(a) Discuss the views of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar regarding caste-discrimination in Indian society. What are the measures suggested by…

(a) Ambedkar on caste discrimination and its elimination

Ambedkar's analysis, in "Castes in India" (1916) and Annihilation of Caste (1936), runs as follows.

Caste is not merely a division of labour but a division of labourers: it fixes occupations by birth and denies choice. It is a graded inequality, an "ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt", so no caste is fully free of hierarchy, and the lowest suffer untouchability. Its essence is endogamy, which he said is kept up by controlling women (enforced widowhood, child marriage, sati). Caste has religious sanction in the Shastras and Smṛtis (Manusmṛti). Its effects are that it kills public spirit, blocks social mobility and fraternity, and negates liberty, equality and fraternity. Caste, he said, is not a physical wall but a notion, a state of mind.

Measures he proposed:

First, inter-caste marriage as the real remedy, "fusion of blood", with inter-dining alone being insufficient.

Second, destroying the authority of the Shastras, since he held that people obey caste because their religion enjoins it. He suggested reform of Hinduism, including a democratic, state-examined priesthood in place of the hereditary one.

Third, education, agitation and organisation ("Educate, Agitate, Organise"), together with direct action such as the Mahad Satyagraha (1927) and temple-entry movements (Kalaram, 1930).

Fourth, political and legal safeguards, representation and reservation (Poona Pact, 1932). In the Constitution he drafted: Article 15 (non-discrimination), Article 17 (abolition of untouchability) and Article 16(4).

Finally, in 1956 he embraced Buddhism as a path of equality and reason, since he judged that Hinduism could not be reformed enough.

(b) Causes of female foeticide in India

Female foeticide is the sex-selective abortion of female foetuses. India's child sex ratio (0-6 years) fell from 927 in the Census of 2001 to 919 in 2011, and NFHS-5 (2019-21) reported a sex ratio at birth of 929.

Main causes: deep son preference, resting on patriliny, inheritance in the male line, expectation of old-age support, and funeral rites; the dowry burden and the perception of daughters as an economic liability; patriarchal control and low status of women; concerns about safety; and the small-family norm, under which families with fewer children want at least one son.

Technology made it possible: ultrasound and other prenatal diagnostic techniques were misused by commercial providers, partly because of weak enforcement of the PCPNDT Act (1994, amended 2003).

Is it only the demonic application of technology? No. Technology is an enabler and not the cause: sex selection was practised earlier through female infanticide where such tools were absent. The root is social: son preference and gender inequality. Hence control of technology needs stricter enforcement, but real change requires changing attitudes, enforcing daughters' inheritance rights, curbing dowry, and promoting education and women's employment, as in Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (2015).

(c) Does social contract theory adequately address human rights issues?

Contract theory gives rights a basis in consent and equality. Locke's natural rights to life, liberty and property, and government by consent, shaped modern declarations of rights. Rousseau grounds rights in the general will, and Rawls's original position yields equal basic liberties. The theory also limits the state, which must respect the terms on which it was authorised.

But it is inadequate on several counts.

First, the contract is hypothetical, and consent is a doubtful basis for rights that people hold simply as humans. Bentham called natural rights "nonsense upon stilts".

Second, it has excluded many. Pateman (The Sexual Contract) and Mills (The Racial Contract) argue that classical contractarians left out women and non-Europeans.

Third, it has trouble with those unable to bargain: children, persons with severe disabilities, animals and future generations (Nussbaum).

Fourth, it concentrates on civil and political liberties and says less on socio-economic, cultural, collective and global rights, such as those of stateless persons and migrants.

Fifth, communitarians say the contracting individual is abstract.

Conclusion: it is a valuable foundation for the legitimacy of rights, but needs supplementing with the human dignity and capabilities approaches.