DRAFT CONSTITUTION 351
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Mr. Vice-President, I see that there is a great deal of misunderstanding as to the real provisions in the Constitution in the minds of those members of the House who are interested in this kind of directive principles. It is quite possible that the misunderstanding or rather inadequate understanding is due to the fact that I myself in my opening speech in support of the motion that I made, did not refer to this aspect of the question. That was because, not that I did not wish to place this matter before the House in a clear-cut fashion, but my speech had already become so large that I did not venture to make it more tiresome than I had already done ; but I think it is desirable that I should take a few minutes of the House in order to explain what I regard as the fundamental position taken in the Constitution. As I stated, our Constitution as a piece of mechanism lays down what is called parliamentary democracy. By parliamentary democracy we mean ‘one man, one vote’. We also mean that every Government shall be on the anvil, both in its daily affairs and also at the end of a certain period when the voters and the electorate will be given an opportunity to assess the work done by the Government. The reason why we have established in this Constitution a political democracy is because we do not want to instal by any means whatsoever a perpetual dictatorship of any particular body of people. While we have established political democracy, it is also the desire that we should lay down as our ideal economic democracy. We do not want merely to lay down a mechanism to enable people to come and capture power. The Constitution also wishes to lay down an ideal before those who would be forming the Government. That ideal is economic democracy, whereby, so far as I am concerned, I understand to mean, ‘one man, one vote’. The question is : Have we got any fixed idea as to how we should bring about economic democracy ? There are various ways in which people believe that economic democracy can be brought about ; there are those who believe in having a socialistic state as the best form of economic democracy ; there are those who believe in having a socialistic state as the best form of economic democracy ; there are those who believe in the communistic idea as the most perfect form of economic democracy.
*CAD, (Official Report), Vol. VII, 22nd November 1948. p.p 494-95.