He has, to his credit also to lead a non-violent civil rights movement through social action, “the greatest upheaval of Asia, and if not of the world, after the 50’s.” It was, in fact an anti system movement aimed at changing the value of the political system and its controlling tools. It was later on became a grand mass movement against the political system. Jayaprakash Narayan always remained the ‘first servant of the country’ in the truest sense of the term because he never occupied any post of power rather he allowed people to participate and exercise their powers in the name of ‘their revolution’. He always struggled for the revival of the Lok Shakti (People’s Power) as the Magsaysay Award confirmed this view; put it on its citation about him, ‘the keeper of the conscience of his people’. The idea of social justice would remain a dream unless the system of governance is controlled by the people’s power.

Lok Shakti

Lok Shakti means the capacity of the people to resist any wrong action or to resist the authority when it is abused or misused and try to bring about the constructive changes in the system as well as society. The JP’s philosophy entails with this idea. His action was aimed at the social reconstruction, social justice and welfare of the people. He has always been in search of a suitable system in which theoretically, and politically people become final authority. JP’s idea of people’s power has its root in the ancient Indian culture. Other modern Indian thinkers like Vivekananda, Tagore, Gandhi, Arbindo and Jayaprakash Narayan were in favour of accepting the qualities of cultures of the East and the West. Their ideas belong to the Hindu tradition of political thinking that was pluralist in direction. In this system ruler was an integral part of that system and the governance was decentralized, means close to the people. It is well known that the ancient India did not adopt the totalitarian method of functioning while a State was totalitarian. “The great deal of initiative and executive power was left to local assemblies as well as religious and social corporations…” Our modern thinkers have chosen the path of amalgamation of the civilizations of the West and the spiritual as well as moral civilization of India. The former is related to political civilization for the construction of the State and the later for the guiding principles of the society. The same combination of qualities has been defined in the JP’s idea of the system of governance.

In his views, like Mahatma Gandhi, the true power of the State vests in the people of the country, not in the Government. The general notion about the power is that it is based at the apex body of the political & social system and distributed to the lower levels, is controlled by the apex body i.e., Centre. The political power holders see the society as voters and beneficiaries. But JP visualized this as a means for the welfare of the people and the complex of human relationships articulated through the variety of pressure groups, community and families. He felt the need for the changing societies according to the will of the people, and this will, should be justified on the moral grounds. This morally developed society can pose challenge against the political power if it goes wrong. Gandhi and JP both were of the view that society (people’s power) must rule over the political system. JP exercised the idea of Lok Shakti on the bases of Socialism, Sarvodaya, Communitarian, Party less Democracy and Total Revolution.

The principle of the socialism is inbuilt in JP’s idea of Lok Shakti. It is in fact, a synthesis of Gandhian revolutionary techniques of social change and Marxian Socialism. Gandhism offers creating socialism by non-violent mass action which does not concentrate on or wait for the capture of state power. JP feels the Gandhian socialist should go direct to the people and help them create a force in society which will affect the revolution in the life of the community. Revolutionary techniques of Gandhiji include constructive as well as combating activities. Non-violent Satyagrah is a kind of combating activities which is, JP feels, a unique contribution to revolutionary techniques. As Smuts says the principle of self suffering to earn the sympathy of others for the cause one feels at heart…where ordinary political method of reasoning and persuasion fail… is “Gandhi’s distinctive contribution to political method.”

While evolving the political system of governance JP reached from socialism to Sarvodaya in order to find out Lok Shakti. He was of the view that enforced socialism will only be the suppression of public liberty that fails to achieve socialism. The solution lies in creating and developing the forms of socialism voluntarily rather establishing it by the use of the power of the State. According to JP, “In other words… the remedy is to establish people’s socialism rather than State socialism. Sarvodaya is people’s socialism…, the more of people’s or voluntary socialism and the less of State-enforced socialism, the fuller and more real the socialism. Thus, the JP’s Sarvodaya is based up on Lok Shakti. The Bhoodan movement of Vinoba Bhave, as JP believed, was the fit example of the socialism based up on the Lok Sakti. He pointed out two main facets of the movement viz., (i) It was an appeal for the trusteeship to the owner of the land and (ii) In case, the appeal fails to bring about a change of heart through persuasion, Vinobaji did not keep out the method of non-cooperation and peaceful resistance.

