Book of Integration Council New - Ministry of Home Affairs

SHRI JYOTI BASU
DEAR SHRI MANMOHAN SINGHJI,
Thank you for your letter of 7 th October 2008 asking me to attend the next
meeting of the National Integration Council enclosing the agenda. I regret that it
would not be possible for me, for reasons of disadvantageous physical
conditions that I am in, to be personally present in the meeting. I shall take this
opportunity to make a few suggestion on the agenda for discussion.
We have long been sending out concrete suggestions to the successive
government of India on the sensitive and important issue of national integration.
We have failed to see yet the impact of propositions in matters of policy of the
Government of India. There must be a change made from the present policy
being pursued in order to make the issue of national integration a vibrant reality
and to keep the nation from falling apart. For this political will is necessary.
The crux of the Constitution is the set of principles known as the directive
principles of state policy. These principles include adequate means of livelihood
for every citizen and the right to work; an economic system, which does not
result in the concentration of wealth; right to education and provision for free,
and compulsory education for children; living wage for workers and equal work
for equal pay for men and women.
None of these principles could be implemented thanks to the bias to the
rich of the socio-economic system that prevails in the counrty. The gap between
the virtuous intentions and the actuality of practice stares us in the face 58 years
since the adoption of the Constitution.
The period since the independence has been marked by a continuing crisis
because of the above-noted factors in the nation's economy. This has served to
stress and accelerate not only the problem but has harmed the national integration
process itself. India has been principally an agrarian country with a superstructure
of industries. After we gained freedom from British colonial rule, despite the
land reforms act of the mid-1950s and scores of pious declarations and promises,
the successive central government led by the Congress and other parties refused
to go in for land reforms. Concentration of land and rural inequalities, and a
severe persecution of the peasant masses continue unabated. A central legislation
on minimum wages in the rural stretches is yet to be implanted properly.
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