How has India done in ensuring social and economic justice?
Hindustan Times|December 23, 2024
The winter session of Parliament ended with a big fight between the treasury and Opposition benches on the issue of their contribution to the legacy of BR Ambedkar, India's biggest social emancipator and one of the key architects of the Constitution, and whether home minister Amit Shah spoke disrespectfully about him in his speech in the Rajya Sabha.
Roshan Kishore, Abhishek Jha and Nishant Ranjan
How has India done in ensuring social and economic justice?

On the penultimate day of the session, the fight took a completely different turn, with the BJP and the Congress accusing each other of assault inside the Parliament premises. Beyond these polemics, there is a more important question to be asked. Seventy-five years after the Constitution was adopted, how has India done on the most cherished goal of Ambedkar: ensuring social and economic equality along with the political equality that the Constitution provided with the principle of universal franchise. These charts try and answer this question.

1. India still does not have political equality in terms of equal social representation in the executive

Adoption of universal franchise did not automatically lead to political equality in terms of equal representation in the executive. 86.4% of the members of India's first council of ministers were from caste groups which were not scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST) or other backward classes (OBC). The skew was even bigger in terms of chief ministers of states. While representation has definitely improved over time, non-SC/ST/OBC persons, or the "upper castes", still have the largest share in chief ministers and council of ministers in India.

This story is from the December 23, 2024 edition of Hindustan Times.

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This story is from the December 23, 2024 edition of Hindustan Times.

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