Idea Of Justice and INHERENT Injustice in India
The Companies Bill 2009 is already in Parliament, the draft of the new income-tax code will be put in public domain on August 20 and the empowered committee of state finance ministers in consultation with the Centre may publish a white paper on GST implementation in the next few months.
Each of this legislative changes will have a significant bearing on how Corporate India conducts its business and keeps its books. The Companies Bill and the new I-T Act represent a complete overhaul of existing laws, with rewriting and reorganisation of clauses in an easy-to -use format.
Several provisions are being modified, and that would have far reaching consequences. The underlying objective is to create an environment where doing business will be less cumbersome, and to ensure the law is easier to interpret, thereby bringing down compliance costs.
The overhaul of the Companies Act, 1956 and I-T Act, 1961 was long overdue — the large number of amendments over the years and existence of obsolete clauses have made both laws unwieldy. The amendments will hopefully go through Parliament in the course of the year.
But before these pieces of legislation are put to voting, all interested constituencies must analyse each provision and help in removing glitches that might hamper smooth conduct of business. And for once, industry must seriously aid the legislative process so that the amendments do not get stalled for one reason or the other, as experienced in the past.
Also, it is pointless to pick holes after the law has been passed. Likewise, when the white paper on GST is released, the industry must play a proactive role in assessing the proposal for ease of implementation.
They must play the role of a responsible stakeholder in law making. After all, even the best brains that draft a piece of legislation may overlook some issues that a business may face at the implementation stage.
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Ministry of Law and Justice is the oldest limb of the Government of India dating back to 1833 when the Charter Act 1833 enacted by the British Parliament. The said Act vested for the first time legislative power in a single authority, namely the Governor General in Council. By virtue of this authority and the authority vested under him under section 22 of the Indian Councils Act 1861 the Governor General in Council enacted laws for the country from 1834 to 1920. After the commencement of the Government of India Act 1919 the legislative power was exercised by the Indian Legislature constituted thereunder. The Government of India Act 1919 was followed by the Government of India Act 1935.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen speaks at the Penguin annual lecture in Kolkata on Wednesday.
"The life of nearly everybody is affected by the activities of unions, be it primary schools, or other institutions. The unions must play a meaningful role," Mr. Sen said while delivering the third Penguin Annual Lecture on "Justice and India" here on Wednesday evening.
Dwelling on the role of trade unions in guaranteeing justice to the workers, Mr. Sen said they tend to generate two divergent views. "Some say unions are misused. They should not be there. Those who support unions say there is no need for alterations, however narrow they may be."
"I claim that unions should be a kind of constructive partner to the organisations," he said.
Mr. Sen regretted the basic issues of people like social deprivation and lack of rudimentary facilities were not being highlighted by political parties.
"Justice demands removal of this tremendous deprivation from the world we live in... But what is amazing is the politicians' quiet acceptance without a little murmur of the persistent deprivation of facilities... the social deprivation," he said.
According to the world renowned academic, continued child malnourishment, absence of basic schooling, gender inequity, maternal malnourishment, lack of medical facilities and deficiency in providing essential services constitute the real issues.
"But the stress is on issues like pollution problems or land acquisition or agitation against the India-US Civil Nuclear Deal," he said.
Participating in an interaction shortly after the lecture, Mr. Sen lauded the mature way in which the residents of Mumbai reacted to the terrorist strike last November.
Drawing a contrast between the incidents in the aftermath of the Babri mosque demolition of 1992 and the Mumbai terror attack, he said: "When the Babri Masjid incident happened, we were unprepared. We did not have any opportunity to regroup.
"But after Mumbai everyone was protesting against foreign terrorists coming to India and not on domestic factors. And I know for certain that as we make more and more use of reason, it matures us."
Mr. Sen also expressed disappointment over Gujarat -- the scene of the devastating communal riots in 2002 -- not voting the way the rest of India did in the 2009 General Elections.
Elaborating on "the comparative approach to justice" at the Penguin Annual Lecture 'Justice and India,' Dr. Sen said the primary question one must ask is: "What remedial action can we take to get rid of the severe injustices existing in our society?"
Drawing from his latest book, 'The Idea of Justice,' he said there were two lines of reasoning about justice — the utopian approach, which concentrates on the nature of a perfectly just society, and the comparative approach, which focusses on the actual realisation of justice and the prevention of the manifestation of severe injustices.
Dr. Sen argued that the first approach, which he has named "Transcendental Institutionalism" in his book, is redundant — "it is neither necessary nor efficient," as it is a remote search for an ideal. There is also the problem that at the level of principle, one may not be able to reject certain claims that may all seem equally just.
To explain this, Dr. Sen gave the analogy that the knowledge that Mona Lisa is the ideal picture in the world is of no importance, when one has to make a choice between seeing a painting by Nandalal Bose and Amrita Shergill.
This was her message on the book, "The Judge Speaks," by Law Commission Chairman Justice A.R. Lakshmanan.
"As Justice Lakshmanan has commented, the confidence of the people in the legal system and in the justice delivery system is an essential pre-requisite for the very survival of democracy. Our judicial system must function in a manner that meets these expectations of the nation and its people," the President said.
She received a copy of the book at a function held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday.
The speeches Justice Lakshmanan delivered during his tenure as Supreme Court judge and subsequently as Law Commission Chairman are published in the book.
Justice Lakshmanan, who was accompanied by his wife and members of the Commission, briefed the President on the book and apprised her of three other books (two in English and one in Tamil — 'Varalatru Suvadugal') he authored. In his message, Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan said: "The contents of the speeches range from philosophical insights into constitutionalism, justice and the rule of law to concrete suggestions pertaining to contemporary areas of legislation and adjudication such as intellectual property, regulation of cyberspace, economic offence, tax and property laws."
Justice Lakshmanan said: "The judiciary has played a crucial role in the development and evolution of society in general and in ensuring good governance by those holding the reins of power in particular. Perhaps, there can be no two views about the significance of the role expected of the judiciary, vis-À-vis, the goal and good governance in a free society."
http://www.hindu.com/2009/08/06/stories/2009080662991300.htm
Judgment may encourage wife-beaters: Brinda
Brinda Karat
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court's judgment that "kicking of a daughter-in-law" or "threatening her with divorce" does not amount to "cruelty" has been criticised by CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat, who has asked the Union government to file a review petition in the apex court.
Terming the judgment "retrograde," Ms. Karat, in a letter addressed to Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily, said the verdict would only "further deepen the miseries of women and undo the effect of various legislation passed for the emancipation of women."
Negative licence
"Such a judicial understanding of cruelty will be a licence for domestic violence — both mental and physical. It may also encourage wife-beaters. If unchallenged, it will undo the positive steps taken by the government and Parliament to provide a just legal framework to address the increasing number of cases of domestic violence and protect the lives and dignity of women within the domestic sphere," she said in her letter.
Play proactive role
Asking the government to "urgently" file a review petition, she said: "The government must play a proactive role in protecting the rights of women, especially when these rights are sought to be eroded by judgments which reflect an insensitive reading of the law." — PTI
PSU banks Q1 total income growth double than that of pvt banks
The growth rate of total income registered by public sector banks was 28.96 per cent during the quarter while that of private sector banks was 13.52 per cent, as per the analysis of 30 public and private Indian banks by the Assocham Financial Pulse (AFP).
Indian retail banking sector, which mainly depends on transactions directly with consumers savings and lending, registered a decline of 5.02 per cent in the first quarter.
"In the context of 15 public sector banks, State Bank of Hyderabad has the maximum share of retail banking segment contributing about 81.84 per cent to its total income followed by Andhra Bank, SBI and Indian Bank," the chamber added.
The banks which registered decline in share of retail banking during the quarter were Oriental Bank of Commerce, Allahabad Bank, Corporation Bank, Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank and Bank of Baroda.
In the context of 15 private banks, Ing Vysya Bank recorded the maximum share of retail banking in its total income contributing nearly 80.20 per cent, followed by Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank of India and ICICI Bank.
"Overall price situation is very serious. But government has taken various steps (to ease the situation)," Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said replying to a discussion in Rajya Sabha on rising prices of essential commodities.
On the monsoon situation, Pawar said: "We are worried" but added "if August and September go well, we will see a different situation. It is only a test of time".
He asserted that the government will try its level best to protect the interest of the vulnerable sections.
Observing that two areas where the situation is serious are pulses and sugar, Pawar dismissed suggestions that futures trading on commodity exchanges was responsible for price hike.
He explained that prices of pulses are high due to demand-supply mismatch, while sugar rates are high because of lower production of the sweetener in the current season.
The minister noted that the Centre and States would have to act collectively to tackle the situation and hoped that the way state governments are responding to the situation, things would improve in the coming months.
Not satisfied with Pawar's reply most opposition parties staged a walk out.
"I cannot see any coordination in the UPA 2. There is no coordination," Lalu Prasad said while participating in a discussion in the Lok Sabha on the price rise.
Criticising senior ministers for not being present in the House when important matters are discussed, Mr. Prasad said: "All of them have disappeared."
Only Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and his deputy V. Naryanasami were present, he noted and added sarcastically: "Both of them are like birds that feel they are holding the whole sky."
Mr. Prasad said the government should take the opposition into confidence to find solution to issues such as the price rise that directly affect the people.
"You will have to take the opposition into confidence. If you need, we will give up our salaries. It (the price rise) is a national calamity. We are ready to move along with the government to find a solution to it," said the former Railways Minister.
"All the MPs should be provided security. People are angry because of this price rise. When we return to our constituencies, we fear that people will throw stones at us. We will be beaten," he said.
He also urged the government to hold a meeting of the Chief Ministers to find a solution to the crisis.
Govt to take steps to check price rise, says Pranab
Government on Thursday assured Parliament that it will take steps to check price rise of essential commodities "as and when necessary".
Intervening in the debate on the issue of price rise of essential commodities in the Rajya Sabha, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said "We are sensitive to it (price rise) ... we are responsible (government)... will take measures as and when necessary".
While inflation measured by the Wholesale Price Index remained in the negative territory for the eighth consecutive week ended July 25 to minus 1.58 per cent, essential commodities, particularly food items like sugar and pulses have seen a sharp increase in prices in the recent weeks.
Mr. Mukherjee said vegetable and milk prices have increased due to erratic monsoon.
He said when inflation had reached a very high level last year, the Government took a number of steps to insulate the common man.
While the overall inflation has come down and the tight money policy of last year reversed, there are signs of global pressures building on commodity prices.
Mr. Mukherjee said this was related to appreciation and demand for dollars and it would be difficult to predict the global behaviour of prices of commodities including fuel.
The Finance Minister sounded a note of warning as far as the impact of fuel prices on inflation is concerned.
He said if the current production and consumption pattern of crude oil continues, by the end of the 11th Plan (2012) India's dependence on imported fuel would increase to the extent of 90 per cent from the present level of 70-72 per cent.
He dismissed the charge of opposition members which had said that the Government was not managing the economy well.
"Economy has grown by 8.6 per cent for five years. It would not have been possible if it was bad management", he said adding that Rs 1.86 lakh crore liquidity was injected into the system to deal with the global slowdown.
However, he said, the liquidity injection has so far not been reflected into the production.
Shopian case: court denies bail for policemen
Srinagar (PTI): A court in Shopian on Thursday rejected the bail application of four police officials, including the then Superintendent of Police Javed Iqbal Mattoo, in connection with the rape and murder case of two women in the town.
Rejecting the bail plea under section 497 of CRPC (discretionary powers of the judge to grant bail or not), the sessions judge said investigations in the case were still on.
The sessions court had heard the arguments of the state government counsel as well as that of the defence counsel for nearly a week before reserving its order on July 31 and adjourning the case for Thursday.
The officers concerned, who have been suspended, were SP Mattoo, DSP Rohit Baskotra, former Shopian SHO Shafeeq Ahmad and Sub-Inspector Gazi Abdul Karim.
While the state government's counsel submitted in the court that the officers had been arrested on suspicion of not performing their duties, the defence counsel Asim Mehrotra, appearing on behalf of the police officials, had countered the argument saying nothing adverse had been found against them.
The four officers were suspended on June 22 for their alleged involvement in destroying evidence relating to the rape and murder of 17 year-old Asiya and her sister-in-law Neelofar (22) on May 30 and arrested on July 15 following an order by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court.
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J Balaji
NEW DELHI: The Indian government should take major steps to overhaul its policing system that facilitates and even encourages human rights violations, said Human Rights Watch in its recent report.
The US based human rights monitoring group, in its 118-page report: "Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police," documented a range of human rights violations committed by police, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extra-judicial killings.
It alleged that for decades, successive governments had failed to deliver on promises to hold the police accountable for abuses and to build professional, rights-respecting police forces.
The group listed out some recommendations to the government which include: requiring police to read suspects their rights upon arrest or any detention, which will increase institutional acceptance of these safeguards; excluding from court any evidence police obtain by using torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in suspect interrogations; bolstering independent investigations into complaints of police abuse and misconduct through national and state human rights commissions and police complaints authorities.
The HRW wanted the government to improve training and equipment, including strengthening the crime-investigation curriculum at police academies, training low-ranking officers to assist in crime investigations, and providing basic forensic equipment to every police officer.
The report was based on interviews with more than 80 police officers of varying ranks, 60 victims of police abuses, and numerous discussions with experts and civil society activists.
