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Right to Develop as a Human Right

 

April 7, 2004

  • All the terms concerned here, ‘right', ‘development', ‘human' and ‘human right' need a definition.
  • It must be considered in the physical, vital, mental and spiritual planes.
  • Also they must be defined in terms of survival, growth, development and evolution.
  • A comprehensive consideration is the arena of a theoretical dissertation.
  • A concise explanation that is precise is called for, for a press conference.
  • Because it is concise and precise, it is not permitted to overlook significant aspects.
  • An election context in an important country, is in some sense, an international political context.
  • Human genius in the collective condenses the content of the context to expressive phrases.
  • He who does so in poetry becomes a great poet of universal dimensions.
  • In prose, thousands of such slogans have been developed by the collective as ell as the Individual. ‘Human Right' itself is such a phrase. The term gentleman contains the civilised spirit of ages as lived by some aristocrats and retains its full flavour to this day. Sanatana dharma, Christian charity, feminine sweetness, karma, dharma are some such phrases.
  • Elections are democratic revolutions. Such phrases are coined during those times and come to stay.
  • At the next lower level, proverbs or famous poetic phrases embody human wisdom.
  • Spirituality is Prosperity; theoretical clarity is practical effectivity are phrases that capture the flavour of The Life Divine in human life. Miracles are no more miracles render the line of Savitri ‘Miracles will become commonplace'. They are words that can come to stay in the language and become household phrases in future.
  • To raise the phrase ‘Right to Develop' especially as a human right to that level of international recognition is the present aim.
  • A rat has no right to live today except by its cunning circumstances. There was a physical period in history when MAN was a rat. Might was right. The strong, in those days, enjoyed the privilege and pleasure of destroying the weak. It is no longer so.
  • A crowd could stone an innocent woman to death for the same act they all did, whether she was innocent or not.
  • Suspected as a witch, she had the option of drowning in the Seine or being burnt by a gleeful, malicious crowd. Amphitheatre was constructed to enjoy seeing a man being torn to pieces by a hungry lion.
  • From such physical periods we have travelled a long way to a society of law and order where the right to strike, right to legal justice, right to education, right to cash a 100 rupee note etc., has emerged as social facts.
  • The UN has been, after a fashion, crusading for a host of causes many of which are successful.
  • The Indian National Congress has declared that it would guarantee employment if it comes to power.
  • As long as a man worked on his land or produced a product, he had a right to work by himself, if he was interested in living.
  • With a large portion of life organised by the government and society, they have a RIGHT to guarantee employment to the citizens.
  • Without employment, one cannot survive.
  • Now we talk of Right to Develop as a Human Right.
  • There are days when it is true to say "I may be a prisoner but I have a right to food and not to be treated violently."
  • When a man had education, capacity, circumstances, motivation to develop, caste in India and class in England denied him the right to develop on his own. This is no longer true.
  • As right to education has become compulsory, the time has come to say the society has a RIGHT to compel or at least encourage one to develop as long as he has the capacity and motivation to develop.
  • In other words, our famous phrase brings Man the Individual to the centre of the picture in this respect, even as Martin Luther announced Man's right to relate to God without an intermediary.
  • Elections are occasions not for theory but for practical programmes. But programmes acquire public charm only in the light of their theoretical eminence.
  • Practically a thousand rights can be illustrated - a failed student's right to examine his paper, a woman's right not to be beaten or deserted, the city's right to keep it clean, the post office's right to deliver letters, etc. - it is not so difficult.
  • Born as a MAN, he has not only a right to survive and grow, but a right to develop. This is in the evolutionary context of spiritual evolution.
  • Issues to be spoken must be TOPICAL as well as politically significant.
  • In these days of rampant corruption, and fraud in election, we can draw up a long list of RIGHTS.
  • To select ten of them of which ONE will catch the imagination of the Indian voters as well as international interest is our view.
  • Some of them are:

1.      Employment must be guaranteed - Guaranteed employment.

2. The voter has a right to demand a FAIR election. Wherever booths are captured, that constituency must be disqualified from voting. This practice exists in England for over 200 years.

3. Government departments have a right to reply to letters on time.

4. Children have a right to provide for aged parents.

5. Parents have a right not to beat their children.

6. Government has a right to supply electricity non-stop.

7. Universities have a right to maintain academic standards.

8. Newspapers have a right to publish only FACTS.

9. Companies have the right to ensure the quality of products they claim.

10.  Now, or in the future, ALL the facilities and circumstances that encourage the individual to DEVELOP must be offered to people by the society and the government as a matter of right.  The right to exist, to develop, demand, right to information, right to hygienic, sanitary conditions, right to higher education, right of the farmer to secure the findings of the laboratories, etc.

All of this sums up on his SIDE as being utterly truthful in all circumstances. Only in that measure can any of these rights be possible and come to be established by the society.



story | by Dr. Radut