Law will take its own course!

In public conversations, 'law will take its own course' tag has almost become a cliche. Law taking its own course is the most favorable course any case can take for the benefit of the accused. Corrupt politicians often take refuge under this umbrella to lengthen the courtroom proceedings, buy time and bailout culprits. This terminology in blame game politics implies that who ever is guilty of an offence will get punished as per law. Law will take its own course is meant for the educated people who are afraid of the law, which is not to be crossed over under any circumstances. Upholding the majesty of law and the principle of equality of all before the law, however high or mighty the persons may be, is the bounden duty of the government. In India, we have the best drafted laws but the problem is that the law enforcing agencies doesn't work effectively and the common people are the worst hit. The law almost never takes its own course in India. The state is always up to mischief against the citizen and the judiciary usually does not resist it. The conduct of democracy rests on three core ideas – representation, rule of law and freedoms. A substantive idea of representation goes beyond the minimalist protocol of electing representatives. It includes an idea of representation of voiceless people who do not know how to speak to power, or who do not know how to use existing laws to protect their lands and forests from rapacious loot by crony capitalists. The second feature of democracy is the rule of law and the accountability of those who implement and use law. The rule of law aims to protect and preserve the rights of people, and if these rights are being infringed, to provide recourse and remedies. And finally, democracy functions through a range of freedoms – to speak, express, form associations, dissent, basically through a mobilization and institutionalization of demands, and a competition of ideas and agendas. Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If not allowed, the safety valve will burst. This is not part of some revolutionary ethic but comes out of a standard understanding of the mechanics of liberal democracy. Truth is self-effulgent. If truth requires evidence, what will evidence that evidence? - Swami Vivekananda

Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are equal

• Retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Ajit Prakash Shah, declared scathingly, “The Republic of Intolerance that India has turned into in the last few years reflects and confirms to us our collective psychological malady, where we have lost sensitivity to the pain of our fellow citizens, and have become numb to the increasing loss of rights as citizens.”
• Justice Shah confessed that his own roots were seeped in saffron: “My grandfather was one of the founding members of the Hindu Mahasabha in pre-Independent India. I grew up reading the poems of Veer Savarkar.”
• He said, “Until the day the RSS declares that Islam and Christianity are equal to Hinduism and other religions born in India, there will be little scope for social harmony.”
• He said that those who lead the mob violence are clearly doing so with impunity, while fear spreads amongst the minorities. The mobile phone and the violent content it brings to you has become a terrorising device, with mob lynchers recording their acts and spreading them.
• The home ministry has directed wide publicity of the severe punishments that participation and abetment to mob fury can draw, it needs to be seen how sincere the government is in implementing this stated intent, Justice Shah said.
• The Indian media has been a big disappointment. “Far from questioning the government on behalf of the people, the media today circulates fake news and questions those who question the government. If the media at large feels compromised, barring a few exceptions, then democracy is in peril. Lynchings have to be condemned by news anchors, not used as ‘masala’ for prime time television,” he said.
• Justice Shah said that in the recent judgement of the Supreme Court directing continued detention at home for activists accused of conspiracy, the value was is in the dissenting verdict of Justice DY Chandrachud. 
• “Dissent is being curbed. Sloganeering is becoming a test of patriotism. When Akhlaq was killed, it wasn’t his body that was sent for post-mortem first. It was the meat which was sent for testing,” he said, pointing out the prejudice in the law and order machinery.
• “When violence happens in small doses, and regularly, we find it hard to remain angry, and accept it as commonplace.”
• The hope for the nation lies in common citizens refusing to accept any deviation of the founding values of the Constitution, Justice Shah concluded.