HRW Asia Director Brad Adams, commenting on the report, said: "India is modernizing rapidly, but the police continue to use their old methods: abuse and threats. It is time for the government to stop talking about reform and fix the system."
He added that India's status as the world's largest democracy was undermined by a police force that thinks it above the law.
Indians avoid contact with the police out of fear. So crimes go unreported and unpunished, and the police could not get the cooperation they need from the public to prevent and solve crimes, the report mentioned.
The group suggested that police officers who commit human rights violations, regardless of rank, should face appropriate punishment. "Police who commit or order torture and other abuses need to be treated as the criminals they are. There should not be one standard for police who violate the law and another for average citizens," HRW felt.
'States fail to provide 100-day employment to all under NREGA'
New Delhi (PTI): Even as the Centre is mulling to raise the number of job days under the NREGA scheme, none of the States has provided the guaranteed 100-day wage employment to all the registered rural households in over three years of the landmark legislation.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the flagship rural development programme of the UPA government, was launched in February 2006 in 200 districts. It was later expanded to another 130 districts in 2007-08 and was eventually extended to cover all the 593 districts.
A total of 4,49,40,870 rural households were provided jobs under NREGA during 2008-09 across the country but only about 14.48 per cent of them could get 100 days of employment assured under the scheme, according to statistics of the Ministry of Rural Development.
The statistics reveal that about 10.62 per cent of the total 3,38,89,122 registered rural households in 2007-08 were provided 100 days of employment.
During 2006-07, a total of 2,09,83,491 household were provided jobs under the scheme, but only about 10.29 per cent of them could get 100 days of employment.
As per an assessment done by the Ministry, the national average of the number of working days per household under NREGA was 48 in the last fiscal and it stood at 25 till May this year.
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia had recently said the government could temporarily raise the number of job days under the NREGA to compensate rural households for loss of income due to a poor monsoon in large part of the country.
The Rural Development Ministry said the number of household which completed 100-days of employment was nil in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland during 2006-07.
No household completed 100-days of wage employment in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland during 2007-08.
"NREGA is demand based. The Act provides a legal guarantee of 100 days of wage employment per household for doing unskilled manual work on demand," an official said.
However, the responsibility for the implementation of the scheme lies with the States and the Ministry provides financial assistance to them as per provisions, he said.
The Ministry also monitors the implementation of the scheme and issues necessary advisories to States to make it more effective, he added.
Govt prescribed price for RIL gas lower than others
New Delhi (PTI): Stressing that the priced fixed for gas produced by Reliance Industries was lower than rates charged by other private firms, the government on Thursday said its gas utilisation policy was aimed at operationalising idle and unutilised assets.
Replying to a calling-attention motion in Rajya Sabha, Oil Minister Murli Deora said the USD 4.2 per million British thermal unit price fixed for gas produced from KG-D6 fields of RIL was lower than the average of USD 5.51 per mmBtu charged by UK's BG-led consortium for Panna/Mukta and Tapti gas.
It was also lower than the USD 4.3 per mmBtu price of gas produced from Cairn's Ravva Satellite fields and USD 4.75 per mmBtu for the UK firm's Lakshmi fields.
Mr. Deora, replying to the motion moved by Tapan Kumar Sen on availability of gas for power generation, said that an empowered Group of Ministers had fixed the price formula as well as usage of gas.
"The intention of the Government being to operationalise all gas based assets which were lying idle or unutilised due to non-availability of gas," he said.
The eGoM-approved price formula provides for a maximum gas price of USD 4.2 per mmBtu at USD 60 a barrel crude rate.
If crude falls to USD 25, RIL gas will cost USD 2.5 per mmBtu.
"I am confident that natural gas would fuel economic growth of the country and the government will do all in its power to ensure its use for natural priorities at reasonable price," he said.
Stating that demand has far outstripped the availability, Mr. Deora said the domestic gas availability in 2008-09 at 105 million standard cubic meters per day met just over half of the 197 mmscmd requirement.
"With the commencement of gas production from (RIL's) KG-D6 fields and increased import potential of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the gap between demand and supply has come down," he said.
RIL, which started gas production on April 2, is currently producing 35 mmscmd, he said adding the eGoM had allocated the first 40 mmscmd of gas from KG-D6 to fertilizer (15 mmscmd), power (18 mmscmd), city gas (5 mmscmd) and LPG plants (3 mmscmd).
"eGoM further decided that any shortfall in utilisation should be allocated to gas-based steel plants and to existing power plants, including captive power plants," he said.
RIL is selling gas to consumers on the basis of priority drawn by the eGoM approved Gas Utilisation Policy.
Mr. Deora said with the commencement of KG-D6 production, over 100 mmscmd gas was being supplied to power and fertilizer sector out of a total supply of 40 mmscmd.
"As a result of KG-D6 supplies, about 4,000 megawatt (MW) of additional power is being generated and an annual saving in subsidy on fertilizer of Rs 3,000 crore will be achieved," he said.
The RIL gas formula approved by eGoM is for five years. "The price of gas being made available to the priority sectors is substantially lower than the prevailing prices of alternate liquid fuels like naphtha," Mr. Deora said.
To make available the natural gas in all regions of the country, the government has authorised several entities for laying gas pipelines to transport natural gas from the production centres to the potential consumers.
"The government proposes to develop a blue print for long distance gas highways leading to a National Gas Grid," he said. "This would facilitate transportation of gas across length and breadth of the country."
Mr. Deora said a study to consider the feasibility of having a uniform cost price regime for pipelines was being undertaken and the report was expected within 3 months.
Kerosene, domestic LPG prices lowest in India: Govt
New Delhi (PTI): The prices of Kerosene and domestic LPG in India are the lowest in South Asia, while the rates for petrol and diesel are comparable with its neighbours, the Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said on Thursday.
In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, he said kerosene at Rs 9.22 per litre in Delhi is the cheapest cooking fuel in South Asia.
Kerosene in Pakistan costs Rs 34.89 a litre, Rs 30.53 in Bangladesh, Rs 21.26 in Sri Lanka and Rs 34.35 per litre in Nepal.
Similarly, a 14.2 kg domestic LPG cylinder in Delhi priced at Rs 281.20 is cheaper than Rs 483.06 in Pakistan, Rs 670.12 in Bangladesh, Rs 666.31 in Sri Lanka and Rs 702.72 per cylinder rate in Nepal, he said.
Petrol at Rs 44.63 in Delhi is costlier than Rs 36.52 a litre price in Pakistan but cheaper than Rs 51.36 a litre price in Bangladesh, Rs 54.19 in Sri Lanka and Rs 34.35 a litre in Nepal.
Deisel at Rs 32.87 per litre in Delhi was a shade higher than Rs 30.53 rate in Bangladesh and Rs 30.43 a litre price in Sri Lanka. But it was cheaper than Rs 36.82 a litre price in Pakistan and Rs 34.35 per litre rate in Nepal, he said.
"It may, therefore, be seen that whereas prices of PDS kerosene and domestic LPG in India are the lowest, prices of petrol and diesel are quite comparable to the neighbouring countries," he said adding prices differ because of tax rates.
High chemical content in drinking water causing alarm in Surpur
Eruptions in the skin caused due to pre-malignant stage of skin cancer on the of a Banjara women can be seen on the right arm of a Banjara women in Kiradalli Tanda. Photo: By Special Arrangement
By T V Sivanandan
GULBARGA: The results of the laboratory test of the drinking water samples taken from all the villages in Surpur Taluk (population 3.36 lakhs)in Gulbarga district has some shocking revelations. A large number of drinking water sources contain high levels of harmful arsenic, nitrate and fluoride content.
The findings of the detailed laboratory tests conducted at the state-of-the-art laboratory at the State Mines and Geology Department at Bangalore that was submitted to the Gulbarga district administration and Zilla Panchayat show that 5.35 per cent of the ground water sources in Surpur taluk contain arsenic levels much higher than the permissible limits, 14.3 per cent of the drinking water sources contain very high levels of fluoride content and as much as 30.62 per cent of drinking water sources had a very high nitrate content.
While high arsenic content in the drinking water can cause skin disorders including skin cancers, the high presence of nitrate in the drinking water can cause cardiac diseases, blue baby syndrome among the children, kidney stone formation and diarrhoea, according to Dr K Vijaykumar, Professor in the Zoology Department in Gulbarga University. The presence of fluoride in drinking water higher than the permissible limits can cause dental and skeletal deformities and affect the bones in general.
A team of doctors led by oncologist-surgeon Sharad Tanga of the M.R medical College in Gulbarga detected an outbreak of a rare form of skin cancer in Kiradalli Tanda in the Surpur taluk six weeks ago. The cancer claimed the lives of four persons and has caused permanent disability to three persons who had to undergo amputation of their limbs to arrest the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body. In addition more than 50 persons in the Tanda were in pre-malignant stage of cancer. These findings forced the district administration and the zilla panchayat to test of all the drinking water sources in taluk for taking remedial action.
Out of the total of 467 samples taken from ground water sources (borewells) in all the villages in the Surpur Taluk, as many 25 samples were found to contain higher arsenic levels than the permissible limit of 0.01 Mg per Litre. In Ammapur village one of the drinking water source had 1.00 Mg per litre of arsenic level. In another 66 samples the fluoride content was higher than the permitted levels of 1.5 Mg per Litre. Maddi Tanda in the taluk recorded 5.73 Mg of Nitrate per litre.
Similarly nitrate was very high in 143 samples with the highest level seen in Pet Ammapur village which had 734.44 Mg per litre. In their report, the officials of the Mines and Geology Department said that the probable causes for high arsenic in groundwater in the taluk may be attributed to the "lithology of the area - mineral composition of the local rock types containing Arsenic-bearing minerals such as Arseno-Pyrite etc, and the mining activity and discharge of mine dumps related to gold and copper mining in the vicinity of the area".
Surpur taluk has a history of gold mining during the British period. There were mines in Mangalure village in the taluk. The Hutti Gold Mines in Raichur is in close proximity to Surpur taluk.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200908061321.htm
Grant more for allied sectors of agriculture: House panel
New Delhi (PTI): Recommending higher allocation for animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries, a House panel has wondered as to why the sector got only 7.7 per cent of the allocated funds of the Agriculture Ministry last fiscal, even though it accounted for 31 per cent of the total farm output.
"The animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries sector contributes over 31 per cent to the output of agriculture and contributes more than 5 per cent to the GDP. But the allocation for this department in the overall allocation of the Ministry of Agriculture is 7.7 per cent of the total outlay (in 2008-09)," the Parliamentary Standing Committee has said in a report.
The Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries (DAHD&F) was granted Rs 940 crore in the revised estimate of the last fiscal.
The situation has not improved this fiscal as well.
Out of the Plan outlay of Rs 14,167.07 crore for the three departments of the Agriculture Ministry in 2009-10, the share of the DAHD&F was pegged at a meagre 7.76 per cent at Rs 1,100 crore.
On the other hand, the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation has been allocated Rs 11,307.07 crore for this fiscal and the Department of Agricultural Research and Education has been granted Rs 1,760 crore.
Opinion - Editorials 
Deficiencies in governance
The acrimonious dispute between the Ambani brothers has turned the spotlight on the deficiencies of governance in the natural gas sector. Petroleum Minister Murli Deora's assertion in Parliament that the government will endeavour to protect its legal rights to regulate the utilisation of gas and its allocation is welcome. However, past actions of the government reveal an inconsistent and ineffective approach to a sector that is poised to contribute substantially to the country's energy needs. The government has been addressing the issue of maximising the public interest across the entire value chain of the gas sector only in fits and starts. There have been major lacunae in the way the nearly-decade-old New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), which governs the upstream oil and gas sector, has been interpreted. Two examples, both relevant to the legal dispute between the Ambani brothers illustrate the gaps. Under the NELP, contractors who won licences for exploration and have signed production-sharing contracts (PSC) with the government have the freedom to market the gas at prices discovered through "arms-length negotiations." They are also bound to follow the official gas utilisation policy which prioritises consumers. That policy was framed almost seven years after Reliance Industries Ltd. signed the PSC and is at the centre of the government's stand.
Price fixation and utilisation of gas have been at the core of the controversy. Contractors who find oil or gas under the NELP will have to share their profits with the government, according to their bidding terms. Profits are determined by subtracting the costs of production from the revenues arising from the sale of oil or gas. An independent certification of costs — so that the contractor does not benefit at the expense of the government through inflating costs of exploration, development, and production — is also critically important. The dispute between the Ambani brothers over the supply of gas, into which the public sector NTPC has also been dragged, has its roots in the opaque manner in which the prices have been arrived at. The government could have laid down internationally accepted benchmarks for price determination and utilisation of natural gas. Policy failures on several counts have discouraged investors. Regulation of downstream industries has also been a problem .The government should take note of an oligopolistic structure emerging in both the upstream and downstream segments of the petroleum industry and formulate a utilisation policy that would serve the broad public interest.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/08/06/stories/2009080651680800.htm
Industrialists want Govt. to set up Land Bank Corporation
Special Correspondent
CHENNAI: Leading Indian industrialists want the government to set up a Land Bank Corporation to acquire land for infrastructural projects on a continuing and ongoing basis.
They also want a seperate Infrastructure Budget, and a National Infrastructure Facilitation and Monitoring Agency and independent regulatory authorities to be set up, especially to deal with projects which are being implemented on a public-private partnership basis.
