Need for a Shot of Justice

Given the backlash against the politics and practice of social justice, this chapter provides a justification for an engagement with the proactive debate in political philosophy on ‘equalisandum’—what is to be equalized across individuals in a just society—since the publication of John Rawls’ path-breaking work, A Theory of Justice, in 1971. Since injustice faced by children is the biggest blot on the promise of equality of opportunity, it makes a case for anchoring the discussion of equalisandum in the context of child survival, in India. Millions of children continue to lack the opportunity to even survive within the first five years of birth, and India has recorded not only the highest number of child deaths for decades, but also some of the worst forms of injustice. The chapter ends with a brief discussion on why Amartya Sen’s capability metric is preferable vis-à-vis its Rawlsian and resourcist counterparts, both conceptually and contextually.

Metrics of Justice

This chapter characterizes and critiques the relevant aspects of various metrics of justice put forth by major theories of justice, with a special focus on Amartya Sen’s capability approach. It then goes on to discuss some of the relevant issues pertaining to the measurement of justice within the capability framework. For instance, justice is to be eventually measured at the individual and not the social level, although our choice will be governed by the evaluative purpose. It ends with a conceptual assessment of the capability approach, highlighting some of its challenges.

The Prospects of Survival

This chapter presents data on child mortality from the earliest time available. It begins with an overview of India’s performance vis-à-vis the top five contributors to under-five deaths in the world and then looks at both inter-state, intra-group, intra-state, and inter-group inequalities among social groups by gender, tribe, caste, and religion. It also analyses intra-group differentials at the inter-state level, looking at how a particular group is doing or has done in different states. This not only shows their relative standing at the state level, but also their given maximal (if not the optimal) achievement in the country, and the shortfall in other states from their respective maximal. One important lesson from this chapter is that child survival in India is, first and foremost, a manifestation of systemic injustice, reflected in the country’s poor aggregate performance over the decades. A narrow focus on inter-group inequalities is, therefore, not enough.

Which Shot of Justice?

This chapter undertakes a critical assessment of five Indian policies pertaining to children and claims of equality of resources (opportunities) and outcomes from the perspective of theoretical and empirical discussions in the previous chapters. As far as the policies are concerned, they have largely focused on equality of resources, predominantly with reference to health care and early nutrition. Despite showing some promise, they have ended up in timidity as far as their conceptualization and operationalization of equity is concerned. The chapter goes on to discuss the relevance of Amartya Sen’s ‘multifocal variable’, and although it seems that Sen would call for equality of capabilities, he does not. Instead, he argues against ‘absolute priority’ to any ‘unifocal criterion’ and in favor of equity considerations being broad, inclusive and multidimensional. It ends with the implications of discussions in the book for the equalisandum debate in political philosophy and for affirmative action policies.

The Architecture of Survival

A shift of focus from outcomes (child survival) to resources (determinants of child survival) makes the pursuit of justice problematic, given that several aspects of parental (especially maternal) well-being are closely inter-linked with child survival, linking the pursuit of justice for children with a broader pursuit of justice. This chapter begins with a critical analysis of the literature on the structural, intermediate and immediate determinants of child survival as well as their interlinkages and contextual variations. Against this backdrop, available data on access or utilization of determinants at the international, inter-state and inter-group level in India is discussed. This chapter demonstrates that, despite efforts to evolve an international consensus in favor of a simple biomedical intervention (vaccination), the sphere of determinants is empirically, normatively as well as politically problematic.