MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 56 of 100

Correct — option (3), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. The passage is his defence of the Directive Principles in the Constituent Assembly, delivered against the criticism that a set of principles which no court can enforce is so much pious sentiment and has no place in a constitution. Read the argument rather than hunting for the name, because the argument itself identifies the speaker's position. It concedes the objection at the outset — the principles have no binding force — and then answers it by relocating the sanction. A government that ignores them may indeed escape a court, but it cannot escape the voters, who will ask at the next election what was done about the poverty, the wages, the education and the welfare that Part IV names; so the principles bind politically where they do not bind legally. That is precisely the position of the man who had to pilot the draft through the Assembly and to justify to its members why a chapter of unenforceable directions had been included at all, and Ambedkar, as Chairman of the Drafting Committee, was that man. He is the member who repeatedly answered objections of this kind about the draft, and the reply here has the shape of all of them: accept the critic's premise, then show that the conclusion does not follow. The substance of what he said is confirmed by the text of the Constitution itself. Article 37 states that the provisions contained in Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court, and then adds in the same breath that the principles are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and that it shall be the duty of the State to apply them in making laws. The two halves of that article are the two halves of the quotation. The Directive Principles occupy Articles 36 to 51 in Part IV, and the idea of including them was taken from the Constitution of Ireland; they direct the State towards securing an adequate means of livelihood, the distribution of material resources to serve the common good, equal pay for equal work, the organisation of village panchayats, free and compulsory education for children, public assistance in old age and sickness, the promotion of cottage industries, the protection of the environment and of monuments, the separation of the judiciary from the executive, and the promotion of international peace. Because they are addressed to the State rather than granted to the citizen, and because they cannot be enforced through Article 32, their whole force depends on the political accountability the quotation describes. One caution about the stem is worth stating, because it costs marks elsewhere in this paper. The word 'not' appears twice in the passage, but it belongs to the quotation and not to the question: the question asked is simply who said this, which is a plain attribution question and not a negative one. Option (3) is the answer.

• (1)Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru — Nehru is the name a candidate reaches for when a constitutional quotation has to be attributed and nothing narrower comes to mind, and his standing in the Assembly makes the guess feel safe. His own contribution there was of a different kind. He moved the Objectives Resolution, the statement of aims with which the Assembly began its work and which set out the sovereign republic, the justice, liberty and equality, and the safeguards for minorities and backward classes that the Preamble later carried; and he chaired several of its important committees, including the Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee. What he did not do was carry the burden of defending the draft article by article against the members' objections, and this passage is a reply to an objection of exactly that sort. The distinction worth holding for examination purposes is between the framer who supplied the Assembly's direction and the framer who answered for the text, since the Commission asks about both.
• (2)B.N. Rao — The paper prints the name as B.N. Rao, and it is more usually written B. N. Rau — Sir Benegal Narsing Rau, who served as Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly. His role was substantial but it was an official's rather than a member's: he studied the constitutions of other countries, prepared the initial draft of the Constitution on which the Drafting Committee then worked, and supplied the Assembly with notes and comparative material. He was not an elected member of the Assembly, and speeches defending the draft on the floor against the criticism of members were not his to make. That structural point is the cleanest way to eliminate him here, and it is worth learning the division of labour it reflects, because the Commission asks about it directly: the Constitutional Adviser prepared the draft, the Drafting Committee revised it and its Chairman defended it, and the Assembly debated and adopted it.
• (4)K.M. Munshi — K. M. Munshi was a member of the Drafting Committee and an active participant in the Assembly's work, so this option is not a random name and cannot be dismissed on the ground that the person was uninvolved. What separates him from the answer is the particular office behind the passage. The quotation is a reply on behalf of the draft as a whole, conceding a criticism of Part IV and then answering it, and replies of that kind fell to the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, who was Ambedkar. Munshi's name is associated in the Assembly's record with other matters, and he is remembered for his work on the chapter of rights and for his part in the drafting exercise as a member rather than as its head. In attribution questions of this kind the productive test is to ask which office the words were spoken from, since a defence of the draft implies the person responsible for the draft.

