India’s Planning Commission has come out with ludicrous figure of Rs 32 a day (less than a US dollar) as the poverty-line for urban Indians, and yet lower Rs 26 a day for their rural counterparts.
With a nation having 8% plus GDP growth (though largely jobless growth) — second highest rate after China in the world, and a per capita income of above Rs 130 a day (less than US 3$) what wisdom made to zero in on these ridiculous figures can at best be answered by the architects of the poverty line.
It is being increasingly felt that the polemics in the nation need to rapidly change within both the government and the civil society. The shift has to happen from per capita and GDP growth-rate figures to pragmatic social security measures, public healthcare and education amenities, job creation and effective public distribution system and mass use infrastructure coupled with life-sustaining resources.
While rural and urban health missions are laudable, how much of these have reached the grassroots and their tangible impact are matters of equal concern. Nationwide rural employment guarantee scheme is an admirable policy only if the job it guarantees makes a fundamental impact on the rural economy and life, and not couched in disguised unemployment. Public distribution system is in totters in several states. The Right to Education has been a revolutionary law. But it is limiting, flouted and hamstrung by several caveats. To make matters worse, lack of infrastructure and initiatives at the grassroots has taken much of its sheen.
Independent India’s most outstanding legislation has been the Right to Information (RTI), which came after protracted civil society struggle on the lines of Jan Lokpal, which is a work in progress. Increasingly, the RTI is being undermined by muzzling it in the name of government secrecy, national interests, murder of whistleblowers, police inaction to protect RTI initiatives and pendency etc.
Unfortunately, the most corrupt face of government has been on display in the past three years juxtaposed with the most inefficient squabbling of the Opposition and judicial activism.
The non-violent, rights conscious, non-partisan but politically aware civil society has
been cornered by all political hues and burdened with all-time high inflationary trends till Gandhian Anna Hazare-led movement burst into Indian public life.
There is no denying that a sleuth of powerful anti-corruption laws, radical electoral reforms, police and judicial initiatives, Citizens’ Charter in all government offices, and a public awareness against bribes and kickbacks are needed in earnestness while burying all communal differences.
Caste and religion — the great divide-and-rule tool — have been kept alive by the votaries of vote-bank politics.
Development, not just growth; accountability, not just action; execution, not just policy; employment, not just consumption; and distributive justice, not just expenditure: these need to be the hallmarks of the governance of tomorrow. And, the civil society must create its own mechanisms to ensure an effective implementation of the basic tenets of governance.
The dawn of new India has set in. It may take a while, but non-violent, social change will certainly have a salutary and participating effect on the democracy, which has been, at best, representative till date. The new worldview will come from tomorrow’s India, and not riding on the crest of ‘past heritage and culture of religion’ et al, but on the dreams of the contemporary global citizens in a knowledge-based society.
