BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Political Science 2 2023-24 Question Paper with Solutions

Coalition politics is the politics of government by alliance: where no single party wins a majority of seats, two or more parties agree on a common minimum programme, share ministerial offices in an agreed proportion, and together command a working majority in the legislature. The word comes from the Latin coalitio, to grow together.

One factor responsible for its rise in India: the decline of one-party dominance. The Congress system, which delivered single-party majorities from 1952 to 1967, broke down, and from 1989 to 2014 no party won a Lok Sabha majority, so government at the Centre was possible only by alliance, through the National Front, the United Front, the NDA and the UPA.

Other factors that would earn the mark equally: the rise of strong regional parties, the multi-party system produced by India's social diversity, caste and regional mobilisation after 1990, and the fragmentation of the vote.

Other differences available: Marx sees two large classes, the elitists see the few and the many; Marx's theory is normative and revolutionary, the elite theory is descriptive and pessimistic; and Marx expects change through class struggle, the elitists through the circulation of elites.

4. The state alone holds the monopoly of legitimate force, which is Weber's definition of the state.
5. To maintain public order and vindicate the law, since a law never enforced ceases to be law.

One drawback: the obligation is entirely one-sided, leaving the subject with duties and no rights, and no remedy whatever against tyranny.

Other drawbacks available: the theory is unverifiable, since a claim to divine authority cannot be tested and every successful usurper has made it; it is unhistorical, since states have arisen by conquest, contract and evolution; and it is incompatible with democracy, equality and popular sovereignty.

Why it is a prerequisite:

1. Democracy means government by the people, and women are half the people. A legislature that does not include them is not representative, whatever its formal credentials.
2. Interests that are not represented are not addressed. Questions of safety, health, childcare, water, sanitation and property rights receive attention when those most affected are in the room, and studies of panchayats headed by women have found measurably greater investment in drinking water and related goods.
3. Political power is the means by which other equalities are secured. Legal and social equality depend on legislation and on administration, so exclusion from political power perpetuates exclusion everywhere else.
4. It changes the perception of women's role, in law-making, in the party and in society, and creates leadership for the next generation.

The harm principle, stated by J.S. Mill in On Liberty (1859):

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

And: "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Its effect is to divide conduct into self-regarding acts, which affect only the actor and are beyond the reach of law, and other-regarding acts, which alone may be restrained. It therefore excludes paternalism, coercing a person for his own good, and legal moralism, coercing him because the majority disapproves.

The utilitarian perspective holds that the citizen ought to obey the state because obedience produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The state exists to promote the general welfare, and it does so by maintaining order, enforcing contracts, protecting persons and property and providing public services, all of which would be impossible if disobedience were general.

The reasoning is consequentialist, not contractual: obligation rests not on any promise given, nor on any right the state possesses, but simply on the useful results of a settled habit of obedience. Jeremy Bentham rejected the social contract as a fiction and natural rights as "nonsense upon stilts", holding that the true reason for obedience is that the probable mischiefs of obedience are less than the probable mischiefs of resistance.

It follows that the obligation is conditional: where disobedience would produce more happiness than obedience, the citizen is at liberty, and indeed obliged, to disobey.

Both Gandhism and Marxism condemn exploitation, both want to end the domination of the many by the few, and both look forward to a society without class. They differ almost completely on how to get there, and on what a human being is.

Points of agreement, which the best answers state: both oppose exploitation and unearned wealth; both want economic equality and the dignity of labour; both are anti-imperialist; both regard the existing order as unjust; and both, remarkably, look forward to a stateless society, Marx by the withering away of the state and Gandhi by enlightened anarchy.

2. Specialisation and expertise. Leaders acquire technical knowledge of finance, law, negotiation and administration that ordinary members do not have, and become indispensable.
3. Control of the means of communication, of the organisation's press, its records and its funds, which lets the leadership set the agenda and shape what members know.
4. Permanence. Leaders become full-time and salaried, while members give spare time, so the leadership is always better informed and better organised than any group that might challenge it.

