Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice

G S Oinam *

One billion Indians and 30 millions of injustice cases are pending in the court tell the dark stories of India. In which small state Manipur registered more then 10000 cases are pending in Guwahati High court only sans thousands of pending cases at district session courts. National Human Rights Commission receives more than 75,000 complains in a year; the National Crime Bureau registered 27,000 cases of violence against Dalits in 2006, 32,461 cases of murders, 19348 rapes, 7618 dowry death and 36617 molestation cases.

In Manipur, most of the urgent cases related to National Security Act (NSA) are pending and waiting for long queues. Service related cases are life long and never ending story. While many of these cases involve disputes between individuals, government, there are far too many instances of families, local communities and groups of people playing judge and jury and imparting" Instant Justice". State government has to face three critical problems at one time.

One, state has to face the anger of public for injustice. Two, improve the law and order in the state. Three, strategic planning and development. Is the state government going to face public anger first or counter the insurgency in the state?

This question mark can be answered by Amartya Sen's idea of justice! From his experiences on land acquisition by the West Bengal government for Nano plan and industrialization, Mr. Sen viewed that there was an issue to be addressed here even if you were to argue it was for the greater good. The sets of people benefiting and paying the price are often different.

One reason that he think acquisition should be the last resort, was that while it may be justified as a greater good, when it benefit some and costs others, then the question of what you are going to do for those paying the price arises. The second point to recognize was that in a society where agriculture is the main employer, land is what you rely on.

When you are poor, your life is insecure and you don't want to be told that your life will go much better if you give up your land. It is not just a sentimental attachment, but rather it's the thought that "my god! This is the basis on which I live." He was very supportive of West Bengal's plans of industrialization but they made two mistakes.

More public discussion would have helped alleviate the fear for those for whom there would be some loss involved. Basic policy was right. Without industry West Bengal would continue to remain poor, and even if a new government comes, the people who come in will face exactly the same problem. And having created a situation where the whole industrialization process was seen with a sense of suspicious then you have to face the question that what are you going to do? To leave the West Bangle to its poverty or to face the anger of the people was the question?

Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice(newly released book )give us outline of more practical alternative to the prevalent theory of justice, which he says concerns itself mostly with describing a just society, a utopian ideal that we are unlikely to ever achieved. It took Mr. Sen 25 years, a Nobel Prize in economics and widespread reorganization as a leading public intellectual to write his book on philosophy. But the idea of justice has been every bit worth and wait.

Definition of Justice:

Justice is a complex idea, but it is very important to understand that justice has much to do with everyone being treated fairly. Even though that connection has been well discussed by the leading political philosopher of our time, John Rawls, Amartya Sen argued that he neglects a couple of important connections. One neglect is the central recognition that a theory of justice has to be deeply concerned with systematic assessment of how to reduce injustice in the world, rather than only with the identification of what a hypothetical "perfectly just society" would look like.

There may be no agreement on the shape of perfect justice (and also perfect justice will hardly be achievable even if people did agree about what would be immaculately just), but we can still have reasoned agreement on many removable cases of manifest injustice, for example , slavery, or subjugation of women, or widespread hunger and deprivation , or lack of schooling of children, or absence of available and affordable health care.

Second, analysis of justice has to pay attention to the lives that people are actually able to lead, rather than exclusively concentrating only on the nature of "just institutions." In India, as anywhere else, we have to concentrate on removing injustices that are identifiable and that can be remedied.

On Human Rights & Justice:

The idea of human rights is much used in practice, and is very powerfully invoked by activist these days often with admirable effect. However, the critics of the approach of human rights argue that the idea of such non legal rights is lacking in foundation. A frequently asked question is; where do human rights come from and what gives them force? One of the aims of the book is to show in what sense – and in what ways- human rights have strong foundation relates also to the basic analysis of social justice, which too is very dependent on the opportunity of public discussion.

It is not so much that the concept of justice "has come only to mean human rights, "but that the two related ideas have to be considered together. It is also important to remember that the idea of human rights has been used, often in very informal ways and frequently without being called human rights, for a very long time in the world history- not just in the 20th and 21st centuries. For example, Ashoka's discussion of everyone's rights to speak and to be heard by others , or Akbar's championing of the right to religious freedom, belongs to the subjects matter of what is now called human rights. And they also relate to Ashoka's and Akbar's conceptions of social justice.

