A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.
Note: 1179 words – Completed in 1 h 32 minutes (brainstorming + writing) – typed unedited version (originally handwritten)
An old man, Rameshwar, coughing violently into his dirty handkerchief, walks up to the counter. He’s come to this counter in the local government electricity office for the 15th time this month alone, and has been repeating this for the past 7 years. Each time he comes on his worn-out bicycle, expecting that today will be the day he finally gets his pension pending for the past 7 years. The very office that he gave 30 long years of his life to treats him as a nuisance now after his retirement.
Rameshwar ji’s story is not an anomaly in our country. Every day, millions of people must struggle and battle for their basic rights in India. While many affluent and upper class people enjoy every moment of their lives without a hiccup, millions of other less well-off commoners struggle to make ends meet day after day. Is this truly the paradise that our founding fathers envisioned when creating our Constitution, the bedrock of the largest democracy on the planet?
History is a living reminder that societies with such stark inequalities and injustice often lead to ruin. King Louis in 18th century France and his fellow noblemen and aristocrats lived lavishly, while the peasants and serfs were on the brink of starvation. Unable to tolerate their king’s selfish nature and indifference for their sorry plight, the French commoners rose up in rebellion, stormed the Bastille Fort, and forcefully obtained their rights. As King Louis lost his head to the guillotine, a new republic that endeavoured to ensure liberty, equality and fraternity to its citizens was born. The case of the French Revolution provides the perfect example to highlight the importance of constituting and maintaining a society built on the foundations of justice.
What is this all-important ‘justice’ then? It is simply the existence of a fair system and institutions where good ethical behavior is incentivized and bad unethical behavior punished. The members of the society must feel that their interests are being accounted for and not neglected. Without justice, the seeds of conflict begin to bloom in a society, leading to disastrous consequences.
In 1947, two heterogenous, culturally diverse nations were born: India and Pakistan. In Pakistan, the society consisted mainly of 2 very different communities – the Urdu and Punjabi-speaking people residing in West Pakistan and the Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan. The Bengali people in East Pakistan were systematically oppressed by the West Pakistan elite; they were denied political, cultural, and linguistic representation and socially discriminated in all spheres of life. Their deep sense of feeling betrayed, oppressed, and sidelined manifested itself in the form of the Bangladesh Independence struggle. In their quest to obtain the justice they longed for, they fought a long, bloody war of independence that, with India’s assistance, resulted in the partition of Pakistan and formation of a sovereign Bangladesh in 1971.
How do we prevent such disasters then? Conflicts are bound to arise in a multi-cultural diverse society. What matters, however, is the manner in which the people in charge choose to resolve them. Let us try to understand how these conflicts can be resolved, justice ensured, and by whom.
Placed in a precarious situation in 1947 with communal riots erupting all over the country and widespread poverty and inequality, India decided to incorporate lasting solutions into the very fabric of the nation – the Constitution. The Preamble itself promised to ensure social, economic, and political justice to the people of India. To ensure that the state does not impinge upon the rights and freedoms of the people, many crucial rights were enumerated in the Fundamental Rights, and most importantly, made enforceable in law courts by an elaborately planned and powerful integrated judiciary. Other social and economic rights that couldn’t be immediately ensured or enforced were incorporated in the Directive Principles of State Policy, making them fundamental in the governance of the country. Every time conflicts arose in India, whether they be the demand for linguistic reorganisation of states, protection of minority languages and cultures, river-water sharing disputes, or financial or tax revenue matters, they were resolved by the state and its leaders, both politicians and bureaucrats, by providing justice to the people within the overarching framework of the Constitution. The fact that India has survived all these years despite the challenges is a testament to its foundations built on justice.
However, is the picture truly that rosy? Despite the institutional guarantees we have to ensure justice, the state still falls short in many aspects and must compensate their shortcomings through providing charity to some of their citizens. Since the state is unable to ensure enough opportunities for economic independence, the lower strata of society in particular become dependent on the government for even their basic needs. The poor depend on the government to provide them subsidized or free food through the Public Distribution System, free healthcare through primary health centres and dispensaries, free education through government schools, free shelter through housing schemes like PM Gram Awas Yojana, free electricity, etc. These basic facilities like food, shelter, education, health, infrastructure, financial support through banking and insurance are the basic rights of all the citizens. In a truly just society, the citizens would already have access to these basic necessities of life. They wouldn’t need charity by providing everything for free because they would be economically empowered enough to obtain these facilities on their own by purchasing them from the market.
However, the rightful entitlements of the people are often projected to be donations to the poor people and portrayed as proof of the benevolence of the ruling government. If the state ensures that courts cases of the common man are disposed quickly, they wouldn’t have to spend years, sometimes over a decade, either waiting and hoping or languishing in prison as an under-trial inmate. If justice is ensured to these people, they wouldn’t need the charity of free legal aid or intervention by senior officials for enforcing simple procedural cases.
Justice is a very subjective term. For the privileged, the society is very just. However, for the unprivileged, it is very unjust and every day is a struggle. In this essay, we explored the importance of justice in a society and the disasters that happen when it is missing. We have identified the institution – the state that is responsible for ensuring justice in a society and resolving conflicts. We have also considered how a just society can reduce the need for charity and freebies to the unprivileged as their basic needs would already be fulfilled. We also examined the peculiar case of India where, despite being built on the foundations of justice and rights to the people, the ground reality remains that many sections of society still rely on charity to fulfil their day-to-day needs. We must endeavour as a nation to take better care of the underprivileged sections of India and ensure true justice to them. We shall keep on moving forward, uplifting the downtrodden, and ensure that people like Rameshwar ji fighting for their basic rights like pension are provided what they deserve.
Great