We bring out the monthly Policy Watch on each of these themes sequentially and every sixth issue is a Special Issue, where we carry articles from each theme. This issue is on the theme, Governance and Development.
The first article by Arun Maira, former Member of the Planning Commission, talks about “the listening deficit.” He goes on to say that: “The fundamental reform India needs (and the world too) is a ‘no tech’ one. It is the process of listening to people who do not seem to think like we do. By listening to other perspectives, we will comprehend the system of which we are all small parts… we can trust each other, and then we can work together, democratically, to make the world better for everyone.”
In the June 2020 issue of Policy Watch, we had carried a piece contributed by Ram Esteves of ADATS, Bagepalli, located right on the Bangalore-Hyderabad highway, giving an eye-witness account of the plight of migrant workers as they walked from Bangalore to their home states. In this issue, we carry a second article, where Ram Esteves documents in detail what happened in the villages surrounding Bagepalli during the pandemic and the lockdown.
The third article is A Review of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 by RGICS Senior Research Associate, Arnab Bose. In this we continue the series of articles reviewing the status of a whole suite of social legislation that was enacted in the 2004–2013 decade. As we have seen in earlier cases, though the laws were highly progressive in intent, even in enactment and adoption, these got diluted, and the attenuation was severe at the stage of implementation.
The fourth and fifth articles are on the nearly three-month-long farmers’ protest. The first is reproduced from the National Herald and carries comments by former Union Finance Minister, Shri P. Chidambaram, and also by veteran activist journalist P. Sainath. The small post by Mumbai-based journalist Sujata Anandan at the end of the article is worth reading for its pithy description of how faith in private players can be belied.
The next article is an interview in Hindi by Dr. Rajaram Tripathi, the Chairman of All India Farmers’ Federation, and makes the point that neither the government’s actions nor the media’s reporting of what happened on 26th January will only strengthen the farmers’ movement.
This issue of Policy Watch was produced on the last day of the month because we wanted to carry the Declaration from the Assembly of Social, Peace and Environmental Movements adopted on 30th January 2021 at the just concluded World Social Forum (WSF) 2021.
Policy Watch: Governance and Development – January 2021
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