2. Psychological causes among the mass

1. Apathy and incompetence of the mass, which lacks the time, information and inclination to participate continuously.
2. A need for guidance, and gratitude towards those who provide it.
3. A tendency to venerate leaders, and to regard criticism of them as disloyalty to the organisation.

3. Psychological causes among the leaders

2. It underrates institutional design: term limits, internal elections, transparency, factions and an active membership genuinely restrain leadership. Some trade unions and parties have maintained real internal contestation.
3. Leadership is not the same as oligarchy. Delegation is necessary; the question is whether the delegates remain accountable, and Michels moves too quickly from the first to the second.
4. It is close to unfalsifiable, since any leadership can be described as an oligarchy.
5. Michels's own later political drift towards fascism suggests he treated the law as a reason to abandon democracy rather than to reform it, which is a use his evidence does not support.

2. Correction rather than infliction. The methods are education, vocational training, work, counselling and medical treatment.
3. Alternatives to imprisonment: probation, parole, community service, open prisons, admonition, and release on good behaviour, because prison is itself criminogenic, mixing the first offender with the hardened.
4. Belief in the capacity to change, which rules out permanently degrading punishment.
5. Recidivism as the measure of success, rather than the severity of the sentence.

Merits:

1. It addresses the causes of crime rather than the symptom, and so protects society more durably than fear does.
2. It is humane and consistent with human dignity, which in India is a constitutional requirement under Article 21.
3. It is particularly effective for juveniles and first offenders, where the prospect of reform is highest.
4. It is cheaper over time, since a reformed offender stops consuming police, court and prison resources.

Demerits:

In Indian law: the Probation of Offenders Act, 1958; release on probation of good conduct under Section 401 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, formerly Section 360 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973; the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, which is built entirely on reformation; and parole, furlough, remission and open prisons. The judicial endorsement is clearest in Mohammad Giasuddin v State of Andhra Pradesh (1977), where the Supreme Court described the offender as a patient and the therapeutic approach as the correct one, and in the prisoners' rights cases Sunil Batra v Delhi Administration (1978) and Charles Sobraj v Superintendent, Central Jail (1978).

The condition. Without a common power to keep men in awe, there is a war of every man against every man, in which there is no industry, no agriculture, no navigation, no arts and no letters; no notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, because where there is no common power there is no law, and where there is no law there is no injustice; no property, only possession for as long as a man can keep it; and continual fear and danger of violent death, so that the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".

Hobbes is careful to say this is a condition of war, meaning a known disposition to fight, not continual fighting, and he offers as evidence the conduct of men who lock their doors and travel armed, and the relations of sovereign states.

The laws of nature are precepts of reason: seek peace; lay down the right to all things so far as others will do the same; perform the covenants made. But they are only theorems of reason, and "covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all".

1. He has covenanted to do so, and covenants must be kept.
2. The sovereign is not a party to the contract and so can commit no breach of it.
3. Resistance would return society to the state of nature, and even a tyrannical government is better than anarchy.
4. The sovereign is the sole author of law, justice, property and morality: nothing he does can be unjust, because justice is what he defines it to be.
5. There is therefore no right of rebellion, no right of revolution and no division of power.

The single exception. Because the whole purpose of the covenant is self-preservation, a man may refuse obedience where his life is directly at stake: he may decline to kill himself, to confess a crime, or to fight where his own preservation is threatened. And if the sovereign can no longer protect him, the obligation lapses, since protection and obedience are correlative.

Criticism

1. The state of nature is a fiction, unsupported by anthropology.

(i) The role of civil society organisations in upholding democratic values

Civil society is the sphere of voluntary, organised association that lies between the individual and the state, and outside the market: trade unions, professional bodies, farmers' and drivers' associations, religious and caste organisations, resident welfare associations, non-governmental organisations, student groups, the press and social movements. Membership is voluntary and the object is not to hold office.