The present Western model of democracy, JP feels, is based on the denial of human history as well as of the social nature of man. The citizens are considered as disparate voters which are against the nature of the men. His thought about the democracy was: “What I have in mind is what Gandhiji often used to emphasize, namely, that as you proceed from the bottom level of government to the top, each higher level should have less and less functions and powers.

For JP, Communitarian - party less democracy means a communitarian polity designed at the lowest level i.e., at the village level, the village people elect Gram Panchayats. At the next higher level is Panchayat Samitis, elected by Gram Panchayats. District Councils at the district level, State Assemblies at the State level and National Legislature at the national level. These all organs are elected by the organs just at the lower levels. In this way these political institutions are integrated to each other. This type of polity, JP feels, offers the ultimate scope for the “people… who are no longer and amorphous mass of human grains but organized in self-governing communities… to govern themselves.” He did not want our defunct Lok Shakti as in the western democracy. He wanted to see our people in the communitarian democracy living together in a strong, united and meaningful community.

The last stage of JP’s Lok Shakti was total revolution. While searching this system suitable for the better functioning of Lok Shakti, he devoted his whole life. The objectives of Sarvodaya and Total Revolution are same. Both the movements had an objective of bringing about social change through ‘peaceful people’s power’. Both were an expression of Lok Shakti. Both the Movements (Sarvodaya and Total Revolution) as he feels, aimed at a comprehensive revolution affecting all aspects of social as well as individual life. Both Vinoba and JP thought, the individual would also undergo a revolutionary change influenced by both the Movements.

Both the Movements were based on Gandhi’s concept of self-governing village republics. According to Jayaprakash Narayan, the long cherished desire of Sarvodaya workers for setting up Gram Swarajya or village government through bhoodan and gramdan would take concrete shape during the total revolution. This does not mean that there is no difference between Sarvodaya and Total Revolution. According to Geoffrey Ostergaard, in terms of their social content and broad objectives, the two are indistinguishable; what distinguishes them is ‘their strategies’. Ostergaard thinks that in his last phase JP was preoccupied with “the attempt to formulate and to carry through, a revised strategy for non-violent revolution in India”. Obviously, this is the assimilation of Lok Shakti in the Total Revolution.

JP’s reversion to large scale Satyagrah of the negative kind applied by Gandhi in the struggle to throw out the British Raj, Ostergaard holds, was a vital element in the ‘revised strategy for total revolution. He feels that this revised strategy looked even more significant when, in the course of the Bihar movement in 1974-75 (from which the movement for total revolution originated), the state power was challenged and plans were declared for the establishment of parallel government i.e. Janta Sarkars (people’s governments), at the village, panchayat and block levels, and for the setting up at the state level of a ‘people’s assembly’. In this way during the total revolution wide spread manifestation of Lok Shakti could be noticed.

Social Justice

Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect. The term can be amorphous and refer to sometime self-contradictory values of justice. It is generally thought of as a society which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society. Different proponents of social justice have developed different interpretations of what constitutes fair treatment and a just share. It also refers to the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.

Social justice is both a philosophical problem and an important issue in politics, religion and civil society. Most individuals wish to live in a just society, but different political ideologies have different conceptions of what a ‘just society’ actually is. The term ‘social justice’ is often employed by the political left to describe a society with a greater degree of economic fairness, which may be achieved through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or property redistribution. The right wing also uses the term social justice, but generally believes that just society is best achieved through the operation of a free market, which they believe, provides equality of opportunity and promotes compassion and charity. Both right and left tend to agree on the importance of rule of law, human rights and some form of a welfare safety net.

Social justice is considered as the principle that all persons are entitled to basic human needs, regardless of superficial differences such as economic disparity, class, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, age, sexual orientation, disability, or health. This includes the opportunity for healthy personal and social development.