The one-day event saw nearly 2,000 people register to attend and listen to various speakers, which also included the articulate MP Shashi Tharoor and student leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

Income tax reduction doesn't impact economic growth

No one likes to pay taxes, particularly more taxes. Discussions about tax rates rouse emotions as discussions about where those taxes are spent. The influence of tax rates isn’t as significant as the emotional response to them might suggest. The basic question is: Do tax rates—by adding money when cut or subtracting money when raised—result in economic growth or contraction, meaning more or fewer jobs? The structure and financing of a tax change are critical to achieving economic growth. If the tax cuts are not financed by immediate spending cuts, they will result in an increased budget deficit, which will result in inflation and increased interest rates. The net impact on growth is either small or negative or uncertain. Base-broadening measures can eliminate the effect of tax rate cuts on budget deficits. They may also reallocate resources across sectors toward their economic use, increased efficiency and raising the overall size of the economy. All tax changes will not have the same impact on growth. Reforms that improve incentives, reduce subsidies, avoid windfall gains, and avoid deficit financing will have more auspicious effects on the size of the economy, but may also create trade-offs between equity and efficiency. 

• The tax policy can influence economic choices, it is by no means obvious that tax rate cuts will ultimately lead to a larger economy in the long run. 
• The income tax rate cuts would raise the after-tax income to working, saving, and investing, they would also lessens their need to work, save, and invest. The first effect raises economic activity, while the second effect reduces it.
• Tax cuts financed by immediate cuts in unproductive government spending could raise output, but tax cuts financed by reductions in government investment could reduce output.
• If they are not financed by spending cuts, tax cuts will lead to an increase in government borrowing, which in turn, will reduce long-term growth. 
• The historical evidence and analysis suggest that tax cuts that are financed by debt for an extended period of time will actually reduce growth.
• Tax reform is complex, as it involves tax rate cuts as well as base-broadening changes. Such changes should raise the overall size of the economy in the long-term, but the magnitude of the impact are uncertain. 
• Broadening the tax base by reducing or eliminating tax expenditures raises the effective tax rate and hence will operate in a direction opposite to rate cuts and mitigate their effects on economic growth. But base-broadening has the benefit of reallocating resources to sectors that have the highest economic return, which should increase the overall size of the economy.
• A well-designed tax policies have the potential to raise economic growth, but there are many stumbling blocks along the way and certainly no guarantee that all tax changes will improve economic performance. 
• A tax change will be more growth-inducing to the extent that it involves (i) large positive incentive effects that encourage work, saving, and investment; (ii) small or negative income effects, including a careful targeting of tax cuts toward new economic activity, rather than providing windfall gains for previous activities; (iii) reductions in distortions across economic sectors and across different types of income and consumption; and (iv) minimal increases in, or reductions in, the budget deficit.
• Debt-financed tax cuts will tend to boost short-term growth, but also tend to reduce long-term growth, if they are financed eventually by higher taxes. Second, revenue-neutral income tax reform can provide a modest boost to economic growth.
• The tax rate on the average American was around 21% in 1947 and declined to around 15.5%, in 2015. The tax rates for the highest earners dropped from 86.45% in 1947 to 39.60% in 2015.  During this period US economy (GDP) grew from $243 billion in 1947 to $18,905 in 2017. Over that period, taxes increased and decreased; wages climbed and dropped; interest rates rose and fell; and so on. But GDP grew year after. It grew because something other than money drives the spirit.
• Income beyond $250,000 per annum gets tossed into savings & investment account and gets utilized for vulgar spending like gambling, trading, holidaying, ornaments, real estate, vulgar homes, money laundering etc and taxing this money doesn't make any difference to anybody.

Tax cuts that target new economic activity, reduce distortions to the allocation of capital, and are not deficit financed are more likely to lead to economic growth. Advanced countries that decrease their tax rates do not experience less economic growth as changes to the top individual income tax rate are not associated with economic growth. Studies show that the US economy has not grown in conjunction with large changes to individual income tax policy. In summary, the impact of tax cuts on growth depends on how the tax cut is financed and the assumed international capital flows. Failure of capital to flow internationally reduces the likelihood of success of tax rate cuts.

Read the source article

The income tax created more criminals 

than any other single act of government ... Barry Goldwater

Almost all studies indicated that, income tax reduction has significant and negative impact on economic development. Hence income tax reforms aiming to reduce tax rates benefits only rich to become much richer and is in violation principles of democracy and equality. The present tax regime which taxes class four employees is ridiculous while almost all businessmen pays meager taxes that never exceed 10% of their real income, where as TDS deductions for salaried class starts at Rs.2.5 lakhs pa. The suggested rationalization of tax rates to be as under with stringent penalties for violations.

