BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Political Science 2 2024-25 - ATKT 75/25 Question Paper with Solutions

The force theory holds that the state originated in force and rests on force, and that the citizen obeys because the state is stronger than he is. The state was created when a strong man or tribe subjugated the weak, and political obligation is simply the recognition of superior might. "War begat the king" is its usual summary.

Its propositions are that might is the basis of right, that the state is an instrument of coercion, and that obedience is secured by fear of punishment.

Its exponents: in a sense Machiavelli, and among modern writers the Marxists, who treat the state as an instrument by which the dominant class holds down the rest. Nietzsche and the German writers on power politics developed it further.

Others that would earn the marks: defection and horse-trading; misinformation and paid news; dynastic control and the absence of inner-party democracy; populism and competitive promises of subsidies; and voter apathy and an uninformed electorate.

Indian examples of interest groups: FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM (business); INTUC, AITUC and BMS (labour); the Bar Council of India and the Indian Medical Association (professional).

Vilfredo Pareto (1848 to 1923) held that every society is ruled by an elite, a small minority with the highest ability, but that no elite lasts. Elites decay and are continually replaced by new elites rising from below. History, in his phrase, is "a graveyard of aristocracies".

The mechanism. Pareto divided rulers into two psychological types, borrowed from Machiavelli:

1. Lions, who are conservative, loyal and attached to tradition, and who rule by force.
2. Foxes, who are cunning, innovative and manipulative, and who rule by fraud and combination.

Neither can govern indefinitely: a regime of foxes loses the will to use force and falls to rising lions; a regime of lions becomes rigid and lets in the foxes. Government therefore oscillates between the two, and that oscillation is the circulation of elites.

Circulation happens in two ways: gradually and peacefully where the elite is open and recruits able individuals from below, and violently by revolution where the elite is closed and talent is shut out.

Participatory democracy is a form of democracy in which citizens take a direct and continuing part in making the decisions that affect them, instead of confining their role to electing representatives once every few years. It lies between direct democracy, where the people decide everything themselves, and representative democracy, where they only choose those who decide.

Its features: continuous involvement rather than participation limited to election day; decision-making at the level closest to the people, which requires decentralisation; deliberation, so that decisions emerge from public discussion; and transparency, since a citizen cannot participate in what he is not permitted to know.

Its Indian forms: the Gram Sabha under Article 243A, which is the whole electorate of a village meeting in person; Ward Committees under Article 243S; social audits of MGNREGA works; the Right to Information Act, 2005; and public hearings in environmental clearance.

Max Weber (1864 to 1920), the German sociologist, distinguished power from authority and then classified authority by the ground of its legitimacy, that is, by the reason people believe the command ought to be obeyed. His threefold classification, set out in Economy and Society, is the standard framework of the subject.

Power and authority first. Power is "the probability that an actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance". Authority is legitimate power: power accepted as rightful, so that obedience is voluntary. Weber's question is what makes people accept it, and he found three answers.

1. Traditional authority

Basis: "an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions". People obey because the ruler occupies a position that custom has always sanctioned.

Routinisation of charisma. Because it dies with the leader, charismatic authority must convert itself into something transmissible: either into traditional authority by making succession hereditary, or into legal-rational authority by creating offices and rules. Weber called this process routinisation, and it is his most original contribution here.

3. Legal-rational authority

Basis: belief in the legality of enacted rules and in the right of those elevated to authority under those rules to issue commands.

Features: obedience is owed to the office and the law, not to the person; authority is impersonal, defined and limited by rules, so that an act beyond competence is void; officials are recruited by merit through examination, are salaried, and follow a career; there is a clear separation between the official's private life and his office; and administration is by written records, hierarchy and specialisation, which is bureaucracy.

Examples: the modern constitutional state, the civil service, the courts, a company board, a university.

Gandhi's answer to the unjust law is Satyagraha, "holding firmly to truth", a technique of resistance that is non-violent, open, and willing to accept the legal penalty. It rests on two pillars, Satya (truth) and Ahimsa (non-violence), and on the principle that the means must be as pure as the end.

