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Uphold India's 'luxuriant pluralism', exhorts Narayanan

President Kocheril Raman Narayanan today fervently appealed to the people to redouble their efforts to blot out crimes against women, the dalits, and deprived sections and remove the "unholy alliance of crime and corruption from our society".

In his customary address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day, the President said: "We are witness to the sorry spectacle of the suppression of women, dalits, and other deprived sections of society -- denial of rights granted to them by law, violence and crimes committed against them, dowry killings and gang rapes not only for lust but as a brutal method of social revenge and social punishment."

He said the sense of fraternity, assuring the individual's dignity and the nation's unity, is the indispensable intangible that holds Indian society together with all its multi-faceted diversity and luxuriant pluralism.

India's unity is not based on any monolithic idea, but on the age-old tradition of tolerance, which is at once a pragmatic concept of living together and a philosophical concept of finding truth and goodness in every religion.

President Narayanan said political freedom in the country today is vibrant and unconfined, but the pursuit of social and economic freedom is still on and the nation's efforts are focussed on justice, social and economic, as envisaged in the Constitution.

"We have to endeavour with sincerity and seriousness to remove every injustice, every discrimination from every quarter so as to 'wipe out tears from every eye'."

Referring to economic liberalisation, the President said disparities in the country have increased in the midst of remarkable achievements. The number of people below the poverty line is estimated at little larger that the size of India's population at the time of Independence.

But "we have given rise to an enterprising middle class" which has become a potent force imparting momentum to the development process and the wheels of commerce.

The country's GNP (gross national product) is among the world's largest and the growth rate and other economic parameters have been only marginally affected by the economic crisis in other parts of Asia.

He said India has traditionally attached importance to the development of man, including spiritual development. Many laws have been passed since Independence investing women, the deprived sections, and workers and peasants with social and economic rights.

The President said the government and all political parties are committed to the idea of reservations for women in Parliament and the state legislatures. "I do hope India will enter the next millennium with our womenfolk unchained and empowered," he said.

* The government is concerned with education, health care, population growth, environmental protection and related problems. It is an irony of history that we find our country placed very low down in the world's Human Development Index, he said.

The need of the hour is not to repeat rhetoric, but to take practical steps to remove illiteracy. It is gratifying that the Ninth Five-Year Plan has given priority to the spread of elementary education.

On family planning, he said, "We have the know-how, the technique as well as desire on the part of the people to adopt methods of family planning. There is a need to mobilise the people in the campaign instead of dissipating our energies in ephemeral activities."

He said India strongly adheres to the policy of non-alignment and peaceful co-existence as a policy for a pluralistic pattern for the world. India also believes in complete and comprehensive disarmament, including the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction, the President said.

UNI

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