Articles

The First World War was deemed to be the war to end all wars. Just twenty years after the end of World War I we were engulfed by the Second World War, fought with weapons far more destructive than those used in the period 1914-1919. These included the weapon to end all weapons, the atomic bomb. The war which succeeded the war to end all wars did not create in its wake a world which realised the folly of killing itself off with weapons which could destroy the globe itself.

The Government of India has announced that it had decided to provide 4.5 percent reservations for Muslims, to form part of the 27 percent reservation quota for other backward classes. Salman Kurshid, the Law Minister, has stated that this reservation would be of the order of 9 percent. The timing of these announcements coincides with the elections to be held in U.P. and this has created an absolute uproar.

How Nine Governments Betrayed the Nation

In India at least since the British came to rule us it is the State which took upon itself the responsibility for providing health care. In 1925 in the undivided province of the Punjab Sir Fazl-i-Husain scheme for health care was initiated. The broad aim of the scheme was that there should be a civil dispensary for every hundred square miles of territory and no villagers need have to go more than five miles to find state provided medical help.

The basic structure of the Constitution of India divides the State into three equal but separate constituents which, nevertheless, have a degree of convergence and interaction because each is incomplete without the others.

Abstract

India is considered to be the largest democracy of the world, which is governed by an elaborate and detailed written constitution. The author in this research paper has elaborately discussed the scheme of social welfare as enumerated in the Indian Constitution. The Preamble of the Constitution has used the terms like “Socialist”, “Social and Economic Justice”, “Equality” etc, these terms indicate that the state would extensively involve in social welfare of people, and would try to establish an egalitarian society.

So much controversy has been created over whether the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) should be under the Lokpal or not that it is time to reflect on what the CBI is. Under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, List 1, Entry 8 Parliament is competent to legislate on the creation, constitution and structure and working methodology of the Central Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence Bureau. Surprisingly neither agency has been brought under any form of legislation under this provision of the Constitution.

“By his Constitutions of Clarendon he (Henry II Plantagenet) sought to fix the relationship of Church and State and to force the Church in its temporal character to submit itself to life and law of the nation.” (A History of the English speaking people Volume I – Sir Winston Churchill)

“We the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic” (The Preamble to the Constitution of India)

I joined the Indian Administrative Service more than fifty-four years ago in 1957. Government was much less complex then, but we were already into an era of planned development and increasingly the regulatory regime of the British was giving way to a more development oriented but state driven government and economy. It was a transition from empire to republic and we of the IAS were a fairly important part of this transition.

There is a monumentally asinine serial called “The Bold and the Beautiful” which has been shown on the television for several years now. Each time an episode ends one feels that we shall now be spared any further infliction. The next episode begins, every time with a twist to the theme from the point where it left off. Each episode is as unbelievable as the one it succeeds and one cannot help but feeling that one is watching the theatre of the absurd compared to which the Mad Hatter’s tea party seems to be a model of sanity.