Its essential conditions, which distinguish it from ordinary law-breaking:

1. The resistance must be non-violent in thought, word and deed.
2. It must be open and public, never secret, so that it is an appeal to conscience and not an evasion.
3. The resister must accept the punishment willingly, which is what demonstrates his sincerity and his respect for law in general.
4. The aim is to convert the opponent, not to defeat or humiliate him, since he too may hold part of the truth.
5. The resister must first have obeyed the law generally and exhausted lawful means: petition, negotiation and arbitration come before disobedience.

4. Hartal and strike. Voluntary suspension of work and business as a mark of protest and mourning.
5. Picketing and boycott. Peaceful persuasion outside shops selling foreign cloth or liquor, and the boycott of foreign goods, paired with swadeshi, the positive use of Indian goods.
6. Hijrat. Voluntary migration out of the jurisdiction of the oppressor, where resistance on the spot is impossible.
7. Constructive programme. Khadi, village industry, removal of untouchability, communal unity, basic education and prohibition, which build the alternative society while the old one is being resisted. Gandhi regarded this as the more important half, because resistance alone destroys and does not create.

Merits: it is available to the weak and the unarmed; it wins moral authority and public sympathy; it leaves the possibility of reconciliation open, so the society that emerges is not poisoned; and it proved effective against the British in India, and later in the hands of Martin Luther King Jr in the United States and of the anti-apartheid movement.

India is the world's largest democracy, and by the basic tests it has succeeded: regular elections, peaceful transfers of power, high turnout, a written Constitution and an independent judiciary. The challenges below are to the quality and spirit of that democracy rather than to its existence.

1. Poverty, illiteracy and inequality. A voter who is poor, illiterate and dependent is vulnerable to inducement and pressure, and cannot exercise the franchise as an informed choice. Ambedkar warned on 25 November 1949 of the contradiction of entering a life of "one person one vote and one vote one value" while social and economic life denied equality.
2. Casteism and communalism. Elections fought on the basis of caste and religious identity rather than policy, and candidates selected for the community they can deliver. Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, makes such an appeal a corrupt practice, and Abhiram Singh v C.D. Commachen (2017) read it broadly, but enforcement is difficult.

8. Regionalism, separatism and insurgency in some regions, and the tension between national unity and regional aspiration.
9. Weakening of legislative deliberation: fewer sitting days, bills passed with little debate, growing use of the money bill route and of ordinances, and the decline of committee scrutiny.
10. Misinformation and the degradation of public discourse, accelerated by social media, paid news and coordinated campaigns, which attacks the informational basis of a free vote.
11. Population, unemployment and administrative capacity, which strain the delivery of the welfare the Constitution promises and so erode faith in the system.
12. Gender inequality in political representation, though the reservation of one-third of seats in local bodies by the 73rd and 74th Amendments, and the 106th Amendment, 2023, providing for reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, address it.

India adopted democratic socialism: social and economic transformation pursued by law and by consent within a parliamentary democracy, retaining private property in a mixed economy. The influence runs through the whole document.

1. The Preamble

The word SOCIALIST was inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976. The Preamble also promises JUSTICE, social, economic and political, and EQUALITY of status and of opportunity. In Excel Wear v Union of India (1978) the Supreme Court read this as democratic socialism, a mixed economy pursuing social justice, not the abolition of private enterprise.

2. The Directive Principles, Part IV, the core socialist content

1. Article 38: the State shall secure a social order for the welfare of the people and minimise inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities.
2. Article 39(a): adequate means of livelihood for all citizens.

3. Fundamental Rights with a socialist edge

Article 14, 15(4), 16(4) and 46 authorise the reservations that redistribute opportunity; Article 17 abolishes untouchability; Article 23 prohibits forced labour, applied to bonded labour and to payment below the minimum wage in People's Union for Democratic Rights v Union of India (1982); Article 24 prohibits the employment of children below fourteen in factories and hazardous work; and Article 21A, added by the 86th Amendment, 2002, makes education a fundamental right for children aged six to fourteen.