These are among the suggestions that the Infrastructure Committee of the Confederation of Indian Industry has come up with in a 12-point plan to accelerate infrastructure development in the country, according to J.P. Nayak, president of operations at Larsen and Toubro. He was speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of Suminfra 2009, of which he is the conference chairman.
Land bank corporation
"Project delays push up the costs and delay the benefit for the population," said Mr. Nayak, explaining the urgent need to complete infrastructure projects on time. According to him, one of the major bottlenecks causing project delays is the acquisition of land. He feels that the proposed Land Bank Corporation could take responsibility for acquiring and allotting it, taking future requirements into account as well.
Professional acquisition of land on an ongoing basis, without waiting for individual project approvals would cut down the delays and also reduce the price as landholders jack up their price only after a project is announced. This would follow the model of the industrial development corporations such as TIDCO or SIPCOT which maintain land banks for industrial purposes. CII wants a similar model to be adopted on national basis for infrastructure projects as well.
Mr. Nayak admitted that such a central government agency "would not satisy the aspiration of the landholder to participate in future value" which has caused much of the problems of land acquisition in the recent past. However, he felt that the public good would be served.
Infrastructure Budget
CII also wants the government to present a seperate Infrastructure Budget to Parliament in order to bring more attention to the sector. "If the Railways, which are only one part of infrastructure, has a seperate [budget] day, why not infrastructure as a whole?" asked Mr. Nayak, adding that the Prime Minister could present this budget, as several ministries dealt with the sector. "PPP infrastructure projects have been proven as the best way to stimulate the economy. It has a multiplier effect of 1.8 times...[and] also creates permanent assets," he added.
Monitoring projects
In order to monitor the progress of infrastructure projects and ensure on-time, within budget delivery, the government should set up a National Infrastructure Facilitation and Monitoring Agency, CII believes. It is already in talks with the government about this agency, which would effectively expand the job carried out by the Prime Minister's Office's co-ordinating agency currently facilitating large projects. "The government should select 20 high-profile cross-sector projects of national importance and immediate impact to be completed first," he said.
A set of truly independent regulatory authorities need to be set up for various sectors, not to create further obstacles, but as agencies with decision-making authority, said Mr. Nayak. For example, private airport developers need such an authority to rule on the contentious user development fee issue, he said, adding that the telecom regulator, which is market driven, but sets caps on private players, is a model to follow.
CII wants the SEZ model to be replicated through domestic economic zones. It also wants the PPP mode to be extended to rural infrastructure development, especially in irrigation and agribusiness facilities. Other suggestions included the need to build mass transit systems for the 20 largest cities, energise infrastructure PSUs, bring greater transparency to the bidding process through standardised rules, and monitor the gross capital formation in the economy.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/006200908062031.htm
UP village heads threaten to stop midday meal
Lucknow (IANS): The association of village heads of Uttar Pradesh has threatened to stop the distribution of midday meals in primary schools because they can no longer pay for the cooking with the Rs.2.50 they get per child. And they haven't even been paid this amount for a long time.
The Pradesh Gram Pradhan Sangh (PGPS), as the association is called, says this Rs.2.50 per student, called "conversion cost", is a two-year-old rate and inadequate to cover the cost.
Out of this Rs.2.50, "40 paise per head is given to the cook and the remaining Rs.2.10 is utilised in buying sugar, oil, vegetables, milk, spices, etc. It is now impossible to arrange food," said R.K. Singh, head of Pinhat Miranpur Pinvat village near the state capital.
The midday meal scheme is the world's largest nutritional support programme, under which primary school children get free lunch in government-run schools all over India. Food grains are given free to the schools.
Despite this, over 30 percent of primary schools in Uttar Pradesh have not been successful in starting the scheme till now and a similar number of schools serve food only twice a week, R.K. Singh said.
"The supply of poor quality food grain also adds to our woes," he added.
A couple of days ago, over 50 children in villages of Siddharth Nagar district fell ill after consuming their midday meal. Seven are still being treated in the district hospital.
The Basic Education Department of the state blames the State Midday Meal Authority (SMDMA) for the drawbacks in the scheme.
"We had sent our recommendations to increase and release the conversion cost on time to the authority a long time back and the file is gathering dust. We keep following up the matter but with no success," an official of the department said on condition of anonymity.
The authority, however, claims that the funds and food grains are released on time.
"The conversion cost of July to September and the food grains have been sent to all the districts and the central government has also agreed to increase the conversion cost after the recommendation of the state government. We hope that the conversion cost will be increased soon," Santosh Kumar, additional director of SMDMA told IANS.
Besides, most of the districts of the state are yet to receive a report from village heads about how the money allotted to them has been spent to provide midday meals for children, he added.
"We are making additional efforts to make the scheme more effective," said the official.
| The idea of justice in Singur | ||
| OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | ||
Calcutta, Aug. 5: Who were denied justice more in Singur — farmers who lost their land or workers who lost potential jobs with the pullout of the Tata car factory? And, if reasoned public discussion is the basis for justice, what hopes for a society if people are bigoted and incapable of reasoning? Amartya Sen had no reason to answer — or even face — such questions at the launch of his new book, The Idea of Justice, at the London School of Economics last month. In Calcutta, though, Singur and land acquisition or the recent electoral debacle of the Left in Bengal, attributed largely to the land question, had to find a place in a discussion that followed his Penguin Annual Lecture on Wednesday evening. Barkha Dutt of NDTV, with whom Sen had the discussion after his lecture on 'Justice — and India', may have missed Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in the audience, especially because the venue, Nandan, is known to be a favourite with Bengal's culture-loving chief minister. He was said to have been keen to attend, but was forced to stay away by an annual party programme that assumed greater political significance this year because of the post-poll crisis of the CPM. Sen's answer could have pleased Bhattacharjee, but only partially. He iterated that the Tata factory could have gone a long way in reviving hopes for Bengal's industrialisation and reducing its level of poverty. But he also said land acquisition should be the last resort, a point he had made earlier in a signed article in The Telegraph last September, and that investors should buy land from the market. The Singur story, in his view, illustrates the need for a public debate on what is the way forward. Between his lecture and the discussion emerged what Aveek Sarkar, Penguin India chairman and editor-in-chief of the ABP Group, had called the "two Amartya Sens". While introducing Sen, he was unsure of what to say of the man without sounding "trite and obvious". But he found his way to do that, introducing the two Sens — one a great academic and thinker and the other a concerned citizen of the world and a great humanist who offered roadmaps for elected governments and for the real world. He recalled the description of Sen as a "sophisticated intellectual campaigner" by Sunil Khilnani, the author of The Idea of India. But he also set the tone for Sen's lecture, recalling Kenneth Arrow and wondering how one would define injustices if one couldn't define justice. Sen began by saying that though justice was a hugely appealing idea, the search for it could look hopeless like "looking for a black cat in a dark room when the cat isn't there". But a society has no escape from searching for justice. Philosophers and political theorists down the ages have done it in two ways. One way is to look for the perfectly just society and the "transcendental institutionalism" that can form the basis for this "not less or not more, but absolutely just" society. Sen's own approach to the question of justice is different. It is "comparative rather than transcendental". He talked of the difference in his approach from that of John Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice. Rawls, he said, identified perfectly just institutions. But Sen argued that the way people lived in a society was influenced not just by institutions and laws but also by their behaviour, their actions, reactions and their movements. The question is one of the impact of institutions on people's lives. "Transcendentalists" wouldn't do anything about battling injustices until their world of perfectly just institutions came into existence. But Sen cited the historic campaigns against slavery, women's subjugation and other social evils by thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft and Karl Marx to argue that the world cannot wait for the perfectly just society to campaign on such issues. For him, life would be unbearable if you did nothing, socially or politically, until you knew what an ideal state was. Preventing manifest problems of injustice is more important than looking for a "perfectly just society". It isn't a matter of only political philosophy, but also of political practice. And the institutions of niti (policies and principles) have to be submitted to the demands of nyaya (justice). Avoiding matsyanyaya, in which big fish devour the small fish, is a crucial part of justice. Sen was concerned that in India, patent injustices such as child malnutrition, poor people's lack of entitlement to basic medical education, primary health care or gender inequality were crowded out of political discourse and practice. The answer – and that also is the road to justice – is to engage more and more people in public discussion. |
The real reasons for hunger
Leading Indian ecological activist Vandana Shiva disagrees with Amartya Sen's analysis of global hunger and argues that famine has returned to democratic India.
Observer Worldview
Vandana Shiva Observer.co.uk, Sunday 23 June 2002 00.54 BST Article history
Amartya Sen's article in last week's Observer - Why half the planet is hungry - argues that no famine can occur in a democracy, and cites India as an example of the elimination of famines. It is true that famines disappeared immediately in 1947, with independence and multiparty elections. But famine is making a comeback in India. As Mulayam Singh Yada, the leader of a major political party, stated in Parliament:
"There is famine in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar, Gujarat. This is a serious matter. The tragedy is that while people starve, the godowns are overflowing. 300 to 400 million Rupees are being spent daily to stock food of which 35% is rotting. What was the reason that the government under pressure of rich countries, decided to let the people starve merely in order to reduce the budget?
Eight hundred tribal children have died of starvation in Maharashtra. Four starving women from Orissa tried to sell her child for 300 Rupees in Calcutta. In the famine stricken regions of Orissa, children are being sold for a few thousand rupees because of starvation. Wives are being sold into bondage".
People are starving because the policy structures that defended rural livelihoods, and access to resources and markets, and hence entitlements and incomes, are being systematically dismantled by structural adjustment programmes, driven by the World Bank, and by WTO rules imposing trade liberalization.
After the Great Bengal Famine of 1942 which killed more than 2 million people, India's policies after independence put livelihoods and food security first, rather than trade and commerce. Land reform put land back in the hands of the peasants and cultivators, thus removing a root cause of poverty. The economic "reforms" under globalization reverse these reforms by corporatizing agriculture, displacing small peasants, and removing limits on land ownership. Displaced peasants cannot have incomes or entitlements. They are among those who go hungry. Amartya Sen does not refer anywhere to issues of land reform as central to the issue of hunger and poverty, or to the high costs of seeds and chemicals which are pushing Indian peasants to suicide. Without people's rights to resources, there is no lasting solution to hunger.
When "democracy" fails to prevent famine
Sen's assumption that democracy can prevent famines in our times is also conceptually flawed because it fails to address the fact that trade liberalization and globalization policies empty democracy of economic content, and remove basic decisions from the democratic influence of a country's people.
Political democracy divorced from economic democracy allows governments to bid for votes on the basis of hate, fear and exclusion. The failure of the ruling party in India in recent regional elections was due to the destitution of farmers - caused by the implementation of trade liberalization policies for seeds, subsidies and imports under WTO rules. Instead of addressing the issue of rural poverty and hunger, the government pulled out the card of communal frenzy in Gujarat and war hysteria over Kashmir to divert the public and create new fundamentalist agendas to electioneer with. Governments can survive famines of they can inflame fundamentalist forces as a diversion. People die of both hunger and wars. Strengthening food sovereignty, food rights and food security requires changes in trade rules. We should understand that this is also a condition for peace in our violent and brutal times.
Deregulated imports mean importing hunger and unemployment
Sen describes food sovereignty and self sufficiency as "obtuse" and "fetishist", and recommends dependence on imports. However, deregulated imports are a major cause of poverty and famine in countries like India. Globalization has dismantled the systems which guaranteed domestic market access for farmers, a system which brought food security to the poor. Meanwhile rich countries subsidise their agricultural production by $1 billion every day, making it inevitable that exports will be dumped on the poor.
The only way to protect incomes and entitlements in poor countries is to bring back controls on imports. As India has opened trade, its agricultural imports have quadrupled, rising from $1 billion (50,000 million Rupees) in 1995 to over $4 billion (200,000 million Rupees) by 2000. Many of these imports come from rich countries such as the United States and Europe. The United States is now planning to spend more than £130 billion over the next ten years to support 2 million farmers: more than two-thirds of this money which will go the largest 10 per cent of farmers. This process results in huge surpluses which are dumped on the global market. They bring down prices worldwide and destroy the livelihoods of millions of peasants. Prices of coconuts have fallen 80 per cent, coffee prices have collapsed by over 60 percent, pepper prices have fallen 45 percent in India since the WTO declared, in 2000, that India must reduce import barriers.
The most dramatic effect has been on edible oil. India's domestic production has been effectively wiped out as highly subsidized soya from the U.S. and palm oil from Malaysia flood the market, due to lack of adequate import controls. Imports now account for 70 per cent of the domestic consumption of edible oil. This has resulted in coconut farmers in Kerala blockading their local harbor to protest against such imports. Groundnut farmers and soya bean farmers in a number of areas mounted demonstrations against this attack on their livelihood. As a result, they were shot at.
It is little wonder that Indian activists, peoples movements and some politicians are calling for the reintroduction of import controls. More than 100,000 peasants and workers attended a rally ahead of last year's Doha meeting of the WTO. This democratic demand would prevent famine. Yet nowhere in his article does Amartya Sen identify the destruction of livelihoods and incomes of the small rural producers as the reason for increased endemic hunger, and indeed famine, in India.
Deregulated exports: a recipe for hunger
On the contrary, Sen recommends further trade liberalization and increased exports as the solution to hunger in the Third World. Yet export-oriented agriculture robs the poor of their land, their water and their livelihoods. There is an inverse relation between increasing agricultural exports and declining food consumption locally and nationally. When countries grow flowers and vegetables for exports, they also sow the seeds of hunger.