Social justice is also a concept that is used to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concept of human rights and equality, and can be defined as “the way in which human rights are manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society. There are a number of forces working to achieve social justice in society. These are working towards the realization of a world where all members of a society, regardless of background, have basic human rights and an equal opportunity to access the benefits of their society.

Social justice penetrates the entire pathology of the inequality syndrome of caste, creed, sex, race, religion, wealth and privileges. The social justice in the quest for social and economic equality between equal citizenry, placed equally. It is in a sense means the rectification of injustice in the personal relations of the people, but generally speaking, it means to remove the imbalances in the political, social and economic life of the people. It seeks to give necessary aids to under privileged so that they may have equal opportunities in life.

History has provided us the steady impression of human nature, i.e., that man has a multiple nature. While Walt Whitman might say, ‘I contradict myself. I contain multitudes’, most often it has been expressed as a dichotomy, as a conflict between good and bad. While in the realm of thought, absolute certainty about good and bad is denied to him as man, he has taken the more modest path of finding “dependable ways of discerning different degrees of probability”. Goodness was justice to Moses, wisdom to Plato, love to Jesus, virtue to the Vedas and perfection to Indian Philosophy as a whole. As a religious man, he has tried to achieve goodness through religious morality by trying to substitute “for the liberating experience of Grace, the obsessive fear of committing a mistake”. As a social animal, he has tried to establish an objective moral order – “that reality in reference to which a person is wrong when he makes a false moral choice, either in his own conduct or in the judgment of another”.

Time and education beget experience, experience begets memory, “memory gets judgment and fancy, judgment begets the strength and structure and fancy begets the ornaments of a poem”. A process of structural adjustments under stresses generated by cultural novelty from internal and external sources constitutes the development of a social system. Cultural complexes compete within a social system as respective interests of groups or associations. Finally it is resolved either through integration by compatibility or by outright refection. It also applies to values that normally serve as efficient criteria of structural compatibility.

Nature and society are living organisms developing their immanent life as a process of acceptance, differentiation and rejection. It is combined with coordination of the differentiated elements. A set standard of value is reached by varying degrees of differentiation that determine the higher or lower rank of things. This applies very much to the pathology of social justice, as a conception of association based upon intelligent reason that also takes into consideration a sub-rational area of instinct.

‘Social Justice’ is too comprehensive in its connotations to be capable of definition in any simple formula. Justice, derived from Latin work justitia meaning idea of joining, is described as the conformity of our actions and our will to law. Whatever is right is according to law or justice (the Latin word rectus meaning ‘according to rule’). But social justice is a philosophy superimposed on the legal system. An Indian scholar describes it as a “balance between an individual’s rights and social control ensuring the fulfilment of the legitimate expectations of the individual… consistent with the unity of nation and needs of the society”. As such, it is an essential part of the great complex of social change for which something may have to be sacrificed for greater good. It is pervasive, the gamut of expanse ranging from minorities protection to eradication of pauperism, from liquidation of vested interests to being the foundation of industrial jurisprudence. Dean Roscoe Paund gives us a division of social justice into six conceptual issues of social interest and eight empirical jural postulates. As such social justice is hypothecated to law and ‘lawyers must regard themselves as social scientists’ Liberty and equality apart, social justice enjoins to “bring about a social order in which justice – social, economic and political … shall inform the institutions of national life”. Allen aptly says, “No obstacle should be offered but rather help afforded to practicable opportunities of self-improvement”.

As such, the concept of social justice is a philosophy super-imposed on the legal system. In the last Zakir Hussain memorial lecture, Chief Justice Ahmadi defended judicial activism against apprehensions about the lengthening nose of the Supreme Court. Only last December, he had admonished for caution on general matters regarding social justice. In retrospect, judicial activism has appeared as a moral vindication of social justice, though polluting factories have not, as yet, been replaced by purifying plants. So the concept of social justice varies from person to person, region to region and with age and climate. Even the time-machine of H. G. Wells can never bring a consensus on the issue among Manu, Solon, Hammurabi and Confucius.