Since broadening tax base has evil aim of taxing the poor while doling out concessions to the rich with other hand and is unacceptable non-sense as it results in much work and little gain. Riches beyond certain point neither increases consumer spending nor capital accumulation but goes into unproductive spending & laundering that burdens the economy and abuses nature. While intelligence, talent & hard work must be rewarded, the high:low wage ratio of over 10,000 is untenable and must be brought to acceptable 200. Extreme poverty must be subsidized heavily and extreme wealth must be taxed heavily.

Delhi archbishop warns of threat to India's secular fabric

 

The archbishop of Delhi has called for a prayer campaign until the next general election in an unprecedented political intervention, citing a threat to the country’s secular fabric, triggering angry reactions from the ruling Hindu nationalist party. "We are witnessing a turbulent political atmosphere which poses a threat to the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution and the secular fabric of our nation," Archbishop Anil Couto wrote in a letter issued this month to all parish priests and religious institutions in the archdiocese of Delhi.

• Christians constitute less than 3 percent of Hindu-majority India’s 1.3 billion people. India is officially secular, but four-fifths of its population profess the Hindu faith.
• The BJP said the letter was akin to calling people to vote along communal lines, and that it was unfortunate. The next election has to be held by next May.
• The Archbishop’s secretary, Father Robinson Rodrigues sad that such prayer campaigns took place before every general election, but the exercise was being politicised this time.
• The spokesman for the Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, Father Savarimuthu Sankar, said the archbishop only called for a prayer campaign not an election campaign. He said the letter, the first of its kind from Archbishop Anil Couto since he was installed in 2013, was prompted by continued violence against Christians over the past four years and following attempts to bring back to Hinduism people who converted to Christianity. We try to influence at least those people who are educated, who are balanced. So far we have been saying these are fringe elements who are behind the attacks. But there is a danger that fringe elements may become the mainstream. To some extent they are succeeding also.
• Responding to questions about the letter, Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh told reporters that minorities are safe in India and that no one is allowed to discriminate on the basis of caste and religion. Between 2014 and 2015, Couto and other Christians in the national capital region of Delhi told Rajnath Singh how violence had picked up after Modi came to power, detailing at least five cases of attacks on churches in New Delhi following which extra police had been deployed to protect 240 churches in the capital.
• The prayer for our nation says, “Let the dreams of our founding fathers and the values of our Constitution – equality, liberty and fraternity – be always held in highest esteem. Let the people of all castes and creeds, all denominations and persuasions live in harmony and peace steering far away from hatred and violence." The prayer also focuses on the poor and the marginalised, saying, “Let the poor of our country be provided with the means of livelihood. Let the dalits, tribals and the marginalised be brought into the mainstream of nation building. Let justice and integrity prevail in every sphere of our life.”
• The prayer further says, "Protect our legislature as a place of discerning minds. Raise our judiciary as the hallmark of integrity, prudence and justice. Keep our print, visual and social media as the channels of truth for edifying discourses. Protect our institutions from the infiltration of the evil forces.” 

While the letter and prayer has no inflammable content, the underpinning is very clear that minorities have apprehensions about their safety, rights and privileges compromised. They are all living with their mouth shut for the last 4 years, with fear gripping them choking. Now that Modi & BJP got weakened, vulnerable and uncertain of wining no more elections owing to his worst performance in all fronts, it is natural that all suppressed sections of people will speak out their mind ventilating their grudge reflecting their anger. With minorities at 20%, dalits at 18% thoroughly alienated, there is no way BJP can win 2019 general elections unless oppositions parties fail to put up common candidates. But with Karnataka episode, Modi has himself united all the opposition parties, underwriting his own defeat. 

The insanity of endless growth

Almost all governments, business, media and both the political ‘left’ and ‘right’ are busy extolling endless growth on a planet which is finite. Clearly endless economic growth is impossible, and its pursuit unsustainable and unethical and such destructive pursuit of the impossible is insane. Humanity is totally dependent on the biosphere and it is degrading. Hence society needs to realize that we are way past sustainable ecological limits. 