Yet India promotes exports of flowers and meat. Yet India spent $27 million (1.37 billion Rupees) as foreign exchange for promoting floriculture exports earning a mere $6.4 million (0.32 billion Rupees) as a result. India can buy only a quarter of the food it could otherwise have grown with the export earnings from floriculture.
In the case of meat exports, for every dollar earned, our research has shown that India is destroying fifteen dollars worth of ecological functions preformed by farm animals for sustainable agriculture. Thus, as a society, India is paying more in terms of food insecurity and ecological destruction than it is earning through exports of luxury crops such as flowers and meat. Putting resources in people's hands, and guaranteeing small producers access to local markets is a far more secure, sustainable and inclusive way to remove poverty.
· Vandana Shiva is Director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology, India. See www.vshiva.net for more information.
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India: Justice, the victim - Gujarat state fails to protect women from violence
India: Justice, the victim - Gujarat state fails to protect women from violence
Index Number: ASA 20/001/2005Date Published: 27 January 2005
Categories: Asia And The Pacific, India
This report Amnesty International appeals to the new government to live up to its promises to secure human rights to all citizens and to address the legacy of the 2002 violence in Gujarat with speed and earnest commitment. The organization also urges the Government of India to pay special attention to the forgotten women victims in Gujarat. Specific recommendations to both the Governments of India and Gujarat are contained in the last section of the report. It uses two key cases to illustrate abuses such as gang rape, murder of relatives of and employees of victims and the subsequent investigations, trials, appeals and retrials.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA20/001/2005
Mumbai twin blasts: Three sentenced to death
Mohammed Hanif Sayed, one of the convicted bombers of Mumbai twin blasts. Photo: PTI
Mumbai (PTI): Six years after two blasts at the iconic Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar here left 52 persons dead, three Lashkar-e-Taiba members, including a couple, were on Thursday sentenced to death by a POTA court for carrying out the explosions.
Handing down the noose to the trio -- Mohammed Hanif Sayeed (46), his wife Fahmida (43) and Ashrat Ansari (32), the judge P R Puranik observed that it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt they had committed heinous acts resulting in numerous deaths.
The court agreed with special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam that this was a rarest of the rare case where capital punishment was justified.
This is for the first time that a couple has been convicted by a POTA court for carrying out blasts.
The trio was held guilty of planting two bombs in taxis that exploded at the Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar on August 25, 2003, claiming 52 lives and injuring 244. They had also planted a bomb on July 28, 2003 in a municipal bus in suburban Ghatkopar which killed two persons.
Soon after the verdict was pronounced, police whisked away Sayed, Fahimda and Ansari to different jails.
Fahmida broke down outside the court while her husband did not react and stood calm by her side.Ashrat said "Is andhe kanoon se kya insaaf milega (what justice can you get when the law is blind).
Commenting on the verdict, Nikam said, "We are happy that justice has been delivered. This would send a strong message to terrorists that they would get such punishment if they indulged in barbarous acts".
The three were given death penalty under section 3(2) of POTA, and IPC sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 120(b)(conspiracy).
They were sentenced to varying prison terms under the provisions of Explosives Substances Act, Explosives Act and Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.
"Initially they had planted a bomb in a bus but since few people were killed, they decided to use powerful bombs on the instructions of Laskhar-e-Taiba," Nikam said.
Nikam said Fahmida had played a major role in these bomb blasts. She not only planted a bomb in a bus on July 28, 2003, along with her husband's friend Ashrat but also on August 25, 2003, she and her husband Hanif planted bombs in taxis at the Gateway of India.
"Fahmida had actively participated in the process of selection and approval of location of targets. Though Fahmida was a woman she was equally cruel as other accused in the execution of conspiracy," Nikam said.
The prosecutor said Hanif was an autorickshaw driver in Mumbai and had gone to Dubai to attend a meeting during which a conspiracy was hatched by LeT to carry out the blasts.
Ashrat had planted bomb in another taxi which exploded in Zaveri Bazaar.
Families of blasts victims waited outside the court to felicitate Nikam and his team of prosecutors. Among them was Ashok Patel who said, "We are happy that justice has been done at last."
Zaveri Bazaar in South Mumbai was selected as blast site since the trio wanted to target the famous Mumbadevi temple.
Gateway of India was chosen since LeT wanted to target the nearby Hotel Taj where many foreign tourists stay, Nikam said.
Along with Hanif and Fahimda, their 16-year-old daughter had been arrested for her alleged involvement in the blasts.
However, she was discharged since the prosecution chose not to investigate the charges against her as she was a minor.
Two other accused, Mohammed Ansari Ladoowala and Mohammed Hasan Batterywala, were also discharged from the case by the POTA court after the Supreme Court upheld a POTA review committee report that had said there was no case against the duo.
An accused-turned-approver had told the court that the meeting to hatch the conspiracy was held in Dubai. The LeT activists had come from Pakistan to attend the meeting, the approver, whose name has been kept a secret, had said.
The motive behind the blasts was to seek vengeance for the atrocities meted against the minority community during the Godhra carnage in Gujarat in 2002, he had told investigators.
From The Hindu Archives
46 killed as twin blasts rock Mumbai
4 held for Mumbai blastshttp://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200908061522.htm
'U.S. digging itself out of a hole in Pak, Afghanistan'
Washington (IANS): Blaming the previous Bush administration for "a culture of poverty" that had starved the U.S. campaign against Taliban, the top U.S. military official says America is still digging its way "out of a hole" in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"I'm digging myself out of a hole in Pakistan and in Afghanistan," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Washington Times in an interview published on Thursday.
"So there's an argument to be made that I haven't gotten to year zero yet with respect to that long-term relationship, and then that gets reflected in how the people look at this. Which I understand completely," he said.
Adm. Mullen, who has visited Afghanistan 10 times, did not disagree with an assessment by Gilles Dorronsoro, a South Asia analyst, saying the Taliban has become more effective and sophisticated in recent years. He said the U.S. has 12 to 18 months "to start turning this thing around".
It was crucial to gain the trust of the Afghan people, who have endured 30 years of conflict since the Soviet invasion, he said noting many Afghan citizens and officials have expressed concern that the U.S. will abandon the country again as it did in 1989 after the defeat of the Soviet occupation.
"That trust was badly broken when we left [Afghanistan] before and it was badly broken in Pakistan... when we sanctioned them [over their nuclear programme]," he said. "It's going to take a lot of time to develop."
"I liken it to somebody who has been starving for a significant period of time and all the sudden you put all the food they need in the world there - they're just not going to come back overnight," he said.
"What I do see and have seen over the last two or three trips is something that I call a 'culture of poverty' and it isn't just that we've under-resourced it - we've under-resourced it for a significant period of time," Adm. Mullen said.
He said a strategy devised since President Barack Obama took office is intended to reverse these negative trends. "We now have a strategy which is a civilian-military campaign plan, a civilian-military strategy."
Kidnapped TN children forced to work in naxal-infested areas, says official
Special Correspondent
CHENNAI: Children are being kidnapped from Tamil Nadu and forced to work in naxal-infested areas, particularly Andhra Pradesh, Additional Commissioner of Police (Headquarters) M. Ravi said on Thursday.
He was speaking at a capacity building programme for police personnel on Child Protection and Childline Services jointly organized by the Department of Social Defense and World Vision India here.
Child trafficking is a matter of serious concern. We have information that children are being kidnapped and taken to naxalite areas for work. The role of NGOs is very vital in identifying vulnerable areas. A coordinated effort is required to eradicate child abuse in all its forms, Mr. Ravi said.
He said in many instances of sexual abuse involving children, the accused persons were known to the victims. Neighbours, relatives and school employees are often the culprits in such cases. Parents should be sensitised to the risk factors.
The Indian Council for Child Welfare Secretary Chandra Thanickachalam said child trafficking was prevalent in Tamil Nadu and Chennai was usually the transit point. When a joint operation was held a couple of years ago in Chennai where all incoming buses and trains were checked, 48 children belonging to the southern districts were rescued.
They were brought by agents for employment in Gujarat and some other northern States. The children were restored to their parents and legal action was taken against the agents who had bought them for work. At least 50 per cent of the children were aged below 14 years, she said.
Ms. Thanickachalam said Tamil Nadu was a source of supply (of women) to brothels in Mumbai. Participation of police was imperative when it came to rescuing children in brothels, industries, clandestine establishments and residential areas where they were forced to work.
In about 2,380 calls received by the Childline in the last 10 years in Chennai, children found to be victims of different kinds of abuse were rescued. Even when police are present during such rescue operations, they are insisting that the Childline should lodge a complaint. Our appeal to the police is that they should become complainants in such cases, she said.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Central) V.A. Ravikumar also spoke. At least 100 police personnel, including women, took part in the programme. They would be designated as Child Welfare Officers, police sources added.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200908061501.htm
Restorative Justice
and India's Caste System
Article and Photos by J.S. Murthy
| For Kshatriya (Kurmi), handsome boy...an attractive, fair girl.... BRAHMIN
|
 A high-caste Brahmin wedding celebration at Hawan Kund (the Hindu wedding altar). | In India, the lists of classified matrimonial ads in the newspapers are almost endless. Caste is always mentioned, invariably. However, personal ads today also mention religious affiliations and professions. Doctors, engineers, even computer-software specialists are advertising in India for mates. The fact that the 3500-year-old caste system should survive in India today almost defies comprehension. It has been an aberration of the Hindu psyche. Indians who use lofty rhetoric about progress, characterizing their society as "united in diversity," seem to be simply perpetuating the system of social gradation that has blighted so many lives. |
| Social distinctions can still be discerned in modern India in many ways. Even a highly educated Brahmin physician (a Brahmin is a Hindu of the highest caste) wraps the wrist of a Sudra (or low-caste person) with a band of cloth before feeling for the patient's pulse. That way, the Brahmin will not to be "defiled" by touching the Sudra's skin. Low-caste people are forbidden to use the wells in villages that high-caste Brahmins use for fear they will pollute the water. A low-caste family is refused the right to bury a family member near their village, where both high and low castes live, because of a superstition that the dead person's ghost will haunt the high- caste people. And a Brahmin bachelor living in a state with only a few surviving Brahmin families has to wait for five long years while his parents search for a suitable mate of the same high caste as he. |
| According to the traditional Hindu view, human beings were divided into four categories on the basis of their intrinsic qualities. The highest caste, the Brahmins, were the thinkers, philosophers, and priests whose role was to provide both spiritual guidance and intellectual sustenance to the society. Originally, they lived on the charity of the people, given in return for the performance of various rites. Next came the Kshatriyas, or Warriors, who were primarily concerned with the defense and governance of the state. The kings and rulers belonged to this caste. The third caste consisted of the Vaisyas, or Traders, who were involved in agricultural and commercial operations. In the fourth category were the Sudras, or Laborers. This caste, at the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder, were responsible for various services, including menial jobs like scavenging and cleaning. They were considered "untouchable" and the three higher castes were not permitted to mingle with them. Marriage across caste lines was forbidden, and even now this taboo persists. Those who fall in love and marry in spite of the taboo risk excommunication from their castes. |
| This social system of gradation was given religious sanction by a verse in the ancient sacred writings of Hinduism and the earliest document of Indian history called the Rig Veda. Believed to have been composed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., it records that Brahmins came from the face of the creator, Kshatriyas from his arms, Vaisyas from his thighs, and Sudras from the soles of his feet. Members of the lowest caste were subjected to many restrictions in society. |  Lower-caste women work all day picking weeds for a wage as low as 50 cents a day. |
| At present, Indian society is characterized by an obsession with the kinds of development that would lead to a free-market economy. The growing economic success of some in India has created a chasm separating the rich from the poor, who make up about 56 percent of the population. Economists describe "two Indias"--one rich and one poor. India's caste system can no longer fully contain the socioeconomic change that the country is undergoing. Different religions, occupations, and levels of education are no longer correlated with caste. A high-caste person cannot be born a chief executive, for example, but must work to become one. A person of low caste may now get a good education and become an executive, a college professor, or even a government leader. |
| Indians who belong to the lower castes that were once considered "untouchable" now choose to call themselves by the name Dalit, meaning "oppressed," and signaling that they are actively resisting injustice. Dalits make up 18 to 20 percent of India's population. Only about 3 percent of India's population is Christian, but 50 percent of the Christian population is Dalit, according to Ms. Soosai Raj Faustina, a teacher and member of the Dalit Solidarity Peoples (DSP) National Working Committee. Foreign Christian missionaries have also had a history of helping Dalits with education and with economic development. |
| Rural India still presents a dismal picture of life for its low-caste people, though. A friend of mine, Dharamnath of Jagdalpur, a member of the Methodist Church and an excellent vocalist, says that the typical low-caste village family may have only one sari (a draped dress using several yards of cloth) for all its women. So, while one woman comes out the hut draped in the sari, four other women must wait inside for their turn to wear the same dress. They can only come out one by one. Faustina explains that, even though she teaches in a mixed school run by the Roman Catholic Church in Ongur, Dalits are still separated in the village. "Normally, Dalits are put on the east side of the village," she reports, "because the wind blows from west to east, and non-Dalits don't want to be contaminated by wind that has touched Dalits. All the institutions are in the non- Dalit area of the village. We are resisting these things," she adds. The Supreme Court of India in Delhi.
