People of India ultimate custodians of Constitution : Prez

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : The President of India Ram Nath Kovind on November 26, 2018, inaugurated the Constitution Day celebrations organised by the Supreme Court to mark the anniversary of the adoption of our Constitution on November 26, 1949, in New Delhi. Speaking on the occasion, the President said that the Constitution is the modern scripture of independent India. It is our suprema lex. However, it is more than just a collection of articles and clauses. For us Indians, it is an inspirational and living document, an ideal of the society we are and the even better society we are striving to be.

The President said that Dr B R Ambedkar and his colleagues in the Constituent Assembly were remarkably large-hearted and generous in their approach. They allowed for flexibility in amending the Constitution and were accommodative of various streams of thought. Above all, they trusted the wisdom of future generations to expand the frontiers of freedom and liberty, justice and fraternity, fairness and equality. They trusted future generations to not just amend the Constitution’s text, but to constructively re-imagine and re-interpret it for changing times, he said.

The President said that the people of India are the ultimate custodians of the Constitution. The Constitution empowers the citizen, but the citizen too empowers the Constitution – by following it, by adhering to it, by protecting it, and by persevering to make it more meaningful with words and deeds. The Constitution is nobody’s preserve – and it is everybody’s preserve, he said.

The President said that perhaps the most moving word in the Constitution is “justice”. “Justice” is a single word. “Justice” is a complex and liberating expression. And “justice” is both the means and the goal of our constitutional and nation-building process. Justice must also be seen in a wider context – in terms of society’s evolution and its changing beliefs, lifestyles and technologies, he added.

The President said that social justice remains a touchstone of our nation building. Social justice is about providing equal opportunities. Such a conceptualisation of justice was valid in 1949 and broadly remains relevant today. No doubt the concept of justice – political, economic and social – has a resilient core but it needs to be thought of in innovative ways. It requires to be applied afresh to emerging situations – situations that may not have existed or been foreseen when our Constitution framers were at work.

The President said that in India, the idea of social justice too has expanded to encompass modern civic parameters – such as clean air; less polluted cities and towns, rivers and water bodies; sanitary and hygienic living conditions; and green and eco-friendly growth and development. These are all implications of environmental and climate justice, within the framework of social justice. If a child suffers from asthma due to air pollution it would be considered a gap in providing social justice.

The President said that innovation has also worked for the benefit of disadvantaged sections of society. A case in point is India’s experience with technology-enabled, Aadhar-linked direct benefit transfers. These have plugged corruption, leakages and exclusion from India’s welfare programmes.

The President said that innovation and technology have brought gains. But they have also brought questions of access and privacy. For example, there is the dilemma of weighing data privacy against the use of data for the greater common good. Within these competing imperatives lie competing notions of justice. And such issues will probably stay with us through the 21st century, he added, according to a PIB release.