WHEN Ambedkar was unsure of his election to the Constituent Assembly, he prepared a memorandum in March 1947, published in May 1947 as States and Minorities: What are Their Rights and How to Secure them in the Constitution of Free India. This document, presented as a ‘Constitution of the United States of India,’ was far ahead, in its radical democratic social vision, of what became the Indian Constitution. This document recommended:

“Key industries shall be owned and run by the State... the State shall compel every adult citizen to take out a life insurance policy commensurate with his wages as may be prescribed by the Legislature... agriculture shall be a State industry.” The same document also advocated the state acquiring all agricultural land, dividing it into farms of standard size, and letting out the farms for cultivation to residents of the village as tenants, to be cultivated collectively.”

The document prophetically observed that private enterprise, if linked to industrialization, “would produce those inequalities of wealth which private capitalism has produced in Europe and which should be a warning to Indians.” Ambedkar observed how capitalism was fundamentally opposed to democracy:

“Anyone who studies the working of the system of social economy based on private enterprise and pursuit of personal gain will realise how it undermines, if it does not actually violate, the last two premises (i.e that the individual shall not be required to relinquish any of his constitutional rights as a precondition to the receipt of a privilege, and that the State shall not delegate powers to private persons to govern others) on which Democracy rests.” (Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, States And Minorities, Appendix I)

He brilliantly refutes the argument that State control would curb ‘liberty’:

“To whom and for whom is this liberty? Obviously this liberty is liberty to the landlords to increase rents, for capitalists to increase hours of work and reduce rate of wages. …In other words what is called liberty from the control of the State is another name for the dictatorship of the private employer.” (Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, States And Minorities, Appendix I)