This government came to power with a mandate to be more sensitive to people’s needs after the ironic India Shining campaign by BJP. The ironies continue with some of the most anti-people policies being promulgated by them.

The Congress led government started with the best food forward though, with a promise to the Right to Education that would guarantee education to every child. Even a tax was set up for it – a 2% tax that would help fund education. They got the Right to Information bill passed – a milestone in Indian democracy since it would make governance as transparent as it never was. Some analysts even argued that this was perhaps among the top 3 information bills in the whole world. The Employment Guarantee Scheme followed – promising at least 100 days of employment to a member of one household in about 100 districts. There was much that was wrong with this but it was an experimental effort to understand how to do it right.

And then the true face perhaps peeked out. Last year, the government decided to weaken the Environment Impact Assessment Guidelines. Without any democratic discussions and with consultations only with large companies, new guidelines were put together. These guidelines effectively allow a company to operate for the first two years without following environmental guidelines (once it has begun operating we know how difficult it is to shut its operations). These guidelines were put out for feedback but no discussion was entertained – either with civic societies or with NGOs.

This was perhaps the government’s way of setting right a problem the Supreme Court had identified through its Monitoring Committee: Over 2000 cases of environmental dumping by large companies in one year (2003). Perhaps the government decided that one way to decrease such illegalities that concerned the Supreme Court was to change the laws themselves.

It has been argued that modernization and globalization will improve environmental standards in the third world. Unfortunately, in India, the government is proactive leading a retrograde process.

Under immense pressure from its citizens’ bodies, the government finally backed out. It did not change the guidelines last October. But it has now decided to do so. Without any consultations but with large companies and their lobbies. Without any democratic processes.

In a declaration in Kathmandu, Judges from all countries of South Asia had recognized the environmental dumping hurts the poor the most and they had proactively decided to protect the poor. Now, with these changing guidelines, the Indian government has decided to find ways to make dumping even easier. That India was already the dumping ground of the world was not enough.

Meanwhile, the government has also reneged on its Right to Education plan. It decided that it did not have money to fund such a plan – even as more than 50% of the funds collected as part of the education tax sit idle. Even as it proposes reservations to help backward classes (but reservations in good for elections, Right to Education is not), it has pulled back on the Right to Education while suggesting that the State Governments take up a watered down education policy and even claiming that parents should be held responsible for children’s educations.

How can parents be held responsible when there are no working schools in large parts of the country, where schools that exist have little facilities and when – as cases in Tamil Nadu have shown – administration cannot keep schools safe for our children?

How can they be held responsible when they are being pushed out and displaced from their homes by unplanned projects, by poor water management in dams, by policies that are depleting water levels in rural communities making life unlivable and forcing migration?

Now, the government is even threatening to go back on the Right to Information policy as well. It has proposed an amendment that will limit such information only to ‘development’  projects – effectively ending transparent governance. Again under severe pressure from civic society and citizen leaders, it has postponed the amendment proposal. However, it plans to bring it on in December. It is unlikely to receive opposition from other parties – after all transparency does not serve any political leader.

All of these bring forth the question – WHY? Why is the government taking such steps? Does it not understand that people – who it claims to represent – are being adversely affected? Perhaps it does, but its hands are tied.

They are tied by World Bank driven structural adjustment policies that is asking third world government to spend less on its people. They are asking to cut down spending on health, on nutrition, on education, on programs designed to invest in our own people – programs we know are necessary for our growth.

They are tied by the greed of investment in large companies. It matters little what party they belong to or what their ideologies may be. The left parties in Bengal are even more proactive that the center in rewarding companies and helping them invest. Companies known to exploit have been invited. (Walmart is a good example). The PM does not have time for his farmers or for people drinking toxic water around the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, but for Walmart, that is another story.

The government is ties – it has no ability, and little motivation to take care of the people. I can only conclude that the people must take care of our selves. And I think we will do a good job doing that.

- Sanat Mohanty