Political and Social Issues

Is Nregs losing steam in states?

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) appears to be losing steam, as financial performance for the current year till the month of October indicates only five states having spent more than 50 per cent of the allotted fund.
While the BJP-ruled Gujarat (63 per cent) leads the pack of states in utilisation of NREGS funds, states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka have lagged behind in the first six months of the current financial year.
Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Assam and Puducherry which have been able to utilise more than 50 per cent of allotted funds.
While West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had been demanding an economic package for her state from the Centre, she does not appear to have pushed for utilisation of NREGS funds
However, Uttar Pradesh, which is amidst a war of words with rural development minister Jairam Ramesh for irregularities, has been able to spend about 46 per cent
This year, officials said, about 60 lakh works have been taken up and after seven months only 3.52 lakh of them have been completed.

Division games

From an administrative point of view, Uttar Pradesh is truly an unmanageable State.
Cutting it up into four smaller States as Chief Minister Mayawati has proposed, roughly along regional cultural divides — Bundelkhand, Avadh Pradesh, Purvanchal, and Paschim Pradesh — has its merits as an idea.
Even with Ms Mayawati's confidence that her party would rule all four proposed States, the instability of governments in small States makes it an unattractive political proposition.
In any case, a green light from the State cabinet is only the first step in a long process that involves an approval by the State Assembly, and then by Parliament.
While there is no doubt that Ms Mayawati has stolen a march over her rivals, it is surprising that for a politician with national ambitions, she seems to have not fully thought through the ripple effect of the move on statehood demands in other parts of the country.
There is no denying that the disappearance of single party rule at the centre and the growth of regional politics have brought about a more federal polity, and a more equitable sharing of power.
But fragmentation of the country on the basis of ever-narrowing identities hardly represents a progressive idea of India.

NDA MPs to give ‘no assets outside India' declaration

In proof of his party and allies' commitment to weed out corruption, Mr. Advani declared, all MPs of the NDA would, in the first week of the coming Parliament session, “solemnly declare that they do not own directly or indirectly bank accounts or assets outside India.”
I feel if there is corruption in the country, it is not because there is no Lokpal, but because there is no political will.
Not only did the government have financial and other experts in key positions, including the Planning Commission, but the Prime Minister himself was an economist, and despite their collective expertise and their announcements to curb inflation
till date I have never seen so many Ministers being removed and jailed for corruption, yet they [UPA] are unaffected. Also, these removals have been based on judicial decisions; they have not been removed by the Prime Minister.

Pranab chants ‘decentralisation of power' mantra in home State

Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday emphasised need for “decentralisation of power” to the grassroots and asserted that officials and bureaucrats alone cannot be relied upon for ensuring development. People needed to be engaged in the process.
The objective with which the Constitution was amended — to decentralise power to usher in development — will not be possible
The transfer of funds to the panchayat-level was resulting in “many leakages.”
“Allegations of leakage are being raised in MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act).

Call for bringing play homes under RTE

Among the unchecked, unregulated number of private play homes are those that are being run by persons with no clue about childcare.
With the absence of any norms for standardisation or certification, or an Act or a single agency in place, child rights activists are a worried lot. So much so that now, a significant number of them want the Government to include play schools within the ambit of the Right to Education Act (RTE).
The argument is that if RTE has to come into force fully, compulsory early child education has to be enforced. For this, RTE has to include the three to six age group too.
Child Rights Protection Commission, said no approval or registration is required to start play homes, which is why there is no form of monitoring.
Sita Shekhar, Executive Director of the Public Affairs Foundation, explained that in the course of the year-long study (2010-11), they did a mapping of centres run by the Women and Child Development Department, Social Welfare Department, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), anganwadi centres, and those under the Factories Act, 1948, among others.
Of them, they discovered that very few catered to the below six months age group — the one that really requires such centres. In addition, most of them are more accented towards providing nutrition and day care, not education.
With no norms in India, some institutions has been following the standards set by U.S.-based National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). “One of the prescribed standards is that of child-to-care giver ratio. For children aged less than one, the ratio is one care giver for every three babies, plus a helper. For ages one and two, it is one is to four. In India, even in high-end chains, the ratio is one is to 10 or even 20 children.”
The fee charged is whimsical too. In some high-end centres, the monthly fee is as high as Rs. 8,000.
“Some centres want the entire fees to be deposited at the time of admissions. So, dissatisfied parents cannot even pull out their children from them,”

“Focus on rehabilitating those freed from bonded labour”

Effective communication with the people affected by the bonded labour system was totally absent.
A separate department was now functioning under the Ministry of Programme Implementation to monitor the issue of bonded labour rehabilitation.
Those liberated from bondage were accorded priority in several things including housing, land and jobs. “Whether the vigilance committees are functioning effectively or not, it is imperative to communicate to those people that these concessions are available,”
This could not be done by non-governmental organisations alone and others, including the politicians, should lend a helping hand.
India had ratified the convention on Abolition of Bonded Labour as early as 1954 nothing much had been done to eliminate the problem fully. It was very much prevalent in textiles and bangle industries.
Though the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was keen on liberating such people, he could not do so in holistic fashion during his tenure of 17 years. But it was former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who brought in an ordinance abolishing bonded labour in 1975. This resulted in two enactments—Bonded Labour System Prohibition Act and Total Debt Liquidation Act.
Till date there was no proper data on the number of bonded labourers in the country
Noting that the relevant powers were vested only in the executive, he wondered why the issue had not been handed over to the judiciary for so long.
However, he noted that the executive was vested with some judicial powers concerning bonded labour, and therefore, a tahsildar could intervene on their behalf.

‘Mediation centres will reduce pendency of cases'

Supreme Court judge Dalveer Bhandari on Sunday suggested setting up mediation centres across the country to bring down pendency of cases.
Over 2.74 crore cases were pending in subordinate courts, 42.9 lakh in High Courts and 56,386 in the Supreme Court.
It involves persuasion and compromise rather than coercion through legal proceedings…It had worked very well in Europe and the United States
One third of the cases are negotiable, and mediation should be used for them
The advantages of mediation were four-fold, he said. “While litigation takes years and decades, mediation takes days or weeks, which also saves money by the case not going to the High Court or the Supreme Court. Also, it removes the uncertainty of the process, as the end judgment depends on the perception of the judge delivering the order. In mediation, the end-solution is acceptable to both parties,”
However, implementing mediation also has its fair share of problems, the foremost being that of inadequate infrastructure.
To solve this issue, he suggested that every court complex set up a mediation centre, and train judges and lawyers in mediation.

State, industry meet to discuss job scheme

The State government will hold a meeting with prominent industrialists on Monday to discuss steps to be taken for issuing one-lakh appointment orders through Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a single day in the last week of December under Rajiv Yuva Kiranalu scheme.
This requires addressing the issue of increasing employment opportunities by pursuing a growth path that balances GDP growth with the growth in employment.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) estimated that a potential of 8 million new jobs (4.5 million skilled/highly skilled, 3 to 3.5 million unskilled) would exist in the construction, textiles, IT & ITES, health care, tourism, pharmaceutical, bio-tech, financial services, para military and security, engineering, retail management, gems and jewellery sectors by 2015.
out of the technical manpower coming from the higher and technical educational institutions, nearly one third remain unemployed, primarily because of the mismatch between the curriculum and the industry requirement.