President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday veered away from his prepared speech and sought to be excused for exceeding his brief to maintain that movements like that of Anna Hazare cannot be brushed aside and that they have opened new dimensions of democratic structure.
“Just 10 years ago nobody could think of the social activists, NGOs...They will not only demand that a particular piece of legislation is to be enacted to protect the interest of the people as they perceive but they insist that you have to adopt this model, this structure. We shall have to agree and if we cannot....Keep it under carpet... These are the types of challenges which we are facing today,” he said in his extempore remarks during the annual endowment lecture of Intelligence Bureau on Thursday.
Referring to Hazare’s movement, Mukherjee said when it was at its height more than two years ago Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had asked him to head Group of Ministers to have negotiations with the anti-corruption campaigner. The President said he was even asked during a trip to Vietnam as to how he would respond to that movement.
Maintaining that he was responding as a student of politics, he said “it is opening new dimensions of our democratic structure which we shall have to address and what is that new dimension.”
Exhorting that there was no room for pessimism or for complacency, he also highlighted that national unity and integrity is another challenge as 125 crore people have to be kept together.
In an apparent reference to creation of Telangana, he said the formation of new States and demands for it will have to be addressed politically, administratively and intellectually. On empowering people, Mukherjee said it immediately poses opportunities as well as challenges.
“I do agree there is a necessity to have a paradigm shift in our developmental strategy by providing empowerment and empowerment can be provided not by expressing intention but only by backing of legal enactment,” he said.
Entitlements like RTE and right to jobs will have to be provided and the Government will have to account for the challenges posed by the implementation of such a system.