4. Amendments carrying the programme

The First Amendment, 1951, added Articles 31A and 31B and the Ninth Schedule to protect land reform and the abolition of zamindari. The 25th Amendment, 1971, added Article 31C, giving primacy to Articles 39(b) and (c). The 44th Amendment, 1978, removed the right to property from the Fundamental Rights, making it a constitutional right under Article 300A, which is the clearest doctrinal mark of socialism in the text.

The relation. Authority is a species of power, namely legitimate power. Authority without power is empty, as with a government in exile; power without authority is unstable, which is why usurpers seek referendums and constitutions.

4. It weakens the institutions of accountability. Pressure on the election authority, the audit body, the investigating agencies, the media and the courts removes the mechanisms that would correct the abuse, so the damage compounds.
5. It suppresses dissent and the opposition. Misuse of investigative agencies, sedition and public order laws, and licensing powers against critics converts political disagreement into a legal risk, and a democracy without a functioning opposition is a form without a function.
6. It produces corruption, since power exercised without limit is power exercised without scrutiny.
7. It leads to democratic backsliding. The characteristic modern danger is not the coup but the elected government that hollows out democracy from within, each step formally lawful, leaving elections in place while removing what makes them meaningful.
8. It ultimately invites instability. Where lawful channels of change are blocked, pressure finds unlawful outlets, which is the situation the right to resistance was formulated to describe.

Using this example, (i) Analyze how implicit bias can influence judicial decisions. (ii) What steps can be taken to address them within the judiciary?

The case is that of Bhanwari Devi, a saathin employed under the Rajasthan Government's Women's Development Programme, who was gang-raped in September 1992 in retaliation for trying to stop a child marriage in her village. The trial court acquitted the accused in November 1995, and the reasoning attributed to it included the proposition that men of an upper caste would not have assaulted a woman of a lower caste. The case led directly to the Supreme Court's judgment in Vishaka v State of Rajasthan (1997), which laid down binding guidelines against sexual harassment at the workplace.

5. Sentencing disparity. Studies across jurisdictions find that offenders from marginalised groups receive heavier sentences for comparable offences.
6. Interpretation of open-textured standards. Words like "reasonable", "grave provocation", "cruelty" and "public morality" leave room for the judge's own social assumptions to enter.
7. Institutional composition. A bench drawn narrowly from particular castes, classes and one gender will share a narrow set of assumptions, so nothing inside the institution corrects them.

Why it matters constitutionally. It defeats Article 14, equality before the law and the equal protection of the laws; Article 15, the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of caste and sex; and the guarantee of a fair trial under Article 21. Justice must be administered impartially in fact, not merely in intention.

(ii) Steps to address it within the judiciary

1. Diversity in judicial appointments, across caste, class, region, religion and gender, so that a wider range of experience sits on the bench and assumptions are challenged from inside. The very low proportion of women and of SC, ST and OBC judges in the higher judiciary is the standing criticism of the collegium system.

5. Procedural safeguards: in-camera proceedings, protection of the complainant's identity, recording of the victim's statement by a woman officer or magistrate, and support persons, all of which reduce the situations in which a stereotype can affect the process.
6. Special courts and trained prosecutors for offences against women and under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, together with time limits for disposal.
7. Transparency and data. Publishing disaggregated data on acquittal, conviction and sentencing allows patterns of bias to be detected, which is impossible when outcomes are not measured.
8. Guidelines on judicial language. The Supreme Court's Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes (2023) identifies stereotyped language used in judgments and supplies alternatives, which is a direct institutional response to this problem.
9. Accountability mechanisms: in-house procedures, and the constitutional process of removal under Articles 124(4) and 217 for proved misbehaviour, though that is reserved for the gravest cases.

