India pursuing neo-liberal agenda, say activists
Anti-poverty network in India, Wada Na Todo Abhiyan organised a two-day consultation last week in New Delhi to review the United Progressive Alliance’s performance in first 100 days. Several speakers spoke of the anomalies in the government’s agenda and the need to keep pressure on it to take pro-poor measures.
New Delhi: “The United Progress Alliance II has no hesitation in pursuing its neo-liberal paradigm of development but at the same time it is compelled to talk about safeguarding the interests of aam aadmi or common man because that has helped it in getting fresh mandate from the people, said D. Raja of the Communist Party of India (CPI).
He pointed out that the government’s claim that it had taken as many as 25 initiatives ever since it took charge in its second consecutive innings was nothing but eyewash.
He was speaking at a two-day national consultation organised by Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA), an anti-poverty network of more than 3,000 civil society organisations, to review the performance of the government in first 100 days.
“Completion of 100 days of UPA II has brought before us an opportunity to assess the orientation of the government towards its activities in coming days,” said Amitabh Behar, National Convener of WNTA.
“The people of India are suffering today of massive joblessness in the wake of economic crisis. The country is heading towards a phase of acute food insecurity, due to continuing drought conditions. [The ruling classes] have formed cartels to eat away the most basic form of livelihood security of the masses. The prices of essential commodities are [skyrocketing],” reads the background note prepared by WNTA.
Annie Raja of National Federation of Indian Women expressed her anguish in a written message over failure of the government to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill, despite “the repeated promises by prime minister himself”.
She added: “The agenda of privatisation is very tactfully hidden across the plan of action in the 100-day agenda [of the government].”
To read the speech of President Pratibha Patil, please click here]
Speaking on the occasion veteran feminist social activist Kamla Bhasin recounted how the Left parties in the previous government had managed to stave off many of the banking sector reforms and disinvestment plans of public sector units [especially the Navaratnas] and saved the people of the country from adverse effects of the global economic recession to a large extent. “It is because of the Left that today we are not so much exposed to the recession,” she said.
She also recalled how the presence of the Left parties was instrumental in forcing the government to take some of the progressive measures like the National Rural Employment Guarantee and the Right to Information laws.
Bhasin also criticised the government’s move to bring in a law that intended to levy tax on nongovernmental organisations, while it had no qualms about providing a whopping Rs 300,000 crore worth tax relief to the corporate sector.
Reforms in governance
Rajesh Tandon of Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) spoke about the urgency of bringing reforms in governance. According to him, there were four areas that required urgent attention.
First, recruitment of government personnel needed to be made professional and protected from political interference, corruption and favoritism.
Second, there should be reform in the delivery of judicial system, which entails reforms in police and judiciary on an urgent basis.
Third, capacity building of the people’s representatives in panchayats and municipalities for effective delivery of all livelihood and social sector programmes.
And lastly, strengthening of the functioning of all statutory and official commissions like the SC/ST Commission, the National Human Rights Commission, etc.
Healthcare in a shambles
Professor Rama V. Baru said that the inequities in health sector – regional, social, economic and gender – had only widened over last 20 years. She underlined the urgent need for health services to go beyond and take into account water supply, sanitation, housing and food security to ensure overall health of citizens.
While maintaining that the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was one of the significant steps taken by the last government to mitigate inequities, she pointed out: “one of the major problems in the conceptualisation of the NRHM is that it has not addressed a very important aspect of health services development, which is, privatisation of healthcare.”
The private sector [in healthcare] had grown to such an extent that it actually came to define, to a large extent, the course of health services development in this country, she said.
“There is no serious attempt to tame the private healthcare sector,” she rued, “we all talk of accountability in public sectors but no one talks about it when it comes to private sector.”
She also talked about the change in mindsets. “Paying for care has been somehow internalised as quality care.”
As a result expenses incurred on health have increased significantly over the years and the number of people going into debts because of inability to pay for care was a serious concern, she said.
Many speakers also expressed their concern that the government had acquired a step-motherly attitude towards social sectors; it wanted returns but refused to pump funds.
