People's Democracy

MOCKERY OF THE CMP

THOUGH the common minimum programme of the UPA government promised an immediate enactment of a legal employment guarantee of at least a hundred days per rural household in all parts of India, there has been a consistent dilution of the provisions of the proposed Act. The draft as it stands today is a mere formality and a farce that makes a mockery of the common minimum programme.

Many non-party social activists came together and put up a draft act to the NAC. Though strong on people’s entitlements, the financial structure that would realise rights envisaged by the Act was problematic from the very beginning. Several economists argued for a fully centrally funded Act along the lines of the food for work programme and clear demarcation of liability for payment of unemployment allowance between the centre and the states in accordance with the cause for non-provision of work. Unfortunately, the Drafting Group did not agree with the characterisation of the present condition of state finances as one of fiscal crisis brought on by central interest and devolution policy. The draft was put up before the NAC for consideration. The Act suffered substantial dilution at this stage, and subsequent to this the rural development ministry’s draft too carried forward the process of dilution.

But the maximum resistance came from the finance ministry, who from the very beginning had opposed an Employment Guarantee Act. The deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission is alleged to have launched a campaign against the Act saying that the CMP was unaffordable. The prime minister insisted on the political necessity of the Act, but was happy to go along with an Act with a flexible legal and wage framework; restricted to extremely poor households only and uncommitted geographical coverage with a high degree of financial burden on the states.

It is now learnt from reliable sources that the proposed Employment Guarantee Act has been seriously diluted and compromised. The indications had started coming in over a month ago. Now, the Act has taken final shape and the finance ministry and the Planning Commission are hoping to bulldoze this diluted anti-people, anti-women and anti-state government Act. They have played into the hands of finance capital by designing an Act that is effectively a narrowly targeted scheme which can move from district to district at any wage for any duration, all at the whims and fancies of the central government.

The Left and other progressive forces in parliament have a historic role to play, because the present conjuncture has produced a confrontation between two opposing tendencies: a Leftward shift of the policies and the ascendancy of neo-liberalism in government on the other.