1. Direct access and representation. Meetings with ministers and secretaries, memoranda, pre-budget representations. FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM make formal pre-budget submissions to the Ministry of Finance each year, which is the most institutionalised form of lobbying in India.
2. Supplying information and technical expertise. Research, data, draft clauses and impact assessments. This is lobbying's most legitimate face: legislators and ministries have limited technical capacity, and organised interests have the specialists.
3. Appearing before parliamentary committees, official consultations and expert committees, and responding to draft rules put out for comment.
4. Membership of official bodies. Industry representatives sit on advisory councils, regulatory consultative committees and trade delegations, which gives continuous access from inside.
5. Campaign finance and electoral support, funding parties and candidates sympathetic to the group's position.
6. Indirect or grassroots lobbying. Shaping public opinion through the media, advertising, opinion pieces, seminars and reports, so that pressure reaches the decision-maker from the public and not only from the group.

3. Corruption at the extreme, where persuasion becomes payment: bribery, quid pro quo, and the purchase of legislative outcomes.
4. Regulatory capture. The regulator comes to see the industry's interests as the public interest, because the industry is the source of its information and often of its personnel. The revolving door, in which officials move to the sector they regulated, entrenches this.
5. Opacity. In India lobbying is neither prohibited nor regulated: there is no statutory register of lobbyists, no disclosure of meetings and no legislative footprint. The citizen therefore cannot know who shaped a law, which defeats the transparency democracy requires. The Radia tapes episode of 2010 made this a public question.
6. Distortion of the policy agenda. Issues important to organised interests crowd out issues important to the unorganised, so that questions of corporate taxation are debated continuously and questions of, say, informal labour are not.

The Trade Dispute Bill banned strikes in industry and the Public Safety Bill gave power to the government to detain anyone without a trial. Subsequently, he went on a hunger strike while in prison to demand better treatment for Indian prisoners, highlighting the inhumane conditions under colonial authority.

(i) Analyze Bhagat Singh's strategies in challenging the unjust laws. (ii) How were Bhagat Singh's strategies different from Gandhian?

(i) Bhagat Singh's strategies analysed

Bhagat Singh (1907 to 1931) was a revolutionary of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, executed at Lahore on 23 March 1931 with Rajguru and Sukhdev. His strategies were:

4. The hunger strike. From June 1929 he led a 116-day fast demanding that Indian political prisoners be treated on the same footing as European prisoners: proper food, clothing, books and newspapers. Jatindra Nath Das died on the 63rd day, and the resulting public outrage forced concessions. This is self-suffering as a political weapon, the same instrument Gandhi used.
5. Ideological writing. From prison he wrote Why I am an Atheist and other essays, arguing for socialism, against communalism and against the exploitation of workers and peasants. He was explicit that independence without social and economic transformation would merely change the rulers.

The character of the strategy. Bhagat Singh's method is best described as propaganda by deed attached to a socialist revolutionary programme. Violence was symbolic and instrumental, chosen to compel attention and to secure a public trial, not to inflict casualties; and the elements that gave it force, surrender, trial and hunger strike, were not violent at all.

(ii) How his strategies differed from the Gandhian

Their common ground, which the best answers state: both rejected the legitimacy of colonial rule and of laws made without Indian consent; both were prepared to accept punishment and used self-suffering, in the fast and the hunger strike, as a political weapon; both used their trials as public platforms; both were fearless of death; and both regarded political independence as incomplete without social change, though they disagreed entirely about what that change was.

For full marks, cover: the meaning of utilitarianism and its six or seven basic principles, Bentham's version with the felicific calculus and his positions on rights, punishment and democracy, then Mill's revisions on quality of pleasure, liberty, the majority and the state, a full comparison, and an assessment of whether Mill's amendments rescue or undermine the doctrine.

Meaning

Utilitarianism is the doctrine that the rightness of any action, law or institution depends solely on its consequences, and specifically on whether it produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is consequentialist, rejecting the view that acts are right or wrong in themselves, and hedonistic, treating pleasure as the only good and pain as the only evil. It grew out of liberalism, and its founder is Jeremy Bentham, with James Mill and J.S. Mill as its principal developers.

Basic principles of Utilitarianism

6. Rejection of natural rights and of tradition. Natural rights are "nonsense upon stilts". Rights are created by law, law is justified by utility, and no custom carries authority merely from age.
7. Individualism. Society is a "fictitious body" composed of individuals; the interest of the community is nothing more than the sum of the interests of its members.
8. Reform as the practical programme. Since every institution must justify itself by results, the criminal law, the poor law, the prisons and the franchise were all open to reassessment.