Migrant populations flock to the outskirts of cities to find work. |  A village girl holds her little brother. In fact, empowered by India's constitution, the Dalits have organized to push for change through legislation and social institutions. Public transportation, radio, and television have begun to have a modernizing impact, especially on children and youth, even in rural villages. But a lack of political will on the part of the state prevents some recommendations from being implemented. Also, villagers who travel to large cities in search of job opportunities are likely to encounter crime syndicates and mafia organizations there. Even in small towns, gangs have proliferated. Last year, the worst-ever massacre of Dalit and landless men, women, and children occurred in Bihar. Sixty people were killed by the Ranvir Sena, a self-styled armed militia of the upper-caste landed gentry, formed to crush the movements of Dalits and agricultural laborers. |
| Dr. James Massey, a minister of the Church of North India and a Dalit, is a member of the government-sponsored National Commission for Minorities (NCM) in India. This commission is responsible for investigating incidents of religious violence in India. Massey says that religious violence in India is fueled by hatred and fear, not outside influences. The NCM investigated the highly publicized murder of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two young sons, Philip (age 9) and Timothy (age 6), who were burned alive in their jeep on January 22, 1999, while they were sleeping. Staines was in Orissa working among patients with leprosy. The NCM team concluded that the incident was part of a definite plan on the part of militant Hindus to create insecurity among Christians. This gruesome act, however, evoked unprecedented condemnation from all sectors of Indian society, including the ruling Hindu Bhartiya Janata Party. The majority of Hindus do not subscribe to these violent methods of reinforcing the nationalistic ideal of creating a Hindu state. Christian leaders in India have appealed for safety and security not only for Christians but also for indigenous people, regardless of their religion. One banner carried by a child at a mass rally read: "Burn Hatred, Not Children." In a secular society, tolerance and coexistence are two sides of the same coin. Under Article 25 of India's constitution, a citizen has the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate any religion. |
Dr. J. S. Murthy is an award-winning photographer in India and the United States. He is also a lecturer at Leonard Theological School in Jabalpur, India.
http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/99ja/india.html
Monsoon situation continues to be grim
P. Sunderarajan
| The northward movement of trough brings relief to north India, northeast |
NEW DELHI: The southwest monsoon crossed its midway point five days ago but the situation continues to be grim across the country, with part of the gains made during the first half of July even getting eroded during the past two weeks following the northward movement of the monsoon trough from its normal position.
As on Tuesday, the cumulative rainfall for the country as a whole was short of the normal level by as much as 25 per cent, a deterioration from the position on July 22, when the shortfall came down to 19 per cent following three-weeks of steady rain over Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and several other parts of Central and south India.
The northward movement of the monsoon has, no doubt, brought some relief to north India and the north-east, which had been lagging badly. But, the level of relief has not been as much as desired.
In the meteorological northwest region, consisting of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan, the situation is back to square one after some improvement over a week from July 22 to 29. The deficiency in cumulative rainfall in the region has climbed back to 39 per cent after the spell of rain between July 22 and 29 brought it down from 38 to 33 per cent.
The meteorological north-east region, consisting of Bihar, Jharkand, West Bengal, and the north-eastern States, is the major beneficiary of the northward movement of the monsoon trough, receiving steady rainfall over the past two weeks.
In the meteorological south peninsula and central India regions, the situation continues to be moderate, though there has been a deterioration. There was hardly any rain in the past two weeks over most parts of the two regions.
Cumulative rainfall
The deficiency in cumulative rainfall in the south peninsula, which comprises Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar has gone up from three per cent to 18 per cent since July 22, while in central India, which comprises Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa, the cumulative rainfall came down from three per cent above normal on July 22, to 11 per cent below normal on Tuesday.
"Still two months to go"
Senior officials at the India Meteorological Department are, however, confident that the situation will improve over time.
Pointing out that on average, 18.2 per cent of the season's total rainfall was realised in June, 32.9 per cent in July, 29.4 per cent in August and 19.5 per cent in September, they said, "there are still two months to go for the monsoon.
Still, about 50 per cent of the season's total rain remains to be realised."
They also noted that the rain during July was 95 per cent of the long period average for the month, which was almost on the lines of the 93 per cent forecast by the IMD.
Southward movement
As per the latest IMD forecast issued up to August 10, the monsoon trough could start moving south, towards its normal position, in the next two or three days.
Consequently, there could be a slight increase in rainfall over northern plains, and a decrease in rainfall in the northeast and along the foothills of the Himalayas from August 8.
Judges Bill fiasco exposes government's vulnerability
Vidya Subrahmaniam & Anita Joshua
| Rajya Sabha stood almost as one to oppose legislation |
New Delhi: Two days after the Opposition closed ranks to force the withdrawal of the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill, 2009 in the Rajya Sabha, top government sources say they erred in assessing the hostility to the legislation which the Union Law Ministry was hoping to flag as a major achievement.
"We did not know there would be so much anger," said a source in a tacit admission that the Parliamentary Affairs Ministers, responsible for floor management, slipped up badly in gauging the mood of the House.
Law Minister Veerappa Moily was evidently well aware that the Bill did not go far enough on assets disclosure. But because it was a historic first — no previous government has attempted legislation on judicial accountability — the Minister expected that the Bill would find support. Instead, the House stood almost as one to oppose the introduction of the Bill, arguing that if anything it discriminated between judges and the common people by placing the former in a special category. The government managers failed to anticipate that Congress MPs Jayanti Natarajan and Rajiv Shukla would be among those who wanted the introduction of the Bill deferred.
The legislative setback — first since the United Progressive Alliance returned to power — has underlined the need for alert and proactive Parliamentary Affairs Ministers, especially given the UPA's vulnerability in the Rajya Sabha. The lack of numbers was in fact the reason why Mr. Moily hastily withdrew the Judges Bill. Had it been put to vote as suggested by the Opposition, and seconded by Deputy Chairman K. Rehman Khan, it would have been defeated at the introductory stage itself, causing huge embarrassment to the government.
In the 245-member House, the UPA's strength is 84. The joint strength of the National Democratic Alliance and the Left is also 84. It does not help the UPA that it has been plagued by absenteeism. Earlier in the budget session, when the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008 was put to vote, the Opposition outnumbered the ruling benches 29 to 25. The latter figure included the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party. The Bill was passed by voice vote. Had the Opposition insisted on a division, the government would have had to scramble for numbers.
It was the same story when the Judges Bill was introduced. The ruling benches were so thinly occupied that the Opposition was able to show its collective muscle to Mr. Moily.
In the Lok Sabha, the UPA has a comfortable majority on paper. The alliance has 262 MPs. It is supported in addition by the SP (22), the BSP (21), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (4) and the Janata Dal (Secular) (3). Together, this adds up to 312 in a House of 542. Admittedly, the government can also count on independents and one-man parties.
Yet, so turbulent has been the Congress' relationship with its outside allies that party floor managers would need to be on their toes in any crisis. The SP has frequently threatened withdrawal of support. The BSP and the Congress are always in combat mode, while the JD(S) can barely put up with the Congress. Within the UPA, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinammol Congress has been a moody partner.
Just how these tensions will play out in the future is difficult to predict. Suffice it to say that in a crunch situation the Congress will need all the support it can muster; the comfort of its current numbers in the Lower House notwithstanding.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/08/06/stories/2009080656191000.htm
Access to Amartya Sen
Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics
Wikipedia on Amartya Sen
Poverty and Famines, Googlebooks online version
Hunger and Public Action, full text of an on-line book, http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco/v41y1993i2p405-408.html
Press Release from the Nobel Prize Committee regarding the awarding of the prize in economics to Amartya Sen http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1998/press.html.
Nobel Autobiography | Nobel Prize Lecture
Infrapoverty - presentation of Amartya Sen at conference on Making Infrastructure Work for the Poor,
Poverty, Evil, and Crime - Oct 5, 2007
Democracy as a Universal Value, Journal of Democracy, 1999.
Human Rights and Asian Values, the 16th annual Morgenthau memorial lecture on ethics and foreign policy, Introduction and summary (summary by Amartya Sen) of the speech, free download, address for ordering the hardcopy full text ($5.00).
Identity and Violence, audio of speech.
Amartya Sen, his Harvard faculty page. His CV.
Articles on Sen
Sen's Theory, 16 January 1998, Press Trust of India article in the Indian Express. http://www.indian-express.com/ie/daily/19980116/01650924.html
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| 'Justice is what will be acceptable in open public discussion' | ||
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who is in Calcutta to deliver The Penguin Annual Lecture on Wednesday evening at Nandan, spoke to Somak Ghoshal of The Telegraph on his new book, The Idea of Justice. Excerpts from the interview: Q: Why do you think that the concept of justice has become almost synonymous with human rights? Sen: I think the connection between the two is very strong, and it's perceptive of you to pursue that track because quite often those who don't like the idea of human rights take it to stand for nothing other than hot air. If you try to defend human rights, you have to argue, as I do in this book, that the vindication of human rights comes from its acceptability as well as its non-rejectability in unrestricted public discussion. Let's imagine a discussion in which somebody says, "Look, you can't arrest a person and keep him without trial because you're violating human rights." Then the other person could say, "Well, you say I'm violating human rights but there's no law in this country against what I am doing" (supposing that were the case). You could then say, "There may be no such law in the country, but still it's not acceptable." But unacceptable to whom? The other person could say, "Well, it's acceptable to me." So the argument would be, "Of course, it's acceptable to you but it's not acceptable to the guy who has been imprisoned." The question is, if there's open public discussion, which point of view will find favour? So justice and human rights are both, in some ways, parasitic on the likely outcome of an open public discussion in which information is freely available and where there is free speech. The theory of justice I'm trying to present claims that the vindication of justice is based on its acceptability in open, reasoned public discussion. My departure from other theories of justice, like that of John Rawls (author of A Theory of Justice), is over the content of justice. However, whether we deal with ideal institutions or with the removal of injustice, there is a meeting of minds between Rawls and me over the idea that justice has objectivity because in an open public discussion, where people are not stifled, the point of view of justice will gain acceptance. Now Rawls discusses this very well but wants to confine acceptability within a particular country. Here, I am less influenced by Rawls than by Adam Smith, who takes the view that acceptability has to be much wider. That's why Smith uses the idea of the impartial spectator, who could come from anywhere. You have to imagine somebody who is not directly involved, though well-informed, coming from another society and looking at the above situation and saying, "Is it just that this person could be arrested and kept imprisoned without trial?" And he could say, "No, this violates acceptable norms of immunity until that person is convicted. And if he is not convicted, and not tried, then he has a right to a fair trial." Mine is this Adam Smithian position. And this is the connection, I think, between human rights and justice. Of course, there's also an immediate connection: quite a lot of statements on human rights are in the form of saying that to deny a person "this" right would be unjust, applied to the right to free speech, or to take a different kind of example, the right to medical care. So the language of justice and human rights has something in common. But there is also a more foundational connection in that both of them are founded on the acceptability of the two ideas in unrestricted public discussion. I'm sorry that was quite a long answer. (laughs). Q: So what is the relationship between justice and law? Is justice then the means or the end of law? Sen: I don't think it is either. I primarily take a positivist view of law; I go with the view that law is basically what has been enacted. I don't fully go by it because I also accept the views of people like Ronald Dworkin, that judges also make law by reinterpreting law. But the starting point is what has been legislated. Justice is not what has been legislated but what would be acceptable in open public discussion. The law in a dictatorial country would be very restrictive in terms of what rights it gives to people. Even in a democratic country, there would be limitations. There is no law in America that would get you support from the State if you are ill, though there are laws in European countries that may take care of your healthcare. So laws vary, but the demands of justice may be less variable. Law is not parasitic on justice. Somebody may pass a law saying, "I know it's unjust, but we need it at this time since the country is in peril." Let's take an example, where terrorists are trying to do terrible things in the country. In the process of trying to weed out the terrorists, suppose someone argues, and I'm not supporting the argument, that because of this there have to be provisions for snooping on telephone calls. So, although this is unjust, we have to sacrifice the justice, and the human rights, of some people; on this ground we have to pass a law like the Pota. Once it's legislated, it becomes law, but it wasn't parasitic on justice. Indeed, the author of the law might even concede that it is unjust though necessary. Q: So does justice give rise to enabling conditions or "capabilities", as you put it? Sen: To understand this, we have to consider a general and a particular theory. The general theory says whatever claims are likely to survive reasoned scrutiny in open public discussion — and being more influenced by Smith than Rawls, I'll say open public scrutiny not confined to a particular country or culture — will have a claim to be part of justice. There's also a more specific theory saying that if such a debate would take place, then the importance of human life and freedom will assume prominence and wide acceptance. Now the second claim is much more demanding and narrower than the first. So I'd agree that capability has become a central part of a theory of justice if you accept that people's lives and freedoms will have to feature in it. Although I'd have a disagreement with someone who does not consider capability important, I'd have a much more foundational disagreement with someone who says public acceptability or survival of reasoned scrutiny has nothing to do with justice. Q: Would you agree that Barack Obama has revived the capabilities theory? Sen: That would be a very strong claim to make. Any politician has to make priorities and policies on the basis of his personal reading of what is feasible. But there's no question that Obama has certainly put a greater emphasis on many of the basic capabilities and human rights, including healthcare and the right to a fair trial. One of the first things that Obama did was to order the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, indicating that he takes capabilities and human rights more seriously than his predecessor did. But he is not following a handbook approach nor do I expect anyone to do so. Q: Would you say Obama's election to the presidency signals a triumph of capabilities? Sen: I wouldn't say that though I wish I could. I don't think that's what happened. I think people were fed up with the Bush administration. Apart from the Iraq war, which I believe was a stupid war, the economy came to a crashing halt towards the end of the Bush era. Even earlier, when the economy was growing, the sharing of the benefits was gravely unequal. The rich were getting dramatically richer. There was a sense of injustice that connected as easily with inequality of income distribution as with inequality of capabilities. Q: Can there be an equality of capabilities? Sen: It is too much to ask for. The fact that you are egalitarian does not mean that you want equality of everything at any cost. There are also other values. You may regard the huge discrepancy between the rich and the poor to be unfair but you cannot want everyone to have the same income irrespective of some of the reasons — though not all — that might explain part of the difference in income levels, such as hard work. I think to be an egalitarian is not the same thing as giving priority to equality over everything else. In general, you may think there is a case for enhancing equality. Q: What is the place of emotions in your theory of justice? Sen: The theories of justice I'm criticising are those concerned with the ideal of an imagined, perfectly just world. Those theories construct an ideal not in tune with living emotions. If you are debating on slavery or female subjugation and if you agree that they are unjust, then you must have had good reason to feel angry. What a perfectly just society would look like is a question difficult to get excited over. I don't regard emotion more important than reason, but we do have reason to take emotion seriously. Q: On a different note, are you planning to write your memoirs? Sen: A number of people are keen that I write them. I take their interest to be a sign of my old age. I remember when I was Master of Trinity, I had to sit for a portrait that now hangs in the main gallery of the college. I was initially resistant as at that time I was also sitting for another piece commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. But then, someone gently reminded me of something called a "sudden departure" and I made up my mind to do it. As you age, your memories fade a bit, so perhaps this is a good time to write them down. But there is something funereal, almost obiturial, about writing even an autobiography in the first person. People could sensibly ask, well, why should we be interested in your life? I haven't made up mind yet, but there is strong pressure from within the family and from my editor and literary adviser. |
Volume 56, Number 5 · March 26, 2009
Capitalism Beyond the Crisis
By Amartya Sen
1.