Its roles:

1. It articulates interests and gives voice to the unheard. Groups whose concerns cut across constituencies, or who are too dispersed to influence a single election, can act together and be heard. The drivers' associations in the facts are precisely such a group.
2. It provides representation between elections. A voter chooses once in five years; civil society keeps pressure on government continuously, which is the practical answer to the objection that representative democracy leaves the citizen powerless between polls.
3. It acts as a check on state power, exposing abuse, contesting policy in the media and in court, and raising the political cost of arbitrary action.

The facts illustrate the mechanism exactly. An organised association protested against a specific penal provision; the government met it, gave an assurance about commencement, and undertook to consult before invoking the provision; the protest was called off. No election was contested and no law was broken, and yet policy was influenced. That is civil society performing its function inside the constitutional order, protected by Article 19(1)(a), (b) and (c), the freedoms of speech, of peaceful assembly and of association.

Its limits, worth a line for balance: civil society is unelected and often unaccountable; well-funded groups have far better access than the poor and unorganised; and a determined group can obstruct policy that serves the wider public.

(ii) A political party, and two differences from interest groups

A political party is an organised body of citizens who hold broadly common views on public questions and act as a unit to capture political power through constitutional means, chiefly by contesting elections. Its functions are contesting elections, forming and opposing government, formulating policy, aggregating and articulating interests, political education, and the recruitment of leadership.

(ii) What is the mission of the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM)?

(i) The thinker, and his view on the right to resistance

The thinker is Dr Martin Luther King Jr (1929 to 1968), the American Baptist minister who led the Civil Rights Movement. The facts identify him beyond doubt: the "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered at the March on Washington on 28 August 1963, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of thirty-five, then the youngest recipient.

His view on the right to resistance, set out most fully in the Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 1963), written to eight clergymen who had called his campaign unwise and untimely:

4. Non-violence is the method, and it has four steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustice exists; negotiation; self-purification; and only then direct action. Direct action is not a substitute for negotiation but a way of creating "such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue".
5. The aim is reconciliation, not victory. The object is the Beloved Community, in which the opponent is redeemed and befriended rather than defeated. "The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness."
6. His debt to Gandhi is explicit. King called Gandhi's satyagraha the guiding light of his technique of social reform, and visited India in 1959.

(ii) The mission of the Black Lives Matter movement

Black Lives Matter (BLM) began in 2013 as a hashtag created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi after the acquittal of the man who shot the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, and grew into a decentralised international movement, becoming a mass movement in 2014 after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and again in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd.

(ii) Name any three socialistic provisions from the Indian constitution.

(i) Three arguments in favour of socialism

1. The argument from exploitation. Under private ownership of the means of production, those who own appropriate value created by those who do not. Marx's theory of surplus value states the mechanism precisely: the worker is paid the cost of his subsistence and produces more than that, and the difference is taken as profit, interest and rent. Socialism ends the relationship rather than mitigating it, by placing the means of production in the hands of the community.

Other arguments available: efficiency and the elimination of waste, since the unregulated market produces monopoly, duplication, trade cycles and unused capacity beside unmet need; public goods and market failure, since education, health, water and sanitation are underprovided by a market; security against the risks of old age, sickness and unemployment that no individual can insure against alone; and social justice, since the accident of birth should not determine a person's life chances.

(ii) Three socialistic provisions from the Indian Constitution

1. The word SOCIALIST in the Preamble, inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976, which declares India a "Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic", together with the Preamble's promise of social and economic justice.
2. Article 39(b) and (c), Directive Principles requiring that the ownership and control of material resources be so distributed as best to subserve the common good, and that the operation of the economic system shall not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment.
3. Article 38, requiring the State to secure a social order for the welfare of the people and to minimise inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities.

At the age of 73, he became the oldest person to accede to the British throne, UK's King Charles could be giving up the throne early in favor of his eldest son Prince William, while William and his wife, Kate Middleton, are still young. (i) Write the mean to legitimize this type of authority as prescribed by Max Weber.

(ii) Name any three differences between power and authority.

