The current political discourse on freebies vs rights seems loud and superficial, like a shallow TV debate. A deeper examination of what constitutes a right and a freebie is needed in policy and political debates — nationally and globally.
With large numbers of people living under conditions of extreme economic vulnerability in several countries, poverty alleviation should be the central focus for governments across the ideological spectrum. In electoral democracies, ensuring a minimum income is not only critical for the survival of millions, but it is equally critical to the survival of political parties. For electoral reasons — if nothing else — there is agreement across ideological divides that minimum income levels must be ensured. The question is, how should this be done?
The Rajasthan government’s stated intent of enacting a Minimum Income Guarantee Law in the next few days is a case in point. This law is part of a basket of social security measures announced and implemented by the state government over the last three years. The legislation doubles the minimum pension to Rs 1,000 per month, with a guaranteed annual increment of 15 per cent per year. The law provides for an enhanced entitlement of 25 days per rural family for work under MGNREGA, and an entitlement of 125 days of work under an urban employment programme. It thus guarantees 125 days of work on demand for all those who can, and social security for all those who can’t.
The law merits examination, for its approach, provisions and implications. There is a global consensus on a minimum basic income, whether through the market or through the state. Till the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed in India in 2005, two large Latin American conditional cash transfer programmes were advocated as the path breakers — the “Bolsa Familia” in Brazil, and “Oportunidades” in Mexico. The objective was to select “targeted” families with low-income levels to remove their poverty. These families were provided conditional monthly cash transfers to help access education, health and energy resources. This was part of a safety net approach for the very poor.
The MGNREGA enacted during UPA 1 in 2005, extended an entirely different paradigm of empowering people through cash for work. First, by making it a universal right for all rural residents who could self-select on the basis of their need for work, MGNREGA tackled the hitherto insurmountable problem of selecting beneficiaries under a cash transfer programme. The earlier “targeted” safety net approach of using BPL lists to identify beneficiaries was plagued by the misuse of power by the rural elite and petty bureaucracy, resulting in the benefits reaching people who were not supposed to receive them. Second, providing wage income as a legal entitlement for work done and measured replaced doles with wages. It wedded development rights with citizenship rights thereby giving citizens the platform to mobilise and assert their rights to plan works, earn a minimum wage and evaluate the outcomes of the programme through social audits. The Right To Work programme helped address market failures, by improving the bargaining power of MGNREGA workers in the open labour market. By adopting the building principles of MGNREGA, the Minimum Income Guarantee asserts its superiority — at least in concept — over targeted “cash transfers” which have found much support in recent times.
The Rajasthan government has boldly positioned its rights-based welfare policies in sharp contrast to the “revdi” and “freebie” terminology used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Rights being fought for by social movements, and being partly enacted by state governments, are in line with the Directive Principles of State Policy. Yet the current discourse only looks at growth rates without examining questions of equality and the constitutional idea of a welfare state. But the government’s concessions to industry and the private sector, in the name of incentives, are not counted as freebies.
The BJP in Madhya Pradesh has announced a transfer of Rs 2,000, similar to the Congress party in Karnataka which is offering Rs 2,000 to every woman head of a household. The minimum income framework has, therefore, been adopted even by the BJP. While the MGNREGA was compared with the conditional cash transfer programmes in Latin America, the Rajasthan law now needs to be studied against the cash transfers announced and implemented by different states including Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.
On July 11, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot transferred over Rs 1,000 crore to over 50 lakh social security pensioners. It seemed to be a magical moment as pensioners watched digital numbers scroll on a screen and heard their mobile phones ping, indicating that the enhanced social security pensions had been deposited into their bank accounts. But the “magic” of Direct Benefit Transfer needs further examination. The chief minister pressed the button to make crores of transactions, but a “small” percentage would have bounced, and not reached the intended bank accounts. The inability to address authentication errors, inaccessible banking systems and lack of proactive facilitation to the most marginalised who are the most likely to face these challenges are some of the reasons that almost 10 lakh people in the state have not received their pension for five months. They could not meet the requirements of verifying themselves biometrically and digitally. Many marginalised people who survive on pensions have found it difficult to find a way to meet these requirements and get their pensions restored.
The most logical and effective method by which delivery systems, even within a rights-based framework, can be made to respond to people’s needs is to make sure that the state agencies are accountable. Officials are accountable not just to their administrative superiors, but also to the people. A crucial long-standing demand of the Soochna Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan has been for the enactment of the repeatedly-promised accountability law — the chief minister has made this promise thrice in his budget speeches.
For any mass scale delivery of rights, a strong people-centric accountability mechanism needs to be in place — the mechanism must be codified by law. The failure to deliver should be dealt with in a given time frame and in a decentralised manner. Accountability should be fixed on individual officials. This law should be passed in this session if the other breakthrough laws like the Minimum Income Guarantee Law are to work in a meaningful manner.
SR Abhiyan and civil society groups are continuing their dharna that began a week ago in Jaipur, awaiting the passage of the social security rights-based laws, as well as the accountability law. This would be a big step forward in the lexicon of rights-based laws, strengthened by a legal framework of transparency with accountability to the people. There can be no guarantees without accountability.
The writers are associated with the SR Abhiyan and Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