Jeremy Bentham (1748 to 1832)

1. Quantitative hedonism: pleasures differ only in quantity, never in worth. "Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry."
2. The felicific calculus as a method for legislation.
3. Punishment is itself a mischief, admissible only to prevent a greater mischief; its aim is deterrence, and it must be proportioned so that the pain slightly exceeds the profit of the offence.
4. Democracy: universal suffrage, annual parliaments and the secret ballot follow from equal counting.

4. Fear of the tyranny of the majority, exercised through opinion as much as through law. Hence plural voting for the educated and support for minority representation.
5. A larger role for the state: compulsory education, factory legislation, protection of women and children, and sympathy for cooperative and socialist experiments. He is the bridge to positive liberalism.
6. Women's equality: The Subjection of Women (1869), and as an MP he moved the amendment that would have enfranchised women in 1867.
7. Utility "in the largest sense", grounded on "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being".

Comparison

Mill gave it a conscience. Quality of pleasure answered the charge that it was "a doctrine worthy only of swine"; liberty as an end protected the individual against the majority Bentham's arithmetic empowered; and his move towards state provision prepared the ground for the welfare state.

But the amendments strain the doctrine. If pleasures differ in quality, something other than pleasure is doing the evaluating, and the standard is no longer self-sufficient. If liberty must be protected even where restricting it would raise total happiness, utility has ceased to be supreme. Sidgwick and later critics pressed both points. Mill is best read as a utilitarian who cared more about human beings than about the consistency of his system.

General criticisms of utilitarianism: pleasures cannot in fact be measured or compared across persons; the doctrine can sacrifice the minority whenever the total rises, and has no principled stopping point; it ignores motive and justice; and it reduces all value to a single dimension.

Panchayats existed in most States under State statutes, but they were creatures of State law, which meant a State could postpone elections indefinitely, supersede a body it disliked, starve it of funds, or leave reservation on paper. Three committees examined the failure: the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee (1957), which recommended a three-tier structure and gave the country the phrase "democratic decentralisation"; the Ashok Mehta Committee (1978), which recommended a two-tier structure and constitutional status; and the L.M. Singhvi Committee (1986), which recommended constitutional recognition of the Gram Sabha. An attempt in 1989, the 64th Amendment Bill, was defeated in the Rajya Sabha.

What the amendments did

1. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, inserted Part IX (Articles 243 to 243-O) and the Eleventh Schedule, giving constitutional status to panchayats. In force 24 April 1993.
2. The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, inserted Part IX-A (Articles 243-P to 243-ZG) and the Twelfth Schedule, giving constitutional status to municipalities. In force 1 June 1993.

Key features

8. Ward Committees in larger municipalities (Article 243S), District Planning Committees (Article 243ZD) and Metropolitan Planning Committees (Article 243ZE).
9. Bar on interference by courts in electoral matters (Articles 243-O, 243ZG), so that local elections are not stalled by litigation.

How they expanded participatory democracy

1. They converted representative democracy into a three-level system. Before 1992 a citizen elected a Member of Parliament and a Member of the Legislative Assembly, both remote from daily life. Now he elects a third tier that decides the things he actually experiences: the road, the school, the water supply, the ration, the drain.
2. The Gram Sabha institutionalised direct democracy. It is not a body of representatives at all but the whole electorate meeting in person, and it is the nearest approach to direct democracy in the Indian system. It approves plans and beneficiary lists and receives accounts, so a citizen can question the panchayat face to face.

Achievements

More than three million elected local representatives, of whom over 1.4 million are women, a scale of political participation by women unmatched anywhere; more than twenty States have since raised the women's share to 50 per cent by their own legislation; and elections are now held broadly on time, with local bodies functioning continuously rather than being superseded at will. Studies of village councils headed by women have found measurably greater investment in drinking water and other goods that women prioritise.

