Food and democratic contractarianism: A comparison between ancient Indian and western thought
- Bihar Journal of Public Administration
- 20(1), Jan-Jun, 2023: p.35-44
Ensuring food to the people as matter of entitlement is a first and foremost responsibility of state in the present times. But the history of responsibility of state to provide food dates back to ancient period, especially in India. State, being ‘individual writ large’, hunting, gathering and cultivation became sine qua non in the story of its evolution. The primary human instincts of greed and selfishness made explicit through demarcating land for oneself became the first lesson of power. Being concomitant with self-preservation, food becomes most important for the life of individual as well as state. The present article seeks to correlate social contract and the relevance of food in origin and preservation of state. The earliest theories on origin of state, the social contract theory served as a silver lining for the advent of liberal democracy. This social contract theory finds place in the Western as well as the Bhartiya ancient political traditions. As such, the present paper underlines the treatment meted out to food in the works of classical contractualist thinkers of India and its western counterparts. It is seen that fair standards of social justice and welfarism (in terms of food and livelihood) were established even in ancient India as envisaged through social contract and prescripts of Dharma. – Reproduced