A long, long time ago when people still read books and were not educated exclusively by Whatsapp forwards or Tik-Tok reels, Nirad Choudhry, the last Englishman in India, claimed in his book of the same name that India was a continent of Circe, where humans were turned into beasts. Now, 70 years later, he has been vindicated by no less an authority than the Supreme Court of India itself. In a recent judgment a bench of the Court termed the under privileged and poor of the country (there are 230 million of them, and 800 million get free rations) as "parasites", thereby improving upon Nirad Babu's formulation of mere beasts. It said, in effect, that the poor, the jobless, the homeless, the landless- the most vulnerable and helpless sections of our 1400 million people- were unjustly consuming the resources of the state through subsidies, doles and "freebees" and implicitly castigated them for their sorry fate. "Are we not creating a class of parasites?" it asked, going on to lament that "they are getting free rations without doing any work!" A demonstration of empathy not seen since the times of Nero.
The Court, in its zeal to sound both learned and neo-liberal, has unwittingly provided its imprimatur and endorsement to the insensitive, cold hearted and callous attitude of the present government to the ordinary citizen of the country, whose fate it is to be counted at election time and then to be consigned to the dungeons of oblivion. Public suffering, hardship and grievances does not matter to it so long as it continues winning elections. This has been amply demonstrated in the last ten years on numerous occasions when the government has not batted an eyelid to provide relief or redress wrongs, or to even display some compassion: the interminable queues at banks and ATMs, in the rain and cold, during the disaster of demonetisation; the year long protest of farmers resulting in more than 600 deaths, the ill-conceived and sadistic Covid lockdown forcing millions of the urban poor to WALK back to their distant villages in the searing heat, being de-contaminated and beaten by police on the way; the messed up Covid policies resulting in more than 40 lakh deaths according to WHO and international observers, the hundreds of corpses floating in the Ganga, the dead in the Kumbh hyper marketing. Even as I write this the Railways are herding Mahakumbh pilgrims into trains like sardines, 5000 in a train meant for 1200, simply so that Mr. Vaishnaw, the Railway Minister can notch up a few records like his Chief Ministerial colleague in Uttar Pradesh. The fact that people are dying in this pursuit of Guinness records and brownie points from an uncaring Prime Minister is, of course, of no concern. For aren't these pesky people parasites who deserve nothing better?
The Hon'ble court would do well to realise that mere obiter dicta of this type only dehumanises people and brutalises an already brutal government. A solution needs a deeper understanding of the origins of the problem. If people do not work it is because there are no jobs for them. If they need free rations it is because they do not have the money to buy them, if they are homeless it is because millions have to forcibly migrate to cities for employment. The Court would have done well to reflect on where these hundreds of millions of "parasites" came from. For they did not have an immaculate conception, my lords, but were birthed by consistently unwise, avaricious and exploitative policies of past and present governments. They are not poor out of choice, or dependent on governments because they are lazy, but because they have been reduced to this state by governments they have elected over the years, by policies that have consistently favoured just the top ten percent of the population. Consider some of them:
* More than 50 million people have been displaced by projects- dams, cement plants, power projects, urbanisation, highways, mines, airports. Rarely do these projects improve their lives, for the benefits flow to cities, industrialists and politicians. They are not parasites, they are internally displaced persons, refugees in their own country.
* The destruction and denudation of the environment which accompanies these projects has immense adverse impacts on the livelihoods of the rural population, forcing more and more to migrate to urban areas. This is particularly true of the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan states. Just the havoc of reckless dam building has displaced 16 million people.
* The worst effected are the category who most need the state's help- tribals, forest dependent communities, and indigenous people. In an article by Roshan Varughese and Soumen Mukherjee in the journal Nature.com (23.5.24), 40% of the victims of development induced displacement are Adivasis, even though their share of the population is only 8%. Thousands are being evicted on an almost daily basis because of state governments' unwillingness to implement the Forest Rights Act: only 3 states have implemented its provisions, but that too only partially.
* Short-sighted, compliance based, propaganda oriented policies are being rammed through a system where its stakeholders are unprepared to navigate their rules. A prime example is the ubiquitous and pernicious tyranny of the KYC process for banks, ration cards and MNREGA. This is a nightmare for even the digitally aware, but for the uneducated poor it has become a matter of survival and a cause of destitution. According to a report by the NGO Lib-Tech, more than 80 million workers were removed from MNREGA rolls in just two years, 2022-24, because of KYC issues. A Down to Earth magazine report of 28th October 2024 quotes a study carried out in two districts of Jharkhand (Latehar and Lohardaga) which revealed that bank accounts of 60% of the families had been frozen for want of completed KYC verification, depriving them access to whatever little money they had, MNREGA wages and Direct Benefit transfers, leaving them at the point of starvation. Similarly, millions of the poor are being denied ration under the PDS because they are unable to complete their KYC. It has been reported that 7 million and 6.9 million beneficiaries in Odisha and Tamil Nadu, respectively, have had their cards frozen for want of KYC verification.
