When govt fails its people

Neera Chandhoke

Political Scientist

Deep anguish, deeper desolation, and immeasurable sadness defeat us as we witness death after death. Death is no longer a stranger, it has become familiar: a neighbour, a visitor, even family. We have looked death in the face, and found it merciless. We do not personally know the people who died, we only know how many died. But we do know they left a part of themselves with us, and took away a part of us. ‘No man is an island’, wrote English poet John Donne, ‘…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’

Sadly, our civil society has been pulverised, courts abdicate their responsibility, and the rule of law is missing.

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This is a moment of unending grief. It is also a moment for asking hard questions. There is nothing more tragic than avoidable death. Who is responsible? We asked for statesmen, wrote Wole Soyinka, we were sent executioners. Indians asked for statesmen, we got politicians for whom democracy is reducible to elections; a route to grab power and privilege.

Democracy has disappointed democrats across the world. We had hoped for democracy because this is the form of rule that recognises the political competence of ordinary people to participate in decision making. Democracy is of value not because of its outcomes, whether peace, increased GDP, or world-class infrastructure, but because of its presumption that every citizen is equal.

Democrats realised early enough that no one can be equal if she is poor, non-literate, malnourished, unemployed amidst opulent affluence. Political equality has meaning only when the holders of power recognise that people should not be poor/ non-literate/malnourished/ unemployed because that compromises the fundamentals of democracy. A well-conceived educational system, a functioning health infrastructure, jobs, housing and a regular income represent the core of redistributive justice.

This notion is not new to India. The Constitution draft, authored by a nine-member committee, with Motilal Nehru as the chairman, conceptualised an integrated system of rights from universal adult suffrage to the right to liberty. Prominence was given to social rights. Motilal Nehru observed that political power could be justified only when it was used to ameliorate poverty, ill health and education through the grant and implementation of social and economic rights. The report obliged a future Parliament of independent India to make suitable laws for the maintenance of health and fitness for work for all citizens, for securing a living wage for all workers, and for the protection of motherhood, welfare of children, and to counter economic consequences of old age, infirmity, and unemployment.

In the Constituent Assembly, the integrated list of rights was split between the Fundamental Rights Chapter and the Directive Principles of State Policy. Many decades thereon, social rights were given attention only in 2004-2009 by the UPA government headed by PM Manmohan Singh. Aided by a Supreme Court anxious to reclaim its image after its sorry record during the Emergency, and by civil society groups, the UPA-I legislated several social rights. The RTE was made a part of the right to life, and granted the status of a fundamental right. However, the right to health was left out. Article 21, which guarantees the right to life, has been interpreted to cover the right to health. The right is thus derived rather than couched in terms of a specific good that all have a right to.

In 1946, the committee on public health chaired by Sir Joseph Bhore had recommended that a web of primary health centres be established to focus on preventive and curative measures. Our public health system has functioned poorly. Since 1991, the private sector, promoting health tourism, has stepped into the field in a major way. Dominated by a few corporates, private hospitals are driven by profit. The private sector is uninterested in the concept of delivering health to all through preventive measures, and is unconcerned about equity. The present government has devolved responsibility for health to the private sector. Consider the pricing policy of vaccination for the 18-44 age group. The onus of protecting lives in the middle of death and destruction has been placed on the citizen.

That the focus on curative health has resulted in inadequate health services, is made painfully evident today. Preventive healthcare is related to the establishment of supportive infrastructure: networks of free or reasonably priced services, high literacy rates, exposure to information, social movements, and, above all, political will, as is the case of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Social activists and scholars have suggested a move away from a policy-oriented approach to health, towards a human rights approach which might manage to secure universal access to health.

Today, we are paying heavily for privatisation and commercialisation of a basic precondition to life. The leadership is content with demoting democracy to elections, and to mandates secured by elections. The ruling class might do something about the lives, liberties, education and health of citizens. It might not do anything. The presumption of democracy can be belied by the outcome. Important as elections are, they are not sufficient for ensuring democracy and well-being. Democracy has to be protected by citizen activism in the space of civil society, by the judiciary and by the rule of law. In India, civil society has been pulverised, courts abdicate their responsibility, and the rule of law has gone missing.

So when the pandemic massacres, the only agent that can hold a mirror to overweening power is the foreign media, a few newspapers and some online news portals. Leaders continue to lust for power, as those who voted for them gasp for breath. This is not the democracy our forebears fought for and conceived of.

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