Dr John Mohan Razu
BR Ambedkar went beyond Rawlsian understanding of justice. For Rawl’s justice means “whatever is due to a person “; whereas Ambedkar pitched ‘social’ before justice. Since India’s social structure is premised on caste system BR Ambedkar had to bring-in ‘social justice’ which stands for liberty, equality, and fraternity of all human beings. He unequivocally voiced for a social system that is based on socially egalitarianism between humans and humans in all the spheres of life. For BR Ambedkar, ‘social justice’ is simply another name for liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Social justice is the soul of the Constitution and the spirit of the Indian democracy. Therefore, it is the bounden duty of the state to secure an order that offers dignity, equality, and fraternity. It further reiterates that that justice be dispensed to those who have been historically discriminated and socially ostracised and marginalized based on caste. Therefore, BR Ambedkar said: “social equilibria precede economic equilibria”. The term ‘social justice’ is increasingly being used by the political class representing all shades of political parties. Therefore, ‘social justice’ as a political category abounds narrow and chauvinistic politics.
As a concept – philosophically, religiously, sociologically, or politically, ‘social justice’ sounds revolutionary and attractive, but when it is translated in real terms it gets diluted. Across the world those who have been the victims of diverse situations across particularly in India keep clamouring and demanding for justice and those victims due to caste schema i.e., the Dalits and tribals clamours for social justice. Dispensation of social justice is the task of those who are at the helm of governments and in responsible positions. Social justice per se will have to be viewed as the duty of the political class, but gets mired by diverse forces that are at play.
Increasingly in India, ‘social justice’ when it comes to the delivery of it. Those dispensing agencies view often as a piecemeal by compartmentalising it leading to all kinds of conflicts and aberrations who look at it differently. What is happening now is the very term ‘social justice’ is being stretched and reshaped by the political parties and thus converted as a catchy term for welfare measures. ‘Social justice’ is the current parlance means just a populist promise and, in the process, having lost its core meaning. It is no more equal access to all resources, education to health to mobility, jobs to justice and expression.
Social justice and economic justice should go hand in hand. Having been deprived of being born at the lower rungs of caste ladder they need to be uplifted offering pro-active programs and policies, so that the vulnerable and ostracised communities can come up in due course of time. Latest CMIE data showed that unemployment rate has climbed to its highest in the last two years more than the previous years; joblessness also increased in rural areas. Despite the appalling scenario, every political party offers quota as succour or proportional representation in the name of ‘social justice’.
Quotas have been abused and misused beyond its limits as those marginalized communities hardly benefit. As a result, quotas have become populist political slogan.Nothing new is offered in the manifestos of the political parties. Political parties keep playing their games around caste and vote-bank politics. India’s ruling dispensation and other political parties believe in trickle-downs, handouts, doles such as gas cylinders or cash benefits, bicycles or lap tops. Sops are multiplying by the political parties to woo the electorates.
When we talk about quotas the political parties should take into account women’s reservation as part of their electoral agenda in the manifestoes. Recently the Indian Parliament passed a bill for women, while in the state assemblies’ reservation for women are yet a mirage. Quotas have been stretched and thus allowed as part of doles for the political parties by opening the doors to everyone beyond social marginalization. It even went to the extent of accommodating forward castes including Brahmins as a category within the ambit of ‘economically deprived section’. Now it is social, but economic, and so the historically oppressed groups gradually losing their rights over quotas and the cake is getting smaller and smaller.
If we look at the quotas within the oppressed communities those fall in the top rungs of the oppressed castes have been enjoying the benefits of the quote system, while the bottom layers way down remains the same who hardly benefits from quota system. However, those who enter into higher echelons of education, jobs, and other areas the dominant castes ridicule them as ‘quota entrants’. The dominant castes do not want to view ‘quotas’ as preferential options or provisions given to those who have been subjected to all kinds of discrimination being faced because of a system or ideologies that functions on hierarchy and division.
The dominant upper castes in India do not want come to terms that they have been part of the system that perpetuates for hundreds and thousands of years and not at all ashamed as being the beneficiaries of the heinous arrangement known as ‘caste’. The upper castes enjoyed status, entitlements, power, position, and privileges for having born and being part and parcel of the unjust system of caste show their casteist venom in their attitudes and actions tending to shun and thus show their aversion of SCs and STs to remain at the same levels and thus do not want SCs and STs to climb up via education.
The ruling dispensation comprising of the dominant caste categories do not want the SCs and STs to come up and so keep making thinner and thinner slices of a shrinking economic pie so that making economic pie unsustainable. Pro-active policies and public sector units are gradually ebbing out and the governments do not want to invest anymore. Apparently, as the private sector keep expanding by inviting and absorbing skill-based workforce, those belonging to the dominant castes get into those jobs. The vulnerable sectors belong to unskilled or under-skilled are left in the lurch.
If we intersect votes, women and jobs all these triune aspects are central to economic empowerment and the core to social justice. All the political parties woo women and depend on women’s votes and their percentage of voting is on rise in every election while their actual participation in the workforce is in alarming decline. Another important factor that we need to ponder over is diversity without equity which is increasingly in fault lines as we have casteism, racism, patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, ethnic divides, regionalism and so on.
Over and above, there are hundreds and thousands of undertrials who are languishing in jails without trials for years that contradicts and undermines the principle of social justice with equity. However, the bottom-line of ‘social justice’ in its true form remains as peripheral and unfulfilled dream as the communities that need it most and to whom it stands for. In such a context, a question that surface is: Has ‘Social justice’ become a mirage or an illusion or a jargon? As Gilbert F Houngbo of ILO points out that: “We need a Global Coalition for Social Justice. It will position social justice as the keystone of global recovery. In sum, it will ensure our future is human-centred.”
