Dr. Dhiman Chowdhury :
When X does injustice to Y, he does injustice not only to Y but also to Y’s spouse, children, parents, his teachers, friends, and relatives surrounding who he was brought up. Man carries teachings, ideas, values, and tastes of others around him. Therefore, injustice to Y indirectly is injustice to all whose knowledge Y is carrying. In many situations, we do not realise the far-reaching consequences of injustice. Y deprived from his legitimate rights means his infant child is also deprived. This is because Y is competing for rights and resources not alone but also with support, advice, knowledge, and cooperation from his family, relatives, friends, and market.
This joint and collective concept of justice is relevant for good governance. When a student performs well, the credit goes to the student, parents, friends, teachers, and the school, among others. Author of a scholarly book acknowledges contributions of many other authors and their work. A person or institution is indebted to many for his or its success. A government may cancel registration of schools for high failure rates. A person’s success or failure is not his alone but of many. In his doing he interacts with many. When a person does wrong, not only he is corrected or punished but also others related to this doing.
What is Justice?
John Rawls views justice as fairness: equal opportunities and rewards based on performance. Treat the same similarly and differences differently. Amartya Sen suggests ‘collective choice rules’ and emphasised public debate for better justice. Reasoning is central to the understanding of justice. Sen’s approach is based on relative components of justice and injustice-comparative assessments of social alternatives on the values and priorities of the people. Adam Smith coined the words ‘impartial spectators’ for taking judgments-judgments by people outside the focal group. Thomas Nagal considers this ‘view from nowhere than view from delineated somewhere’. Therefore organisations around the world both in private and public sector are now governed (composition of the board of directors) by majority nonexecutive members (organisation outside advisors). Independent outsiders, impartial spectators, the eyes of other people, the eyes of the rest of mankind shall be accommodated in the assessment of principles of justice. Plurality of impartial reasons lies in the center of assessing justice and injustice.
Justice Confused with Morality
Sometimes laymen confuse justice as morality. Morality has some problems however. Morality when based on beliefs and rituals, may not be justice. Unlimited loyalty to senior, giving to beggars, religious rituals are considered moral in Bangladesh but many of these are inconsistent with science, philosophy, and literature, and therefore, not considered moral in advanced countries around the world. Seniors, parents, teachers, or respectable persons have done this and so others should follow-is considered virtue and ethical. This theory of virtue is not always true. True virtue or epistemological virtue is intellectually pursued rather than mechanically followed. Intelligence-driven virtues suggest that we do not impose determinate goals on our children, we rather aim to equip them to take intelligent choices about what their long-term goals will be to pursue goals in the right way, and to cope with adverse circumstances in their lives.
Some Real Practices in Bangladesh
Let me illustrate the joint and collective concept of justice with some examples. First, the oldest private university, North-South University in its faculty recruitment advertisement requires the candidates to have a North-American degree. This ideology based governance is an insult not only to other potential candidates but also to their institutions, their teachers, degrees, knowledge, families, and the environment where they were grown up. So if governance is based on ideology, self-interest and fixed belief then it adversely affects multiple of individuals, institutions, and societies. Second, Dhaka University has a policy of allocating residential quarters by joining the points of husband and wife together (when both of them are employed in this university) and thus the two plays against one which is contrary to rules of any game. This noncompetitive policy not only deprives Y but also his children who were supposed to be grown up in one of the best places to live in Dhaka city. Third, when Dhaka University student dormitories and teachers’ residential quarters have privileged uninterrupted subsidised State electricity supply where ‘rest of the mankind’ used to face power load shedding every alternate hour then this was a clear case of serious injustice to multiple of individuals, institutions, and societies. Similarly when the President of the country invites guests on national days overly represented from Dhaka University (all full professors of about 600) then there is enough justification for the other sections of people to feel ignored.
Short-termism as Against Long-termism
The above noncompetitive individual and institutional behaviours were based on without much thought, examination, and scrutiny. The behaviours are based on surface or outward observation only but not on in-depth analysis and evaluation. These are aimed at serving some related community and related interests than serving principles-based common interests and purposes. Only immediate benefits or results were considered; long-term and far-reaching consequences were overlooked.
Theory of Knowledge: epistemic justifications
A belief is justified when there is no other overriding belief to the contrary. Adequate grounds, total evidence, independent reasons are prerequisites for epistemic justification of beliefs. Classify and breakdown a complex and obscure belief into its constituent parts and series in an orderly method and scrutinise them separately, then combine them in chains of deductions. Emmanuel Kant’s ‘critique of pure reason’ suggests to purify our reason and to shield it against error. Adam Smith called for ‘plurality of impartial reasons’. Amartya Sen’s ‘idea of justice’ emphasizes on comparative justice rather than transcendental or perfect justice or just rules and just justifications. John Elster in his book, “Reasons and Rationality” said a rational actor is one who acts for sufficient reasons.
Man carries teachings, ideas, values, and tastes of others around him
Justice or injustice to an individual is also the same to his knowledge system. A person first observes and then gets a belief and then verifies it with his family, community, and other subsequent levels. His belief gets better and becomes knowledge when it is coherent at the various levels. In Indian philosophy, it is not one’s body but the knowledge that matter. Whatever we are doing in twenty-four hour time we are using our knowledge in that doing. The food we take, the dress we wear, the way we talk, walk and behave, the profession we choose, and the game we play, all depend upon the quality of our knowledge. That is, the work, the performance or the act is nothing but the knowledge. Even the words we say is the expression of what we learned from available literature and culture. Knowledge is greater than genes because gene is carried from parents to children whereas knowledge is carried from parents to children, teachers to students, senior to junior, and one member of a society to another.
Theory of Social Choice is Relevant
Kenneth Arrow in his theory of social choice argued that there is a set of potential conceivable actions each of which leads to certain consequences. Amartya Sen in his Nobel Lecture 1998 therefore called for evaluation of alternative social possibilities (social choice) for which we need informational broadening and widening. There is a need for comparative assessment of social alternatives on the values and priorities of the people involved. There is also a role of public debate and reasoning in the social choice and justice.
Dreams are not only an Individual’s but also the Family’s
Martin Luther in his ‘I have a dream’ speech in Washington on 28 August 1963 has said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. Children’s rights and interests are tied to parents’. A decision affects not only father’s career but also affects his children’s. A family’s plan is not an individual’s but joint. Wishes, wants, and desires are not always isolated and individual but jointly tied and planned. Good governance and justice is necessary to maintain this jointly tied interests and rights. Japanese societies have provisions for this family value. Here organisations give their employees extra benefits every year for family travels and visits. The effect of miss governance is not only immediate but also far reaching. Justice therefore, need to be focused not only to an individual but also to the impacts on the other members of his or her family. Social choice or justice therefore, need to be classified into components relevant not only for an individual but also separately for other members of her family.
(Dhiman Chowdhury (PhD Lancaster, UK) is Professor of Accounting, University of Dhaka).