2008 was a year of crises. First, we had a food crisis, particularly threatening to poor consumers, especially in Africa. Along with that came a record increase in oil prices, threatening all oil-importing countries. Finally, rather suddenly in the fall, came the global economic downturn, and it is now gathering speed at a frightening rate. The year 2009 seems likely to offer a sharp intensification of the downturn, and many economists are anticipating a full-scale depression, perhaps even one as large as in the 1930s. While substantial fortunes have suffered steep declines, the people most affected are those who were already worst off.
The question that arises most forcefully now concerns the nature of capitalism and whether it needs to be changed. Some defenders of unfettered capitalism who resist change are convinced that capitalism is being blamed too much for short-term economic problems—problems they variously attribute to bad governance (for example by the Bush administration) and the bad behavior of some individuals (or what John McCain described during the presidential campaign as "the greed of Wall Street"). Others do, however, see truly serious defects in the existing economic arrangements and want to reform them, looking for an alternative approach that is increasingly being called "new capitalism."
The idea of old and new capitalism played an energizing part at a symposium called "New World, New Capitalism" held in Paris in January and hosted by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the former British prime minister Tony Blair, both of whom made eloquent presentations on the need for change. So did German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who talked about the old German idea of a "social market"—one restrained by a mixture of consensus-building policies—as a possible blueprint for new capitalism (though Germany has not done much better in the recent crisis than other market economies).
Ideas about changing the organization of society in the long run are clearly needed, quite apart from strategies for dealing with an immediate crisis. I would separate out three questions from the many that can be raised. First, do we really need some kind of "new capitalism" rather than an economic system that is not monolithic, draws on a variety of institutions chosen pragmatically, and is based on social values that we can defend ethically? Should we search for a new capitalism or for a "new world"—to use the other term mentioned at the Paris meeting—that would take a different form?
The second question concerns the kind of economics that is needed today, especially in light of the present economic crisis. How do we assess what is taught and championed among academic economists as a guide to economic policy—including the revival of Keynesian thought in recent months as the crisis has grown fierce? More particularly, what does the present economic crisis tell us about the institutions and priorities to look for? Third, in addition to working our way toward a better assessment of what long-term changes are needed, we have to think—and think fast—about how to get out of the present crisis with as little damage as possible.
2.
What are the special characteristics that make a system indubitably capitalist—old or new? If the present capitalist economic system is to be reformed, what would make the end result a new capitalism, rather than something else? It seems to be generally assumed that relying on markets for economic transactions is a necessary condition for an economy to be identified as capitalist. In a similar way, dependence on the profit motive and on individual rewards based on private ownership are seen as archetypal features of capitalism. However, if these are necessary requirements, are the economic systems we currently have, for example, in Europe and America, genuinely capitalist?
All affluent countries in the world—those in Europe, as well as the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, and others—have, for quite some time now, depended partly on transactions and other payments that occur largely outside markets. These include unemployment benefits, public pensions, other features of social security, and the provision of education, health care, and a variety of other services distributed through nonmarket arrangements. The economic entitlements connected with such services are not based on private ownership and property rights.
Also, the market economy has depended for its own working not only on maximizing profits but also on many other activities, such as maintaining public security and supplying public services—some of which have taken people well beyond an economy driven only by profit. The creditable performance of the so-called capitalist system, when things moved forward, drew on a combination of institutions—publicly funded education, medical care, and mass transportation are just a few of many—that went much beyond relying only on a profit-maximizing market economy and on personal entitlements confined to private ownership.
Underlying this issue is a more basic question: whether capitalism is a term that is of particular use today. The idea of capitalism did in fact have an important role historically, but by now that usefulness may well be fairly exhausted.
For example, the pioneering works of Adam Smith in the eighteenth century showed the usefulness and dynamism of the market economy, and why—and particularly how—that dynamism worked. Smith's investigation provided an illuminating diagnosis of the workings of the market just when that dynamism was powerfully emerging. The contribution that The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, made to the understanding of what came to be called capitalism was monumental. Smith showed how the freeing of trade can very often be extremely helpful in generating economic prosperity through specialization in production and division of labor and in making good use of economies of large scale.
Those lessons remain deeply relevant even today (it is interesting that the impressive and highly sophisticated analytical work on international trade for which Paul Krugman received the latest Nobel award in economics was closely linked to Smith's far-reaching insights of more than 230 years ago). The economic analyses that followed those early expositions of markets and the use of capital in the eighteenth century have succeeded in solidly establishing the market system in the corpus of mainstream economics.
However, even as the positive contributions of capitalism through market processes were being clarified and explicated, its negative sides were also becoming clear—often to the very same analysts. While a number of socialist critics, most notably Karl Marx, influentially made a case for censuring and ultimately supplanting capitalism, the huge limitations of relying entirely on the market economy and the profit motive were also clear enough even to Adam Smith. Indeed, early advocates of the use of markets, including Smith, did not take the pure market mechanism to be a freestanding performer of excellence, nor did they take the profit motive to be all that is needed.
Even though people seek trade because of self-interest (nothing more than self-interest is needed, as Smith famously put it, in explaining why bakers, brewers, butchers, and consumers seek trade), nevertheless an economy can operate effectively only on the basis of trust among different parties. When business activities, including those of banks and other financial institutions, generate the confidence that they can and will do the things they pledge, then relations among lenders and borrowers can go smoothly in a mutually supportive way. As Adam Smith wrote:
When the people of any particular country have such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence of a particular banker, as to believe that he is always ready to pay upon demand such of his promissory notes as are likely to be at any time presented to him; those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them.[1]
Smith explained why sometimes this did not happen, and he would not have found anything particularly puzzling, I would suggest, in the difficulties faced today by businesses and banks thanks to the widespread fear and mistrust that is keeping credit markets frozen and preventing a coordinated expansion of credit.
It is also worth mentioning in this context, especially since the "welfare state" emerged long after Smith's own time, that in his various writings, his overwhelming concern—and worry—about the fate of the poor and the disadvantaged are strikingly prominent. The most immediate failure of the market mechanism lies in the things that the market leaves undone. Smith's economic analysis went well beyond leaving everything to the invisible hand of the market mechanism. He was not only a defender of the role of the state in providing public services, such as education, and in poverty relief (along with demanding greater freedom for the indigents who received support than the Poor Laws of his day provided), he was also deeply concerned about the inequality and poverty that might survive in an otherwise successful market economy.
Lack of clarity about the distinction between the necessity and sufficiency of the market has been responsible for some misunderstandings of Smith's assessment of the market mechanism by many who would claim to be his followers. For example, Smith's defense of the food market and his criticism of restrictions by the state on the private trade in food grains have often been interpreted as arguing that any state interference would necessarily make hunger and starvation worse.
But Smith's defense of private trade only took the form of disputing the belief that stopping trade in food would reduce the burden of hunger. That does not deny in any way the need for state action to supplement the operations of the market by creating jobs and incomes (e.g., through work programs). If unemployment were to increase sharply thanks to bad economic circumstances or bad public policy, the market would not, on its own, recreate the incomes of those who have lost their jobs. The new unemployed, Smith wrote, "would either starve, or be driven to seek a subsistence either by begging, or by the perpetration perhaps of the greatest enormities," and "want, famine, and mortality would immediately prevail...."[2] Smith rejects interventions that exclude the market—but not interventions that include the market while aiming to do those important things that the market may leave undone.
Smith never used the term "capitalism" (at least so far as I have been able to trace), but it would also be hard to carve out from his works any theory arguing for the sufficiency of market forces, or of the need to accept the dominance of capital. He talked about the importance of these broader values that go beyond profits in The Wealth of Nations, but it is in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was published exactly a quarter of a millennium ago in 1759, that he extensively investigated the strong need for actions based on values that go well beyond profit seeking. While he wrote that "prudence" was "of all the virtues that which is most useful to the individual," Adam Smith went on to argue that "humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit, are the qualities most useful to others."[3]
Smith viewed markets and capital as doing good work within their own sphere, but first, they required support from other institutions—including public services such as schools—and values other than pure profit seeking, and second, they needed restraint and correction by still other institutions—e.g., well-devised financial regulations and state assistance to the poor—for preventing instability, inequity, and injustice. If we were to look for a new approach to the organization of economic activity that included a pragmatic choice of a variety of public services and well-considered regulations, we would be following rather than departing from the agenda of reform that Smith outlined as he both defended and criticized capitalism.
3.
Historically, capitalism did not emerge until new systems of law and economic practice protected property rights and made an economy based on ownership workable. Commercial exchange could not effectively take place until business morality made contractual behavior sustainable and inexpensive—not requiring constant suing of defaulting contractors, for example. Investment in productive businesses could not flourish until the higher rewards from corruption had been moderated. Profit-oriented capitalism has always drawn on support from other institutional values.
The moral and legal obligations and responsibilities associated with transactions have in recent years become much harder to trace, thanks to the rapid development of secondary markets involving derivatives and other financial instruments. A subprime lender who misleads a borrower into taking unwise risks can now pass off the financial assets to third parties—who are remote from the original transaction. Accountability has been badly undermined, and the need for supervision and regulation has become much stronger.
And yet the supervisory role of government in the United States in particular has been, over the same period, sharply curtailed, fed by an increasing belief in the self-regulatory nature of the market economy. Precisely as the need for state surveillance grew, the needed supervision shrank. There was, as a result, a disaster waiting to happen, which did eventually happen last year, and this has certainly contributed a great deal to the financial crisis that is plaguing the world today. The insufficient regulation of financial activities has implications not only for illegitimate practices, but also for a tendency toward overspeculation that, as Adam Smith argued, tends to grip many human beings in their breathless search for profits.
Smith called the promoters of excessive risk in search of profits "prodigals and projectors"—which is quite a good description of issuers of subprime mortgages over the past few years. Discussing laws against usury, for example, Smith wanted state regulation to protect citizens from the "prodigals and projectors" who promoted unsound loans:
A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it.[4]
The implicit faith in the ability of the market economy to correct itself, which is largely responsible for the removal of established regulations in the United States, tended to ignore the activities of prodigals and projectors in a way that would have shocked Adam Smith.
The present economic crisis is partly generated by a huge overestimation of the wisdom of market processes, and the crisis is now being exacerbated by anxiety and lack of trust in the financial market and in businesses in general—responses that have been evident in the market reactions to the sequence of stimulus plans, including the $787 billion plan signed into law in February by the new Obama administration. As it happens, these problems were already identified in the eighteenth century by Smith, even though they have been neglected by those who have been in authority in recent years, especially in the United States, and who have been busy citing Adam Smith in support of the unfettered market.
4.
While Adam Smith has recently been much quoted, even if not much read, there has been a huge revival, even more recently, of John Maynard Keynes. Certainly, the cumulative downturn that we are observing right now, which is edging us closer to a depression, has clear Keynesian features; the reduced incomes of one group of persons has led to reduced purchases by them, in turn causing a further reduction in the income of others.
