By TCN News,
New Delhi: To mark the NDA government’s 365 days in office, the NOMOre Campaign has come up with a comprehensive report card assessing the government’s performance on four fronts: democracy, education, gender & sexuality and economy.
Befitting a government which rose to power on a high tide of expectations, each section of this report begins by enlisting these, followed by a sombre appraisal of the government’s success – or lack of it thereof – in meeting these expectations.
“Evocative of a growing murmur of dissent against the government, the report brings together references to a variety of critical analyses of its performance published in mainstream and alternative media. This makes the NOMOre report a ready reckoner for analyzing the performance of the BJP government’s one year in power,” Kiran Shaheen on behalf of the NOMOre Campaign said in a release.
The NOMOre Campaign’s report card on four counts is as follows:
Democracy
Signs of a healthy democracy include respect for the Constitution in letter and spirit, proper functioning of the legislature, executive and judiciary and a free and aware media and civil society that keep a check on the government. An analysis of the government’s first year in office points towards its abysmal failure in meeting these expectations.
The government’s omission of the word ‘secular’ from the Preamble was a symbolic manifestation of its agenda to unsettle the founding tenets of our constitution. The last year witnessed an increase in attack against religious minorities, including vandalisation of their places of worship. The violence on Muslims in Ballabhgarh, Haryana, is the latest in a long series of attacks.
Despite having an absolute majority in the legislature, the executive has repeatedly resorted to the emergency provision of passing ordinances on critical matters such as land rights, a mark of democracy under duress. Moreover, the inclusion of MPs with serious criminal background in the Union Cabinet – including charges of stoking communal violence – is grave concern. If the judiciary’s autonomy is an in-built constitutional mechanism to keep a check on such tendencies, the government has already questioned its legitimacy by accusing it of being driven by “five star activists”.
However, even the space of activism is severely threatened. The IB has labeled several NGOs as being “anti-national”; many of these work on issues related to communalism, nuclear energy and the environment. The onslaught against marginalised citizens such as Adivasis, who typically challenge the idea of development remains robust as ever. In Gujarat, a new anti-terror law allows confession as admissible evidence. This further edges out the space for critical voices
Nandini Rao, women’s rights activist, questions, “Who is the ‘real citizen’ of this country? Is it only the Hindu-born (or re-converted) person who prays to the ‘right’ gods, doesn’t eat beef, doesn’t dissent and who passively accepts what’s happening in our country today? Everyone else is suspect under the new dispensation.”
Economy
The expectations from the government on the economic front are captured in the ‘catch all’ promise of development. Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas was the commitment of this government. A year in office stands evidence to a warped conception of development, and a shameful betrayal of the people who expected to partake in the fruits of development.
It is turning out to be a fable ‘of the private investor, by the private investor and for the private investor’ instead of development ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’.
The rechristening of the Planning Commission as Niti Aayog effectively shed the need to even maintain a façade of inclusive development. The most disappointing indicator on its report card is the new land ordinance which largely dismantles the need to seek consent and assess social impact before acquiring land for a variety of projects. Likewise, auctioning of minerals will mean that resources that belong to and sustain the people will be sold at a low prices. In a similar vein, the impact of continuing privatization of PSUs is likely to be felt most adversely by common citizens.
Alongside, the government has taken several steps to cut social sector spending. India’s health budget is now among the lowest in the world, and the cut-back on the MNREGA will affect at least five crore rural households. In the meanwhile, the government is going out of its way to help favoured corporations. In the last one year, questions have been raised on the $ 1 billion State Bank of India loan to Adani mining and the government’s efforts to keep Spice Jet afloat.
Furthermore, in the name of doing away with red-tapism to facilitate industrial growth, environmental laws are being changed such that business owners voluntarily disclose pollution and monitor their own compliance to norms. Labour inspection is also to become a thing of the past. Even child labour has been legalized in ‘family enterprises’ after school hours and during vacation.
If these are components of the government’s much-touted ‘Make in India’, a more sombre reassessment of its priorities is in order. This is not only in light of a questionable conception of development, but also that the government’s claim that the economy grew at a pace of 6.9% in the last fiscal year is quite far-fetched. A more realistic estimate stays the figure at the earlier 5%.
Education
The growing needs for education in India demands more public spending on education for equitable access. It should have scope for holistic education that enables both knowledge production and skill building. It should also be attentive to the need to afford a degree of autonomy to educational institutions, and ensure that their functioning is not driven by narrow political ideologies. The BJP-led NDA government’s performance on all these indicators has been rather disappointing.
Not only did the government backtrack from its promise of increasing spending on education, it has in fact, reduced budgetary allocation to education. School education schemes such as Sarv Shiksha Abhyan, Midday Meal Scheme and Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan have also faced significant cuts. The reordering of priorities in favour of skill-based education at the cost of social sciences, humanities and pure sciences continues under this government. Even as its tenure began with the scrapping of the controversial Four Year Undergraduate Programme at Delhi University, the year in office saw the ill-thought out and non-consultative imposition of a qualitatively similar Choice Based Credit System.
Within a year of being in power, “saffronisation” of education is already underway. Several recent appointments including the Chief of the Indian Council of Historical Research have known connections with the RSS and questionable academic credentials. Inclusions of Dinanath Batra’s books to the Gujarat school curriculum and the replacing of German with Sanskrit in Kendriya Vidyalayas are other instances which confirm the government’s agenda.
Gender and Sexuality
For a government which came to power after the wave of protests against the December 16, 2012 rape case, the promise of women’s empowerment was high on its agenda. At the very least, this must imply the right to bodily integrity and freedom from violence. It must also include protection of the rights of sexual minorities. The government’s performance on this front was marked by a deeply regressive stance on such issues.
In the course of this year, a number of Ministers publicly declared that prevention of rape is not possible. The Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh also alluded to women’s complicity in rape. Despite the UNDP estimate that 75% married women in India experience marital rape, the Minister of State for Home insisted that marriage in India is “sacrament” and therefore marital rape is not possible in this country.
Confirming its lack of commitment to addressing violence against women, the PMO scrapped the one-stop crisis centers for women which were to be instituted following the Justice Verma Committee Report. It also did nothing in response to the death of several women due to botched sterilization operations in Chattisgarh and Jharkhand.
The centrality of women to the communal agenda has assumed unprecedented importance. This year was marked by repeated, strong and unfounded accusations of ‘Love Jihad’, while Hindu women were asked by one BJP MP to have at least four children to protect Hindu religion. Khap Panchyats were defended as custodians of social custom, and the new media policy announced by the government suggested that it would encourage films rich in ‘Indian’ culture to create an “extra-political moral order”.
In the meanwhile, the Indian government abstained from voting on a UN resolution on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In a similar vein, Goa government offered medical therapy to make LGBT people ‘normal’. In the courses of this year, the Cabinet also barred same-sex couples from adopting children.
Stray remarks by MPs, concerted efforts by them on some issues and absolute inaction on others coalesce to indicate an apathetic, if not deeply regressive, attitude towards questions of gender and sexuality.