• The most drastic effects of the rise of economic growth are the impoverishing of democracy, the loss of liberty, and the abandonment of equality. We must subject the economy to the ideals of democracy, liberty, equality, and unity. The drivers of free-market system are causing interrelated problems and if we are to turn our nation from this path of folly, we must first abandon the faulty assumptions that drive our thinking. The four pillars of capitalism - endless economic growth, ever-increasing productivity, accelerating technological advances, and self-interest must be abandoned. Economic insanity challenges people to stop looking for answers within the system and look instead to changing the system.
• The reality is that endless economic growth on a finite planet is unsustainable, especially if society has exceeded ecological limits. There are ‘limits of growth’; and the ‘endless growth mantra’ within society is unsustainable. The three main drivers of ‘unsustainability’ are overpopulation, over consumption and the growth economy. 
• The ‘decoupling’ strategy by switching over to renewable sources of energy etc has its merits and limits, and at best a partial solution to the problem. The key social problem is denial of our predicament along with the contribution of anthropocentric modernism as a worldview that aids and abets that denial. At best attempts at decoupling slow down the rate at which things get worse. Talk of 100% decoupling is likely to be merely a wishful thinking.
• Human population growth and the concomitant increase in the consumption of resources would exceed planetary limits around the middle of the 21st century, causing societal collapse. The Global Ecological Footprint now stands at 1.6 Earths. The Living Planet Index has declined by 58% between 1970 and 2012.  The species extinction rate is at least 1000 times normal. At least 60% of ecosystem services are degrading or being used unsustainably. We are bankrupting nature and consuming the past, present and future of our biosphere.
• Economic growth is seen as the panacea for almost all societal ills. Commitment to growth is being promoted in the guise of free trade, competitiveness, productivity – or even as sustainable development which is an oxymoron. Sustainable development requires a GDP growth rate of 5%, doubling output every 14 years. Economic growth can't be the cure for poverty, unemployment, debt repayment, inflation, population explosion, and so on.
• The idea of benefits of growth would trickle down and alleviate global poverty has failed. The verb ‘to grow’ has become twisted; its original meaning is to spring up and develop to maturity, a steady state. To grow beyond a certain point is disastrous. It is possible to develop scenario where full employment prevails, poverty eliminated, people have more leisure, and greenhouse gases drastically reduced, with low or no economic growth. It is a mistake to assume that economic growth is a necessity for full employment.
• Once we have exceeded ecological limits, growth will make us worse off with uneconomic growth. Products scarcity leads to advocacy of even more growth. This becomes a death spiral. Healing our world requires accepting the reality that the economy cannot grow forever. 
• A dismissal of ecological limits and the rapidly worsening environmental crisis indicates many are still in denial of the insanity and unsustainability of endless economic growth. Many things change and solutions become easier if we change our worldview and ethics. Society needs to return to ecocentrism and adopt an Earth ethic and undertake the work of repairing the Earth and changing to a worldview of ecocentrism to step on the path to a sustainable future.

We have been locked into an insane growth fantasy for two centuries, but the past does not mandate the future. It is time now to grow up. We need to acknowledge the scale of the problem, abandon denial, and move towards a major shift in worldview. This is a big task, but also an exciting, positive challenge – one nobody should deny.

Read the source article

Four Earths would be needed if everyone lived like Americans.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem 
brings us face to face with another problem ... Martin Luther King, Jr.

Growth mantra has simply made rich much richer while poor remained poor. The disparity between rich and poor has widened like never before. This trend can't go on forever. In order to retain our humanity in the face of ecological limits, we would have to confront inequality head on. If wealth were divided equally among the all the people in the world, the per capita material affluence would drop significantly. Global society has already entered the phase where the capacity to grow, to generate real new wealth, is declining. When growth stops, tensions mount. Only the tyrannical state, with its monopoly on violence, its enormous bureaucracies, its tentacles reaching into every facet of life, will have the power to save us from the stupidity called the freedom to grow forever. 

Gandhi's 100 teachings

Here are 100 teachings drawn from Gandhi's writings. 
There will be greater opportunities to put them to good use.