In Greek physics, harmony and proportion constituted justice, regarded as an ultimate principle. Heraclites warned, “The handmaids of justice will find him (the offender) out” and Euripides made the phoenecian Maidens sing, “Measures for men equality ordained”. The sophist Antiphon looked upon it as merely conventional and so, contrary to nature. In Thrasymachus, it is the interest of the stronger. Plato defines social justice as:
the principle of a society, consisting of different types of men… who have combined under the impulse of their need for one another, and their concentration on their combination in one society, and their concentration on their separate functions, have made a whole which is perfect because it is the product and image of the whole of the human mind.

Plato’s social justice focuses for giving to every man his due. It is not a juristic definition as it skips a lot and includes a lot. The Epicureans put a premium on the means in needs out of mutuality as socially just. The Romans, while conforming to Plato provided for legal safeguards to protect the slaves and guarantee women’s equality. Seneca and Cicero followed Plato in concepts of right and justice. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas too shared with Plato the absolute and permanent nature of the concept of justice. Marsiglio and Dante were Erastian and Reformationists like Zwingli and Calvin reiterated the equation between the natural (inalienable) rights and natural duties. Milton, Hooker, Harriongton and Green were Lockean, while Bentham, J. S. Mill and the Utilitarians, like Aristotle, believed that the relative concept that was justice would change with values, conditions and changing times, Bentham was concerned with the primacy of the individual’s right to security. While Austin equated social justice with social restraint, J. S. Mill made ‘self-regarding’ proportional with ‘other-regarding’.

As regards the Contractualists, Voltaire’s cryptic statement, ‘we may not have contracted into, but we cannot contract out’ tells a lot. The arrogation of the arbitrary authority of Hobbes’ Leviathan and the dual contract of Locke to keep men in enjoyment of their rights are paradoxes ‘reconciled in Rousseau’ as Bosanquest observes. The French Revolution and Paine emphasized on the equal rights, the inalienable rights of liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression and legal equality (for the French it meant equality in law and for the British, absence of governmental interference). To Halbach, social justice was the supreme virtue. Burke put a premium on humanity, justice and reason. Kant believed in a system of rights of compulsion and punishment while Bradley stressed state and society as moral organisms. Bosanquet saw in social justice the imperative need for “maintenance of conditions favourable to the best of life”. It was, to McDougall, “purely mental or psychological”. McIver regards it as a form of service, without any mystical power, Laski said, “The rights of the individual must correspond to his contribution to society”. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) emphasized that “universal peace can succeed only if based on social justice. The Indian constitution is first and foremost, a social document.”

As William Hazlitt said,
Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. To pretend that the country or society today is not the survivor of innumerable tragedies is sheer perversity or an ignorance that is more depressing than history itself.

It is clear that social justice look for the adjustment of the various institutions concerned in the social and constitutional structure of society and state for promotion of accord on ethical and economic basis. Social justice is synonymous with moral justice and equality for establishing a just society. It is an vital variable in determining the evolution of society. Its instrumentality alone can make distribution of wealth as equally as possible for sharing of the fruits of labour and capital with rational equity.
It differs from legal justice in that it does justice between the classes of society. In more ways than one, social justice is identifiable with natural justice in that each represents “justice in itself-indeed and in truth and is not to be identified with the rules of positive morality.”

Social justice supposedly stands for an objective moral order, or, that reality vis-à-vis which a person is wrong when he makes a false moral choice, either in his own conduct or in the judgment of another. To Milton, social justice signified worship of individual freedom. To Hooker, law was essential to social life. Harrington admonished that history and observation must compromise democracy with order and progress. And Green suggested that the State must guarantee ideal rights through law. The Pound’s concept of social justice, the social interest goes around factors, such as (i) General Security involving peace, public health, etc., (ii) Security and Social Institutions like marriage, religions, etc., (iii) General Morals standing to nullify those that harm the moral order, like gambling and drinking, etc., (iv) conservation, particularly of food and minerals, etc., (v) general progress manifest in research, trade, etc., and (vi) individual rights involving wages, service conditions, etc. Pound then goes on to catalogue eight jural hypotheses. These are (i) no aggression, (ii) good faith of parties (iii) no hindrances in enjoyment of one’s acquisitions, etc., (iv) due care and caution, (v) cautious storing of dangerous things, (vi) right of employment, (vii) social sharing of individual misfortunes, and (viii) compensation to work for human wear and tear in industries.