However, Keynes can be our savior only to a very partial extent, and there is a need to look beyond him in understanding the present crisis. One economist whose current relevance has been far less recognized is Keynes's rival Arthur Cecil Pigou, who, like Keynes, was also in Cambridge, indeed also in Kings College, in Keynes's time. Pigou was much more concerned than Keynes with economic psychology and the ways it could influence business cycles and sharpen and harden an economic recession that could take us toward a depression (as indeed we are seeing now). Pigou attributed economic fluctuations partly to "psychological causes" consisting of
variations in the tone of mind of persons whose action controls industry, emerging in errors of undue optimism or undue pessimism in their business forecasts.[5]
It is hard to ignore the fact that today, in addition to the Keynesian effects of mutually reinforced decline, we are strongly in the presence of "errors of...undue pessimism." Pigou focused particularly on the need to unfreeze the credit market when the economy is in the grip of excessive pessimism:
Hence, other things being equal, the actual occurrence of business failures will be more or less widespread, according [to whether] bankers' loans, in the face of crisis of demands, are less or more readily obtainable.[6]
Despite huge injections of fresh liquidity into the American and European economies, largely from the government, the banks and financial institutions have until now remained unwilling to unfreeze the credit market. Other businesses also continue to fail, partly in response to already diminished demand (the Keynesian "multiplier" process), but also in response to fear of even less demand in the future, in a climate of general gloom (the Pigovian process of infectious pessimism).
One of the problems that the Obama administration has to deal with is that the real crisis, arising from financial mismanagement and other transgressions, has become many times magnified by a psychological collapse. The measures that are being discussed right now in Washington and elsewhere to regenerate the credit market include bailouts—with firm requirements that subsidized financial institutions actually lend—government purchase of toxic assets, insurance against failure to repay loans, and bank nationalization. (The last proposal scares many conservatives just as private control of the public money given to the banks worries people concerned about accountability.) As the weak response of the market to the administration's measures so far suggests, each of these policies would have to be assessed partly for their impact on the psychology of businesses and consumers, particularly in America.
5.
The contrast between Pigou and Keynes is relevant for another reason as well. While Keynes was very involved with the question of how to increase aggregate income, he was relatively less engaged in analyzing problems of unequal distribution of wealth and of social welfare. In contrast, Pigou not only wrote the classic study of welfare economics, but he also pioneered the measurement of economic inequality as a major indicator for economic assessment and policy.[7] Since the suffering of the most deprived people in each economy—and in the world—demands the most urgent attention, the role of supportive cooperation between business and government cannot stop only with mutually coordinated expansion of an economy. There is a critical need for paying special attention to the underdogs of society in planning a response to the current crisis, and in going beyond measures to produce general economic expansion. Families threatened with unemployment, with lack of medical care, and with social as well as economic deprivation have been hit particularly hard. The limitations of Keynesian economics to address their problems demand much greater recognition.
A third way in which Keynes needs to be supplemented concerns his relative neglect of social services—indeed even Otto von Bismarck had more to say on this subject than Keynes. That the market economy can be particularly bad in delivering public goods (such as education and health care) has been discussed by some of the leading economists of our time, including Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. (Pigou too contributed to this subject with his emphasis on the "external effects" of market transactions, where the gains and losses are not confined only to the direct buyers or sellers.) This is, of course, a long-term issue, but it is worth noting in addition that the bite of a downturn can be much fiercer when health care in particular is not guaranteed for all.
For example, in the absence of a national health service, every lost job can produce a larger exclusion from essential health care, because of loss of income or loss of employment-related private health insurance. The US has a 7.6 percent rate of unemployment now, which is beginning to cause huge deprivation. It is worth asking how the European countries, including France, Italy, and Spain, that lived with much higher levels of unemployment for decades, managed to avoid a total collapse of their quality of life. The answer is partly the way the European welfare state operates, with much stronger unemployment insurance than in America and, even more importantly, with basic medical services provided to all by the state.
The failure of the market mechanism to provide health care for all has been flagrant, most noticeably in the United States, but also in the sharp halt in the progress of health and longevity in China following its abolition of universal health coverage in 1979. Before the economic reforms of that year, every Chinese citizen had guaranteed health care provided by the state or the cooperatives, even if at a rather basic level. When China removed its counterproductive system of agricultural collectives and communes and industrial units managed by bureaucracies, it thereby made the rate of growth of gross domestic product go up faster than anywhere else in the world. But at the same time, led by its new faith in the market economy, China also abolished the system of universal health care; and, after the reforms of 1979, health insurance had to be bought by individuals (except in some relatively rare cases in which the state or some big firms provide them to their employees and dependents). With this change, China's rapid progress in longevity sharply slowed down.
This was problem enough when China's aggregate income was growing extremely fast, but it is bound to become a much bigger problem when the Chinese economy decelerates sharply, as it is currently doing. The Chinese government is now trying hard to gradually reintroduce health insurance for all, and the US government under Obama is also committed to making health coverage universal. In both China and the US, the rectifications have far to go, but they should be central elements in tackling the economic crisis, as well as in achieving long-term transformation of the two societies.
6.
The revival of Keynes has much to contribute both to economic analysis and to policy, but the net has to be cast much wider. Even though Keynes is often seen as a kind of a "rebel" figure in contemporary economics, the fact is that he came close to being the guru of a new capitalism, who focused on trying to stabilize the fluctuations of the market economy (and then again with relatively little attention to the psychological causes of business fluctuations). Even though Smith and Pigou have the reputation of being rather conservative economists, many of the deep insights about the importance of nonmarket institutions and nonprofit values came from them, rather than from Keynes and his followers.
A crisis not only presents an immediate challenge that has to be faced. It also provides an opportunity to address long-term problems when people are willing to reconsider established conventions. This is why the present crisis also makes it important to face the neglected long-term issues like conservation of the environment and national health care, as well as the need for public transport, which has been very badly neglected in the last few decades and is also so far sidelined—as I write this article—even in the initial policies announced by the Obama administration. Economic affordability is, of course, an issue, but as the example of the Indian state of Kerala shows, it is possible to have state-guaranteed health care for all at relatively little cost. Since the Chinese dropped universal health insurance in 1979, Kerala—which continues to have it—has very substantially overtaken China in average life expectancy and in indicators such as infant mortality, despite having a much lower level of per capita income. So there are opportunities for poor countries as well.
But the largest challenges face the United States, which already has the highest level of per capita expenditure on health among all countries in the world, but still has a relatively low achievement in health and has more than forty million people with no guarantee of health care. Part of the problem here is one of public attitude and understanding. Hugely distorted perceptions of how a national health service works need to be corrected through public discussion. For example, it is common to assume that no one has a choice of doctors in a European national health service, which is not at all the case.
There is, however, also a need for better understanding of the options that exist. In US discussions of health reform, there has been an overconcentration on the Canadian system—a system of public health care that makes it very hard to have private medical care—whereas in Western Europe the national health services provide care for all but also allow, in addition to state coverage, private practice and private health insurance, for those who have the money and want to spend it this way. It is not clear just why the rich who can freely spend money on yachts and other luxury goods should not be allowed to spend it on MRIs or CT scans instead. If we take our cue from Adam Smith's arguments for a diversity of institutions, and for accommodating a variety of motivations, there are practical measures we can take that would make a huge difference to the world in which we live.
The present economic crises do not, I would argue, call for a "new capitalism," but they do demand a new understanding of older ideas, such as those of Smith and, nearer our time, of Pigou, many of which have been sadly neglected. What is also needed is a clearheaded perception of how different institutions actually work, and of how a variety of organizations—from the market to the institutions of the state—can go beyond short-term solutions and contribute to producing a more decent economic world.
—February 25, 2009
Notes
[1]Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Clarendon Press, 1976), I, II.ii.28, p. 292.
[2]Smith, The Wealth of Nations, I, I.viii.26, p. 91.
[3]Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 189–190.
[4]Smith, The Wealth of Nations, I, II.iv.15, p. 357.
[5]A.C. Pigou, Industrial Fluctuations (London: Macmillan, 1929), p. 73.
[6]Pigou, Industrial Fluctuations, p. 96.
[7]A.C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare (London: Macmillan, 1920). Current works on economic inequality, including the major contributions of A.B. Atkinson, have been to a considerable extent inspired by Pigou's pioneering initiative: see Atkinson, Social Justice and Public Policy (MIT Press, 1983).
Letters
July 16, 2009: Harold Kalant, Health Care, Elsewhere: An Exchange
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22490
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Articles on Prof. Sen
(After the Noble Prize)
Justice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, fairness, religion and/or equity.[2]
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Concept of justice
Justice concerns the proper ordering of things and persons within a society. As a concept it has been subject to philosophical, legal, and theological reflection and debate throughout history. A number of important questions surrounding justice have been fiercely debated over the course of western history: What is justice? What does it demand of individuals and societies? What is the proper distribution of wealth and resources in society: equal, meritocratic, according to status, or some other arrangement? There are myriad possible answers to these questions from divergent perspectives on the political and philosophical spectrum.
According to most theories of justice, it is overwhelmingly important: John Rawls, for instance, claims that "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought."[3]: Justice can be thought of as distinct from and more fundamental than benevolence, charity, mercy, generosity or compassion. Justice has traditionally been associated with concepts of fate, reincarnation or Divine Providence, i.e. with a life in accordance with the cosmic plan. The association of justice with fairness has thus been historically and culturally rare and is perhaps chiefly a modern innovation.[4]
Studies at UCLA in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are "wired" into the brain and that, "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need" [5]. Research conducted in 2003 at Emory University, Georgia, involving Capuchin Monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense and that "inequality aversion may not be uniquely human."[6] indicating that ideas of fairness and justice may be instinctual in nature.
[edit] Variations of justice
Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, where punishment is forward-looking. Justified by the ability to achieve future social benefits resulting in crime reduction, the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome.
Retributive justice regulates proportionate response to crime proven by lawful evidence, so that punishment is justly imposed and considered as morally-correct and fully deserved. The law of retaliation (lex talionis) is a military theory of retributive justice, which says that reciprocity should be equal to the wrong suffered; "life for life, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."[7]
Restorative justice is concerned not so much with retribution and punishment as with (a) making the victim whole and (b) reintegrating the offender into society. This approach frequently brings an offender and a victim together, so that the offender can better understand the effect his/her offense had on the victim.
Distributive justice is directed at the proper allocation of things - wealth, power, reward, respect - between different people.
Oppressive Law exercises an authoritarian approach to legislation which is "totally unrelated to justice", a tyrannical interpretation of law is one in which the population lives under restriction from unlawful legislation.
Some theorists, such as the classical Greeks, conceive of justice as a virtue—a property of people, and only derivatively of their actions and the institutions they create. Others emphasize actions or institutions, and only derivatively the people who bring them about. The source of justice has variously been attributed to harmony, divine command, natural law, or human creation.
[edit] Kinds of justice
[edit] Justice as harmony
In his dialogue Republic, Plato uses Socrates to argue for justice which covers both the just person and the just City State. Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. Hence Plato's definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one's own. A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the individual level and at the universal level. A person's soul has three parts – reason, spirit and desire. Similarly, a city has three parts – Socrates uses the parable of the chariot to illustrate his point: a chariot works as a whole because the two horses' power is directed by the charioteer. Lovers of wisdom – philosophers, in one sense of the term – should rule because only they understand what is good. If one is ill, one goes to a doctor rather than a quack, because the doctor is expert in the subject of health. Similarly, one should trust one's city to an expert in the subject of the good, not to a mere politician who tries to gain power by giving people what they want, rather than what's good for them. Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust city is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain (the common people), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship's course (the politicians), and a navigator (the philosopher) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port. For Socrates, the only way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge.[8]
[edit] Justice as divine command
Justice as a divine law is commanding , and indeed the whole of morality, is the authoritative command. Killing is wrong and therefore must be punished and if not punished what should be done? There is a famous paradox called the Euthyphro dilemma which essentially asks: is something right because God commands it, or does God command it because it's right? If the former, then justice is arbitrary; if the latter, then morality exists on a higher order than God, who becomes little more than a passer-on of moral knowledge. Some Divine command advocates respond by pointing out that the dilemma is false: goodness is the very nature of God and is necessarily expressed in His commands.
[edit] Justice as natural law
See also: John Locke
[edit] Justice as human creation
In contrast to the understandings canvassed so far, justice may be understood as a human creation, rather than a discovery of harmony, divine command, or natural law. This claim can be understood in a number of ways, with the fundamental division being between those who argue that justice is the creation of some humans, and those who argue that it is the creation of all humans.
[edit] Justice as authoritative command
According to thinkers including Thomas Hobbes, justice is created by public, enforceable, authoritative rules, and injustice is whatever those rules forbid, regardless of their relation to morality. Justice is created, not merely described or approximated, by the command of an absolute sovereign power. This position has some similarities with divine command theory (see above), with the difference that the state (or other authority) replaces God.
[edit] Justice as trickery
In Republic, the character Thrasymachus argues that justice is the interest of the strong—merely a name for what the powerful or cunning ruler has imposed on the people. Nietzsche, in contrast, argues that justice is part of the slave-morality of the weak many, rooted in their resentment of the strong few, and intended to keep the noble man down. In Human, All Too Human he states that, "there is no eternal justice."
[edit] Justice as mutual agreement
According to thinkers in the social contract tradition, justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone concerned; or, in many versions, from what they would agree to under hypothetical conditions including equality and absence of bias. This account is considered further below, under 'Justice as fairness'.
