Current Public Administration Magazine (AUGUST 2018)
Sample Material of Current Public Administration Magazine
1. Social Administration
::The Freedom We Long For::
“By independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves. There is great danger of things going wrong.” Sixty-nine years ago, Babasaheb Ambedkar made this prophetic observation in his last Constituent Assembly speech. As the country celebrates its Independence Day, we find that things have gone horribly wrong because of the rise of communal and fascist forces which today control the State apparatus. Under this dispensation, Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis have been lynched in the name of Hindutva and cow protection.
2. Indian Administration
::A Brief History of Democracy::
On 15 August 1947, at the stroke of the midnight hour, while half the world slept and the other half lay chained by colonialism, the epochal question before the Indian people switched. Till then, it was: “When shall we get freedom?” After 15 August it became: “What shall we do with freedom?”
Mahatma Gandhi had answered the first question. When he launched his phase of
our freedom struggle in 1919, a notable Indian sceptic famously scoffed: “What
does this man in a dhoti think he is doing? The British empire will last 400
years.” Once Gandhi lit the long-dormant spark within Indians, the British were
out in less than 30 years. India’s liberation signalled the end of Europe’s
colonial project. Within another 30 years, colonial rule had vanished. But the
question it left in its wake — “What shall we do with freedom?” — is still
searching for answers across the world.
The first part of the answer was easy. India had not won freedom from Britain in
order to deny freedom to its own people. Democracy, equality and their attendant
rights became the first and fundamental principles of India’s Constitution.
3. Indian Administration
::Aadhaar In The Dock::
August 24 will mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s emphatic re-affirmation of the status of the right to privacy as a fundamental right under the Constitution. It may be recalled that that decision, a unanimous one of a nine-judge bench, came in the context of the cases challenging the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project.
In the one year since that decision, even as a five-judge bench has heard and reserved for judgment the case against Aadhaar, a committee of experts headed by Justice (Retd) B N Srikrishna has submitted in the last week of July its report and a draft bill on personal data protection. Among other things, the report proposes extensive amendments to the Aadhaar Act, without including those in the draft bill. The draft bill has been criticised by many, with good reason, as containing exceptions and exemptions for the government and law enforcement as opposed to treating the state as a model data controller or fiduciary. Be that as it may, it still gives us a good framework to evaluate and critique the past and present practices of the state — including Aadhaar.
4. Law and Order Administration
::People Police::
In the 1960s, India and the US faced a similar law and order situation — escalating crime and street violence. The two countries responded differently with different results. A criminal justice system can hope to succeed in delivering peace and order only in a “majority defenders of law” situation, that is, most of the citizens obey the law voluntarily. And it is the responsibility of the police to facilitate the achievement of this objective. Robert Peel, the father of modern policing, had this insight when he founded the London Metropolitan Police in 1829. Calling the police “citizens in uniform”, he urged them to work in close collaboration with the community and focus on crime prevention. This remains a go-to strategy as it makes citizens partners in crime prevention and is the best bet for creating a majority-defenders-of-law situation. It is another matter that the British in 1861 built a militaristic and repressive police in India to defend their predatory rule.
5. Current Topic
::Article 35A::
Why Article 35A Must Stay As the colonial era withdrew, with the world map
redrawn to shape new nation states, two countries took birth on the basis of
religious identity: Pakistan and Israel. The toxicity of the new creations
continues seven decades down the line, to increase in intensity and impact,
almost hijacking the millennial developments and scripting the 21st century hate
discourse.
Jammu and Kashmir, then popularly known as just Kashmir, was a semi-independent
country under British suzerainty ruled by a Dogra Hindu king. This sprawling
country of diverse ethnicities, climates, topographies, religions and cultures,
spread from the Karakoram to Punjab plains, had one commonality: It had almost
80 per cent Muslims living in all areas. The united India was at war with itself
on the basis of religious hostility, Muslims demanding a separate country and
the Hindu majority acquiescing (or abetting?) to it.