Article 15 of the Constitution stands for non-discrimination on grounds of religion, caste, race, sex or place of birth; Article 16, for equal opportunity in employment, and Article 17, for abolition of untouchability. The welfare needs are adequately catered to by Article 23 (abolition of forced labour), Article 38 with its premium on welfare promotion, Article 42 thundering for just conditions of work and maternity relief, and Article 47 with its healthful impetus to health and hygiene.

Since 1978 Maneka Gandhi case, the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular have come to assume a more populist tone and tenor. Particular importance has come to be laid on what is termed as judicial activism. In a way, it denotes that the function of the judiciary is not only to interpret the law but to make it by approximating to the constitution’s ardour for social justice as manifest in Justice P. N. Bhagawati’s ‘goal-oriented’, Justice Krishna Iyer’s ‘humanist-reformist’ or Justice Ranganatha Mishra’s ‘community-oriented’ approaches. The cumulative results have been the emergence of new dimensions like bonded labour, human rights, slum-dwellers, women protection, and much other jurisprudence. The lesson has been learnt that participative justice is the clarion-call for social justice to bring about socio-economic change in our country. To quote justice Pathak, in the Bandhua Mukti Morcha case, “creation of a system which promises legal relief without cumbersome formality and heavy expenditure” is the goal of the Public Law Litigation (PLL) in this regard has gone a long way to increase the people’s power. All these speak for themselves on the issue that Social Justice is Justice which is not confined to a fortunate few but which takes within its sweep large masses of people in the country. Justice which penetrates and destroys all inequalities of race, sex, power, position or wealth, justice which seeks to bring about equitable distribution of social, material and political resources of the community.

Social Justice and Development

The concept of social justice has got a new implication in the context of privatisation process and liberalisation. John Rawls theory of social justice is often referred to as the only solution to the problems of a liberal capitalist society. Rawls in his famous work, A Theory of Justice, said,
It is these inequalities, presumably inevitable in the basic structure of any society, to which the principles of social justice must in the first instance apply…. The justice of a social scheme depends essentially on how fundamental rights and duties are assigned and on the economic opportunities and social conditions in the various sectors of society.

In fact, he wanted to develop a conception of justice that could provide a standard by which the distributive arrangements of a society could be measured. He was concerned with the legal protection of freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, competitive markets, private property in the means of production and the monogamous family. Writing on the heels of a period of intense political questioning, a period when the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements, followed by anti-Vietnam war agitations that challenged the basic postulates of the American liberalism, Rawls was more at home with the neo-classical economists. His emphasis on market-maximizing behaviour was to prevail over social norms and ethical values. It does not provide for an efficient social arrangement through which goods of society could be justly distributed among the members of the society. It neither ensures a social plan of equal access to economic opportunities and social conditions in various sectors of the society, nor can it guarantee quality of being fair and just in social relations of human beings. Rawls’ preference for class inequality may lead to the growth of an inequality of power and concentration of wealth in some limited segments. His idea seems supporting the theory of liberal democratic justice at the best.

The concept of social justice implies an egalitarian, non-exploitative society that always stands for basic needs to its citizenry. Both welfare capitalism and centrally planned socialist systems have been criticized for their failure to create a socially just political order. Whereas welfare schemes have resulted in the fiscal crisis, slow economic growth, and loss of moral and ethical values in society, the socialist economy has failed to ensure Marx’s vision of a non-exploitative society. To rely on the market economy to meet the basic needs of a system often creates a politically dangerous situation. This has not been refuted even by Professor Milton Friedman, the leading economic philosopher of the Free to choose doctrine. In an article in Praxis, he said that a non-market device of a minimum guaranteed salary should be provided to all workers to enable them to satisfy their basic needs. However, this measure should be accompanied by the removal of all social security and any protection for the rights of workers.

