BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Political Science 2 2021-22 Question Paper with Solutions

Answer: (b) Authority

Why. Authority is legitimate power, so it is composed of exactly these two elements. Power supplies the capacity to secure compliance; legitimacy supplies the belief that the command is rightful, so that obedience is given willingly rather than from fear. Take legitimacy away and what remains is bare power, as with a junta or a blackmailer; take power away and what remains is an empty claim of right, as with a government in exile. Robert Bierstedt put it in one phrase: authority is institutionalised power.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Law is a body of rules enacted and enforced by the state. Law is one of the sources of legitimacy, not a compound of power and legitimacy.

Answer: (c) Charismatic

Why. Max Weber defined charismatic authority as resting on "devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person", his gift of grace. The words in the question, personal charm and extraordinary characteristics, are Weber's own criteria. Obedience is owed to the person of the leader and not to any office or rule.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Traditional authority rests on "an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions". It is inherited by birth and succession, as in a hereditary monarchy, and has nothing to do with the holder's personal qualities.

Answer: (b) C.W. Mills

Why. C. Wright Mills (1916 to 1962) coined the term in The Power Elite (1956). His thesis is that political power in the United States is held by a small interlocking group occupying the command posts of three institutional hierarchies: the political directorate, the corporate chieftains and the military warlords. They are unified not by conspiracy, which Mills expressly denied, but by common social origin, interchange of personnel through the revolving door, and a shared outlook.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Max Weber gave the threefold classification of authority, traditional, charismatic and legal-rational, and the definitions of power and the state. He did not use "power elite".

Answer: (c) Social contract

Why. All three are the classical exponents of the social contract theory: that men once lived in a state of nature and left it by an agreement which created civil society and government, so that political obligation rests on that agreement. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651); Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689); Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762).

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Idealist theory, associated with Hegel and in England with T.H. Green and Bosanquet, treats the state as a moral organism and the highest expression of the ethical Idea. It is a theory of the state's purpose rather than of its contractual origin, and Green explicitly rejected the contract.

Answer: (c) Hijrat

Why. Hijrat means voluntary migration: leaving the territory of the oppressor and settling elsewhere, so as to withdraw one's presence, labour and cooperation from an unjust regime. The word derives from the Arabic hijra, the Prophet's migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. Gandhi listed it among the means of resistance available where resistance on the spot has become impossible, and where a community would otherwise have to submit to humiliation.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Strike is the collective withdrawal of labour while remaining within the territory. It is a means of resistance, but it involves no migration.

Answer: (b) Reformative

Why. Employment and education are aimed at changing the offender so that he can return to society as a law-abiding member. That is the definition of the reformative theory, which treats crime as a symptom of circumstance, upbringing, poverty or illiteracy and the criminal as a patient to be treated rather than an enemy to be crushed. Its methods are exactly those named: education, vocational training, work, counselling, probation, parole and open prisons.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Retributive punishment is given because the offender deserves it, in proportion to the gravity of the offence. It is backward-looking and has no interest in what the offender becomes.

Answer: (c) Deterrent

Why. The word fear settles it. The deterrent theory holds that the purpose of punishment is 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 formula is that men are punished not because they have sinned, but so that others may not sin. The question also names both of its forms: "no one commit" is general deterrence, aimed at society, and "repeat" is specific deterrence, aimed at the offender.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Retributive: punishment is deserved because a wrong was done, looking backwards; deterrence looks forward to consequences.

Answer: (c) Communism

Why. Marx and Engels called their doctrine scientific socialism, to distinguish it from the utopian socialism of Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier, and its final stage and programme is communism. Their joint manifesto of 1848 is the Communist Manifesto, and their claim to be scientific rests on having supplied a mechanism, the materialist interpretation of history, class struggle and surplus value, where earlier socialists offered only moral appeal.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Socialism is the wider family, which includes utopian, Fabian and democratic socialism as well as the Marxist variety. Marx and Engels did not lay its foundation; they gave one branch of it a scientific claim.

Answer: (a) Utilitarianism

Why. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number" is the principle of utility, the foundational proposition of utilitarianism, adopted by Jeremy Bentham from Hutcheson and Beccaria and made the standard of right and wrong. An action, law or institution is right in proportion as it promotes happiness and wrong as it produces the reverse.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (b) Liberalism is the parent doctrine, and utilitarianism is an offshoot of it, but liberalism's own characteristic principles are individual rights, liberty and limited government. Indeed Bentham rejected the natural rights that classical liberalism rested on, calling them "nonsense upon stilts".

Answer: (b) Democracy

Why. Democracy is government by discussion, and it depends on the citizen being able to inform himself, evaluate competing claims and choose. Political education is therefore listed by every writer on the subject, J.S. Mill, Laski, Bryce and Ambedkar, among the essential conditions for the successful working of democracy. Mill regarded universal education as the first condition of representative government, because an uninformed electorate cannot exercise the franchise as a choice rather than as a reflex.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Society does not depend on political education for its existence; societies have functioned under every form of rule, including those requiring no political knowledge at all.

