Almost all analysts of the Bihar election results are agreed that the transfer of ten thousand rupees each to lakhs of women on the eve of the elections, ostensibly to promote entrepreneurship, was an important factor behind the landslide victory of the National Democratic Alliance. This transfer has been rightly called a ‘bribe’ that was given even after the Model Code of Conduct had come into effect; and the Election Commission of India has been justifiably criticised for allowing it.
Given the distress in much of rural India, one cannot cavil at any such transfer from the government to the people; but it is indicative of the sorry pass to which the country has come today. In the 1954 Raj Kapoor film, Boot Polish, the incomparable lyricist, Shailendra, had put the following words in the mouths of destitute children in a song: “Bheekh mein jo moti mile toh bhi hum na lenge (we would not take even pearls as alms)”. These words were by no means incongruous in 1954, for the same children in the same song talked of becoming citizens of a country where there would be a crown on every head, no hungry masses and no prevalence of deprivation. The betrayal of this promise of freedom is so palpable today that people can ill-afford the dignity of citizenship: they are willing to exchange their votes, which are the insignia of citizenship, just for a few thousand rupees. Franchise, which should be judiciously exercised, keeping in mind the best interests of the country, is instead exercised in gratitude for some personal benefit. On the other side, the ruling elite, having enriched itself at the expense of the people, is willing to purchase their votes to perpetuate this arrangement.
The Opposition, which has objected to the distribution of largesse after the MCC came into effect, does not, alas, flinch at the fact of this distribution of largesse. The issue goes beyond the timing of the distribution of largesse; it goes even beyond morality, whether a government should or should not purchase votes by distributing largesse. These, no doubt, are important; but even more important is the fact that the material conditions of life of the people are so abysmal as to make this purchase of votes possible. These conditions convert the proud citizens of a country that had earned its freedom after years of anti-colonial struggle into mere mendicants.
Authentic democracy requires transcending this situation, and that can be achieved with the institution of a set of constitutionally-guaranteed fundamental economic rights, on a par with the civil and political rights we already have, so that a minimum material life is assured to every citizen by the sheer fact of her being a citizen.
We are justifiably proud of our Constitution, which, in turn, is based on the 1931 Karachi Congress Resolution. The fact that France, the country with the most outstanding bourgeois revolution in history, introduced universal adult franchise in an election only in 1945, while India had envisioned it in 1931 and introduced it in 1952, a mere seven years after France, is a remarkable achievement. Likewise, measures like separation of religion from the State, equality before law, and a set of fundamental rights for every citizen marked a profound advance in a country with millennia of institutionalized inequality embodied in the caste system. The one gap that remains, however, in this path-breaking document upon which modern India is founded, is the absence of a set of fundamental economic rights. Such rights would have breathed life into our democracy and placed India ahead of most other countries in this respect.
True, the mere institution of such rights is no guarantee that they would be realized. The executive today is riding roughshod over the existing fundamental rights of citizens; and the judiciary is too intimidated to defend these rights consistently. Even the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which confers a right of sorts (a quasi-right) on rural households, is being violated with impunity. What, it may be asked, would prevent a similar violation of fundamental economic rights even if they are legally enacted?
There is, however, a basic difference between rights in the economic domain and rights in other domains. Violations of the former would typically occur en masse and not just in individual instances; they would therefore constitute grotesque instances of rights abuse. Political formations that feel compelled to give ‘freebies’ at present for winning elections, would be chary of such grotesque violations of fundamental economic rights.
For that reason, there would be massive opposition to the institution of fundamental economic rights, even of quasi-rights enacted not into the Constitution but as laws, as in the case of the MGNREGS. But this is precisely why those concerned about the current erosion of democracy in the country, and abhorring the corruption involved in doling out ‘freebies’ for votes, should be pressing for such rights or quasi-rights, instead of engaging in a competitive race for offering larger ‘freebies’.
At least five economic rights are urgently required: a universal right to food, through a generalisation to the entire population of the scheme operated for the below-poverty-line population before the pandemic; a universal right to employment (failing which a person must be paid a full wage); a right to free quality healthcare through a National Health Service; a right to free quality education at least up to the higher secondary level; and a right to a non-contributory living pension and disability benefit for those not already enjoying them. These rights can be easily financed; they would usher in a welfare state that would make democracy meaningful.
Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi