At the onset of the New Year, the Central Government has restructured the Planning Commission and is, in effect, going to make it a policy research body. On the plea of “fast track growth”, a spate of Ordinances has been re-promulgated as they could not be legislatively converted into Acts. These had been subjected to some amount of public debate. The rest of them have been imposed without any debate in the Parliament or any deliberation by public at large. Thus, the political leadership has ventured to implement measures without legislative sanction and without formulating the essential strategies for enabling the relevant social changes.
The corporate leaders have applauded the governmental measures as growth-oriented. Such statements have been made in the context of the fast-track steps, though undemocratic, as they are apparently subserving their profitability. The religious leaders have spoken in confused terms and have sown the seeds of acrimony leading to diversion of attention from the basic problems faced by the common man. There have been avoidable controversy regarding books and their banning, rewriting of history in a preconceived manner, public sector banks have sanctioned billion dollar loans to well-connected industrialists for investments in mining abroad, there has been a corresponding cut back in allocations to crucial sectors like health or education, etc., and unsuitable policies have been thrust upon the so-called poorer States, which have a large quantum of tribal population and forest areas.
The Swachh Bharat campaign has not caused any tangible change in the insensitive and misdirected administration of basic civic amenities like sanitation and safe water supply. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, my dearest, respected and valued friend of more than half a century, in his recent address at the Presidency University, Kolkata, has called upon the youth not to be guided by the preachings/directions of the political leadership, not to be guided by the dictates of religious leadership and not to be swayed by the alluring advisories of the corporate leadership, but to be guided by their inner pristine “conscience”.
About sixty per cent of the forest areas of the country are inhabited by different tribes. Most of the districts, which have forest cover greater than sixty-seven per cent in tribal districts. In Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, amidst acute poverty and exploitation, lies the reserve of about seventy per cent of India’s coal, eighty per cent of high grade iron ore, sixty per cent of bauxite and almost hundred per cent of chromite reserves. In these States, the tribal population has been significantly adversely affected either by insensitive and unregulated exploitation of minerals and through displacement caused by industries or construction of dams. In this scenario, the Ordinance amending the 2013 land Acquisition Act (The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013) rings an incongruous and discordant note, devoid of empathy and sensitivity. Such communities are dependent on uninterrupted access to forests for livelihood. The policies enunciated and implemented do not, however, appear to ensure the protection of such avenues of livelihood. They do not involve measures diversifying them for greater viability, ensuring adequate orientation towards sustainability by reducing the distortions. The nature-endowed resources are endangered by the repressive and aggressive measures of the concerned governments and their bureaucratic machinery. For protecting the interests of tribals and ensuring their proper development, the duties cast on the concerned Governors have often been reduced to tokenism, contrary to the mandates of the Constitution of India. The reports of executive are often forwarded to the President of India and the Government of India, rubberstamped as the reports of the concerned Governors. Even elementary requirements like critical minimum of nutrition have not received adequate attention.
Nearer home in Odisha, rampant illegal and improper implementation of land acquisition has led to the establishment of a spate of industries from Athgarh to Jharsuguda, running across several districts, without any proper assessment of socioeconomic impact or protection of environment or continued sustainable manufacturing activity of the concerned units. No wonder, many of them are caught in the web of controversies or have ceased to be operative.
land reform is another sector, where we have almost ensured that agriculture, horticulture and allied activities like fisheries gradually dwindle year after year. The Odisha land Reforms Act strangely defines “plantations” as coco, tea, rubber and coffee. These are not our normal “plantations”. Coconut, bananas, cashew nuts, polanga and karanja, pineapples and such other horticultural or commercial plantations do not receive the benefit of exemption from the uneconomic ceilings of our land Reforms Act. While our Act seems to have copied the “plantations” enumerated under the Kerala Act, unscrupulous persons, from within government and outside, have cornered huge chunks of land in undivided Koraput and Dhenkanal districts in the name of coffee or rubber plantation. Floriculture is another ignored sector leading to import of flowers worth crores in a year.
We have also to learn from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other States which have laws regulating private commercial plantations of teak and other valuable forest produce. These laws are so devised not to cause deforestation and to further enable commercially viable investment in the growth of forests and their products. Public-private partnership has not been adequately devised and implemented in this socially and environmentally-vital sector, which by its very nature is labour-intensive and thereby employment-oriented. There are, however, some rudimentary indicators relating to the field of vegetable and allied products, but the steps in this regard are still marginal in nature. Analysis and identification of the quality of land and its most profitable use have not yet received adequate attention, though they form the basic foundational requirement for any further development towards more appropriate and socially efficacious utilisation of agricultural land.
Small, mini and micro industries, subserving a very vital role in grassroots development and restructuring the economy, have been neglected at the national level and have been more so, at the level of our own State of Odisha. They are neglected by the financial institutions, are charged interest rates higher than law permits and have had minimal support for adequate marketing, especially when such industrial units cannot afford a huge marketing overhead. As some of the current studies indicate, not even four per cent of the industrial financing falls to their share. They form the largest sector contributing to employment, but receive the least of promotional attention. The so-called large industries do not appropriately carry out their obligations of networking with a gamut of ancillary small industrial units. Instead, many of them set up their own feeder sources so that the profits of all transactions flow into their kitty alone. We have forgotten that “small is beautiful”.
All these aberrations require appropriate remedial attention in policymaking in the hands of Government. let the year 2015 usher in a reorientation in our policy formulations and the underlying philosophy thereof! This is where the call for the inspiration towards turning to the voice of our inner, pristine and pure “conscience”, propounded by the eminent social thinker/activist, a former “people’s Governor” and the Mahatma’s grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi is vitally relevant. This soul-searching introspection ought to motivate the responsive voters, especially the youth amongst them. This calls for not isolated but for concerted, collective, resolute and effective actions. This inner voice of genuine concern must now be effectively audible at least for protecting the future of the young citizens and the later additions to their class. This is a duty or an obligation that flows from the potent rights that our sacrificing forefathers have gifted to us as the citizens of the Republic of India. We must remind ourselves that this calls for synergised, convergent and purposive efforts. Such assertions are not to be limited to individual voices; they have to be expressions of well-organised collective demands in the public domain. Prompt programmatic actions in this direction are now unavoidable and any indolence and apathy leading to any further delay in this regard is bound to be to our peril. Surely, this concerns us all!
(The writer, a Senior Advocate, is a former All India Service officer, a former diplomat, a former editor, a former President of Orissa High Court Bar Association and a former Advocate General of Odisha. jayantdas@hotmail.com)