Abstract
It’s commendable that we deliberate, debate, and discuss these aspects of a mega-crisis that a democratic-pluralist society confronts today. India has been and continues to be a model of diversity. However, diversity simply does not mean symbolic representation of multicultural elements. Diversity without lack of equality and justice is hollow. Excellence without diversity is amoral elitism. It’s therefore incumbent on us to ensure that public and social policies are duly designed and implemented to achieving these objectives with a rational and humane perspective. Today humanity is passing through a difficult epoch in world history. We have seen melt-down of the state as an age-old unit of societal organization; we have hardly overcome the aftermaths of a fiscal tsunami that nearly brought a global depression; and we confront the ubiquity of terror that has destroyed the fabric of a civil society.
Like many other so called historical “ages” or epochs before, the age of human rights remains a relatively rarefied property of the privileged few, who are sometimes too quick to misconstrue their own conditions for those of others. A commitment to human rights entails, however, a commitment to satisfactorily securing the conditions required for a world finally free from the effects of systematic misery and avoidable suffering.
Andrew Fagan (2009:1)
A keynote address delivered to the Golden Jubilee National Seminar on Social Policy and Human Rights in India: Agenda of Social Work Education in Twenty First Century, February 19–20, 2010, Udaipur School of Social Work, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.
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© 2011 Brij Mohan
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Mohan, B. (2011). Human Rights Today. In: Development, Poverty of Culture, and Social Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117655_14
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