Public Policy and Impoverishment

Abstract

Inspired by the passionate pen of Prof. Upendra Baxi, this article rephrases the extant issues concerning public policy on impoverishment to discover the reality of ‘impoverishment’ which has long been subdued by the myth of ‘poverty’. The use of the conjunction ‘and’ in the title reflects the attitude of unconcern that the global community had preserved in this regard. Democracy in India has often been compared with the ship of Theseus as the British conventions have been read into both the ‘written’ and ‘unwritten’ constitution of the nation with the colonial legal system being thoughtlessly transplanted as a consequence of which, the process of decision-making has never been in the public domain but has remained a manifestation of top-down model of justice delivery. With the rampant theorization and implementation of ‘othering’ in an absolute no-rights discourse, a sense of permanency and continuity had wrongly been ascribed to the homogeneity of the condition of living of a bulk of the population. Besides, the status of the citizens has been reduced to that of beneficiaries. In the extant condition, the much deferred dream of ‘social revolution’ which was imbibed in the Indian Constitution is to be achieved by means of identification of the distinct problems of the distinct groups and creation of a regime of rights.