The Emerging Challenges To Civil Society

By P. Chidambaram

Summary

This pamphlet prints the Sixth Nani A. Palkhivala Memorial Lecture, ‘The Emerging Challenges to Civil Society,’ delivered by P. Chidambaram — then Union Home Minister — in Mumbai on 5 October 2009 and published the same month by the Nani A. Palkhivala Memorial Trust. The front matter pays tribute to Palkhivala (1920–2002), recalling his five-month argument before a thirteen-judge Supreme Court bench in the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati case that established the ‘basic structure’ doctrine, and his later defence of the citizen during the 1975–77 Emergency. It also supplies brief biographies of Palkhivala and of Chidambaram, and a foreword by Y. H. Malegam, the Trust’s Chairman.

In the lecture itself, Chidambaram opens by reflecting on Nehru’s 1947 ‘tryst with destiny,’ arguing it expressed a sense of destination rather than predetermined destiny. In the rendered pages he frames the challenges to civil society around two registers: inclusive economic growth and internal security. On the economic side he defends inclusive growth against the costs of subsidies and entitlement spending, citing budget figures, public-sector bank lending and tax-base data. On security he points to an outdated, ill-trained and ill-paid police system, the growing insurgency in the North-Eastern states, the Naxalite movement, and cross-border terrorism and terrorist cells based in India. The Trust’s note frames these as issues vital to the stability and development of Indian society and invites public debate.

Key points

• Prints the Sixth Nani A. Palkhivala Memorial Lecture, delivered by Home Minister P. Chidambaram on 5 October 2009 in Mumbai.

• Published October 2009 by the Nani A. Palkhivala Memorial Trust (c/o Forum of Free Enterprise, Mumbai).

• Front matter honours Palkhivala’s role in the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati ‘basic structure’ case and his stand during the Emergency.

• Includes biographies of Palkhivala and Chidambaram plus a foreword by Trust Chairman Y. H. Malegam.

• Chidambaram opens by reinterpreting Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’ as a statement of destination rather than fixed destiny.

• Argues for inclusive growth, weighing the fiscal cost of subsidies and entitlements against the imperative of equity.

• Identifies internal security threats: an outdated police force, North-Eastern insurgency, the Naxalite movement, and cross-border terrorism.

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