(i) The type of authority, and the means by which Weber says it is legitimised

The King holds traditional authority, the first of Max Weber's three types. The facts admit of nothing else: the throne passed by hereditary succession on the death of the previous holder, the successor is identified by birth order, and the succession was automatic, with no election, appointment or test of merit.

Weber's sub-types of traditional authority are patriarchalism, patrimonialism and feudalism, and his other two types are charismatic authority, legitimised by the extraordinary personal qualities of a leader, and legal-rational authority, legitimised by belief in the legality of enacted rules.

(ii) Three differences between power and authority

1. Individualism: the individual is an end in himself, and society is a collection of individuals judged by what it does for them.
2. Natural rights to life, liberty and property, prior to the state. Locke.
3. The state as a necessary evil, confined to defence, order and justice: the police or night-watchman state. Thomas Paine: society is produced by our wants, government by our wickedness.
4. Laissez faire: the economy is self-regulating, and the state must not interfere. Adam Smith's invisible hand.
5. Government by consent, constitutionalism, separation of powers and the rule of law.
6. Equality before the law, with privilege by birth abolished.
7. Freedom of thought, speech, press and religion, and toleration.

Its thinkers: Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham, the early J.S. Mill, and in its extreme form Herbert Spencer, who opposed even state education and public sanitation on the ground that they weakened self-reliance.

Two further forces pushed in the same direction. The extension of the franchise to the working class from 1867 made it politically necessary for any doctrine seeking votes to answer their demands. And utilitarianism itself, which had begun as a laissez faire doctrine, contained the germ of the change: if the test is the greatest happiness, then state action that increases happiness is justified, and Bentham's own programme was one of vigorous legal and administrative intervention.

Positive or modern liberalism, from about 1870

T.H. Green (1836 to 1882) is the turning point. He redefined freedom as "a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others". On that definition a law compelling school attendance, or forbidding the sale of adulterated food, or limiting working hours, enlarges liberty rather than diminishing it, because it removes an obstacle to the exercise of capacity.

Its features:

1. Positive liberty: freedom to develop one's capacities, not merely freedom from interference.
2. The state as a positive good, an instrument for removing obstacles, and not a necessary evil.

A later turn worth naming: from the 1970s neo-liberalism, associated with Hayek, Friedman and Nozick, argued for a return to the minimal state, deregulation and privatisation, and had large practical influence, in India from the reforms of 1991. Liberalism is therefore not a straight line from less state to more state but an argument that has run in both directions.

But it is not only liberal. Part IV, the Directive Principles, is positive-liberal and socialist: Articles 38, 39, 41, 42, 43 and 47 direct the state to secure a social order for the welfare of the people, adequate livelihood, a living wage, work, education and public assistance. The 42nd Amendment, 1976, added the word socialist to the Preamble, and the 44th Amendment, 1978, removed the right to property from Part III, which no classical liberal constitution would do.

How the tension was resolved. Part III is enforceable and Part IV is not, and for three decades the two were treated as rivals, through the First Amendment, the Ninth Schedule, Article 31C, Golak Nath (1967) and Kesavananda Bharati (1973). The settled position, stated in Minerva Mills v Union of India (1980), is that the harmony and balance between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles is itself part of the basic structure, and that the Directive Principles guide the interpretation of the Fundamental Rights. That is how a negative-liberal Article 21 acquired positive content: the right to livelihood in Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985), to health and emergency medical care in Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity v State of West Bengal (1996), and to education, later made express by Article 21A.

For full marks, cover: the just deserts theory with its principles, its relation to classical retribution, why it revived in the twentieth century, its merits and criticisms; then the deterrent approach in full, its basis in Bentham and Beccaria, its two forms, features, merits, demerits, its position in Indian law; and a conclusion on how the two work together.

Part 1: The just desert theory of punishment

The theory. The just deserts theory holds that punishment is justified because, and only because, the offender deserves it, and that the amount of punishment must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and to the offender's culpability. Its two questions are: has this person done something deserving punishment? and how much does it deserve? It refuses to answer either by reference to future consequences.

