body budgets—which are more consequential for the lived reality of citizens—are hardly discussed.

The Muslim League in the mid-1940s wanted a very loose federation with residual powers in the provinces after the British left, insisting that the provinces would fund the central government, rather than the latter raising any taxes directly. Nehru and Patel foresaw that such an arrangement would destabilise the Union, and rightly rejected the idea, even though it meant accepting Partition.

RTE militates against the right to equality, the right to property and the right to free association. Economist Bibek Debroy succinctly summarised his opposition to the RTE in The Indian Express. The RTE, he wrote, ‘imposes high compliance costs on many of these low-cost private schools while simultaneously tacitly admitting that the government school system cannot deliver’.40

is outcomes that matter, not outlays.

They are supported by the outdated mindset that education should not be a profit-making industry. There is only one real reason why profit continues to be illegal in parts of the education industry—because profit in modern India continues to be a dirty word for some ideologues. Never mind that these ideologues turn a blind eye to politically connected education sector incumbents who want the sector to remain off limits to profit-making, such that their de facto businesses enjoy protection. It is a classic case of bootleggers and Baptists coming together to ban alcohol.

These institutions will be freed from regulatory control that has been the scourge of the education sector. The government is also taking steps to scrap the biggest impediments to the liberalisation of the higher education sector—the University Grants Commission and the All-India Council for Technical Education—and replace them with a single regulator called the Higher Education Commission of India.53

Similarly, in a stellar reform move, the Medical Council of India, notorious as a den of corruption and cronyism, was replaced with a new body called the National Medical Commission in August 2019.54

The Left dominance over the intellectual establishment has its roots in the systematic ‘ethnic cleansing’ of all non-Left thinkers since the 1950s … the result of the systemic cleansing was that there were no non-Left academics remaining in the social sciences field in India by the early 1990s … there needs to be a wider national debate about bringing greater plurality of thought in India’s intellectual establishment.61

The assumption that primacy of the Judicial Branch in the appointments process is an essential element and thus a basic feature is empirically flawed without any basis either in the constitutional history of the nation or any other and normatively fallacious apart from being contrary to political theory.

With regard to the question of the concurrence of the Chief Justice, it seems to me that those who advocate that proposition seem to rely implicitly both on the impartiality of the Chief Justice and the soundness of his judgment. I personally feel no doubt that the Chief Justice is a very eminent person. But after all the Chief Justice is a man with all the failings, all the sentiments and all the prejudices which we as common people have; and I think, to allow the Chief Justice practically a veto upon the appointment of Judges is really to transfer the authority to the Chief Justice which we are not prepared to vest in the President or the Government of the day. I therefore, think that that is also a dangerous proposition.100

While hearing and deciding on cases related to Dahi Handi, Jallikattu and the Sabarimala temple, the judiciary has apparently given little thought to the diversity of traditions within Hindu dharma.

Sabarimala issue is not about caste or gender justice.

But leaving minorities out in the cold in the name of protecting them only widens the fissures in Indian society, where one section of the population experiences liberal State policy—such as the freedom to divorce with mutual consent—but a large minority is subjected to ultra-conservative religious laws that are provided State backing in the name of protection.

An attempt to homogenise Hindus using State power erodes the diversity of Hinduism and only semitises it. Such attempts stem from the impulse of the judiciary to rule on what is ‘essential religious practice’.

Imagine the incentives at play—if temples admit people from other faiths, they risk losing their independence. Does this really further pluralism and national integration?

When a PIL was filed to ban the practice of butchering animals as a form of religious practice, or at the very least employ trained butchers so as to cause the animals the least pain and trauma, the Supreme Court said: This Court has to balance between the law and religious practices. This is a sensitive matter better dealt by the representatives of the people in the appropriate forums. We cannot shut our eyes to centuries-old traditions.127 Such arbitrary interpretation of the law not only breeds resentment but also calls into question the basis on which judgments are being delivered. What made the Supreme Court interfere in the centuries-old tradition of Jallikattu when in the case of another faith similar interventions were not its business?