1. A civilization is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.
2. A Government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.
3. All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect.
4. All fear is a want of faith.
5. All other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
6. A nonviolent resister cannot wait or delay action till perfect conditions are forthcoming.
7. A nonviolent revolution is not a program for the seizure of power. It is a program for the transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
8. A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
9. By our actions we mean to show that physical force is nothing compared (to) moral force.
10. Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil.
11. Civil disobedience without constructive programs is bound to fail.
12. Cooperation with good is as much a duty as noncooperation with evil.
13. Do not undertake anything beyond your capacity, and at the same time do not harbor the wish to do less than you can. One who takes up tasks beyond his powers is proud and attached. On the other hand, one who does less than he can is a thief.
14. Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible.
15. Each step upward makes me feel stronger and fit for the next step.
16. Every one of my failures has been a steppingstone.
17. Every right carries with it a corresponding duty.
18. Everything is done openly and aboveboard, for truth hates secrecy.
19. Evil can only be sustained by violence.
20. Exploitation is the essence of violence.
21. Faith does not admit of telling. It has to be lived and then it becomes self-propagating.
22. Faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of God within.
23. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.
24. For a nonviolent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him.
25. Freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom.
26. Given the opportunity, every human being has the same possibility for spiritual growth.
27. God is conscience.
28. [God] reveals Himself daily to every human being but we shut our ears to "the still small voice."
29. Good government is no substitute for self-government.
30. He who is ever brooding over results often loses nerve in the performance of duty.
31. I am a Christian and a Hindu and a Moslem and a Jew.
32. I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.
33. I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him; and, if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.
34. I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill.
35. I can retain neither respect nor affection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.
36. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, "unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind."
37. If a father does an injustice, it is the duty of his children to leave the parental roof. If the headmaster of a school conducts his institution on an immoral basis, the pupils must leave the school. If the chairman of a corporation is corrupt, the members thereof must wash their hands clean of his corruption by withdrawing from it; even so, if a Government does a grave injustice, the subjects must withdraw cooperation wholly or partially, sufficiently to wean the ruler from his wickedness.
38. If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
39. I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me.
40. Individuals or nations, who would practice nonviolence, must be prepared to sacrifice [everything] except honor.
41. In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
42. In nonviolent resistance, success is possible even if there is only one nonviolent resister of the proper stamp.
43. In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things to go on. (written in September 1939 at the start of World War II) 
44. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.
45. It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
46. It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves.
47. It is not nonviolence if we love merely those who love us. It is nonviolence only when we love those who hate us.
48. It is sinful to buy and use articles made by sweated labor.
49. I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
50. Love is the law of life.
51. Love never claims, it ever gives.
52. No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption.
53. No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice no matter where it occurred.
54. No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important.
55. Nonviolence, in the very nature of things, is of no assistance in the defense of ill-gotten gains and immoral acts.
56. Nonviolence is never a method of coercion, it is one of conversion.
57. [Nonviolent] struggle is impossible without capital in the form of character.
58. Nothing enduring can be built on violence.
59. Our aim is the establishment of the kingdom of Righteousness on earth.
60. Peace has its victories more glorious than those of war.
61. Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one another.
62. Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?
63. Religions are different roads converging on the same point.
64. Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
65. Rights that do not flow directly from duty well performed are not worth having.
66. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
67. Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.
68. Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone.
69. Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak.
70. That line of action is alone justice which does not harm either party to a dispute.
71. The acquisition of the spirit of nonresistance changes one's outlook upon life. It puts different values upon things and upsets previous calculations. And when it is set in motion, its effect can overtake the whole world. It is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul.
72. The best politics is right action.
73. The danger is greatest when victory seems nearest.
74. The fabled godly Elephant King... was saved only when he thought he was at his last gasp.
75. The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
76. The fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves.
77. The highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
78. The movement of noncooperation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt; it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, or spirit.
79. The problem is a world problem. No nation can find its own salvation by breaking away from others. We must all be saved or we must all perish together.
80. There is a power now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.
81. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.
82. To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.
83. To benefit by others' killing and delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religious and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.
84. True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it.
85. Truth never damages a cause that is just.
86. Violence is suicide.
87. We are all children of one and the same God and, therefore, absolutely equal.
88. We hug the chains that bind us.
89. We leave things to Fate after exhausting all the remedies.
90. We may attack measures and systems. We may not, we must not, attack people. Imperfect ourselves, we must be tender toward others and slow to impute their motives.
91. We may not be God but we are of God -- even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.
92. We must combat the wrong by ceasing to assist the wrongdoer, directly or indirectly.
93. Western democracy as it functions today, is diluted nazism or fascism. At best it is merely a cloak to hide the nazi and fascist tendencies of imperialism.
94. What is possible for one is possible for all.
95. When we disobey a law, it is not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.
96. Where Love is, there God is also.
97. Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
98. Whilst... [conscience] is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon others would be an insufferable interference with their freedom of conscience.
99. Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great he might be, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically.
100. You should be pioneers in presenting a living faith to the world and not the dry bones of a traditional faith which the world will not grasp.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem 