[edit] Justice as a subordinate value
According to utilitarian thinkers including John Stuart Mill, justice is not as fundamental as we often think. Rather, it is derived from the more basic standard of rightness, consequentialism: what is right is what has the best consequences (usually measured by the total or average welfare caused). So, the proper principles of justice are those which tend to have the best consequences. These rules may turn out to be familiar ones such as keeping contracts; but equally, they may not, depending on the facts about real consequences. Either way, what is important is those consequences, and justice is important, if at all, only as derived from that fundamental standard. Mill tries to explain our mistaken belief that justice is overwhelmingly important by arguing that it derives from two natural human tendencies: our desire to retaliate against those who hurt us, and our ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's place. So, when we see someone harmed, we project ourselves into her situation and feel a desire to retaliate on her behalf. If this process is the source of our feelings about justice, that ought to undermine our confidence in them.[9] Utilitarianism.
[edit] Theories of distributive justice
Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:
- What goods are to be distributed? Is it to be wealth, power, respect, some combination of these things?
- Between what entities are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future), sentient beings, the members of a single society, nations?
- What is the proper distribution? Equal, meritocratic, according to social status, according to need, based on property rights and non-aggression?
Distributive justice theorists generally do not answer questions of who has the right to enforce a particular favored distribution. On the other hand, property rights theorists argue that there is no "favored distribution." Rather, distribution should be based simply on whatever distribution results from non-coerced interactions or transactions (that is, transactions not based upon force or fraud).
This section describes some widely-held theories of distributive justice, and their attempts to answer these questions.
[edit] Egalitarianism
According to the egalitarian, goods should be distributed equally. This basic view can be elaborated in many different ways, according to what goods are to be distributed—wealth, respect, opportunity—and what they are to be distributed equally between—individuals, families, nations, races, species. Commonly-held egalitarian positions include demands for equality of opportunity and for equality of outcome.
[edit] Giving people what they deserve
In one sense, all theories of distributive justice claim that everyone should get what they deserve. Theories disagree on the basis for deserts. The main distinction is between theories that argue the basis of just deserts is held equally by everyone, and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice—and theories that argue the basis of just deserts is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice by which some should have more than others. This section deals with some popular theories of the second type.
According to meritocratic theories, goods, especially wealth and social status, should be distributed to match individual merit, which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. According to needs-based theories, goods, especially such basic goods as food, shelter and medical care, should be distributed to meet individuals' basic needs for them. Marxism can be regarded as a needs-based theory on some readings of Marx's slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."[10] According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good.
[edit] Fairness
In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Rawls asks us to imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance which denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents and life plans, and then asks what theory of justice we would choose to govern our society when the veil is lifted, if we wanted to do the best that we could for ourselves. We don't know who in particular we are, and therefore can't bias the decision in our own favour. So, the decision-in-ignorance models fairness, because it excludes selfish bias. Rawls argues that each of us would reject the utilitarian theory of justice that we should maximize welfare (see below) because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse Rawls's two principles of justice:
- Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
- Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both
- to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
- attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.[11]
This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure. Rawls's theory distinguishes two kinds of goods – (1) liberties and (2) social and economic goods, i.e. wealth, income and power – and applies different distributions to them – equality between citizens for (1), equality unless inequality improves the position of the worst off for (2).
[edit] Property Rights (non-coercion)/Having the right history
Robert Nozick's influential critique of Rawls argues that distributive justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal pattern, but of each individual entitlement having the right kind of history. It is just that a person has some good (especially, some property right) if and only if they came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds:
1. Just acquisition, especially by working on unowned things; and 2. Just transfer, that is free gift, sale or other agreement, but not theft (i.e. by force or fraud).If the chain of events leading up to the person having something meets this criterion, they are entitled to it: that they possess it is just, and what anyone else does or doesn't have or need is irrelevant.
On the basis of this theory of distributive justice, Nozick argues that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of their owners, are theft. In particular, redistributive taxation is theft.
Some property rights theorists also take a consequentialist view of distributive justice and argue that property rights based justice also has the effect of maximizing the overall wealth of an economic system. They explain that voluntary (non-coerced) transactions always have a property called pareto efficiency. A pareto efficient transaction is one in which at least one party ends up better off and neither party ends up worse off. The result is that the world is better off in an absolute sense and no one is worse off. Such consequentialist property rights theorists argue that respecting property rights maximizes the number of pareto efficient transactions in the world and minimized the number of non-pareto efficient transactions in the world (i.e. transactions where someone is made worse off). The result is that the world will have generated the greatest total benefit from the limited, scarce resources available in the world. Further, this will have been accomplished without taking anything away from anyone by coercion.
[edit] Welfare-maximization
According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. This may require sacrifice of some for the good of others, so long as everyone's good is taken impartially into account. Utilitarianism, in general, argues that the standard of justification for actions, institutions, or the whole world, is impartial welfare consequentialism, and only indirectly, if at all, to do with rights, property, need, or any other non-utilitarian criterion. These other criteria might be indirectly important, to the extent that human welfare involves them. But even then, such demands as human rights would only be elements in the calculation of overall welfare, not uncrossable barriers to action.
[edit] Theories of retributive justice
Theories of retributive justice are concerned with punishment for wrongdoing, and need to answer three questions:
- why punish?
- who should be punished?
- what punishment should they receive?
This section considers the two major accounts of retributive justice, and their answers to these questions. Utilitarian theories look forward to the future consequences of punishment, while retributive theories look back to particular acts of wrongdoing, and attempt to balance them with deserved punishment.
[edit] Utilitarianism
According to the utilitarian, as already noted, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment is bad treatment of someone, and therefore can't be good in itself, for the utilitarian. But punishment might be a necessary sacrifice which maximizes the overall good in the long term, in one or more of three ways:
- Deterrence. The credible threat of punishment might lead people to make different choices; well-designed threats might lead people to make choices which maximize welfare.
- Rehabilitation. Punishment might make bad people into better ones. For the utilitarian, all that 'bad person' can mean is 'person who's likely to cause bad things (like suffering) '. So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment that changes someone such that they are less likely to cause bad things.
- Security/Incapacitation. Perhaps there are people who are irredeemable causers of bad things. If so, imprisoning them might maximize welfare by limiting their opportunities to cause harm and therefore the benefit lies within protecting society.
So, the reason for punishment is the maximization of welfare, and punishment should be of whomever, and of whatever form and severity, are needed to meet that goal. Worryingly, this may sometimes justify punishing the innocent, or inflicting disproportionately severe punishments, when that will have the best consequences overall (perhaps executing a few suspected shoplifters live on television would be an effective deterrent to shoplifting, for instance). It also suggests that punishment might turn out never to be right, depending on the facts about what actual consequences it has.[12]
[edit] Retributivism
The retributivist will think the utilitarian's argument disastrously mistaken. If someone does something wrong, we must respond to it, and to him or her, as an individual, not as a part of a calculation of overall welfare. To do otherwise is to disrespect him or her as an individual human being. If the crime had victims, it is to disrespect them, too. Wrongdoing must be balanced or made good in some way, and so the criminal deserves to be punished. Retributivism emphasizes retribution – payback – rather than maximization of welfare. Like the theory of distributive justice as giving everyone what they deserve (see above), it links justice with desert. It says that all guilty people, and only guilty people, deserve appropriate punishment. This matches some strong intuitions about just punishment: that it should be proportional to the crime, and that it should be of only and all of the guilty. However, it is sometimes argued that retributivism is merely revenge in disguise.[13] Despite this criticism, there are numerous differences between retribution and revenge: the former is impartial, has a scale of appropriateness and corrects a moral wrong, whereas the latter is personal, unlimited in scale, and often corrects a slight.
[edit] Institutions
In a world where people are interconnected but they disagree, institutions are required to instantiate ideals of justice. These institutions may be justified by their approximate instantiation of justice, or they may be deeply unjust when compared with ideal standards — consider the institution of slavery. Justice is an ideal which the world fails to live up to, sometimes despite good intentions, sometimes disastrously. The question of institutive justice raises issues of legitimacy, procedure, codification and interpretation, which are considered by legal theorists and by philosophers of law.
Another definition of justice is an independent investigation of truth. In a court room, lawyers, the judge and the jury are supposed to be independently investigating the truth of an alleged crime. In physics, a group of physicists examine data and theoretical concepts to consult on what might be the truth or reality of a phenomenon.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Luban, Law's Blindfold, 23
- ^ Konow, James. 2003. "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories." Journal of Economic Literature 41, no. 4: page 1188
- ^ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (revised edn, Oxford: OUP, 1999), p. 3
- ^ Daston, Lorraine (2008). ""Life, Chance and Life Chances"". Daedalus: 5-14.
- ^ Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate, study shows / UCLA Newsroom
- ^ Nature 425, 297-299 (18 September 2003)
- ^ Exodus 21.xxiii-xxv.
- ^ Plato, Republic trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: OUP, 1984).
- ^ John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism in On Liberty and Other Essays ed. John Gray (Oxford: OUP, 1991), Chapter 5.
- ^ Karl Marx, 'Critique of the Gotha Program' in Karl Marx: Selected writings ed. David McLellan (Oxford: OUP, 1977): 564-70, p. 569.
- ^ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (revised edition, Oxford: OUP, 1999), p. 266.
- ^ C. L. Ten, 'Crime and Punishment' in Peter Singer ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993): 366-72.
- ^ Ted Honderich, Punishment: The supposed justifications (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1969), Chapter 1.
[edit] Further reading
- Anthony Duff & David Garland eds, A Reader on Punishment (Oxford: OUP, 1994).
- Barzilai Gad, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
- Brian Barry, Theories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
- C.L. Ten, Crime, Guilt, and Punishment: A philosophical introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
- Colin Farrelly, An Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory (London: Sage, 2004).
- David Gauthier, Morals By Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
- James Konow (2003). "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, 41(4), pp. 1188-1239.
- David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice (New York: CUP, 2006).
- Harry Brighouse, Justice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (revised edition, Oxford: OUP, 1999).
- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism in On Liberty and Other Essays ed. John Gray (Oxford: OUP, 1991).
- Nicola Lacey, State Punishment (London: Routledge, 1988).
- Peter Singer ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), Part IV.
- Plato, Republic trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: OUP, 1994).
- Robert E. Goodin & Philip Pettit eds, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An anthology (2nd edition, Malden Mass.: Blackwell, 2006), Part III.
- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).
- Ted Honderich, Punishment: The supposed justifications (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1969).
- Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An introduction (2nd edition, Oxford: OUP, 2002).
[edit] External links
 | Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Justice |
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries:
- Distributive justice, by Julian Lamont.
- Justice as a virtue, by Michael Slote.
- Punishment, by Hugo Adam Bedau.
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 Anil Ambani group says pressure working on Reliance Industries The comment came against the backdrop of Petroleum Minister Murli Deora informing the parliament Thursday that the current level of production from the Krishna-Godavari was 35 million units per day.  PMO seeks oil ministry's view on Anil's claim Amid a legal battle on gas supply between Mukesh and Anil Ambani groups, Prime Minister's Office has sought comments from the petroleum ministry on allegations by Anil Ambani that it was siding with the other side.  SC sets Sept 1 hearing in Reliance gas dispute The Supreme Court said it would club all petitions and applications in the RIL -RNRL gas case. KG-D6 facility | Hottest biz feuds | Full coverage: RIL-RNRL gas row  Govt intervention to make RIL-RNRL battle fiercer Legal battle between RIL & RNRL is set to get bigger as power ministry, is now readying itself to join the battle. RIL-RNRL gas row I RIL's' KG-D6 facility  What is the Reliance gas dispute all about? The raging dispute being heard in the Supreme Court between the companies belonging to the two Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, mainly concerns the supply and pricing of natural gas from the Krishna Godavari basin.  Oil ministry siding with Mukesh: Anil to PM Anil Ambani claimed his group was only seeking gas supply from RIL's lawful share of entitlement of production and not from the government's share.  Expert to check RIL's oil pricing math An international expert will examine the pricing formula proposed by Reliance Industries (RIL) for the crude oil produced from its D-6 block in the Krishna-Godavari basin, an oil ministry official said.  No ownership claims over KG gas, says Anil Anil Ambani's missive seeks to allay fears of existing power and fertiliser customers of KG gas. Key dates in Ambani brothers' feud I Full coverage: RIL-RNRL gas row  Govt asks SC to make it party in RIL-RNRL gas dispute Government's involvement in the proceedings was aimed at effectively resolving the controversy that has arisen in the matter.  RIL can't sell gas to RNRL; asks SC not to stop 3rd party sale RIL said it would not be possible to supply gas to RNRL without govt's nod and requested the SC not to restrain it from selling gas to others. RIL-RNRL case  Govt has no role to play in gas sharing row: RNRL RNRL said that RIL had contended before the single judge of the High Court that it was neither aware of the existence of the MoU nor its terms. RIL-RNRL gas row  KG gas belongs to govt, not Ambanis: Deora Petroleum minister Murli Deora on Sunday reiterated that the KG gas belongs to the government and not to either of the Ambani brothers who are battling out in the court.  Gas rift resolution should not be left to Ambanis' mother: YSR Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Sunday said that the settlement of the gas dispute between the Ambani brothers could not be left to their mother Kokilaben and the Centre must play a decisive role.  Battleground shifts to Delhi for Ambani brothers Both brothers and their associates are frequenting the corridors of power as the SC gets set to hear arguements in corporate India's biggest battle. RIL-RNRL case  Many discoveries later, gas is still a pipe dream India has one of the lowest spreads at 0.003 km of pipeline per sq km of land. | ||
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