Answer: (c) Communism

Why. A classless society is the final goal of communism in Marx's scheme. Since a class is defined by its relation to the means of production, abolishing private ownership of those means abolishes the basis of class division itself. Once classes disappear, the state, whose function was to maintain the domination of one class over another, has nothing left to do and withers away, leaving a classless and stateless society governed by the rule "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Utopian Socialism, of Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier, sought harmony and cooperation through model communities and moral persuasion. It did not have a theory of class or a doctrine of the classless society, and Marx criticised it precisely for that lack.

Answer: (d) Sarvodaya

Why. Sarvodaya is a Sanskrit compound of sarva (all) and udaya (rise or uplift), so the word itself means the "welfare of all" or the betterment of all. Gandhi coined it in 1908 as the title of his Gujarati paraphrase of John Ruskin's Unto This Last, from which he drew the lesson that "the good of the individual is contained in the good of all".

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) Liberalism is centred on the individual and his rights and liberty, not on the collective welfare of all.
2. (b) Utilitarianism aims at the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which is deliberately not the same as all: a minority may be sacrificed to raise the total.
3. (c) Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and production for profit, with no doctrine of universal welfare at all.

Answer: (c) 2002

Why. The 86th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2002, did three connected things:

1. It inserted Article 21A, making free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen a Fundamental Right.
2. It substituted Article 45, which now directs the State to provide early childhood care and education for children below six.
3. It added Article 51A(k), a new Fundamental Duty on a parent or guardian "to provide opportunities for education to his child or, as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years". This is the eleventh Fundamental Duty, and the only one added since the original ten.

Answer: (a) Right to Equality

Why. The provision is Article 15(3), which falls under the Right to Equality (Articles 14 to 18). Article 15(1) prohibits discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth; Article 15(3) then provides that "nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children". It is an exception written into the equality guarantee so that protective and enabling legislation for women and children is not struck down as discrimination on the ground of sex.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (b) Right to liberty and (c) Right to Life both refer to Article 21 and its neighbours, which deal with the protection of life and personal liberty, not with special provisions for particular groups.

Answer: (a) 368

Why. Article 368, in Part XX, confers on Parliament the power to amend the Constitution "by way of addition, variation or repeal of any provision" and lays down the procedure. Amendments fall into three categories: those by a simple majority outside Article 368 (such as the formation of new States under Articles 3 and 4); those by a special majority under Article 368(2), that is a majority of the total membership of each House and two-thirds of those present and voting; and those requiring, in addition, ratification by half the State legislatures under the proviso, where the federal structure is affected.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (b) Article 370 contained the temporary special provisions for Jammu and Kashmir, and was rendered inoperative in 2019.
2. (c) Article 17 abolishes untouchability.
3. (d) Article 18 abolishes titles.

2. (c) Certiorari means "to be certified" or to be informed. It is issued by a higher court to an inferior court or tribunal to quash an order already passed in excess of jurisdiction or in violation of natural justice. It undoes what was done; mandamus compels what was not done.
3. (d) Quo warranto means "by what authority". It calls on a person holding a public office to show by what right he holds it, and is used to oust a usurper.

Answer: (a) Regional Party

Why. The "sons of the soil" doctrine is the claim that the natives of a State or region should have first, and sometimes exclusive, claim to jobs, education, land and business opportunities within it, as against migrants from other parts of the country. It is a demand rooted in regional identity, language and culture, and it is therefore advanced by regional parties, whose support base is confined to a single State and whose programme centres on that State's interests. The Shiv Sena in Maharashtra is the standard Indian example, and similar demands have been made in Assam, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (b) National Party contests across the country and seeks votes in every State, so it cannot adopt a doctrine that sets one State's people against another's; it would lose in the States it excluded.

Answer: (b) Two

Why. The United Kingdom is the classic example of a two-party system, in which two major parties dominate the contest and power alternates between them: historically the Whigs and the Tories, then the Conservatives and the Liberals, and since the 1920s the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. Other parties exist and win seats, but a government has been formed by one of these two in almost every Parliament for a century.

Why the others are wrong:

1. (a) One party system means a single legally or effectively permitted party, as in the former Soviet Union or in China. Britain has free, competitive elections.
2. (c) Multi-party systems, as in India, Italy, Israel and most of continental Europe, have several parties with a real prospect of governing, usually producing coalitions.
3. (d) Few is not a recognised category in the classification of party systems.

Power is the capacity to make others behave as one wishes, even against their will. Authority is legitimate power: the recognised right to command and be obeyed.

Three further differences if needed: power is often personal, authority is institutional and attaches to an office; power needs continuing coercion and is therefore expensive, authority is cheap; and authority is transferred by lawful procedure, election or appointment, while power is tied to its source.

Two demerits:

1. Excessive individualism. By treating society as a collection of separate individuals it neglects community, fraternity and the social nature of man, and offers a thin account of the obligations people owe one another.
2. In its classical form it produced economic inequality. Formal freedom without means is empty: a person too poor, too ill or too ignorant to use his liberty is not in fact free, and freedom of contract between grossly unequal parties is freedom for one of them. This is the Marxist charge that liberalism is the ideology of the propertied class, and the abuses of the factory system are the historical evidence for it.