The universal theory of social justice has not yet evolved either in the Western liberal philosophy or in the socialist and communist doctrines. However, certain basic ingredients of the concept of social justice have already been projected through the international human rights documents and national constitutional documents. The basic aim of social justice is to remove the imbalances in the political, social, and economic life of the people and create a just society. The subordination of social justice to markets in the developing countries has resulted in the emergence of politics as a conscious, critical and creative participation of it in the structural relations. Politics is neither a basis of a legitimized monopoly for coercing others, nor a realm of projection of unconsciousness and unresolved personal complexes. These ideas of people like Max Weber and C. G. Jung are responsible for the sharpening of the intrinsic contradictions in the state structures. The market-based development process, structural adjustment programmes, and consumerist culture have created a psyche of impatience.

The basic policy of a political system is to assist in the self-actualising process to fulfil the inside requirements of an individual for its continuous moral growth. According to Michael Oakeshott, the state, as a corporate enterprise association, should try to achieve, not ‘benefits’ or ‘satisfaction’, but creation of conditions under which an individual can fully exercise its duties and responsibilities. “The supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements”, said John Dewey “shall be the contributions they make to the all-round growth of every members of society”. An emphasis on profitability and market efficiency provides an amoral grounding to politics. The total dependence on market economy creates crises of ethnocide, ecocide, and authoritarian attitude of political and social process. It dilutes the democratic and liberating role of the nation-state as well as the question of equity between and within the nations. In his report on Our Creative Diversity in 1995, President of World Commission on Culture and Development, Javier Perez de Cuellar said that the economic approach was probably not the best way to solve development problems, the cultural issues had also to be addressed. He said that cultural dimension of development had to be emphasized with human beings at the very centre of development dialogue.
In his address to the World Summit for Social Development, the United Nations Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali said that the goal of the constructive social integration is a ‘society for all’ in which citizen feel that the State is responsive to their needs; one that promotes “development consistent with justice for the individual, harmony among groups and social cohesion”. A healthy economic growth, not growth per se, is seen as essential to successfully meeting the challenge of peace and security, the challenge of human rights and responsibilities, the challenge of democracy and the rule of law, the challenge of social justice and the reform and the challenge of cultural renaissance and pluralism.

The question of empowerment of people is central to both social justice and growth. The 1993 Human Development Report emphasizes that market should serve people instead of people serving markets. It says “both state and market should be guided by the people. The two should work in tandem and people should be sufficiently empowered to exert effective control over both.”

Social Justice Vs. Market

During the Davos Conference of the World Economic Forum in February 1994, the then Prime Minister of India, Mr. P. V. Narasimha Rao forcefully stated that the collapse of the communist model had established the domination of the market forces. Liberalisation of trade and pursuit of policies to allow an unfettered movement of international finance, technology, and entrepreneurship to move across international frontiers, had been considered to give strong impetus to economic growth and poverty alleviation programmes. The then Indian Finance Minister, Dr. Manamohan Singh emphasized during all his budget speeches (1991-6) that the key element of the Indian structural adjustment programmes had been to give top priority to strengthening anti-poverty programmes. However, after the publication of the National Sample Survey Report in 1995, there have been a number of serious debates on the incidence of poverty. Concerning the condition of rural poverty, it has been found out that more and more people have gone below poverty line since 1989-90. From 33.67 percent in 1989-90, it has increased to 41.72 percent in 1992-3. Similarly, during 1989-93, the share of top 30 percent in the field of national consumption has gone up whereas share of bottom 70 percent in the areas of national consumption has gone down. The price rise of essential commodities has gone up whereas the governmental statistics regarding national inflation has gone down. In one of the editorials in a national daily, it was stated that
What such an economy cannot conceal is the structural settlement of islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty. Politically the government of the day is obliged to borrow increasingly to expand social security programmes. It ends up with borrowing more to repay loans and is left with shrinking budgets to found what it had borrowed for.

