By Manohar Manoj
When UPA Government came in power in year 2004, then its
leader Ms. Sonia Gandhi was very much influenced with Jhola brand NGOs and
political activists. Sonia was strongly of the view that then ruling party
NDA's economic reform agenda were avoiding the human face of reform. To her,
NDA was running very fast on the new economic policy pitch laid by her party's
previous Prime Minister P V Narsimha Rao and it has lost its human touch and hence this
party, despite delivering so many things on various performance criteria, lost
the 2004 election and on the contrary, the congress party, which was hopeless
of getting power in year 2004, ultimately able to find the hands of the poor.
After
UPA’s coming in power, Sonia formed a national advisory committee which was
full of all those members which already had an ideological bond with Sonia.
These persons advised Sonia directed UPA government to start issues like;
'Right to Information', 'Employment guarantee scheme' and 'Right to Education'
etc.. Roughly these all program ideas were very significant for the social
empowerment and development of the country. On Right to information, agitations
were going on in the country for last 9 years under the leadership of Aruna
Roy. On the employment front, rural manpower were rushing towards big metro and
industrial centre of the country and over education, it was thought out that
country must enhance its GDP expenditure ratio over this. Therefore, UPA took
all these three agenda on its priority which actually had come to the Manmohan
led government through Sonia route. But Sonia would have never thought a time
will come when this game changer schemes propounded by her proved to be a
reason of her defeat in year 2014 Loksabha election.
The reason to say, the purpose of bringing Right to
Information was to check corruption from the system. The purpose of employment
guarantee act was to create gainful employment opportunities in rural areas and
right to education was tried to ensure through levy of education surcharge over
the existing taxes imposed over the public. Out of these all 3 measures,
barring 'Right to Education' measure, rest 2 measures in way created
catastrophe for the Sonia controlled UPA government.
'Right
to information' Act enabled the issue of corruption, to come on the forefront,
but in place of controlling corruption, this Act proved to be a tool of
blackmailing over the issue of corruption. This RTI Act provided an opportunity
to go into the deep of any corruption occurrence, of which activist desired to
do; but it was not instrumental enough to convict the culprit. So this law was
to be more helpful for the people like Media persons, who reports about corrupt
occurrences and this act might have provided them detail information about the
occurrences. But in practice, this Act erected such kind of NGO activists who
started their activism in targeted way and thus they started to launch their
political agendas which ultimately proved to be one of the reasons of defeat of
Sonia controlled UPA.
In place of piecemeal initiative like RTI, if UPA government
might have started a big campaign over
the issue of corruption comprising legal, institutional and policy
measures, the issue which has rooted in our system very from 1960s and have been flourishing in the system day by day , it would have much better
prospect for the Sonia led UPA.
Out of
above mentioned 3 measures, the most discussed issue MNREGA is said to be major
reason for the country's fiscal and inflationary position. When this scheme was
being launched, there were many, particularly the social scientist, who said
lot of words in the praise of this scheme. Some said that this scheme would be
most revolutionary scheme for the sake of rural transformation. But perhaps
these people might have forgotten that the element of corruption which is
persisting in every sphere of country's life will ultimately spoil this very
buzzing scheme too. The drafters of this scheme were of the view that the legal
entitlement of this scheme will ensure its success. Even prior to this scheme
there were scheme like National rural employment scheme NREP and IRDP and
country has experienced big fiasco of them. Though, there must be no
controversy over the volume of funds what MNREGA has been allocated in these
years; because we think rural sector deserves more funds, which was not become
possible in the country despite the presence of big socialist and communist
slogan. The fact was that country never crossed 5 PC growth rate before the NEP
period. When country ushered in high growth rate era, it enabled high revenue earning
for the government and so higher allocation for the rural area.
The
way, the present finance minister Arun Jaitly says that until unless we become
business friendly, we can not have more revenue earning and so enough resource
for the poverty alleviation schemes. Actually this statement of Jaitly does not
reflect his original idea, rather it was the mantra of congress party while
launching of their new economic policy. But Sonia controlled UPA perhaps
forgotten this point that the hiked allocation for the rural development can
not benefit people until unless they have full proof scheme, where there is no
possibility of monkey sharing and collective distribution of fund among the
corrupt officials.
Despite
the MNREGA scheme having legal framing and series of modification in it,
initiated by Minister like Jayram Ramesh in between UPA and UPA 2 period, people
in general were of the view that MNREGA has become a scheme of shier looting of
public money, which is also creating many side effects in the economy.
Economists openly said that this scheme is responsible for creating crisis in
the country in terms of fiscal deficit and inflation.
This is very simple theory of economics, if the money
invested somewhere, does not produce anything in terms of goods and services;
it has inflationary effect over the economy. This is the reason during the UPA
ruling period price rise had alarming position and administrator like Sheela
Dixit have had to say MNREGA is responsible for the price rise.
On the
whole, in absence of a broad vision, administrative reality and foresighted approach, various schemes initiated by Sonia were proved to be merely
populist one for the electorates of the country and in fact futile for the
country's economy. It consequently till the coming of 2014 country was trapped
in vicious cycle of fiscal deficit, trade deficit, food inflation and
investment drought. The poor people who were earlier dancing with the populist
measure, now began to cry over the side effects of these schemes in form of
price rise and unemployment.
In
recently concluded parliament session parliamentarians termed this MNREGA
scheme an unwarranted scheme for the county. Many MPs termed it digging and
filling schemes which avoids asset creation in the village and community site.
The minster in charge of rural development, Nitin Gadkari introduced some minor
modification in the scheme; he announced little reshuffling in the expenditure
ratio of this scheme.
The labor asset proportion which was earlier in 60:40 ratio,
has been changed to 51:49 now.
The
question is, the monetary allocation and transfer of resources to the rural
areas must be continuously enhanced, but before this it is very necessary to
ensure that this money get invested mostly over the infrastructure building in
the rural areas. Infrastructure means,, both social infrastructure like school,
hospital, sanitation, home for weaker etc. and capital infrastructure means road,
electricity, bridges, banks, irrigation; investment over these items will automatically
create employment opportunities as well as asset creation in rural area. So we
urgently need to club all the capital infrastructure schemes like PMGSY,
MNREGA, IRDP, NREP,PMSJGY, RIDF into one Rural capital infrastructure
development yojana and clubbing all social schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,
midday meal, NHRM , Nirmal gram Yojana into one social infrastructure
development yojana .
The
money, which UPA government distributed into the pocket of rural unemployed
youth, it was better to invest this money over the pension and social security
of all weaker section of the society like widow and widower, above 55 aged
people, chronic patient and all handicap population of the country, it would
have much better option.
We
should not forget this fact that whatever prosperity the rural India is
witnessing now days, that is because of remittance economy, Thanks to the
mobility of laborers market in the country, which provided opportunity to the
million of workforce in both the domestic and international market. The mass out
flux of laborers from the supplier market to the demand market enabled huge
influx of money in the rural area. One who says that MNREGA has enhanced the
living standard of labor population, they are wrong. If each district of the
country has a growth center under PURA model, it would have better step. The
way we are discussing skill development through the ITIs in the country, in the
same manner we need growth centre in each district of county, it would have
multiplier effect over the rural economy. For this it is also necessary we make
infrastructure development of rural areas as the main base of rural
development. Our mantra of rural development must be 1 infrastructure
development 2. Human development 3 comprehensive social security scheme along
with toilet cum house for all destitute and landless family of the village and
4, to garner as much as employment opportunities out of these all 3 schemes.
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