Universal Economic Rights: Bedrock of Citizenship

Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, an eminent economist, speaks at the Idea of India Conclave on economic rights. He says the society earlier and even now is based on extraordinary caste oppression and social oppression. He emphasises the importance of having universal economic rights like right to food, health care, education, employment etc., for having a meaningful political citizenship. Patnaik argues that providing these rights are easily affordable. He pointed out that the tax GDP ratio in our country is among the lowest in the world and the extra amount required to provide these basic economic rights can easily be realised by additional taxes on the rich.

Rough Transcript:

Among secular progressive people, whenever we talk about the contemporary reality, there is a tendency to believe the following: that there was an ideal state earlier, kind of platonic ideal, from which the reality has become worst, this ideal consisted of unity and diversity, a tolerant society, a society in which all kinds of opinions flourished and from there we are now deviating into a world in which there is a monolithic imposition of a particular perception on everybody. And that the NDA, the BJP, the RSS are responsible for the imposition of this monolithic perception of Indian society. No I'm not saying that this is a false proposition, Romila Thapar for instance has talked about the semitization of Hinduism that from a group of Hindu religious segments increasingly there is an attempt to construct a version of Hinduism which is parallel to that of any other Semitic religious groups.

But on the other hand, it seems to me that no matter whether we talk about the old India or the new India, all of it was based on extraordinary caste oppression, on extraordinary social oppression again, one of my colleagues in JNU Suvira Jaiswal has always argued that the essence of Hinduism is a caste system. Now if that is a case, then this platonic ideal is not something that we should be harking back to much to. Yes of course, we should keep it in mind, we should attack the degree to which there is this effort to impose a monolithic perception on the Indian society. But at the same time, what we need to do is to go beyond that old India as well and I believe that was the underlying perception of the anti-colonial struggle which wanted to create a notion of a political citizenship, going beyond individual identities; and going beyond individual caste and religious and other such identities.

Now if we are going to develop a notion of political citizenship, then it's not enough that there should be political rights, but it is extremely important that there has to be a set of universal economic rights. And these economic rights, the minimal economic rights, to my mind, would be a right to food, universal right to food, a universal right to employment, a universal right to free publicly funded education, a universal right to free publicly funded healthcare, and of course a universal right for old age pension, and disability assistance. Now these to my mind are minimal universal rights which have to be institutionalized if we are going to define a concept of citizenship that goes beyond individual caste identities that one creates, an alternative perception of an Indian which is not submerged in the kind of identities to which people are born.

Now the point is, of course once, you cannot have a world in which there is a political citizenship of a certain kind and at the same time you have enormous social differences, you've castes and so on and so forth, one or the other is going to subvert. I mean one of these is going to subvert the other, and it seems to be that the political intervention of this kind is essential for subverting a social reality which is broken up into castes and other kinds of identity groups. In other words, one way of intervening in the process of modernisation of the Indian society is in fact to create the notion of a political citizenship with universal rights and these universal rights are not just political rights which of course are there like, universal adult suffrage and so on but a set of economic rights.

Now this is something which I believe the country can easily afford. It would not be more than 10% of the GDP that is required for the institutionalizing these universal rights. And of course, given the fact that we in India have a tax GDP ratio taking centre and states together, which is not even 14% just short of it, if you add 10% to it that comes to 24% which is actually not much higher than the tax GDP ratio in the lowest tax true blue capitalist country, that’s the United State. Europe and so on have much higher 30-35% tax GDP ratio so, we can easily afford it. India is one of the countries where the tax GDP ratio is among the lowest in the world and consequently, we have enough resources to be able to afford it. Now, this of course, universalising a set of rights, does not by any means preclude affirmative action on the other hand, affirmative action would have to be added on to it but on the other hand, the kind of resentment that affirmative action creates and of course the kind of jockeying for being the beneficiaries of the affirmative action that is currently created is something that would disappear.

It seems to me that one of the important factors behind the rise of the NDA, the BJP, the RSS is actually in a sense is the support of the intermediate strata whose resentment is being nurtured vis a vis the kind of slightly progressive policies of redistribution that were effected under the UPA regime. I think, Michał Kalecki, the Polish economist said the intermediate strata are very important in third world societies, including societies like ours. The intermediate strata formed earlier, the backbone of the public sector under the Nehruvian dispensation. The intermediate strata are now being increasingly mobilized for the cause of a neo liberal policy which is yoked to communal fascism. And I think if we're going to break that kind of yoking then it is essential in my view, to have an institutionalisation of a set of universal rights which are enjoyed by everybody. And as I said we can easily afford it. Now, this of course would require some kind of a going back on neo-liberalism, of course a reversal of neo-liberalism, it would require capital controls, because immediately Moody's will downgrade you, but these are things which are absolutely essential if we are to recapture the political space required for giving expression to the Idea of India that all of us are concerned with. Maybe I should stop there. Thank you very much.