MNS:- The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was an iconic personality, a close associate of Gandhiji, a leader in the freedom struggle, a person who along with Jawaharlal Nehru was at the helm of affairs in the early years of our existence as a free country. Delivering the Annual Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture on ‘Physical Integration and Emotional Inconsonance’ organized by All India Radio (AIR) here today, he said that his contributions were manifold; above all, history and generations of Indians will remember him as the man who presided over the process that resulted in the integration of the Indian States following the end of British rule and the termination of the “vague and undefined” relationship that princely States (together constituting 40 percent of the Indian land mass) had with the United Kingdom as the paramount power.
He said that the process of integrating 554 large and miniscule States was complex. It involved intricate negotiations on political, administrative and financial matters as also those relating to the armed forces of these units. It was almost completed by the time the Constitution of India came into force on January 26, 1950. The passage of time was to show that this integration of the minds, not only by the residents of the erstwhile princely states but by citizens on the national scale was to be a longer process, at times torturous, and covered all regions and all segments of population in our vast land. Nor was this unanticipated; as early as 1902, Rabindranath Tagore had observed that ‘unity cannot be brought about by enacting a law that all shall be one.’
The Vice President said that the size and diversity of the Indian landscape adds to the difficulty of finding solutions. A population of 1.25 billion dispersed over 4,635 communities 78 percent of whom are not only linguistic and cultural but social categories. The human diversities are both hierarchical and spatial. ‘The de jure WE, the sovereign people is in reality a fragmented ‘we’, divided by yawning gaps that remain to be bridged.’ Around 30 per cent of our people live below the official poverty line and the health and education indicators, for the population as a whole, despite recent correctives, leave much to be desired. There are, in addition, problems arising out of Naxalism and insurgency in some areas where the writ of the State runs in name only, demands for a better deal for the States of the Union, as also for tribes, dalits and most of the minorities within them. Each of these also relates to the requirements of fraternity and the achievement of national integration.
He said that hard issues agitating the public mind in different regions have come to the fore and seek acceptable solutions. B. G. Verghese has rightly observed that ‘as India’s multitudinous but hitherto dormant diversities come to life, identities are asserted and jostle for a place in the sun.’ He lists among these issues of majority and minority, centre and periphery, great and little traditions, rural and urban values, tradition and modernity and concludes that ‘this management of diversity within multiple transitions is a delicate and complex process aggravated by inexorable population growth.’
He opined that one obvious reason for this is the ripening and deepening of the democratic process in the country, the awareness generated by it, and the terms and shape of the dialogue propelled by it. Another is the failure of the State to comprehend the dimensions of change and the resultant failure to respond appropriately, without undue procrastination, and adapt existing mechanisms to newer requirements. As a result, the immediate has taken precedence over the remote; the obvious over the less obvious. There has been a shift of focus, perhaps a narrowing of the vision, with the national receding behind the regional or local. This is also evident in the domain of foreign policy where complex questions of national interest are involved and should not be impinged upon by transitory considerations.
The Vice President suggested that a beginning can, and must, be made with the loadstar of our national destiny, the Constitution. Experience shows that its provisions have been used creatively to expand the area of rights, to redress grievances, to allow greater space for federal units in specific areas. The need of the hour is to reinvigorate this process, to explore and make better use of existing constitutional provisions; above all, to ensure better delivery. Prescriptions of despair, unwise or impracticable, do not help the process.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/vp-delivers-sardar-patel-memorial-lecture-on-physical-integration-emotional-consonance/
