It’s a clear verdict and here is what people are saying
Rita and Umesh Anand
New Delhi
THE Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has come back to power with a handsome verdict in its favour. The victory can be seen in many ways. It is a vote for stability, peace, balance, pluralism, secularism, genuine economic reforms. It is also a vote for a new generation of leaders who the Congress has been projecting.
But above all, this is a vote for development. It is a victory for people’s movements and recognition of the issues that they have been raising with regard to land and water.
The old order has been thrown out in Chengara, Jagatsinghpur, Nandigram, Singur, Saharanpur and several flashpoints.
The Congress' willingness to listen, reach out to the grassroots and address issues of poverty has created a groundswell of expectations reflected in the votes it has got.
People clearly want the UPA government to complete what it set out to do in its first term. Reforms are needed but they can’t be only designed to benefit the corporate sector.
The script for this victory began being written five years ago when the National Advisory Council (NAC) with Sonia Gandhi as its head tuned into the voices of activists and campaigners.
The result was the laws on the right to information, rural employment and the rights of forest dwellers. These have made a contribution to the Congress' election victory.
For the first time laws that were shaped through long consultation among activists and people's organisations actually reached government and got passed in Parliament. It wasn't easy. For Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze and a whole lot of others it was an engagement that took place at several levels.
It is significant that through all this give and take the key Congress leadership stood firm in allowing dialogue to take place. The result was that finally good laws were passed.
Voters have also seen in the Congress a willingness to own up to its mistakes. In Civil Society, functioning as journalists, we closely racked the disputes over land acquisition and SEZs. This was a major issue. It did not go unnoticed that the UPA government moved to amend an outdated colonial law on land acquisition with inputs from activist groups.
So, if the Congress has been brought back to power with a large number of seats, it is because the voter places great hope in the party. But finally what the voter wants is governance. The UPA ‘s time to perform begins now.
Much remains to be done for implementing Right to Information Act, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act.
There are also issues of urban poverty and nonrural
employment to be addressed. In health and
education, the government has to show that its
own infrastructure delivers because privatisation
has had many ill-effects and hasn’t solved the
problems of millions of poor Indians. You could
add affordable housing, power shortages and
public transport to this ever growing list.
It will be equally important to help industry to be competitive. Private sector investment will be the key to growth and employment. How this investment can be inclusive and match national goals is the question.
If all this sounds terribly daunting, be assured the voter doesn't expect miracles. But there is at least the hope that the spirit of governance will change – in much the same way as the Congress organisation is being given new life.
In the past five years, probably for the first time, there was a serious attempt to take Union legislation to the grassroots and inform people about their rights. The response was positive. For NREGA, some 50 million job cards have been issued.
Implementing legislation is not an easy task. It is a complex minefield of corruption and indifference.
However, expectations are high. So are aspirations.People want a government that is capable of greater accountability. A government that ensures liberalisation's benefits are for everyone and not a chosen few.
Wherever you go in India people want to get on
with their lives and find real time solutions to
their problems. They have little time for the bluff
of caste and religion. Similarly they have no time
for ideologues who don't practise what they preach
and do little to improve the lives of ordinary people.It should not be forgotten that West Bengal's
Left Front does little to implement RTI and relies
on an outdated colonial land acquisition law.
The Congress' big asset has been its ability to
listen and make course corrections. As we did
when the Manmohan Singh government first
came into office, we once again offer a selection
of voices from across India.
Obviously, this isn't a perfect exercise. It can't
possibly be. But it is this magazine's small contribution
to the process of consultation that must
continue.
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Extend NREGA, simplify RTI
Aruna Roy, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan
We would like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) extended to 100 days of work per person per year. A great deal has to be done by the government to make this possible. Various kinds of work have to be looked at. We would like public education and political commit-ment to the concept of social audit since transparency is very important for the scheme. The scheme also should be extended to urban areas.The UPA has promised this. It is necessary to address the issue of unemployment among the youth who may not seek work under NREGA.
In Rajasthan rural voters voted for the UPA because of NREGA. Urban voters were for RTI, for transparency and accountability. But implementation of RTI has been poor. We have to take RTI further and rethink strategy. The campaign by activists has focussed too much on the commission and not enough on the government. The government must spend on publicity and train staff - it has not done so -- and make applications for RTI simpler.
Right to food is a promise by the UPA. It must be implemented along with midday meals. This right must be worked out with people's movements.
Older people need social security and pension. People are living longer but are unable to cope with work. When we hold our meetings in rural areas people tell us they are too old to take work under NREGA. Such people need social security.
Finally, education and health are two very problematic areas. Private healthcare is too expensive and private schools have no standards. The government's healthcare systems have broken down and treatment is no longer available at its hospitals.