Justice in Democracy:

One of the main arguments of the book is the role of open public discussion for our understanding of the demands of justice. Indeed, democracy can be seen as "government by discussion" ( an approach made famous by John Stuart Mill ), and the pursuit of justice can be much enhanced by good democratic practice- not just well fought elections but also open and well aimed public discussion, with a free and vigorous media.

In an early book, Amartya Sen discussed a remark of a very poor and nearly illiterate peasant. It is not difficult to silence us, he said, "but this is not because we cannot speak." In that quiet confidence there are reasons of hope for the future of justice and democracy in India. In any democracy, what a government does depends not only on its own priorities but also on the priorities of the opposition and what they demand, Mr.Sen said in an exclusive interview of ET-NOW Television.

On Neeti and Nyaya

The distinction between neeti and nyaya is not a quintessentially Indian or eastern thought. It figures everywhere. We have, however, had a most clear headed discussion of it. The distinction-neeti is about arrangements and rules, about the right thing to do.Nyaya are about what's happening in the world.

So neeti is all about rules and arrangements and institutions and they don't necessarily deliver. In the context of democracy, the democratic institutions might exist but their utilisations might be quite limited, partly through our own fault because we don't engage enough, partly it's about the way the media is organized and its limits or the way the parties are organized. That immediately leads to a clash between the intentions of the neeti and the actual realizations of the neeti.

On Human Behaviour:

People do think about behaviour. But often it is made to play a subsidiary role. You set up the right institutions and everything will be fine. Like democracy, you have elections, what more do you want?

The fact is that you need a lot more to make a democratic work. You need to engage with it a lot more. It needs politics, media; it needs editors to be courageous and innovative. Why is that we can cover famine very well, but cannot cover the continued under nourishment of the largest under nourished population in the world? This is the kind of behaviour lacuna that we do not think enough about human behaviour.

It is not a question of moral education like the Christian Sunday schools but rather about thinking more widely about thinking more widely about our role in the society. Not forgetting our own concerns but recognizing that we live in a society and that there are other people around. It depends ultimately on the importance of reasoning and public reasoning.

On Injustice: First, we have a pretty strong sense of injustice. Whether untouchability here or slave and torture elsewhere in the world, our first immediate sentiment is in the most natural sense one of injustice rather than justice. Second, all our policies relate to injustice because none of our policies, even ones like the employment guarantee scheme, will make the world perfect just. It will only make the world little unjust.

The third point is that the mainstream theories of justice deal with perfect justice and start by asking the question "what would a perfectly just world look like?" We may not all agree what it may look like, some would say equal economic opportunity while some one else may emphasise personal liberty more.

We could debate these but we don't need to resolve this debate to decide what needs to be done now. If removing injustice is the goal, and then starting with the question "what constitute perfect justice?' like the mainstream theories of justice do, seem to start in the wrong place.

On Capital Punishment:

Novel laureate Amartya Sen is in opinion that he opposed to death penalty in general and would not want it given to Ajmal Kashab, the lone survivor Pakistani terrorist in Mumbai attacked or anyone else." I do discussed the need for prevailing practices, including capital punishment, to be scrutinized by the public reasoning , and note the fact that capital punishment is most used in countries with relatively little public discussion, the three biggest users are China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Next come the US, and I discuss why I disagree with those judges in the US Supreme Court who think that argument coming from elsewhere (like Europe) are no relevance of America." Mr Sen said.

On Recent Government Policy:

Novel laureate Mr.Sen is opinion that NREGA has basically done a lot well in the country. His frustration has always tended to be when the people do one good thing but neglected the other side. Judge on its own, has it been able to reach a lot of people who would have otherwise not been reached? Has it increased the income levels of some and thus provided some level of security and been able to tackle to some extent the problem of undernourishment?

Yes, it has, but the problem of undernourishment, which is very widely spread and a real blot on India's record that you won't be able to remove just on the strength of it.

Therefore, the discussion on right to food is important. Reaching undernourished people of the world is difficult and in India it's challenging and for that we have to attack it on many fronts. Employment guarantee is one of them.