New Delhi : National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairperson H.L. Dattu on Friday said that there was a need to discuss the fundamental issues of Governance affecting the day to day life of the people, as rules and regulations for everything do not always solve the problems.
“Legislation, rules and regulations for everything do not always solve the problems, rather too many of them create confusion in the minds of gullible masses and tend to compound the problems,” said Dattu.
He was speaking at the inauguration of a two-day national consultation organised by the NHRC to assess the prevailing human rights situation in the country.
The consultation, which saw participation of several Union government ministries,
Based on the consultation, the Commission would assess human rights situation in the country and make a report for the third Universal Periodic Review to be conducted by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in 2017.
Stating that there was a need to discuss fundamental issues of governance and find out the drawback, Dattu said that if issues are addressed priority wise, many problems affecting human rights at micro or sectoral level may not even arise so as to need further legislation or rules to fix them.
Dattu said that the problems lie more with the inconsistency in the implementation mechanism of several welfare measures due to the lack of awareness among the both, the beneficiary and benefactor, at almost all levels of society.
“Concerned governments, ministries and departments must involve philanthropists, corporates, as part of their social responsibility, in running mass-scale awareness campaigns on all aspects of public life and good in the interest of clean and transparent governance, which is the buzzword today,” said Dattu.
However, Dattu said that the UN-mandated Universal Periodic Review should not be so much about putting holes as much as it should be about plugging holes in the scheme of things introduced and implemented for the cause of general good.
Earlier, N.C. Saxena, the Supreme Court-appointed Commissioner on Right to Food, pointed out shortcomings in the implementation of various welfare programmes and said that funds allocated to different ministries are not being utilised as a result the Government is reducing them in each subsequent year.
Apart from the NHRC Chairperson, the participants included representatives from the union ministries of External Affairs, Home Affairs, Women & Child Development and Health and Family Welfare, NITI Aayog and several NGOs.