Economic rights of the common man
BY SIR S. RADHAKRISHNAN
After the transfer of power on August 15, 1947, the next important step we have taken is the declaration of the Union of India as a sovereign democratic Republic, in pursuance of the Constitution we have adopted for ourselves.
This is fixed for January 26, 1950, the date on which the Indian National Congress passed the resolution of Independence 20 years ago. Adult suffrage, abolition of untouchability and communal electorates, the integration of States, the adoption of fundamental rights, equality of sexes, opportunity for all and non-discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place or birth are some of the progressive measures embodied in the Constitution. Napoleon said
that a Constitution should be short and obscure; ours is not short, and I hope, not obscure.
The Constitution is a flexible one and allows scope for development. It is democratic because it depends on the people’s will and the representatives of the people may mould and change the Constitution so as to bring it nearer the objectives which are set forth in the Constitution, through the machinery provided for the purpose. If we give up constitutional methods and resort to violence, if a minority seizes power and overthrows the established government and imposes a different constitution which is not favoured by the people’s representatives elected on the basis of adult suffrage, we abandon democracy and adopt dictatorship.
There is today greater insistence on the need to add economic to political rights. This advance is due to the extension of the functions of the State, from the narrowly defined sphere of classical liberal democracy to the modern one of a welfare State with its social and economic preoccupations. This is not peculiar to the Russian system which declares that political rights are empty formalities when they are divorced from social and economic rights. Even Roosevelt’s statement of the four freedoms enlarges the conception of rights by giving an economic interpretation. Freedom from want is an economic right. For the vast majority of human beings the main anxieties are social and economic rather than political. Political freedom is mainly a means to a better life. The right to work, the right to a living wage, the right to minimum education, the right to care and maintenance in infancy, old age, ill-health are more important to the ordinary man than the right to vote or freedom of speech and assembly. These latter are coveted because they are the means for achieving the economic rights.
Duty to work
We cannot secure high standards of social and economic rights unless we maintain a high standard of productivity. If we wish to secure to citizens freedom from want, we must expect them to work for making available adequate productive resources without which freedom from want would remain an illusion. If we are to secure certain economic rights for the individual, it can only be done by the recognition and enforcement of certain obligations by the individual to increase the available resources.
This does not mean forced labour. Workers should be free to choose their employment in the social context. They must enjoy complete freedom of thought and expression together with freedom of association. It should be our endeavour to reconcile the needs of society with the freedom of the workers.
Our economic structure today is unstable. Stagnation in industry and agriculture threatens a social breakdown. Our productivity is low and what wealth there is is concentrated in the hands of a few. These vast disparities have produced mass discontent which is an open invitation to subversive propaganda. If we are to preserve the liberties we have worked into our Constitution, we have to raise the standards of life by the adoption of the most up-to-date technical methods and work for a more equitable distribution of wealth. All this means drastic land reforms and economic planning. The few have to give up their privileges for the good of the many and in our country with its traditions of peaceful change this redistribution of wealth will not cause much difficulty.
Our country will be exposed to the loss of liberty, if we do not adopt a courageous policy of economic reform. There is little justification for private control of public institutions. We are anxious that this transfer shall take place by voluntary agreement and co-operation among the interested parties, proprietors, managers and workers. There is nothing sacrosanct about our present property laws. If the private ownership of property, free enterprise and the profit motive have given the United States her high standards of living, Soviet Russia with public ownership of the means of production, economic planning and with no profit motive, has in thirty years transformed a nation of peasants and serfs into producers of the atom bomb with all the scientific research and engineering skill which it involves. What is essential for industrial development is not free enterprise or economic planning, but the application of science and technology to agriculture and industry. Surely to make profits out of others labour need not be regarded as highly ethical. Taking our conditions into account, we have to plan an economy which will make for increased productivity and proper distribution.
Political freedom is the gateway not only to economic betterment but also to spiritual rebirth. We have to work for the liberation of the mind, for the discovery of our heritage and its reformulation in the light of its fundamental pattern. The aim of a democracy is not simply political in the sense of providing representative government, or economic in the sense of providing equal opportunity to everyone, or social in the sense of abolishing caste privileges, and untouchability, but it is essentially ethical and religious in that it asserts the superiority of the human person to all the economic and social mechanisms which oppress him. India has affirmed from ancient times the dignity of the human individual. Mahabharata tells us that there is nothing greater than man on earth. Gruhyam brahma tad idam yo bravimi no manusat sresthataram hi kincit.
The universality of spirit, the participation in it of each individual, the ultimate realization of God as a possibility for every human being, these ideas are not limited to the thoughts of philosophers, or the experiences of mystics, but are believed by the mass of the people instinctively or traditionally. They are a part of the most intimate mind of the most ordinary Indian. The basic values of democracy for which our Constitution stands are the ultimate principles of our culture.
In a free society reverence for the human being should prevail in all human relations. A boss-ridden political life, a dictatorial industrial life does not make for free citizenship. In a democratic society there shall be no fanaticisms, no cult worship. Everyone shall have the liberty to doubt, to make mistakes, to search and experiment, to say ‘no’ to any authority, literary or scientific, philosophical or religious.
The only justification for nationalism is that the nation contributes to the richness of the world by its specific way of life. If the Indian nation surrenders its distinctive cultural pattern and becomes an echo of the American or the Soviet ways of life, it ceases to be Indian, whatever else it may be. In spite of our poverty, disease, illiteracy and material conditions as bad as any to be found anywhere, we have preserved the force of spirit which can defeat the overbearing assumptions of a technical civilization. Let it not be said that we squandered it away after we attained political freedom.
The justification for our nationalism is that we believe that we have something to contribute to the world. We are prepared to submit to the restrictions of our national sovereignty in the cause of peace within the framework of the United Nations. But we cannot give up our national character, though we may surrender as much of our national sovereignty as is necessary for the purpose of attaining world union.
The acid test
We have incorporated in our Constitution all that democracy implies, equality of opportunity for education and employment, elimination of privileges based on birth or wealth, abolition of caste inequalities and untouchability. We will be judged not by these declarations but by the practical measures we adopt to implement them. We must give the legal text of the Constitution life and warmth. We must create conditions of social justice. That is where our society is sick. If we heal it we will live; if we neglect it, we will decline. Our leaders will be responsible not only for what they do but for what they do not do. If in a moment of weakness, we show lack of courage, things may happen to us which neither blood nor tears could wash away thereafter. We are suffering today from a certain inflation of unreal ideas, from a certain debasing of our virtues, from an excessive anxiety to be popular at the cost of one’s integrity. Some of our administrators remind us of the French revolutionist who said. “The mob is in the street. I must find out where they are going for I am their leader.”
Our leaders have often deported the selfish opportunism, competitive jealousy and disregard of the public interest among our workers. We want today not merely a few leaders at the top but a good many at all levels, who are disinterested, men who will be ready to sacrifice their prospects, their life for the good of society. If we are not disinterested, we are subject to the hazards of our personal careers; we lose our clearness of view, and will have no courage to follow our conscience. We will be at the mercy of every wind that blows. The presence of disinterested men, men of principle will help to purify our public life. Let us remember on the sacred 26th January the wise warning which Thucydides attribute to the Funeral Oration of Pericles: “I fear our mistakes far more than the strategy of our enemies.”
— from Republic Supplement, January 26, 1950
Independent India at 60
