About the Book

Justice is one of the primary qualities of a good political order. With rising disparities of income, wealth and access to opportunity in most of the liberal societies, justice is now a concern of anyone for one’s rightful due. Each one in society wants and expects one’s fair share of wealth, income, political power, social recognition, education, and other resources and opportunities. The basic question is about the specific standard to be employed in assessing what one deserves. To utilitarian theorists, a socially just allocation is ultimately an allocation that produces the greatest sum of happiness. The most ambitious attempt to answer these questions was provided by John Rawls. Rawls’s view is that justice demands ‘maximum equal liberty’ and a distribution of economic benefits which makes the least favoured person as well off as possible. Hayek and Nozick challenge John Rawls’s arguments saying that distributive principles are incompatible with individual liberty. In the traditional distributional approach, the sole emphasis on distribution without an examination of the underlying causes of the mal-distributions was not acceptable to several contemporary political theorists such as, Iris Young, Nancy Frazer, Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor. Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have expanded the conception of justice beyond Rawls (distributive justice) by advancing capability approach. Today, even environmental and ecological justice have become very important themes of discussion for social and political theorists. The idea of social justice implies more than just granting political and legal equality by the state. The book pursues this line of inquiry by providing students, scholars and policy makers with an extensive review of research on social justice. Contributors Mohit Bhattacharya P.K. Chaubey Naresh Dadhich M.P. Dube Debashis Guha Sanjay Gupta M. Kistaiah Bhaskar Majumdar Anand P. Mavalankar Asok Mukhopadhyay Chandrakala Padia S.V. Pande Sumita Parmar Ramashray Roy Ashish Saxena Papia Sengupta K.L. Sharma T.R. Sharma Mahendra Prasad Singh Archana Srivastava D.K. Verma

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Contents

Introduction

Part I: Theorizing Social Justice

1. The Concept of ‘Justice’ / Debashis Guha

2. The Idea of ‘Justice as Fairness’ / Naresh Dadhich

3. Rawls’s Theory of Justice / Asok Mukhopadhyay

4. Theorizing Social Justice Beyond Distributive Principles / M.P. Dube

5. Affirmative Action and Justice / Ramashray Roy

6. Beyond Rawls: Conceptualizing Social Justice in a Varna-Based Society / T.R. Sharma

7. Justice for Groups: Multiculturalist Critique of Rawls’s Theory of Justice / Papia Sengupta

8. The Question of Justice in the Contemporary Global Order: Some Guiding Considerations / Anand P. Mavalankar

 

Part II: Social Justice and Marginalized Sections in India

9. Social Development through Social Justice: The Indian Context / S.V. Pande and Archana Srivastava

10. Transformation of Caste System into ‘Caste’ in Contemporary India / K.L. Sharma

11. Politics of Social Backwardness and Empowerment of Other and Economically Backward Classes / D.K. Verma

12. Social Inclusion through Exclusive Provisions in India: The Glass is Half Full / P.K. Chaubey

13. Social Justice and People at the Margins / M. Kistaiah

14. Issues of Social Justice and the Marginalized: Contextualizing Scheduled Castes in J&K State / Ashish Saxena

15. Social Justice in Economic Perspective: Displacement of People by Land Acquisition for Industrialization in India / Bhaskar Majumdar

16. Free Legal Aid as a Fundamental Right in India: Reality or Still a Distant Dream? / Sanjay Gupta

 

Part III: Gender Perspectives of Social Justice

17. Gender and Development: Theoretical Perspectives / Mohit Bhattacharya

18. Women’s Rights as Human Rights / Mahendra Prasad Singh

19. Women and Politics of Violence: An Essay on Attitudinal Fundamentalism / Chandrakala Padia

20. Trajectories of Women’s Fiction in India / Sumita Parmar

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About the Author / Editor

M.P. Dube is Vice Chancellor, U.P. Rajarshi Tandon Open University, Allahabad. Earlier he also served as the Director, Institute of Gandhian Thought and Peace Studies; Dean, Faculty of Arts; and Head, Department of Political Science, University of Allahabad. Professor Dube has a rich experience of over four decades of teaching and research in the fields of environmentalism, gender justice, contemporary political philosophy, and Indian politics. He has contributed more than hundred articles and research papers to journals and edited volumes. Professor Dube has to his credit several authored books and edited volumes. He also edited the journal Man, Nature and Society and Journal of Social and Political Studies. He has received several awards for outstanding contribution to education.

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