The Prime Minister sought to cool tempers in the Rajya Sabha over “rising intolerance”, saying patriotism need not be proved day and night. “Faith in the Constitution takes us out of a daily verbal duel”. Home Minister Rajnath Singh too was not lagging behind. He asked writers, artists and scientists, who have returned their awards, to take them back.

Much ground was covered in the two debates, including the need to move towards a comprehensive uniform civil code, systemic corruption, legislative reservations for women, social security and justice in development. Inevitably, political brownie points were scored on all sides.

In a sense the debates were academic, they aimed to address and educate the present generation, presumed innocent about Ambedkar and the Constitution-making generation. How far the present generation needs these lessons remains controversial, and the question of whether they learnt anything from their elders remains. The legislative debates were also political in a partisan way. Each side sought to appropriate Ambedkar as a shining light of its own pantheon. The apolitical appropriation of an icon is scarcely a new happening; what is remarkable is the amnesia it suggests. Many aspects of what Ambedkar said are now forgotten. He said; “Bhakti in religion may be a road to salvation of the soul. But in politics bhakti or hero-worship is a sure way to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

Articles 17, 23, 24 of the Constitution are great gifts of Babasaheb. Article 17, an aspect of the fundamental right to equality, liberty and fraternity forbids “untouchability” and declares any practice on the ground of untouchability an offence, and Articles 23 and 24, forbid and declare as offensive trafficking in persons, serfdom and child labour. These provisions are explicitly entitled as rights against exploitation.

The Constitution declares certain social practices as an offence, which are to be redressed by parliamentary legislation and oversight under Article 35. Parliament has the power coupled with duty, regardless of federal design and detail, to make and enforce laws with respect to these provisions. And it has made laws, the last being Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. But these laws are not implemented with any firmness. Atrocity against “untouchables” continue, and these notably include arson, rape, gang rape, mass and individual murder, stripping and parading, pursuit of “obnoxious” occupations as well as thousands of unspeakable daily horrors. This is not to say that no change has occurred in the past six decades — it has, but at a hostile pace. It now needs to be accelerated, indeed to a point and scale of war against untouchability in all its forms; only then will a celebration of Constitution day be more apt.

Similarly, Census 2001 figures revealed 1.26 crore working class children in the age group of 5-14 crore; approximately 12 lakhs children work in hazardous occupations. Progress seems to have been made, if we take on board the National Sample Survey Organization’s 2004-2005 data, which estimates the number of working children at 90.75 lakh and census 2011, which places the number of working children In age group 5-14 years at 43-53 lakh.

Significantly, though these aspects were almost missing in the debate, no Constitution Day celebrations can be complete without a detailed recall of the communities of right-less peoples. These call for greater attention, alongside the varied groups of newly disenfranchised people now created by forces of globalization, of which the constantly re-victimized people of the Bhopal catastrophe are, till today, the first grim reminders. The traditionally improvised groups also include communities of misfortune, such as people living with disabilities, people of different sexual orientation and conduct, people declared and incarcerated along before trial—and unfortunately, this list is not exhaustive.

Last but not the least, the plight of India’s poor must be recalled. We were told in 2010 the good news that India’s poverty rate was set to decline from 51 per cent for the population in 1990 to 24 per cent over the next five years. But this analysis by the London-based Overseas Development Institute did not prove accurate. Anyhow, new global impoverishment measures and new intersectional inequality truth underscore that the impoverishment is multi-dimensional. But even to achieve this bare minimum, plenty of hard governance and non-governance organization work lies ahead.

This overall picture would be little less depressing if Parliament were to demonstrate the collective political will to celebrate the Ambedkar Jayanti by declaring war on these unconstitutional evils and developing a timeline for eliminating them. (IPA Service)