2. It is humane and consistent with human dignity. It treats the offender as a person capable of change, which in India is what Article 21 requires; the Supreme Court took exactly this view in Mohammad Giasuddin v State of Andhra Pradesh (1977), describing the offender as a patient and the therapeutic approach as the correct one.

Two demerits:

1. It is weak against grave and premeditated crime, where a purely therapeutic response fails to protect society and offends the public sense of justice, on which the law's credibility depends.
2. It has no principle of proportion and therefore no upper limit. Since treatment continues until the offender is judged cured, a purely reformative system can justify indefinite detention. C.S. Lewis put the objection sharply: the humanitarian theory removes the offender from the realm of justice, where he is entitled to be punished no more than he deserves, and hands him to experts who may detain him as long as they think fit, for his own good.

The social contract theory holds that men once lived in a pre-political condition, the state of nature, and left it by an agreement which created civil society and government. Political obligation therefore rests on that agreement: the citizen ought to obey because he, or those through whom he holds his place, promised to, and the duty to obey is the ordinary moral duty to keep a promise.

Its importance is that it replaced the divine right explanation and made the state a human, artificial institution, created by consent for human purposes and answerable to them.

Its three great exponents, and the obligation each derives:

1. Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651): the state of nature is a war of every man against every man, so the surrender is total, the sovereign is not a party to the covenant, and obligation is absolute, with no right of resistance except to preserve one's own life.

Three features:

1. The lengthiest written constitution in the world. As adopted on 26 November 1949 it had a Preamble, 395 Articles in 22 Parts and 8 Schedules, and after more than a hundred amendments it now has around 470 Articles in 25 Parts and 12 Schedules. The length comes from the country's size and diversity, from borrowing heavily from the Government of India Act, 1935, and from providing a single constitution for both the Union and the States.

Article 21 provides: "No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law." Since Maneka Gandhi v Union of India (1978) the procedure must be fair, just and reasonable, and the Court has read a wide range of rights into the word "life", which in Francis Coralie Mullin (1981) was held to mean more than mere animal existence and to include the right to live with human dignity.

Three rights read into Article 21:

1. The right to livelihood, recognised in Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985): a person cannot live without the means of living, so depriving someone of his livelihood deprives him of life itself.
2. The right to health and emergency medical care, recognised in Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity v State of West Bengal (1996), where the State was held liable for a hospital's refusal to treat an injured man.
3. The right to privacy, recognised by nine judges in K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017), which includes informational privacy and decisional autonomy over intimate personal choices.

Article 17 provides:

"Untouchability" is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of "Untouchability" shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.

Its features:

1. It is one of the very few Articles that is absolute: it admits of no exception and no reasonable restriction, unlike Articles 19 and 21.
2. It is available against private individuals as well as the State, which is unusual in Part III, most of whose guarantees operate only against the State. Articles 15(2), 23 and 24 are the other such provisions.

The question asks specifically for provisions in Part III, the Fundamental Rights, and not in Part IV.

Three provisions:

1. Article 23: prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour. It forbids begar and all similar forms of forced labour, and it has been given a strongly socialist reading: in People's Union for Democratic Rights v Union of India (1982) the Supreme Court held that paying less than the minimum wage amounts to forced labour, because a person who works for less has not truly consented but has been driven by want.
2. Article 24: prohibition of employment of children below fourteen in any factory, mine or other hazardous employment, which protects the most vulnerable participants in the labour market.
3. Article 16(4), read with Articles 15(4) and 14: reservation in public employment for backward classes not adequately represented, and special provision for socially and educationally backward classes. These redistribute opportunity, which is the socialist objective of equality of status pursued through law.

The sovereignty of two masters is Jeremy Bentham's doctrine, stated in the opening sentence of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789):

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.

The two masters are pain and pleasure, and the passage makes two distinct claims:

1. A descriptive claim: pain and pleasure determine what we shall do. Human beings in fact act to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This is psychological hedonism.
2. A normative claim: they point out what we ought to do. They are the standard of right and wrong, so an action is right in proportion as it promotes happiness. This is ethical hedonism, and it yields the principle of utility, the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Because Marx took Hegel's dialectic and applied it to matter instead of to the Idea. The name has two halves and each names one half of what he did.

1. "Dialectics" is retained from Hegel: the method by which development takes place through the conflict of opposites, thesis producing antithesis and both being resolved in a synthesis, which becomes a new thesis. Change is therefore internal to a thing, arising from its own contradictions, rather than being added from outside.
2. "Materialism" is what Marx substituted for Hegel's idealism. For Hegel, reality is essentially mental, and history is the unfolding of the Idea or Absolute Spirit towards self-consciousness. For Marx, reality is essentially material, and what develops through contradiction is the mode of production, the material conditions under which men produce their means of life. "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."