Promises? Make them obligations

The Common Minimum Programme should have been framed in more imperative terms. Juxtaposing the word 8216;programme8217; with the word 14...

The Common Minimum Programme should have been framed in more imperative terms. Juxtaposing the word 8216;programme8217; with the word 8216;minimum8217;, does not seem good enough. Given our ground realities, the more appropriate word should be 8216;obligation8217;. What the nation really requires is a charter of 8216;minimum core obligations8217;, more than, and surely much before, Common Minimum Programme CMP.

To be fair, the UPA8217;s CMP does have some statements of 8216;obligations8217;, but they are inadequate and the point has not come through decisively. One place where it surely does, however, is the commitment to 8220;immediately enact a National Employment Guarantee Act8221; which is aimed at providing a legal guarantee for 100 days of employment in every rural household. A business daily quite predictably termed this a mistake. It cited the employment assurance scheme of the past and pointed out that 8220;for want of either funds or bureaucratic energy, it made little difference8221;. Yes, the want of funds have been an excuse that governments continue to make and strangely get away with, but lack of bureaucratic energy just cannot be tolerated when we know that access to livelihood is a fundamental right of every citizen.

The point is that schemes would be made in the future, too, as in the past and with questionable results, unless the state is held accountable if it fails to deliver. The legal guarantee proposed now thus makes good sense. The other place where the obligation, not only of the government but also of the citizen, has been suggested is the decision to 8220;introduce a cess on all central taxes to finance the commitment to universalise access to quality public education8221;.

Two points are worth noting here. One, universalising elementary education is no longer a mere commitment of the government, it is an obligation of the state and one that is enforceable against it by the people who have a fundamental right to education. Once this is understood, the decision to introduce a cess can be clearly seen as marshalling of the necessary resources to honour a fundamental right, or conversely, an obligation to give effect to a thing that is not only desirable, but one that is inescapable.

When it comes to food and nutritional security, the UPA advocates a 8216;mid-term strategy8217; and 8220;to move towards universal food security over time, if found feasible8221;. This a feeble formulation. A mid-term strategy and, that too, only if it is feasible, hardly does justice to repeated assertions of the Supreme Court that the right to food is a fundamental right. The lack of acceptance of minimum obligations gets, however, more clear in the section that talks about agriculture 8212; an area which has been in the spotlight with the issue of farmers8217; suicides assuming critical importance. The suicides have been a combined result of an insensitive rural credit system, failed crop insurance schemes and lack of access to irrigation, among other things. The CMP does talk about ensuring the doubling of flow on rural credit in three years, expanding institutional lending and making insurance schemes more effective. However the fact that these are imperative in the context of suicides needed emphasis. The recent NHRC notice to the Andhra Pradesh government is based on a simple point. Addressing these suicides was an immediate obligation but the government mistook it as one aspect of its continuing programme for the poor.

Note also that the UPA says that 8220;water management in all its aspects, both for irrigation and drinking purposes will receive urgent attention8221;. But this assurance again is not good enough. Water for irrigation and for drinking purposes has to be seen differently. For irrigation 8216;urgent attention8217; could still do but would be barely just in the context of farmers8217; deaths. However, water for drinking purposes is again an obligation that the government of the day has to be forced to honour.

Shortly after independence, we began talking about Minimum Standards of Living, then we came up with a Minimum Needs Programme and in that tradition we have now a Common Minimum Programme. For a long time there have been a clear understanding of what this 8216;minimum8217; is. It is time we decide on what the minimum obligations to achieve this minimum are. The courts have already done so. So why is the executive still so impervious to the notion?