In government schools teachers are highly paid but have no accountability.
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Just govern
Anupam Mishra, Gandhi Peace Foundation
The voter has risen above bickering Indian politicians
and given a clear mandate to govern. This is
a vote which goes beyond caste and religion. It is a
vote for stability and development. The voter has
looked at the national interest and not been
swayed by local considerations and petty demands.
A huge responsibility therefore rests with the Congress and UPA government to honour the faith placed in them. The challenges of governance are one thing. But a more intricate task is in building dialogue and consensus. In creating space within which dissent is possible and even encouraged.
Voters have clearly seen the instability in the rest of the subcontinent and therefore given such a large mandate that the incoming government does not have to spend five years looking over its shoulder negotiating deals for its survival.
There is a clear message in the way in which parties have been set aside by voters. Lalu Yadav, Paswan and Mayawati have been ignored. Voters have also shown that it is possible to speak for the common man as the Congress has done without belonging to the Left.
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Protect urban employment
Dunu Roy, Hazards Centre
Three key concerns appear to emerge from our work with community groups across the country. First, an urban right to work Act that provides for the livelihood concerns of the urban working poor. This has to be different from the NREGA because of the nature of the urban economy. More than asking the State to provide employment, the demand is for policies that protect employment opportunities.
Second,universalisation of access to services, including rations, health, education, water, housing. The targeted policies are leading to conflicts within the same communities and widespread misuse of resources, which were beginning to be controlled under universal schemes through greater transparency and accountability.
Third, public audit of the functioning of Private-Public-Partnerships, particularly for utilities and services such as water, energy and transportation. Such a review is urgently required for formulating policies based on the facts of optimum provisions rather than on the fiction of efficient markets
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Build rural infrastructure
Apoorva Oza, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme
The real crisis in infrastructure is in rural India – poor roads, no energy, no drainage. It is important to get specific.
First, roads with culverts so that children in rural areas can attend school across rivulets during the monsoon months. Culverts cost little, but are critical.
Second, is energy – light for children to read, power for irrigation. There are villages next to rivers which have no irrigation because they cannot pump the water from the river. Power can help milk to chill, so dairying can spread to all parts of the country. Energy is so much a key to increasing rural incomes, that all other investments like watershed and water harvesting don't add up till energy converts water to irrigation, and cattle to milk income.
Third, water and sanitation. They are key for the health of rural communities. Most diseases, whether in coastal, drought or flood-prone areas are water-borne, and bacteriological contamination is caused by poor sanitation and drainage.
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Implement forest law
Ashok Chaudhury, National Forum for Forest People
and Forest Workers
The Forest Rights Act should be implemented in its true letter and spirit throughout the country and it should find a place in the CMP. The core functions of forest management should be with the people and not with the Forest Department so that community forest governance can be realised. Basic amenities must be made available to forest dependent people. The Taungiya people still don't have voting rights.
A law like the new Forest Rights Act must be drawn up for fish workers.
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Save babies
Arun Gupta, Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India
The Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) has stayed at 37 since 2003. The Infant Mortality Rate reduced by 1.8 per year from 65 to 57. Some may call this minor change 'progress' but I question it.
Infants are human beings below 12 months. They form about two per cent of our population, that is about 25 to 26 million. About five per cent or more than one million are wiped out before they reach their first birthday. About 0.7 million of these babies are below the age of one month. They are wiped out by preventable diseases like newborn infections, diarrhoea, pneumonia and under nutrition.
Use of ORS for treatment of diarrhoea is just about 32 per cent. Poor governance and poor understanding of the direction to take is responsible.
There are three interventions which our Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, outlined in his speech on Independence Day, 2007:
"….Infants need to be breastfed, have access to safe drinking water and health care. We need the active involvement of the community and panchayats to see that what we spend reaches our children. I appeal to the nation to resolve and work hard to eradicate malnutrition within five years." All this should be implemented.
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Educate children
Meenakshi Kohli, CRY
The government must ensure children a life of dignity and justice. Primary among these are education, health and protection. We would like the government to:
Increase expenditure on education to 10 per cent and health to seven per cent of GDP. Redraft the Right to Education Bill reflecting the true sprit of children's right to education, discouraging privatization and commercialization of education.
Ensure all children six to 18 years, without discrimination, are in government formal, fulltime schools providing quality education, in their own neighbourhood. Children below six years should be in anganwadis.
There should be nutritious mid-day meals in all primary schools. This scheme should include all children, even those out-of-school, through the year.
Implement integrated child development services for all children under six years, as per the Supreme Court order of November 2001.
