Times of India: Anand: Thursday,
April 17, 2014.
Eminent
social activist Aruna Roy has called for a fight to bring all the political
parties under the purview of the Right To Information (RTI) Act.
The Magsaysay
award winner and architect of the RTI Act told media persons after delivering
her address at the 33rd annual convocation of Institute of Rural Management,
Anand (IRMA) here on Wednesday, "Political parties do not want to be
transparent. The day they too come under RTI, people will come to know about
the sources of the funds they receive. But we will have to fight for that.
In her
convocation address she also hit out at the political parties for failing to
talk about poverty in their poll manifestoes.
She also took
questions from the media on Gujarat model being propagated by BJP's prime
ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. She said that each state has its own
advantages and short falls.
"Development
depends on the definition one uses to define it. If you talk about roads, that
is one aspect. If you talk about 9.5 per cent growth that is another aspect.
But one has to also consider how much debt the state has taken. How much
interest a state is paying? What is the condition of poor, the marginal farmers
and the land that they own? I don't see any particular shinning example when it
comes to the condition of poor here," she said.
Roy stressed
that soon after Independence, Gujarat was always considered a better state
compared to others. "People here are business-minded. The co-operative
movement has grown here since the time of National Dairy Development Board
(NDDB) popularized through film 'Manthan'," she said while adding that a
growth model popularised by corporate houses isn't going to resolve problems of
the poor and unemployed youths.
"Such a
model will bring in more machines instead of generating employment for
youths," she said, adding that if Kerala is a good state in terms of
social indicators, Tamil Nadu is a better state when it comes to mid-day meal
scheme. "Similar is the case of Himachal Pradesh when it comes to primary
education," she said.
"The
marginalization of the poor and the indifference to them is dangerous in a
country so contrasted by the gap between the rich and the poor. That is why a
concept like the MGNREGA, which empowers workers to demand work and equality,
is anathema to 'profit wallahs'. In my youth they were called 'box wallahs'. We
are branded as 'jhola wallahs'," said Roy.
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