It is the modern form of the retributive theory, and the label "just deserts" belongs to its twentieth century revival, associated with Andrew von Hirsch, whose report Doing Justice (1976) gave the movement its statement, and drawing on Kant and Hegel.

Its relation to classical retribution. Classical retribution, from lex talionis through Kant, insisted on desert but often gestured towards literal equivalence, an eye for an eye, which cannot be applied. Just deserts keeps the desert principle and proportionality but abandons literal equivalence, replacing it with a scale: offences ranked by seriousness, punishments ranked by severity, and the two matched.

Why it revived. In the mid-twentieth century sentencing in many countries was dominated by the rehabilitative ideal, with indeterminate sentences and release decided by boards on an assessment of whether the offender had reformed. Three things discredited it: the empirical doubt about whether rehabilitation worked; the disparity it produced, since two offenders who did the same thing received very different treatment; and above all the threat to liberty, since detention until "cured" has no ceiling. Just deserts was proposed as a liberal safeguard, and this is the point students most often miss: its motive was to limit punishment, not to increase it.

Merits:

1. It supplies an upper limit that neither deterrence nor reformation can supply.
2. It produces consistency and predictability, and reduces arbitrary disparity.

Part 2: The deterrent approach to punishment

The approach. Punishment aims to prevent future crime by creating fear. The offender is punished so as to make an example of him, so that he and others are frightened out of committing the offence. The classical formula is that men are punished not because they have sinned, but so that others may not sin.

Its basis. It is utilitarian. Jeremy Bentham held that man is governed by pain and pleasure and calculates before acting, so punishment must add enough pain to outweigh the profit expected from the crime: crime must never pay. Cesare Beccaria, in On Crimes and Punishments (1764), argued the crucial refinement, that it is the certainty rather than the severity of punishment that deters, and that excessive severity is both cruel and useless.

Its two forms:

1. Specific or individual deterrence, aimed at the offender himself, so that he does not repeat the offence.
2. General deterrence, aimed at the public, who are meant to learn from his punishment.

Its features:

1. It uses the offender as a means to the good of others, which is Kant's objection, and in principle could justify punishing an innocent person believed guilty if the example served.
2. It tends to excessive severity, and severity beyond a point makes juries and courts reluctant to convict at all.
3. It fails against crimes of passion, committed without calculation, and against hardened and habitual criminals, who are brutalised rather than frightened.
4. It ignores the causes of crime and makes no attempt to reform, so the released prisoner re-offends.
5. Its central empirical claim is doubtful as usually applied: certainty of detection deters far better than severity of sentence, so raising punishments without improving investigation and conviction achieves little.

For full marks, cover: Marx's definition of class and its criterion, the classes at each historical stage, why conflict is inevitable, class in itself and class for itself, ideology, the revolution and the classless society; then a full evaluation with merits, criticisms and the Indian angle.

Part 1: Class and class conflict

The proposition. The Communist Manifesto (1848) opens: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Class conflict is the motor of historical change.

What a class is. For Marx a class is defined by its relation to the means of production, and by nothing else. Not by income, status, education, religion, occupation or lifestyle. The criterion is one question: does the group own the means of production, or does it own only its own labour power? A well-paid worker is therefore still a worker, and a poor shopkeeper is not a proletarian, because the criterion is ownership and not affluence.

The classes at each historical stage:

Why the conflict is irreconcilable. The profit of the owner is by definition the unpaid surplus labour of the worker. Marx's theory of surplus value states the mechanism: labour power is bought at the cost of the worker's subsistence, but the worker produces more value than that, and the difference is appropriated. There is no rate of wages that abolishes the surplus, so the conflict cannot be settled by bargaining within the system. Exploitation is structural and not a matter of individual employers being unkind, which is why Marx thought moral appeals useless.

Class in itself and class for itself. A group that merely shares an economic position is a "class in itself". It becomes a "class for itself" when it acquires class consciousness, the recognition of a common interest and a common opponent. Capitalism generates that consciousness itself, by concentrating workers in factories and cities where they can communicate and organise, and by reducing them to a uniform condition.

