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| Subir Roy: Emerging face of inclusive growth | | A solid body of unglamorous action has been taken to address governance |
| Subir Roy / New Delhi Mar 04, 2009, 00:48 IST |
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At the end of five years of UPA rule a contrast is emerging. Four years of record growth which brought India into international reckoning stand stymied in the last year by a global slowdown. But a solid body of unglamorous action seems to have been taken to address governance and the lot of those at the grassroots, which can prove durable and make today’s actors look back with satisfaction.
How can the same administrative structure, which has failed to deliver over decades, have woken itself up and laid new foundations for delivery? The credit goes to an institution innovation, the National Advisory Council, which gave the executive advice it was not used to getting. The advice was both insightful and implementable as it came from banging together heads belonging to three groups that usually don’t jell — some notable civil society leaders, senior officials and a few academics. And the administration could not ignore the advice as it came under the imprimatur of the highest political authority in the land, Congress president Sonia Gandhi who chaired the advisory council.
Set up to help the government implement its programme, the council of nine had four notable members from the civil society space — Sehba Hussain, Aruna Roy, Madhav Chavan and Jean Dreze. And acting as a bridge between the groups was N C Saxena, a remarkable civil servant who had been equally a scholar on grassroots issues. At the end of the day the council can claim a success rate of four out of five. Its stamp is clearly visible in three landmark legislations — the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Rights Act — and a multi-year development programme — the national rural health mission. And its big failure is its inability to see through, in an acceptable form, a rehabilitation and resettlement bill.
There is now widespread recognition that not only is the right to information working, those manning the works fear that it may have already begun to wilt under the overwhelming pressure of applications. This is because it has not only caught the fancy of the educated middle class, some of its best beneficiaries are very ordinary people in the countryside who, with their civil society mentors, are using the process to get vital information on spending and the running of public programmes.
K K Mishra, the chief information commissioner of Karnataka, is fearful that such is the volume and the way in which the time for an application to be disposed of is going up (it is now a year or more in Maharashtra and UP), right to information may go the way the consumer disputes redressal process has gone. If you have to wait for a year or more to simply find out if you will get the information you want, will you bother and will the official interested in withholding the information be fearful of doing so? On the other hand, the controversy over whether file notings are available under the Act has virtually disappeared with high courts upholding the access to them.
The rural employment guarantee programme is another innovation that is seen by those helping people at the grassroots to be working. From an initial 200 districts it has now been extended to all districts. Proof that it is working comes from the demand for more days — from the current 100 to 200 — of employment. Now that an economic slowdown is upon us and people who have lost their city or construction industry jobs are going back to the villages, it is seen acting as a safety net. It is working partly because of systemic innovations like the use of computers and smart cards. Those familiar with its working readily point to corruption and mismanagement also taking place, in particular in states with a poor administrative tradition. But in rural areas where there is a degree of literacy and an active NGO is around to help, or the administration is committed, the people are making demands on the system and it is delivering.
The same can be said for the national rural health mission. It was off to a slow start but successive independent evaluations have shown that in some areas, where the conditions listed above or an active panchayat is around, the mission is delivering. Here again an innovation, the asha or woman rural health worker, seems to have worked. Another innovation, the Rogi Kalyan Samiti, has tremendous potential but care is needed to ensure that the really poor are not left out as the better off and better educated walk away with the benefits. The overall feeling at the grassroots is the same as with the employment programme — the idea is good, the scheme is well worked out and is working and delivering in places.
Action under the Forest Dwellers Rights Act, the legislation to be passed most recently, is just about taking off. Activists are not happy with all its provisions but there is a clear recognition that “for the first time they (forest dwellers) had a law that recognised the rights of tribals and forest peoples,” says Rita Anand in Civil Society. Earlier, villages of forest dwellers had no access to healthcare, school or roads. The real test of the law will come when forest dwellers are able to sell non-timber forest products and earn more.
The conceptual changes that these laws represent mark a new departure in the Indian state’s journey to bring some of the fruits of growth to the poor. A revolution will be wrought if at least some of the initial promise is fulfilled.
subir.roy@bsmail.in
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