Shortcomings

1. Funds, functions and functionaries were not transferred with the status. Article 243G says the State legislature "may" endow panchayats with powers, so devolution is permissive and varies enormously between States. Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra devolved substantially; several States did very little.
2. Financial dependence. Most panchayats raise very little of their own revenue and depend on tied grants, so they administer schemes rather than decide priorities.
3. The sarpanch pati phenomenon, where a male relative exercises in practice an office won by a woman.

For full marks, cover: the meaning of political obligation, eight or nine grounds with a line each, Raphael's five, then the divine right theory in detail with its propositions, exponents, character of obligation and criticisms, then the social contract theory through Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau with the character of obligation each derives, a comparison of the two theories, and a conclusion.

Meaning

Political obligation is the duty of the citizen to obey the state, its government and its laws. It is the central question of political theory, and the question is not "who has power?" but "why ought I to obey?"

The question matters because obedience secured by force alone is not obligation: a robber compels and creates no duty. A theory of political obligation must therefore bridge the gap between "I must" and "I ought".

The grounds of political obligation

8. Benefits received and fair play. The citizen enjoys security, order, courts, roads, schools and hospitals, and cannot fairly take the benefits while refusing the burdens.
9. Patriotism and belonging. Loyalty to a community with which the citizen identifies.
10. Self-interest and convenience. Obedience is simply the cheapest course for an ordinary person.

D.D. Raphael grouped the serious versions into five grounds: social contract, consent, the general will, justice, and the general interest.

Political obligation under the Divine Right Theory

The theory. The ruler derives his authority directly from God, not from the people. The king is God's deputy on earth, answerable to God alone, and obedience to him is a religious duty.

Its propositions:

1. Monarchy is divinely ordained, and the institution is of divine origin.
2. Kingship is hereditary, passing by divine appointment through the line of succession.
3. The king is above human law and cannot be judged, deposed or punished by his subjects.

4. It makes obligation entirely one-sided, with no remedy for misgovernment.
5. It confuses religion with politics, and collapses with the rise of secularism and the separation of church and state.

Political obligation under the Social Contract Theory

The theory holds that the state was created by an agreement among men who had previously lived in a state of nature, and that the duty to obey rests on that agreement. It replaced divine right and made the state a human, artificial institution created by consent for human purposes.

Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651)

State of nature: a war of every man against every man, with no law, no justice, no property and no industry; the life of man "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".

The contract: a covenant among the subjects themselves, each surrendering his right of self-government to a common power on condition that all do likewise. The sovereign is not a party and is therefore bound by nothing.

Nature of the surrender: total and irrevocable; all rights are given up except self-preservation.

Political obligation: limited and conditional, resting on consent, express or tacit. Government holds power on trust, and if it breaks the trust power reverts to the people, who may resist and establish a new government.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762)

State of nature: man is a noble savage, innocent, free and happy; it is society and private property that corrupt him. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

The contract: each surrenders himself wholly and equally to the whole community, so that "each, giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody". What emerges is the general will.

Political obligation: the citizen obeys the general will, and in doing so obeys himself and remains free, since he is part-author of the law. Sovereignty remains permanently with the people. The notorious consequence: whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be "forced to be free".

The two theories compared

Conclusion

Neither theory survives as a historical account. Divine right fell with the rise of secularism, and the social contract is a fiction: no such agreement was ever made, tacit consent inferred from residence is not consent, and later generations made no promise at all. But the contract theory's normative legacy is the vocabulary of modern politics: consent, popular sovereignty, natural rights, limited government and the right of revolution. Its monuments are the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and through them Part III of the Indian Constitution and the words with which its Preamble opens, "We, the people of India".

Part 1: Marx's class conflict theory, and its relevance today

The theory. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." A class is defined by its relation to the means of production, not by income or status: either a group owns the means of production or it owns only its labour power. Every epoch divides into two opposed classes, master and slave, lord and serf, and under capitalism bourgeoisie and proletariat. Their interests are irreconcilable, because the profit of one is the unpaid surplus labour of the other, so the conflict cannot be settled by bargaining within the system. Capitalism itself creates the conditions for its overthrow by concentrating workers in factories and cities where they acquire class consciousness, and the outcome is revolution, a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally a classless society in which the state withers away.

