India’s New Rights Agenda: Genesis, Promises, Risks

Since 2004, India has introduced a series of progressive national bills that enact a right to new civic entitlements, ranging from information, work and education to forest conservation, food and basic public services. What explains the emergence of these laws? How are the rights conceived by these acts conceptualized, operationalized and pursued? What are the promises, challenges and risks—legal, political and economic—of enshrining socioeconomic entitlements as formal statutory rights? This paper engages these questions. In part 1, I argue that three slow-burning processes since the 1980s, distinct yet related, catalyzed India’s new rights agenda: high socio-legal activism, rapid uneven development and the expanding popular foundations of its federal parliamentary democracy. Significantly, all three processes exposed the growing nexus between political corruption and socioeconomic inequality. Equally, however, each raised popular expectations for greater social justice that were only partly met. Part 2 of the paper evaluates India’s new rights agenda. The promise of these new laws is threefold: they breach the traditional division of civil, political and socioeconomic rights, devise innovative governance mechanisms that enable citizens to see the state and provide fresh incentives for new political coalitions to emerge across state and society. Several risks exist, however. Official political resistance from above and below, the limited capacities of judicial actors, state bureaucracies and social forces and the relatively narrow base of many of these new movements endanger the potential of these reforms. The paper concludes by considering several imperatives that India’s evolving rights movement must confront to realize its ambition.

印度的新權利議程: 起源、承諾、風險

自2004年以來，印度出台了一系列進步性的全國性法案，規定了包括從信息、工作和教育到森林保護、食品及基本公共服務等方面的新的法定公民權利 。這些法律的出現說明了什麼？這些法案中構想的權利是如何被定義、實施及實現的？將社會經濟權利正式奉為法定權利將帶來什麼樣的法律、政治及經濟方面的承諾、挑戰和風險？這些是本文所要探討的問題。首先，本文提出， 是二十世紀八十年代以來的三個雖然迥異卻相互關聯的緩慢發展的過程催生了印度的新人權議程， 即高漲的社會法律維權運動，快速而不均衡的發展， 及聯邦議會民主的民眾基礎的不斷擴大。值得注意的是，所有這三個過程都暴露出政治腐敗和社會經濟不平等之間日益緊密的聯繫。同樣的，每一過程也增加了人們對更大的社會公正的期望。其次，本文評估了印度的新權利議程。本文認為這些新法律提供了三方面的承諾：它們突破了民事、政治和社會經濟權利之間的傳統區分，設計了能使公民看到國家的地位的新穎治理機制，並鼓勵新政治聯盟在整個國家和社會的出現。但是這些新法案也帶來了一些風險。如來自上下各方面的官方政治阻力，司法人員、國家官僚機構和社會力量有限的能力；而許多這些新運動相對狹窄的基礎也會危及這些改革的潛力。最後，本文探討了印度發展中的權利運動要實現其抱負所必須要解決的問題。

Translated from English by Xin Huang