The Opposition must rise up to safeguard the idea of India
India has always been bold and adventurous. Our founders constantly strived to do better as a nation. They experimented with revolutionary concepts to further the promise of the nation to all. Surrounded by wars, they consciously chose the path of non-violence. They witnessed exclusionary citizenship and extractive development and opted for universal enfranchisement and inclusive development.
And they rejected the graded inequalities to opt for equality. That quest, to always choose what’s best for the people, defines our republic.
In that quest, our founders used their different approaches and ideas to become more than their individual parts. The belief that we are stronger together, and because of each other, was deeply ingrained in India’s collective consciousness. That is how we have grown over the past 70 years, by supporting and enabling each other.
Barring some unfortunate exceptions, we have consistently strived to ensure that each one of us is able to enjoy equal rights, lives a life of dignity and security and is guaranteed equitable access to opportunities. It is because of this that India has grown leaps and bounds in the last 70 years, and is a beacon of hope and inspiration the world over.
Unfortunately, today regressive forces are compromising the well-being of millions of Indians, and promoting development which is exclusionary. The most marginalised and vulnerable are being consistently denied access and opportunities to a better life.
In collusion with the State, these forces are aggressively homogenising India according to those very principles of hierarchy, patriarchy and fundamentalism that Babasaheb Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhai Patel, Maulana Azad and all our other founders so decidedly rejected during the birth of our nation.
Today, rigid norms are being imposed with regard to food, clothing, language and free speech, while the State is silent and unwilling to enforce the rule of law.
Consequently, hatred and violence towards Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, women and the minorities (both religious and ideological) have risen exponentially. As former vice-president Hamid Ansari rightly pointed out, there is a palpable sense of fear and indignity in India today. This poses a grave threat to India’s inclusive conception of polity and citizenship.
It has been argued that there is no viable force left to stop the attacks on India’s soul. The opposition, both social and political, has been caricatured as fragmented and bereft of a viable vision. There is a brooding sense of foreboding and helplessness at India’s future as a democracy committed to liberty, equality and fraternity. But not anymore.
To craft a visionary blueprint for the future, and to address the above mentioned concerns, the government of Karnataka recently organised the world’s largest Dr BR Ambedkar International Conference from the July 21-23, 2017. This historic conference saw the participation of over 300 academics, activists and policy-makers across the world as well as 12,000 delegates. Their insightful deliberations comprehensively assessed the contemporary challenges and opportunities India faces.
This dialectic yielded some bold and innovative recommendations. These were compiled into the Bengaluru Declaration, which outlines specific policy responses for India’s all-round development.
Some of the important institutional recommendations include dramatically empowering the Election Commission of India to ensure that all political parties strictly uphold fundamental rights and adhere to constitutional values; strengthening the Press Council of India so it can act against attacks on journalists and censorship, establishing a farmers' income commission to ensure income security for India’s "annadatas" and institutionalising an equal opportunities commission to ensure the representation of Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, women and minorities in the public and private sectors.
Some of the salient policy recommendations include making secondary education and healthcare universal rights, free accommodation for educated youth employed in tier I and II cities, a national law to allocate budgetary resources equal to the SC and ST population etc.
This blueprint makes an important start in proposing a viable alternative vision of development and governance. If it continues to amalgamate additional creative recommendations for all sectors, it could emerge as the undisputed silver bullet to the problems that India faces today.
To borrow from Martin Luther King, “out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope”.
We have come a long way in the past 70 years. And by adopting the Bengaluru Declaration, we can go much further in the next 70.
If we are to keep rising to ever greater heights, we need to immediately address the concerns of equity, freedom, human rights, justice and democracy. We need to also ensure that we grow and prosper together, shoulder to shoulder. To do that, we need to be compassionate in our policies and constructive in our politics.
And most importantly, we need to steadfastly safeguard the idea of India. Only then can we address the needs and aspirations of all Indians.