Scroll.in: National: Friday, June 23, 2017.
For 30 years
now, social activist Nikhil Dey has been active in movements advocating for the
rights of workers, farmers and marginalised citizens. Through the Mazdoor Kisan
Shakti Sangathan, Dey and his colleagues Aruna Roy and Shankar Singh have
campaigned to bring in the Right to Information Act, the Right to Food Act and
the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
On June 13,
however, Dey found himself sentenced to four months in jail by a Rajasthan
court in a 19-year-old case of alleged assault. In a verdict the Mazdoor Kisan
Shakti Sangathan termed as a “miscarriage of justice”, the district court in
Kishangarh convicted Dey and four other activists for assaulting Pyarelal Tank,
the former sarpanch of Ajmer’s Harmada village, and his family. They have also
been convicted on charges of trespass.
Dey and the
Sangathan have denied the charges. They have claimed that it was the sarpanch
and his relatives who had attacked Dey and the other activists when they went
to Tank’s house on May 6, 1998, to ask for panchayat records of funds that had
come in for various public schemes. While the activists chose not to file a
police complaint at the time, Tank filed a case accusing them of assaulting
him. The case was closed a month later but reopened in 2001. The Sangathan
claimed that the sarpanch dragged the case on for years by bringing in a series
of false witnesses.
Last week’s
conviction was an unexpected and an unpleasant surprise for Dey. For now, the
conviction stands suspended as the activists have appealed against it.
While Dey
chose not to discuss the case and his conviction on record, the 54-year-old
activist spoke with Scroll.in about the status of various welfare programmes in
rural India, the shrinking space for democracy under the Narendra Modi regime
and why India needs a law on accountability for public servants.
It is
three years since the National Democratic Alliance came to power. How has this
regime fared so far compared with the previous government?
The social
sector has become much worse today. There is hardly any imagination about how
poverty, farmers, vulnerable groups can be dealt with. Before winning the election,
the NDA openly attacked rights-based approaches and after they won, they have
only talked of empowering people in the market. They said they didn’t want a
system based on doling out benefits to people – that has been their approach,
in their own words.
Today, their
programmes for rural development have flopped. The one big thing they have
pushed is enrolment for Aadhaar (a 12-digit biometric-based unique identity
number that the government wants every citizen to have), which they claim has
improved delivery of benefits. But in Rajasthan, the only state that has made
biometrics compulsory for access to rations, we have seen that 30% of the
eligible population is not able to get food grains. That is huge exclusion even
if Aadhaar enrolment has been a huge success.
We are also
seeing the tragedy of Swachh Bharat in the way it is being implemented. In
rural India, they have offered Rs 12,000 to each household for building a
toilet – an amount that is too little even for the poor. Besides, states like Rajasthan
lack water for toilets. But they [government officials] have been going after
people, saying they won’t give out rations, pensions or Nrega work to those who
don’t have a toilet at home. They have been chasing people who defecate in the
open in the mornings, humiliating them. Swachh Bharat is a programme that has
to be implemented persuasively, but they are forcing it upon people. This is a
tragedy.
What is
the status of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Right to
Information in the country today?
When the NDA
came to power, there was little funding available for Nrega initially. But then
we had drought years and the government realised that Nrega was the only way to
address people’s distress, and they eventually started investing more money in
it. But today, Nrega is in a very sad state. Even though there is a lot of
money, it is not being used properly. There is no enthusiasm for
second-generation reform.
The RTI is
not in bad shape but that is entirely because of the people, who have
incredibly carried on despite facing threats and death. Six to eight million
people use RTI every year. Still, by now, more than 10 years after the RTI Act
was enacted, the government should have put out a lot of information in the
public domain on its own so that the people did not have to use RTI to inquire
about the most basic things.
And even now,
in the case of most RTI queries, the first appellate authority just defends the
government, which is an indication that this regime does not really take the
law seriously. Even the UPA government tried to attack the RTI, but the NDA has
done nothing to implement the Lokpal law or the Whistleblowers Protection Act,
both of which would support the RTI.
In general,
there is much less democratic space in the country today. There is an
atmosphere of fear among Dalits and other minorities.
What is
the focus of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan today, after all these years of
activism?
We have spent
many years fighting for laws like the RTI and the Right to Food, which we see
as entitlements. But implementation is getting more and more challenging. So we
are now fighting for an accountability law which would be like RTI part two. We
need a law that holds politicians and bureaucrats accountable for not
performing their roles properly, with financial penalties. So far, only
government departments can initiate enquiries and impose penalties but this
would be a citizen-centric law, through which citizens can initiate enquiries.
We have
written a draft accountability law and are now travelling across districts
campaigning for it. We are trying to prepare a people’s manifesto that we will
use to engage with all parties.
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