The National Right to Employment Guarantee Act is close to completing its first year. While numerous government and other policy groups will probably be analyzing the successes and failures of the Act and how it could be rolled out to other states, another discussion is also necessary – what is the role and the impact of such government run programs in empowering citizens in a democracy.

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Two different ethoses influence this analysis – one by Gandhi expressed that the state continues to exist because of our own weaknesses and the other by Freire which expresses that those who are not oppressed can only express solidarity with those who are; if they attempt to take on the identity of the oppressed, the oppressed will lose their voices.  He adds that rights and freedom cannot be given – they must be taken. And only by those who are oppressed.

In the first year we have seen NREGA to have influenced many lives – providing the safety net of employment in conditions of extreme poverty and absence of livelihoods. Similar programs such as Right to Food have also brought much relief to starving communities – starving not owing to drought but owing to the breakdown of local economies and disappearing livelihoods.

Of course, numerous examples of corruption and malpractices have come to light. While one could dwell on them, it is also fair to say that such inefficiencies in implementation should not take away from the value of such programs. And perhaps more appropriate checks and balances – Right to Information, perhaps – would help resolve these.

So in this context of success of programs that have been actively supported and endorsed by a broad set of people, institutions and organizations, from mainstream to so called progressives to even radicals, this analysis may seem inappropriate – however, it is important to ask whether these programs empower our communities.

I participated in a Public Hearing on Right to Food in Varanasi in April 2006. It was heartening to see about a thousand citizens from rural communities coming to share their stories of how things have failed. Their coming together and describing the failures was itself a highlight of an evolving democracy – as I have described in the past.

Even within this limited participation, there were a number of more nuanced observations that were disconcerting – when I later recognized them. Except for one individual who said that they would take to the streets to rally for the effective working of the Public Distribution System – their right – every other speaker pleaded for help or was despondent at the ineffectiveness of the system. There was one old woman who came and cried for help, pleading to one of the young men who had help organize this event, pleading for some food for the family.

Has the Right to Food empowered these communities – I do not think so. That they are a safety net, I have no doubt. But they have not empowered these communities. They have, in fact, given more power to a certain layer of bureaucrats to hand out crores of Rs or sanction programs for people at their discretion. More possibilities of corruption as well.

And they will give more power to NGOs to act as a middle layer to ‘help’ communities get access to these programs.

However, in the absence of people being able to hold any government authority – even the pettiest government clerk – accountable, these programs do not empower them. Despite the instances that the media reports where people hold local government officials responsible – that is neither easy nor is it the norm. In most cases police stations will violently throw out the poor seeking to file reports. And when there is success, much organizing is necessary. Clearly, people cannot demand these ‘rights’ – they are reduced to pleading for them (in most cases) and when granted, it is presented as a favor rather than a right.

Thus, one must question the strategy of empowering government to give itself more power over the lives of the disempowered. This strategy of ‘giving’ rights is perhaps disempowering – just as Freire points out.

Livelihoods are disappearing or becoming unsustainable in rural and in urban communities, owing to numerous economic policies that the government makes – including liberalizing of the agricultural and allied markets, setting up of SEZs, absence of rehabilitation of displaced people, rampant and uncontrolled dumping of pollutants and externalizing of other costs of the development process on these communities. They are disappearing faster than such programs can address.

If the government suggests that such programs will resolve poverty or result in longer term livelihoods, it is being disingenuous. If various NGOs and people’s rights groups believe this, it is myopic.

These programs are significant as safety nets and perhaps could be rolled out to the rest of the country. At best, they could also be a tool around which communities could organize to begin to hold government agencies accountable. However, they are no solution to increasing poverty owing to disappearing livelihoods driven by costs that are being externalized to these communities.

Programs such as these seem to fail the ethos of Gandhi and of Freire. While they may provide a safety net in the short term, they are disempowering because they do not attempt to address our weaknesses and focus on empowering the state. They are disempowering because they believe that rights can be given by us to them.

It is not clear to me that by themselves, they empower those for whom they are designed. They are certainly not enough.

- Sanat Mohanty