Against consciousness stands ideology. Law, religion, morality, education and the press form the superstructure, and their function is to make the existing order appear natural and just. Marx calls the resulting state of mind false consciousness, and religion in particular "the opium of the people".

4. It produced practical results by way of reaction. The eight-hour day, minimum wages, factory legislation, social security and trade union rights are reformist answers to problems Marx identified, so capitalism was reformed partly by the pressure his analysis generated.
5. Alienation remains a compelling description of modern work, and has outlived the economics it was attached to.
6. As a method of criticism it endures: asking who owns what, in whose interest a law operates, and who bears the cost of an arrangement are now standard analytical moves.

Criticisms:

1. It is monocausal. Religion, nationalism, language, race and, in India, caste have moved history at least as powerfully as class. The two world wars were not class wars, and Indian politics is not primarily class politics.
2. Class has not polarised into two camps. A large middle class of professionals, managers and technicians grew instead, and shareholding, pension funds and small enterprise spread ownership far more widely than Marx expected.

The Indian angle, which is worth its own paragraph. Dr B.R. Ambedkar's criticism is the most searching in the Indian context: he argued that caste divides the working class against itself, so that the unified proletariat Marx assumed does not exist in India, and that a movement which addresses class while ignoring caste will fracture along the line it ignored. India's own response was neither revolution nor laissez faire but democratic socialism: the word socialist in the Preamble by the 42nd Amendment, 1976, the Directive Principles of Articles 38 and 39 aimed at preventing the concentration of wealth, land reform legislation, and the removal of property from the Fundamental Rights by the 44th Amendment, 1978, all pursued by law and consent.

Verdict. Marxism's diagnosis has outlived its prognosis. As an account of inequality, of the relation between economic power and political power, and of the experience of work, it remains indispensable, and the concentration of wealth in the last four decades has given the diagnosis new force. As a prediction of two-class polarisation, increasing misery, proletarian revolution and a withering state, it has been falsified by events.

2. Casteism and communalism, which convert elections into a census of communities. Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, makes such appeals a corrupt practice, and Abhiram Singh v C.D. Commachen (2017) read it broadly, but enforcement is difficult.
3. Criminalisation of politics, addressed by disclosure of antecedents in Union of India v Association for Democratic Reforms (2002) and disqualification on conviction in Lily Thomas v Union of India (2013), but limited by the slowness of trials.
4. Corruption, which converts a citizen's right into a favour that must be paid for.
5. Money and opaque political funding. The electoral bonds scheme was struck down as unconstitutional in Association for Democratic Reforms v Union of India (2024) for violating the voter's right to information under Article 19(1)(a).
6. Defection and horse-trading, which defeat the voter's choice. The Tenth Schedule, added in 1985 and tightened in 2003, has been evaded by mass resignation and re-election.
7. Absence of inner-party democracy and dynastic control, so that the options offered to the voter are themselves selected undemocratically.

Part 2: The Gram Sabha

What it is. Under Article 243A, inserted by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, the Gram Sabha is a body consisting of all persons registered in the electoral rolls relating to a village comprised within the area of a panchayat at the village level. It is not a body of representatives at all: it is the whole adult population of the village meeting in person.

Its constitutional and statutory position. Article 243A leaves it to the State legislature to define its powers and functions, so its strength varies between States. In the Fifth Schedule areas, the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) gives it far stronger powers, including over minor forest produce, land alienation and, crucially, a role in consultation before land acquisition.

Its powers and functions, in the general pattern followed by most State Acts:

1. Approval of plans, programmes and projects for economic development and social justice before the panchayat implements them.

2. It makes the panchayat accountable face to face, since the elected body must present its accounts and its plans to the people who elected it.
3. It reduces corruption and elite capture in beneficiary selection and in public works, because the decisions are taken and audited in public.
4. It brings local knowledge into planning, since the people affected know best where the road, the hand pump or the school should go.
5. It is educative: participation in real decisions about a real budget develops civic capacity, which is the argument of Rousseau, Mill and Carole Pateman.
6. It gives voice to those excluded elsewhere, and PESA and the Forest Rights Act use it deliberately as the instrument for protecting tribal communities.

