D POTHUMALLEE Vs. DISTRICT COLLECTOR COLLECTORATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We deal here with the right of all our children, whatever their race, to an equal start in life and to an equal opportunity to reach their full potential as citizens. Those children who have been denied that right in the past deserve better than to see fences thrown up to deny them that right in the future ... [U]nless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together.

(2.) 1. As regards discrimination by providers, grassroots-level workers like Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) and Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) were more discriminating than the higher-order providers such as doctors and lab technicians. Of the total number of times that Dalit children accessed health care services, more than 93 per cent times they experienced discrimination by ANMs and AWWs.

(3.) 1. Interdrinking, interdining, intermarrying, I hold, are not essential for the promotion of the spirit of democracy. I do not contemplate under a most democratic constitution a universality of manners and customs about eating, drinking and marrying. We shall ever have to seek unity in diversity, and I decline to consider it a sin for a man not to drink or eat with anybody and everybody.