brings us face to face with another problem ... Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dynasty in Politics

The Preamble of  The  Constitution of India states ...

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN, SOCIALIST, SECULAR, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this 26th day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

• Equality of status and of opportunity means all men are equal and can aspire for any political positions irrespective of caste, creed, color, or any thing which includes the so much talked about 'dynasty'. There is no way 'dynasts' can be relegated as 'untouchables' in independent India.
• It is no body's job to install or pave way for the ascending of aspiring common man occupy such positions. If the process has become so much cumbersome and expensive it is not the fault of 'dynasts'. It is our own political and social problem.
• Can we debar effective communicators like Modi, KCR etc paving way for so called aspiring common man? If 'dynasts' have some inherent advantages of their fore fathers and money that is their good luck. Everybody looks forward standing on the shoulders of their parents & grandparents. Nothing wrong in that.
• These days, money is playing decisive role in politics and it is due to failure of government, institutions and people themselves. Not the failure of constitution. Education, awareness and independent media are the keys.
• Social justice is not a goal or a dead end. In a good society there would be many above the thin line of 'Social Justice' and few below. The other way round like in India is worrisome. It is the responsibility of underprivileged to work hard and alleviate themselves and also the duty of Society and Government to extend helping hand to accelerate the same.
• Representative & Constitution based Democracy is neither perfect nor foolproof but is the least worst forms of Democracy. There is no such thing called ideal democracy.
• Extreme democracy, as practiced in 'small & rich' Switzerland too has many aberrations.
• The beauty of Indian democracy is that very often erring famous people encounter defeat and were sent into oblivion indicates its inherent strength and resilience. But that should not be a limiting factor in eradicating most of the ills the of society, if not all.
• As long as our economic policies aids corruption & capitalism in the name of 'rewarding the talent' and in reality rewards the rich, educated and perverted who will continue to become richer while poor will remain poorer resulting in Gini coefficient increasing beyond limits and eventually could result in social unrest and destruction of the nation.
• In a democracy 'Elected Executive' stands tallest of all. If institutions proactively doesn't control erring executive, at every step, democracy dies and authoritarianism erupts. The real power is with that person who control Money, Police & Military i.e. The Executive. Institutions have no jurisdiction over them. Where ever 'Elected Super Boss' subverts constitution and institutions, dictatorships have ruled those nations. It is imperative for people to elect good person to positions of power. People can't elect rogues to rule them and expect institutions to control him with checks and balances. Life doesn't work that way. 
• Every undebated and nontransparent decision of Executive & Legislature must be subjected to judicial scrutiny prior to its implementation.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” ― James Madison

Why do people vote for 'dynasts'? That is because familiarity of that family with the people and people enjoyed some benefits of their generosity in the past. Why do parties rally behind dynasts with in the party? That is because of their belief in their charisma to hold the party together. Without Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi at the helm of Congress party, it would disintegrate. As long as so called 'dynasts' have popular mandate, it is perfectly in order. What is wrong in standing on the shoulders of forefathers and looking forward? Which everybody does. Some years ago an ageing cricket batsman was asked when he would retire paving way for young aspirants. He said that he wouldn't do any such thing and it is for the young new cricketer to work hard and prove better than him and displace him. That answers the concept of merit, the underpin of democracy.