The Republic Day Agenda

Sixty years back, the Preamble to the Indian Constitution made a bold promise of a dream.  The Preamble went on to articulate a direction in which we wish to see India grow. Each of the highlighted words is a task that the executive, legislature and judiciary of the country has to deliver to the people. The preamble says:

“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation…”

I believe that we need to look at any country’s independence on three parameters – Social, Economic and Political freedom. Political freedom is a starting point; but the more difficult freedom to achieve is always – social and economic. We have for the past six decades managed to keep India a thriving democracy (except for the brief period from 25 June 1975 – 21 March 1977 when Indira Gandhi declared the state of emergency and suspended political freedom and muzzled the press). We have,  largely,  learnt to hold free elections even though there is some fine tuning to be done to ensure that we bring in Members of Parliament who have the education and training needed to run the country.  The influence of money and guns needs to go down before we can give ourselves a thumbs up on this.

Where we have ground to cover in large measure is in the area of making social and economic freedom available to people. While we achieved political freedom on 15th Aug 1947, we achieved economic freedom only in the ’90s when the country liberalized the economy. That has allowed us to make a beginning to solve the economic freedom we promised ourselves. The country has to first build a strong economic framework which generates wealth. That agenda has certainly started to deliver over the last two decades. The GDP is growing at a respectable pace well beyond the 1% to 3% “Hindu Rate of Growth” (a controversial term coined by the economist KN Raj) that was the average GDP growth of India in the pre-liberalization era. What needs to be built in parallel is a better system of social justice that creates an inclusive society by distributing equitably across the marginalized, the benefits of economic prosperity. In the absence of that the gap between the different layers of society does not minimize.

The process of doing this efficiently lies in all the institutions that promote good governance. India is in that stage where strong, corruption-free governance is going to make all the difference in our goal of getting social justice.  A country as large and diverse as India will have many conflicting priorities that fight for a share of the budget. We need to build world class infrastructure, a strong army etc. and the list could go on. I believe that cheap healthcare and a strong primary and secondary education should be the top two priorities to address many of the challenges that a growing economy like India faces. Creating low cost, innovative health care solutions will make social justice possible. This is the necessary condition but not sufficient. The right to have access to clean drinking water should now be made available to all especially in the rural areas and urban slums.

Strong primary and secondary education creates a base on which higher education thrives. Making a world class education available to rural schools and building infrastructure that lowers the digital divide should be the focus for the next ten years.  Education must aim to create a nation of innovators. The best scientists, the best thinkers, the top corporate leaders and above all the nation’s entrepreneurs should consciously spend time to mentor a five children every year from the disadvantaged sections and build in the them the capability to dream big and have the education needed to make those dreams come true. Education is in my opinion the necessary and sufficient criteria that builds a country in the long run.

While political freedom is a starting point, the economic and social freedom agenda has to be pursued simultaneously to generate the dream of social and economic justice that we dreamt of providing to everyone. While in every economy there will be very rich and very poor – the measure of success is always going to be how quickly can the gap be minimized to create an inclusive society.

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You may want to read the article The RDB Generation Celebrates 60 Years of Freedom.

If you like the painting of the Indian flag, you can download it from here

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