K. Ramesh

A CITIZEN'S right, the world over, is recognised by the country's legal system and national economic policies are framed keeping in mind such rights. The sovereign state guarantees these rights through its legal system and citizens look to the government as protector of these rights.

India, yet to free itself from the colonial mindset, continues to follow the West in placing the individual's right above all in the Constitution and is building its economic policies on the same basis. Contrary to this idea, for ages, Indians have had a more practical structure wherein the individual is integral to family, community, which in turn identifies itself as part of the village, state and the nation. Culturally, dharma (the righteous path) is placed before every other sphere of life — economy (artha), desire (kama) and salvation (moksha).

The most demanding aspect of `rights' is that all individuals depend on the state to be their protector, whereas dharma obliges the individual to be righteous to oneself, one's family and, through the family,to the rest of the community and ultimately to the nation. This makes for an interesting difference in the role of the state in governance.

Insurance is an unavoidable cost in virtually every sphere in the West and states are increasingly failing to provide full medical support to its citizens. In money terms, the value of those not covered by medical insurance in the US is estimated to be worth trillions of dollars. About a third of France's gross domestic product (GDP) is spent in protecting its senior citizens, a cost that is borne by the younger generation.

Majority of the people in the West complete only school education because not only is college education costly, but also because of a lack of financial support from the family. In India, to have the population depend on the government for social security, medical care, and education is unthinkable. Neither is there an effective system whereby citizens can assert their basic rights, nor does the government have the resources to meet that demand.

For a sizeable population, particularly in villages, the family continues to be the effective insurance.

Such a structure offers informal insurance which the state cannot provide. It become the duty (dharma) of the father to educate his children and that of the son to take care of his parents.

It is the self-policing social structure of dharma that keeps the crime rate in India low, compared with the West, even when the nation has abysmally low number of police stations corresponding to its population. It is the self-punishing, sacrificing attitude of the family to protect its own that has enabled the country of largely poor to tide over the worst of economic and other crises. In India, the government has never had, and cannot in the foreseeable future have, the resources to meet the fundamental needs of her citizens. Even so the government is failing to appreciate the working of dharma through a rather unique social structure.

Surprisingly, the West is slowly recognising that governments cannot be the sole guarantor of its citizen's rights.

It would be rewarding for the nation, if only our policy-makers reform the legal system and re-set economic priorities in keeping with our culture.

(The author is a Chennai-based advocate.)

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