* Not only has the present government failed to create new jobs in adequate numbers, it has destroyed millions of existing jobs through demonetisation, GST and neglect of the SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) sector. Employment, under-employment and disguised unemployment are at their highest levels in 45 years, even as 12 million new job seekers enter the market every year. Who do the poor turn to if there are no jobs for them? And how do they eat if they get no wages?
* We may tom-tom that we are the fifth or fourth largest economy in the world but that offers no succor to the poor, for we rank 140 in per-capita income, below Bangladesh. In a shocking analysis of Household consumption data, T. Muralidharan in an article in Telengana Today (Nov. 13, 2024) has revealed that the bottom 30% of our population ( 420 million people) spend just Rs. 50 on food per day per capita, whereas a vegetarian thali costs more than Rs. 50 (Economic Survey 2020). Worse, the poorest 5% of the country lives on just 2/3 rds of a thali per day!
One is left wondering if the Hon'ble court had informed itself of these facts before terming these unfortunates as parasites. Quick-fixes are okay for joining shards of broken Dresden pottery, but will not repair the broken edifice of a nation's conscience or a government's splintered feeling of compassion, or faulty neo capitalist policies. Judicial quick-fixes are particularly dangerous for they impart a legal legitimacy to half baked ideas. Yes, there are plenty of undeserving people benefitting from these welfare schemes and they should be weeded out. The court would have rendered yeoman's service to the nation if it had focused on this aspect and directed the government to prepare a time bound plan to do so, instead of using a broad brush to castigate and condemn the poor. We have robbed the country's poor of their lands, jobs, food and health; let us not strip them of their right to be called human beings. It is all they have left.
How can this be? As the world’s 4/5th largest economy and certainty of being Viksit Bharat by 2047 with ! Free rations for 800 million parasites at least the government cannot be accused of lacking compassion?
ReplyDeleteIt was mystifying to observe the Indian cognoscenti and literati pluck the ‘parasite’ word from Justice B. R. Gavai’s remark in court and build the ugly edifice of derogation around it. Those who read the remark will know immediately the context in which he applied it. That freebies disincentivise their beneficiaries from investing efforts towards earning a livelihood, making them attritionally dependent on dole. He said and intended nothing more. Bracketing all such recipients with those genuinely destitute and starving in the country - with the aim of vitalising their narrative - is the parasitic ballast of argumentators. Those coming purportedly from wisdom, who latched on to that one word but misinterpreted it ludicrously, diminished themselves more than the good Judge.
ReplyDeletePlucking a word or term out of a meaningful discussion by those unconnected to it, and giving it a tailspin to grab eyeballs, is a routine stunt of the politicia. But to attack a Supreme Court Judge with this borrowed toolkit does little to burnish the credentials of thinkers and writers membering the intelligentsia.
Needless.
I am afraid that, in expending a lot of furious energy in defending the court and castigating the "literatti", Mr. Patankar for once has lost his way. He wants us to take Justice Gavai's words "in context" but he himself has missed the context. I would urge him to read the Feb 20th article by Gautam Bhatia in THE WIRE titled "Parasites, Perversion and Brazenness: When Judges' Remarks Spark Concern Over Biases in Indian Courts." By doing so, he would discover two important points he has missed or conveniently disregarded to favour his own bias:
ReplyDelete[1] Justice Gavai's comments were made in a case brought by Harsh Mander about shelters for homeless people. THIS is the context, sir. Shelters for destitutes is not a "freebie" in a Constitutionally socialist country but an obligation of the government. By terming this as a freebie and those who need them as parasites, and by terming all welfare schemes as freebies, Justice Gavai has exposed his elitist bias.
[2] There is a larger context to this remark too, which has been pointed out by Gautam Bhatia in his article: namely, that this obiter dicta is not an isolated instance but part of a pattern emerging from our constitutional courts; Bhatia has mentioned three specific cases in the recent past where the courts have bared their prejudices against liberal values in a society. If Mr Patankar does not find this disturbing then I am deeply disappointed. I would urge him to reflect on why so many non-political, law abiding and respectable people have protested against Justice Gavai's callous and heartless remarks, and to not adopt the simple quick-fix of branding them litterati or cognoscenti. For as Gautam Bhatia warns us in his piece: "There is but the thinnest of lines between individual human prejudice and courts of law becoming courts of prejudice." It is bad enough to have governance based on prejudices, but if justice too were to be based on prejudices then we might as well give up all hope.