Unlike a certain book with well laid out rules in Abrahamic religions, rituals form the core of Hinduism. It will wither away without them. But the Supreme Court has no time or inclination to understand the nuances attached to these traditions. What is outright dangerous is its interpretation of these customs from the Abrahamic point of view. What the judiciary is trying to do is define (or shrink?) the boundaries of Hinduism by striking down one ritual after another citing that this or that practice is not essential.128

Dr B.R. Ambedkar had specifically shot down attempts to add these words: What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances … If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are … taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live.130

The political-intellectual cartel jumped to interpret the BJP-NDA government’s defeat in the 2004 election as the rejection of reforms. But there were several voices that differed. Columbia University’s Arvind Panagariya wrote in July 2004, ‘The demonisation of reforms not only distorts facts, it also endangers growth that is essential for poverty alleviation.’

In an echo of the manner in which Communist parties helped Indira Gandhi stay in power after the Congress split in 1969, India’s Communist parties had won a record number of seats in the 2004 elections and gave support to the Congress party, which formed the UPA government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A bacchanalia of spending ensued, as Manmohan Singh rode the growth wave seeded by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Just a few years into Manmohan Singh’s second term, the abdication of liberalisation came home to roost, with persistent inflation and plummeting growth.

The UPA government tied education, housing and poverty alleviation schemes to a citizen’s religion. The most bizarre manifestation of this identity-centric approach was the creation of a women’s only bank4 after the ghastly 2012 gang rape in Delhi, as if such puerile tokenism would make Indian women feel secure and empowered.

As Jawaharlal Nehru University political scientist Ajay Gudavarthy observed, ‘the Hindutva brand of politics seems to be a step ahead in articulating the idea of justice for all, which should have ideally come from those championing secularism and more so from the religious minorities themselves.’8

When the galaxy of leaders who fought for freedom from colonial rule decided that the Constitution of India should carry illustrations of episodes from India’s great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—a version of the Ramayana illustration that comes in the fundamental rights section of the original Constitution graces the front cover of this book—they similarly bowed to that civilisational history. The modern Indian State is the inheritor and flagbearer of this heritage.

Just as socialist economics and spurious secularism feed off each other in a destructive cycle, in the same way, a liberalised economy and individual freedom reinforce each other. Moving forward on the path of greater economic and personal freedoms is necessary if India is to fulfil its potential for greatness.

On the economic side, these include the implementation of a bankruptcy code, the creation of a common national market through indirect tax reforms, the liberalisation of agriculture, the formalisation of the real-estate sector, the reorganisation of the Indian Railways bureaucracy, opening up FDI across industries, an unprecedented push to universalise sanitation and electrification, digitalisation in governance, and an incipient market-driven universal health access programme.

In the area of internal cohesion and national security, some of the steps taken are the barring of the practice of triple talaaq, introducing a need-based criteria for reservations, peace accords12, 13 to address long-pending regional grievances in north-east India, closing a land border agreement with Bangladesh to address long-festering boundary issues,14 removing Article 370 to integrate Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh with the rest of India, defence administrative reforms culminating in the creation of the chief of defence staff post, the indigenisation of defence production led by private industry and administrative reforms in the Ministry of External Affairs.

India’s young population is a generation that has tasted the alternative to the monochromatic world that their parents and grandparents inhabited, and they will not settle for less. In this sense, a new way that is a clean break from the socialistic, feudal past is not just the correct policy prescription for India, but also makes for good politics.

This India will be more secure, equal and prosperous, seeking a greater sway in world affairs. There is an intellectual contest underway between those who are striving to build this new India, and those who are invested in perpetuating its antithesis—indeed, a section of the Indian intelligentsia have gone so far as to proclaim that ‘India must not become a superpower’.