Do it yourself

  The preamble to the Constitution of India declares India to be a sovereign socialist (emphasis added) secular democratic republic. The Supreme Court of India has held in Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala Case (1973) and S R Bommai vs Union of India (1994 ), that the Preamble is an integral part of the Constitution. The Court held that the Preamble is not the supreme power or source of any restriction or prohibition but it plays an important role in the interpretation of statutes and provisions of the Constitution. The question is “whether, in the normal course, every legislation, policy, programs and practices framed and pursued by the Parliament and Executive ought to be congruent with the Preamble, to be constitutionally legitimate? Is it unreasonable to expect that the legislature and policymakers put all legislation, policies, programs and practices framed by them through the test of this declaration, before these are implemented? To clarify, these questions need to ...

A   new study   by the World Inequality Lab highlighted one of the most obvious facts, i.e., the income and wealth inequalities in India have been rising and are now worse than the colonial period. The study highlights that “Inequality declined post-independence till the early 1980s, after which it began rising and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Trends of top income and wealth shares track each other over the entire period of the study. Between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration. By 2022-23, the top 1% income and wealth shares (22.6% and 40.1%) are at their highest historical levels and India’s top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil and the US.” The study suggests that “A restructuring of the tax code to account for both income and wealth, and broad-based public investments in health, education and nutrition are needed to enable ...

India shall complete the seventy-sixth year of its independence from British colonial rule in a couple of weeks. The nation has progressed materially on various fronts in these years. However, the direction of progress has not been on the most desirable path. Of course, coming from much behind, India has joined the world’s leading economies in terms of the size of GDP. The development of physical infrastructure has been remarkable in the past couple of decades. India has attained strong positions in the areas like IT services, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, etc. However, the development of social parameters has not gathered the desired momentum. The regional and household disparities have remained wide and deep. Income and wealth inequalities have continued to widen despite a strong affirmative action plan in terms of reservation in education and government jobs for the backward castes and communities. The constitutional guarantee of “Equal Rights” is far from fully implemented. The...

 Being the finance minister of India is arguably one of the most challenging jobs in the world. The incumbent has to deal with 28 Federal States and 8 Union territories, each having a distinct socio-economic and fiscal profile. Unlike some developed countries like the USA, the Federal States in India are not autonomous and/or self-reliant in fiscal matters. These states rely on the Union Government for financial resources. Besides, the finance minister of India is limited by the constitutional mandate of being “socialist”. To make things more complicated, implementation of GST; acceptance of the recommendations of 15 th  Finance Commission; and abolition of the planning commission have materially curtailed the powers of the union finance minister. Technically speaking, all the policies formulated and proposed to be implemented by the union finance ministry must pass the test of “socialism”, since the Constitution of India overrides all the legal provisions and policy directi...