Mr. Shukla has, with his indignant rebuttal, reinforced that the cognoscenti and literati - he being counted among them - have widely missed the Judge’s rationale behind using the “P” word. This stems from their eagerness to deploy socialist firepower derived from the Constitution, whenever challenged by contrarian views on poverty.
ReplyDeleteThe Judge had questioned the logic of offering freebies, particularly of the monetary kind, to the poor, just prior to elections being held. He doubted the purpose and timing of the dole-based schemes as Ladli Behen, not just in one state but now state after state. He raised his skepticism over the vigour with which political parties are trying to outdo each other in their declarations of monetary hand-outs pre-election. He observed how assured monthly incomes from election promises erode the motivation of beneficiaries to seek livelihood. He did not object to the arguments of the lawyers in the matter that he was hearing - of the right to shelter of homeless persons in urban areas. His remark targeted the malaise caused by the weakening effect of permanent dole, and towards that he used the “P" word from his lexicon. This was latched upon and the Judge was soundly criticised by activist sources, all of whom were precipitate.
Mr Shukla is encouraged to read The Economics Times and hear from Live Law, both attached below. And should the Judge’s intent dawn upon him, then spread its suffusing glow upon the others, all of whom I usually hold in the highest regard.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/are-we-not-creating-class-of-parasites-sc-slams-freebies-promised-before-polls/amp_articleshow/118181242.cms
https://www.livelaw.in/amp/top-stories/supreme-court-justice-gavai-on-freebies-integrate-homeless-in-mainstream-society-for-contribution-to-nation-283732
What Mr. Shukla alludes to as “facts and figures” are culled from Gautam Bhatia’s article in The Wire of the 20th February 2025. It warrants scrutiny, given that is serves as the “vade mecum" Mr. Shukla pivots his stand on.
ReplyDeleteBhatia excoriates Justice Gavai for terming the shelterless poor of New Delhi as a ‘class of parasites’, unwilling to perform “work", owing to state welfare programs. On that premise, he concludes that Gavai exhibits a deep inner conviction that has “nothing to do with law or legality”, but stems from personal prejudices and embedded social disparity.
He then judges the Judge further, arguing that being next in line to don the robe of the Chief Justice of India, Gavai is expected to temper his prejudices, but fails simply because he does not care. (Prejudices conjured solely by Bhatia but ascribed to the Judge).
Finally comes the crest - Bhatia, probably by now in the uncontrollable grip of his own rhetoric - goes beyond Gavai and other judges to lament the very functioning of the Indian Constitutional Courts. Stating that they seldom pass cases on merit, and that such seasoned judgements are “rare enough to be classified as celestial events"!
Of note is that Justice Gavai is senior most after the current incumbent CJI Sanjeev Khanna, and among his judgements is the verdict condemning the bulldozer actions against the demolition of structures of accused persons - 2024 SCC Online SC 3291.
But perhaps his more cogent decision that may buttress the matter being laid threadbare, is the one on sub-classification to OBCs - 2024 SCC Online 1860 - where he was one of the 7 judges and among the 6 who favoured it, making them eligible for more benefits. However, he observed that “the State must evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer even from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes so as to exclude them from the benefit of affirmative action." In his view, " this was the only way to real equality as enshrined in the Constitution."
Juxtaposing these judgements with his current remark and its background, it is inferable that the Judge neither intended nor voiced his contempt for the shelterless as “parasites". His criticism was directed against the ad-hoc, politically motivated welfare system that prioritises electoral gains over sustainable upliftment. The activist cum academic brigade has loaded the excess baggage taken from assumption and extrapolation of the Judge’s remark and castigated the man wrongly.
Mr Shukla has preferred to rely on their interpretations rather than consult the actual transcript of the courtroom. If this is his mooring, then he has anchored himself to a sand wall at high tide.
The fact remains that India is slowly edging towards poverty and also GDP is no measure of Individual well being.
ReplyDeleteSecondly with a sizable population dependant on agriculture, how does that portion of the Nation get an economic boost?
Thirdly with AI coming, shrinking jobs after education, decreasing real time wages (fueling unemployment big time), falling consumption are major problems looking us in the eye..
Focusing on electoral freebies and mismanaged religous extravaganzas isn't enough to run this populous Nation.
Solutions needed but none forthcoming