Question

Read the snippets from the debates held in the Constituent Assembly. Identify the interest groups. Discuss what kind of interest groups exist in contemporary India. How do they function?

Answer 1

Snippets from the debates

• K.T. Shah said that the right to use full employment could and should be made real by a categoric obligation on the part of the state to provide useful work to every citizen who was able and qualified.
• B. Das spoke against classifying the functions of the government as justiciable and non-justiciable. “I think it is the primary duty of Government to remove hunger and render social justice to every citizen and to secure social security…”. The teeming millions do not find any hope that the Union Constitution… will ensure them freedom from hunger, will secure them social justice, will ensure them a minimum standard of living and a minimum standard of public health”.

Ambedkar’s answer was as follows:

• “The Draft Constitution as framed only provides a machinery for the government of the country. It is not a controversy to install any particular party in power as has done in some countries. Who should be in power is left to be determined by the people, as it must be, if the system is to satisfy the tests of democracy.
• On land reform Nehru said, that social forces were such that law could not stand in the way of reforms, interesting reflection on the dynamic between the two. “If law and Parliament do not fit themselves into the changing picture, they cannot control the situation”. On the protection of the tribal people and their interests, leaders like Jaipal Singh
  were assured by Nehru in the following words during the Constituent Assembly „ debates: “It is our intention and our fixed desire to help them as possible; in as efficient a way as possible to protect them from possibly their rapacious neighbours occasionally and to make them advance”.
• Even as the Constituent Assembly adopted the title Directive Principles of State Policy to the rights that courts could not enforce, additional principles were added with unanimous acceptance. These included K. Santhanam’s clause that the state shall organise village punchayats and endow them with the powers and authority to be effective units of local self government.
• T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar added the clause for promotion of cottage industries on co-operative lines in rural areas. Veteran parlimentarian Thakurdas Bhargava added that the state should organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern lines.
• Interest groups are people outside the government who support the political parties to gain favours from them when they are in power. These are private organisation formed to influence public policy. They are non political groups whose main aim is to uphold their own interest.Political parties are not political parties. In India interest groups adopt two methods i.e. to influence the legislative committees and to help people at the time of natural calamity.
• In contemporary India ASSOCHAM, FICCI, Labour Unions, Student’s union,Farmers union, women’s organisations are example of pressure group and interest groups.