The Directive Principles of State Policy occupy Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, and they are instructions to the State rather than rights of the citizen. The idea was borrowed from the Constitution of Ireland, and its purpose was to record the social and economic goals of the new republic without making them justiciable, since a poor State could not be compelled by a court to provide what it did not have the resources to provide. Article 37 states the position exactly: the principles are not enforceable by any court, yet they are fundamental in the governance of the country and it is the duty of the State to apply them in making laws. Their content covers the securing of an adequate means of livelihood, the distribution of ownership and control of material resources to subserve the common good, equal pay for equal work, the organisation of village panchayats, free and compulsory education for children, the raising of the level of nutrition and public health, the promotion of cottage industries, the separation of the judiciary from the executive, the protection of monuments and of the environment, and the promotion of international peace and security. The relationship between Part III and Part IV — enforceable rights against unenforceable directions — has been one of the most heavily litigated questions in Indian constitutional law, and the settled position is that the two are complementary and are to be read harmoniously rather than as rivals. Several principles have been given effect through ordinary legislation and through constitutional amendment, which is the route the quotation anticipates: political will, not judicial compulsion.

Attribution questions are a staple of the polity section, and MPSC sets them in two forms, one asking who said a given sentence and the other asking which principle or provision a named framer was responsible for. Both are best prepared by learning the roles rather than by memorising quotations, because the role usually identifies the speaker. Ambedkar chaired the Drafting Committee and answered for the draft; Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution and chaired the principal committees on the Union; Rajendra Prasad presided over the Assembly; B. N. Rau was the Constitutional Adviser who prepared the first draft; and Munshi, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and the other members of the Drafting Committee worked on the text under Ambedkar. A candidate holding that division of labour can place most quotations without ever having read them. This question also illustrates a trap that this paper sets deliberately elsewhere: the word 'not' appears in the stem but inside the quoted passage, so the question is a plain attribution and not a negative one. The five genuinely negative stems in this paper print their negation in bold; a negation inside a quotation is part of what is being quoted and should not change how the question is read.

• The passage defending the Directive Principles as politically rather than legally binding is attributed to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who as Chairman of the Drafting Committee answered the Constituent Assembly's objections to the draft.
• The Directive Principles of State Policy are contained in Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, and the idea of including them was taken from the Constitution of Ireland.
• Article 37 provides that the provisions of Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court, but that they are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and that it is the duty of the State to apply them in making laws.
• Because the Directive Principles cannot be enforced through the courts, their sanction is political: a government that disregards them answers for it before the electorate rather than before a judge, which is the argument the quoted passage makes.
• B. N. Rau, whose name this paper prints as B.N. Rao, was the Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly and prepared the initial draft of the Constitution; he was an official of the Assembly and not an elected member of it.

• Attributing any constitutional quotation to Nehru by default, when the passages defending the draft against members' objections belong to the Chairman of the Drafting Committee
• Treating a stem as a negative question because the word 'not' appears inside a quotation, when the negation belongs to the passage being quoted and not to the question asked
• Confusing the Constitutional Adviser, who prepared the initial draft, with the Drafting Committee, which revised it, and with the Assembly, which debated and adopted it
• Concluding from the unenforceability of the Directive Principles that they have no constitutional significance, when Article 37 declares them fundamental in the governance of the country

The Constituent Assembly and the Directive Principles are among the most frequently examined areas of the polity section, and the Commission asks them through attribution of quotations, through the composition and chairmanship of committees, through the article numbers of individual principles, and through the sources from which particular features were borrowed. Quotation questions look like memory tests but are usually answerable from the role of the speaker, so time is better spent on who did what in the Assembly than on collecting quotations. It is also worth preparing Part IV article by article, since the Commission asks which article provides for village panchayats, for uniform civil code, for the separation of the judiciary from the executive or for the protection of the environment, and these are recalled only if the numbers have been learnt with the content.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Article of the Constitution declares that the Directive Principles shall not be enforceable by any court but are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country ?

  • (a)Article 32
  • (b)Article 36
  • (c)Article 37
  • (d)Article 51

  Answer(c) Article 37 — it contains both halves of the position at once, providing that the provisions of Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court while declaring that they are fundamental in the governance of the country and that it is the duty of the State to apply them in making laws. Article 36 supplies the definition of the State for Part IV, Article 51 directs the promotion of international peace and security, and Article 32 is the right to constitutional remedies, which belongs to the enforceable Part III.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The idea of including a chapter of Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution was drawn from the constitution of which country ?

  • (a)The United States of America
  • (b)Ireland
  • (c)Canada
  • (d)Australia

  Answer(b) Ireland — the Irish Constitution is the source from which the framers took the device of a set of non-justiciable directions to the State, and the Indian Directive Principles in Part IV follow that model. The American Constitution supplied the Fundamental Rights, judicial review and the impeachment procedure; Canada supplied the federation with a strong Centre and the residuary powers of the Union; and Australia supplied the Concurrent List and the provisions on freedom of trade and commerce.