The external debt has touched $ 100 billion. There has been a decline in the gross saving rate from 24 percent in 1990 to 20.2 in 1994. In a country where 80 percent people depend on agricultural economy in the rural sector there has been no serious state intervention to remove rural backwardness. Mahatma Gandhi had said:

Our cities are not India. The city people are the brokers and commission agents for the big houses of Europe, America and Japan. The cities have cooperated with the bleeding process that has gone on for two hundred years.

Growing unemployment, debt service ratio, political corruption, privatization of public sector economy and deteriorating law and order situation have deeply affected the social justice programmes in India.

Many China watchers like Professor Thomas Gold believe that the market-Leninism of China would not be in a position to take it too far. It is growing into a ‘disintegrating dynasty’. Social conditions in the rural China are deteriorating everyday. The situation is not different in the Latin American countries. During the 1970s, Brazil with its growing growth rate and export-oriented economy was considered to be the ‘country of the future’. 1970s was a ‘miracle period’ for Brazil. After it became a part of the globalization in the 1980s, its ‘miracle period’ gave way to the ‘period of lost decade’. The situation in Africa is fast becoming more frightening day by day. The African political system is facing today a continuing condition of scarcity, frustration, criminalization, ethnic violence, and extra-constitutional growth. Complex and contradictory trends are becoming more and more pronounced in different crisis sectors. Alcohol-related deaths in Russia have gone on increasing because of “despair caused by economic hardships because of market-oriented reforms”. Likewise, corruption in China has gone to such a proportion that President Jiang Zemin has warned that it threatened to ruin the Party itself. In India, the issue of corruption and other social issues have affected the very foundation of the political system itself.

It has been observed that extreme poverty and income disparities often exist along with rapid increases in GNP and other indicators of growth. Some critics regard it as a deep disappointment or a ‘moral outrage’. The trickle-down theory and Kuznet’s inverted ‘U’ theory of income distribution has not been very successful in checking the growth of internal colonies. The real progress of human beings involves much more than what is often referred to as economic growth. As market economy is concerned with a limited upper layer of population, it fails to initiate a sense of empowerment among the marginalized majority of the society.

Economic growth by itself does not lead to the democratisation of society. Neither it strengthens its institutional processes nor it automatically creates a linkage between growth and social justice. This could only be possible if the infrastructural forces of social democracy are committed towards egalitarian ethics. Just governance is necessarily multi-dimensional. Besides, targeting of resources efficiently, coordination of conflicting objectives, and the management of deep societal issues, the ruling elites in a system ought to have credibility and commitment towards social justice.

Since 1950, the political and economic policies of India have failed to evolve what Professor V. R. Mehta calls a new faith in the capacity of the democratic structures to cope with the socio-economic issues facing the country. He said:

The economic and political developments in the country have, in fact, not only tended to increase economic disparities and inequalities but have also created ominous links between those who control economic power and those who control political power.

Social justice in a system is the product of social construction of difference, concentric patterns of political and intellectual acquiescence, and the language of political economy. It cannot be achieved through what Michael Ignatieff refers to as ‘bureaucratic transfer of incomes among strangers’. A proper and meaningful policy planning process has to be evolved to integrate the concept of social justice with the political economy interaction. What we need is a new approach, a comprehensive alternative development, and an integrated vision of the people-oriented social justice schemes.

Conclusion

Importance of the citizens’ duties as well as its involvement in the system of governance reflects in the ideas and deeds of the Lok Nayak. His insistence on “systematic mass participation and identification of rulers and ruled” that have placed JP in the company of political theorists who have tended to “prepare the way for totalitarianism.” It has also been seen that under his guidance most part of the Janata Sarkar’s programme was constructively delivered social justice through regulating the public distribution system, checking corruption at the lower levels of administration, implementing the land reform laws, settling disputes through the age old custom of reconciliation and arbitration, assuring a fair deal to Harijans, curbing social evils like tilak and dahej. It became possible only because at every stage of its functioning the Lok Shakti was visible.#