R Jagannathan
Firstpost.comOne of the big theme-songs of the UPA has been to convert every good intention into a fundamental right. Hence, we have the right to information (RTI), the right to food (the Food Security Bill), the right to identity (Aadhaar UID), the right to work (NREGA), the right to education (RTE) and, now, even the right to housing (National Right to Homestead Bill.
In mid-March, the Union cabinet cleared the right to food law even over the objections of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and the finance minister . It is effectively sending the message that rights need have no connection to reality or the responsibility to deliver. Put another way, the Congress party's rights-and-entitlement based legislation are probably more linked to its right to be -re-elected, not the rights contained in the laws.
The reason why none of the rights-based laws are working, or will work, as intended is simple: a right cannot be delivered on the basis of laws alone for it addresses only one side of the equation the demand for a public service or good; it has to be enabled through governance and reforms on the supply side, which includes the ability of the state to fund it.
Even more so, no right can be delivered if it is not continuously monitored for compliance and consistently improved. Or else, it can be abused and become a wrong.
Take the case of the anti-rape ordinance. Women activists are insisting on this provision or that (based on the Verma Committee report), but let us be clear that not even half the intent will be delivered. What we will have is a tough law without any supporting infrastructure. The law will become yet another instrument to harass people, both women and men, and will deliver very little justice. The government is happy to legislate all kinds of things and fool people into believing that it has done its duty.
You can't deliver better safety for women in public places without police reform. You can't prevent marital rape or child abuse by relatives without rethinking social education, gender sensitisation, providing support for better parenting and schooling, and focusing on the right development inputs for bringing up boys, not to speak of creating an infrastructure for counselling and support for both genders, victims and victimisers.
The bald point is this: more than law, more than rights, what we need is to focus on implementation, on nurturing individual and collective responsibility as the other side of the rights equation.
A quick look at how the wave of legislated rights has worked (or rather not worked) tells us why these initiatives are sinking in the sands.
RTI: The Right to Information Act, one of the UPA's much-celebrated early legislations, is now meandering into meaninglessness. Even as the demand for RTI-based information soars, the bureaucracy has managed to erect a wall by allowing almost every query to go into appeal, and by delays that can't be remedied.
The reason why the RTI gets too many queries is simple: the bureaucracy treats even basic information that every citizen is entitled to as state secrets. RTI will work the minute all public data especially data relating to a citizen's personal information needs like status of applications for birth and death certificates, ration cards, etc are available to all through websites. Once this supply side problem is licked, the RTI will not be abused for personal information.
The courts have also latched on to the RTI as an avenue of employment for retired judges. The Supreme Court has said that all information commissioners must work in benches of two , with one being a former high court or Supreme Court judge. There is a problem in finding enough judges of calibre for the huge needs of central and state information commissions. Now, of course, the RTI will run into a wall: not enough judges, another supply side problem.
Right to Work (NREGA): What has NREGA, which gives every rural household the right to 100 days of paid employment at a certain inflation-indexed minimum wage, achieved?
First, it has pushed up wages in general, forcing farmers to mechanise more, thus reducing the available pool of rural jobs. It has also priced women out of regular work on farms and driven them to NREGA. And worse, NREGA is largely work that is useless. Very little assets have been created under it.
What one should also consider is whether NREGA has contributed (among other factors) to destroying the economy's real job creating potential substantially. The last decade has seen jobless growth . Between 2004-05 and 2009-10, the economy created all of 2 million jobs despite high growth. In the previous five-year period, when there was no NREGA, the economy created 92 million jobs despite slower growth. Why?
The real problem with NREGA is that it creates useless work. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh was himself quoted as questioning the utility of NREGA work. The Indian Express quoted him from an interview to Yuvadesh, an e-magazine of the Youth Congress, thus: "Kitna mazdoori aap karoge? Kitna gaddha khodoge? Kitne talaab ka punarnirman karoge? Kitna vriksharopan karoge? To ek seema bhi hoti hai na (How much work will you do? How many ditches will you dig? How many ponds will you rebuild? How much forestation will you do? There has to be a limit). We will have to see in one-two years whether 100 days (of work) will continue."
KS Gopal, a former member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, was quoted by Business Standard as saying that NREGA's problem is not a "demand problem but a supply problem. It is not that the NREGA worker's demands for work are not being registered. It is that work is not being provided. Merely issuing fiats from Delhi won't help."
One would have thought that this is elementary: before you guarantee work, you have to build your pipeline of worthwhile jobs. Right to Work has to follow the creation of the conditions for work, not the other way around. If this does not exist, why not call NREGA an unemployment allowance and be done with it?
Right to Education: The Supreme Court has upheld the Right to Education Act (RTE) inasmuch as it applies to private schools, but the RTE is, once again, an effort to create demand for education without enhancing supply of the right quantity and quality.
The RTE tries to force private schools to take on 25 percent more students from the poorer and disadvantaged sections. Good thought, but private schools account for only 7-10 percent of the total, and the real problem is the 90 percent of the population that wants schools and will still need to go to poor-quality government schools. The RTE tries to shift the burden of the state to the private sector without fixing the 90 percent that needs to be fixed.
Abhijit Banerjee, an MIT professor who has worked on real-life issues faced by governments in addressing poverty, has nothing but abuse for the scheme. At a recent seminar in Kolkata, he said the programme lacked sense, reports Business Standard . "It is simply for the teachers, by the teachers, and of the teachers. It ensures the livelihood of school teachers." The real issue was the right to learn, and that needs a different approach from the RTE.
He said: "Before 2009, the education level was flat. But there has been a perceptible decline after the RTE came into force. In RTE, there is a lot of emphasis on the teacher-student ratio, the teacher's salary and physical infrastructure. Studies have shown no correlation between these factors and improvement in learning. On the other hand, it may force many schools to shut, as they cannot afford high salaries or huge infrastructure."
Once again, rights created out of thin air are not the answer to any social issue. Banerjee is saying the RTE will end up closing schools instead of expanding their capability. Once again, a supply problem.
We can same the same about the next few rights that are coming up.
The Right to Food will ruin the market for grain and distort food economics as it involves buying grain at Rs 12-15 a kg and selling it at Rs 1-3 a kg. The bulk of the subsidies will go to keep rice, wheat and coarse grains farmers in business when demand is moving away to proteins milk, vegetables, fruits, eggs, etc.
Supplies of protein foods, the main drivers of food inflation in the recent past, are not rising commensurately. The right to food will thus be addressing a hunger problem that is either not there or may exist only in pockets of India.
As Firstpost noted in an earlier report , "The National Sample Survey (NSS, 66th Round) on Perceived Adequacy of Food Consumption in Indian Households shows that the proportion of rural households saying they are getting two square meals a day throughout the year has increased from 94.5 percent to 98.9 percent between 1993-94 and 2009-10. The proportion of urban households saying the same increased from 98.1 percent to 99.6 percent."
If acute hunger is reducing, why have a national food security law?
The Right to Housing, being dreamt up by Jairam Ramesh even when NREGA remains messed up, will guarantee 10 cents of land (one-hundredth of an acre) to the rural homeless. Where is he going to rustle up the needed land, and who will pay for it?
All the rights being legislated by the UPA under Congress tutelage point to one truth: there is a big market for bad ideas. Or is it that these Rights are intended as a cover to ensure that one family has the Right to Rule forever?
The writer is editor-in-chief, digital and publishing, Network18 Group