Its effectiveness in practice, and the reasons for the shortfall:

1. Poor attendance. Meetings frequently fail to achieve quorum, particularly among women and the landless, who cannot afford the time or are discouraged from attending.

Where it has worked: Kerala's People's Plan Campaign from 1996, which devolved a substantial share of the State plan outlay to be decided through Gram Sabhas; MGNREGA social audits in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, which recovered misappropriated funds and led to prosecutions; and the use of Gram Sabha consent under PESA and the Forest Rights Act, most visibly in the Niyamgiri case, where the Supreme Court in Orissa Mining Corporation v Ministry of Environment and Forests (2013) directed that the Gram Sabhas decide on the community's religious and cultural claims over the hills, and they refused the mining proposal.

Reforms proposed: making Gram Sabha approval binding rather than advisory for plans and beneficiary selection; a statutory minimum number of meetings with quorum requirements including a minimum proportion of women and of SC and ST members; Mahila Sabhas and Ward Sabhas as smaller units feeding into it; independent social audit units; proactive disclosure of panchayat accounts under the Right to Information Act, 2005; and genuine devolution of funds, functions and functionaries.

For full marks, cover: the greatest happiness principle with Bentham's version, the felicific calculus, its implications and Mill's revision, then a full criticism; then Green's idealist position on the state, the common good, his theory of political obligation, his view of rights, and his carefully fenced right of resistance, ending with the connection between the two halves.

Part 1: The principle of the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number

The principle. The rightness of any action, law or institution is measured solely by its consequences, and specifically by whether it produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is the foundational proposition of utilitarianism, founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748 to 1832), who took the phrase from Hutcheson and Beccaria.

Its components in Bentham's version:

Its implications:

1. In legislation: every law must justify itself by results, so no custom carries authority merely from age. This produced the reform of the criminal law, the prisons, the poor law and the franchise.
2. In punishment: punishment is itself an evil, admissible only to prevent a greater evil, and its aim is deterrence with a punishment proportioned to the temptation.
3. In politics: since each counts for one, the greatest happiness is served by democracy, and Bentham argued for universal suffrage, annual parliaments and the secret ballot.
4. In economics: broadly laissez faire, on the ground that individuals are the best judges of their own interest.

Mill's revision. J.S. Mill (1806 to 1873) accepted the principle but held that pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity, and that some are intrinsically higher: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." He grounded utility on "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being", and in On Liberty protected individual freedom against the very majority the principle empowers.

His foundations:

1. The end of the state is the moral development of the individual. The state exists to create the conditions in which people can realise their best selves, that is, to hinder the hindrances to the good life. His famous formula for freedom is "a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others".
2. The common good. Individual and society are not opposed. A person's true good is not separable from the good of others, because his moral development takes place in and through the community.
3. Will, not force, is the basis of the state. This is Green's central and most quoted proposition: a state rests ultimately on the recognition by its members that it serves the common good, and not on coercion. Force may be used, but it is never the ground of the state's authority.
4. Rights are social. A right is a claim recognised by society as necessary for the realisation of the common good. It follows that rights exist in and through society, that there are no rights against society as such, and that rights and duties are correlative: a right claimed for oneself must be conceded to others.

3. The test is the common good, not private conscience. A citizen may not resist merely because a law is inconvenient to him or offends his private opinion; he must be able to show that the law defeats the good of the community.
4. Lawful means must be used first: petition, agitation, persuasion, and the use of political rights to change the law. Resistance is a last resort.
5. Resistance should be open and public, and directed at the particular law rather than at the legal order as a whole.
6. The likely consequences must be weighed: resistance is justified only where the general interest will not suffer more from the resistance than from the law.
7. In a state with representative institutions the case for resistance is weaker, because lawful channels of change exist, and Green thought that where a citizen can vote and organise he should use those means rather than defy the law.