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Restore groundwater
Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams,Rivers and People
The issue of access to water is becoming more and more relevant and intense. Some of the key issues the new government must address as top priority include the following:
Groundwater is the real water lifeline of India and will remain so for a long time. That lifeline is in very poor health, due to four reasons: destruction of existing groundwater recharge systems, unsustainable extraction with no serious attempt at regulating the use for unjustifiable purposes, pollution and deterioration of quality, and finally, practically no attention, allocation of resources or priority to groundwater recharge systems.
Only decentralized, local water systems can help recharge groundwater. And the only way to regulate this essentially local resource is through a bottom up mechanism starting at the lowest rung of government.
Secondly, India has one of the world's largest irrigation infrastructures including over 4,500 big dams. The performance of this infrastructure is very poor, due to lack of attention, allocation of resources and priority to ensuring repair and maintenance of this infrastructure so that we can get optimum benefit from this sunk cost.
Instead of spending more on creating more infrastructure particularly big projects, the new government must give top priority to achieving optimum utilisation of this infrastructure.
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Revive traditional farming
AV Balasubramaniam, Centre for Indian Knowledge
Systems
Indian agriculture cries out for urgent attention. There has been a continuous erosion of soil fertility and the extrapolation of the green revolution model has meant today that government effectively subsidizes every acre of land that is chemically farmed to the tune of Rs 6,000 every year.
The emphasis should shift to enriching soil fertility with natural products and at least a part of this subsidy should go to organic farming based on indigenous knowledge and inputs.
Land under agriculture is shrinking rapidly and the State needs to step in to protect agriculture and diversion of this land to non-agriculture use must be minimized and undertaken with careful weighing of the options.
India is a mega centre for biodiversity, housing two of the 12 global hotspots of biodiversity and we boast of a tremendous diversity of seeds. Farming needs to be diversified offering farmers a wider choice to cultivate their own traditional varieties.
The rich and diverse knowledge base of agriculture with our farmers has repeatedly been documented and validated even by the ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) but it needs to be integrated with the extension system of the government. Infrastructure and basic amenities in farming areas are vastly inadequate
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Improve governance
Rajesh Tandon, Participatory Research in Asia
I suggest the new government rationalize, modernize and simplify the entire system of governmental functioning to make existing available funds be used in a more transparent, accountable and effective manner.
India must be ranking first on the Index of Gross Domestic Wastage of Public Resources. We mobilize annually nearly $100 billion dollars (Rs 5 lakh crores) of public funds through various forms of taxations, levies and cess. Yet, we are unable to provide basic services for fulfillment of fundamental human needs of all our people - food, shelter, education, health, water, sanitation, employment, etc.
The main reason for this is a colonial, archaic, inefficient, corrupt, unaccountable and opaque system of conducting business in the entire gamut of public functions of governments at the local, state and national levels. We have old colonial laws on our statutes that are no longer relevant and contradict new laws. Our system of book-keeping and financial management in governments is pre-historic and wasteful.
Our entire system of personnel management (it's too chaotic to call it human resource management) is outmoded, feudal, chaotic, dysfunctional and illogical; recruitment, induction, deployment, review, promotion, compensation, discipline and termination systems and procedures (and mind-sets) in the entire range of government institutions breeds nonperformance.
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Efficient services
Ajay Mehta, National Foundation for India
Ordinary people have adjusted to being poorly served, be it by private sector facilities or government. This government needs to have a strategy that changes the mind- set of ordinary people and service providers.
It also needs to facilitate a new kind of politics that goes beyond the pursuit of power, patronage and control considerations. To serve their full potential, NREGA and the Forest Rights Act need radical changes in social and property relations and everyday politics. This government should look into how this might be done. The frame of the National Policy for the Voluntary Sector, passed in 2007 allows for such a discourse.
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Tackle urban poverty
Amita Joseph, Business and Community Foundation
The government would need most of all to keep sight of the deepening crisis of poverty and hunger. Reports on urban poverty reveal unacceptable levels of deprivation even in Delhi. The capital is home to over 100,000 homeless people, 95 per cent of whom are productive workers. They subsidise our cities as headload workers, rag-pickers, vegetable vendors, rickshaw- pullers, cart-pullers, etc. Yet they struggle for an identity - for a voter's card, ration cards and a decent night shelter.
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Pension for elderly
Mathew Cherian, Helpage India
The elderly were just eight per cent of the population in 2002, but they will be 21 per cent by 2050. Ninetyfour per cent of the elderly vote in any election. The elderly in India hope that universal pension and universal health care for all the elderly will be a reality. Ten years after the National Policy of Elderly in 1999, we hope that the new government will implement the unimplemented promises made in that policy.
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