Arguments that it remains relevant

5. Alienation describes modern work more convincingly than most rival concepts: the worker distant from the product, monitored by algorithm, and estranged from the process.
6. Class conflict continues in organised form: strikes, trade union action, the Indian farmers' protests of 2020 to 2021, and the political salience of wages and prices.
7. Marxism as method survives across the social sciences even where the political programme is rejected, and much labour and welfare legislation is the reformist answer to problems he identified.

Arguments that it has been falsified

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 voting behaviour is not primarily class behaviour. Ambedkar's criticism is decisive in the Indian context: caste divides the working class against itself, so the proletariat Marx assumed does not act as one.

Verdict

The fair conclusion is that Marx's diagnosis has outlived his prognosis. As an account of inequality, of the relation between economic power and political power, and of the experience of work, class analysis remains indispensable. As a prediction of two-class polarisation, immiseration, proletarian revolution and a withering state, it has been falsified by events. Marxism today survives chiefly as a method of criticism rather than as a programme of government, and India's own response was neither revolution nor laissez faire but democratic socialism: the Directive Principles, land reform, and redistribution pursued by law and consent.

Part 2: Communism and Gandhism compared

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

For full marks, cover: the meaning of legitimacy with definitions, six or seven reasons for its importance, Weber's three bases plus modern additions, a list of observable indicators, the methods by which a state maintains it, what a legitimacy crisis looks like, and a conclusion.

Meaning

Legitimacy, from the Latin legitimus, lawful, is the quality that makes power rightful, so that those subject to it accept the right to command and obey willingly rather than from fear. It is what converts naked power into authority.

Definitions:

1. Max Weber: legitimacy is the belief of the governed in the rightfulness of the rule, and the ground of that belief may be tradition, charisma or legal-rational rules.

4. It permits the peaceful transfer of power. The defeated party accepts the result because it accepts the process. This single fact is the practical difference between a democracy and a coup.
5. It limits power and prevents arbitrariness. Because legitimacy depends on the rules being observed, a ruler who breaks them forfeits it; legitimacy is therefore a standing check as well as a support.
6. It enables the state to demand sacrifice. Conscription, taxation, emergency restrictions and, in a pandemic, restrictions on movement are all borne only by a population that accepts the state's right to impose them.
7. It underpins international standing. Recognition, treaty-making and membership of international institutions follow from being accepted as the lawful government of a territory.
8. Its absence is fatal. A state that loses legitimacy is thrown back on coercion, which is expensive, brittle and self-defeating, since repression itself becomes the grievance.

7. Public trust in institutions, measurable through survey data on confidence in the courts, the election authority, the police and the legislature.
8. A free press and an active civil society that criticise the government without being suppressed, and an opposition that functions.
9. Compliance of the executive with judicial decisions, which is a particularly sharp test, because it shows power submitting to authority.
10. Effective delivery of public goods: security, justice, health, education and infrastructure.
11. Absence of large-scale, sustained protest aimed at the system itself rather than at particular policies.
12. International recognition and participation in the community of states.

How a state maintains its legitimacy

1. By holding regular free and fair elections, conducted by an independent authority: in India the Election Commission under Article 324.
2. By observing the rule of law and due process, so that power is exercised through general rules and is subject to judicial review.

The crisis of legitimacy

A legitimacy crisis occurs when the belief in rightfulness drains away while the legal title remains. Its symptoms are mass protest directed at the system, widespread non-compliance, boycott of elections, growth of extra-constitutional movements, and increasing reliance on coercion. The Indian example usually cited is the Emergency of 1975 to 1977, imposed lawfully under Article 352 and yet reversed decisively at the first election, which is a demonstration that legality and legitimacy are different things.

Conclusion

Legitimacy is the most economical instrument of government ever devised: it produces obedience without cost, at scale, and in the absence of the state. Every other instrument, force, reward, surveillance, must be paid for continuously and works only where it reaches. That is why maintaining legitimacy, through elections, law, justice, performance and accountability, is not one function of the state among others but the condition of its being able to perform any of them.