 "Manmohan Singh's tenure: A lasting legacy of rights-based legislation")
Long before Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party burst in on the political scene, the Congress in 2004 went to the people with the overarching theme: “Congress ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath”. It worked in the elections that year. And the policy push that came with it is one of the lasting legacies of Manmohan Singh’s 10-year tenure as Prime Minister: Rights-based legislation.
From the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to the Right to Information (RTI) to the Forest Rights Act, his government took the legislative route to raise social welfare to an altogether new level.
Though many of the pieces of legislation were championed by the National Advisory Council, which was an advisory body chaired by then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and had their own share of criticism from the Prime Minister’s Office, its Economic Advisory Council, or the Planning Commission, experts said they ultimately passed muster with all their cut and thrust.
Among the major rights-based laws, the MGNREGA stands out for the sheer number of people it has directly impacted. The Act was notified on September 7, 2005. First covered only in 200 districts, it was extended to the entire country in 2008. Though the Act did have its share of controversies and sceptics, it was also credited for being one of the factors that brought the United Progressive Alliance, headed by the Congress, back to power in 2009.
A 2015 study done by National Council of Applied Economic Research showed the Act helped in lowering poverty by almost 32 per cent between 2004-05 and 2011-12.
More recently, the Act, along with the National Food Security Act (NFSA) of 2013, was seen by many as being the major social security net that enabled the poor and needy to face the devastation wreaked by the pandemic.
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The Act has been further fine-tuned and funded by the current regime and its Budget has only grown since 2014.
Among other such legislation, the Right to Food Act or the NFSA guaranteed legal entitlement for highly subsidised food to almost 800 million Indians.
Though critics then alleged that the NFSA would lead to huge annual food-subsidy bills and promotion of mono-culture cultivation in the country, the government then went ahead with it.
The RTI Act was another piece of legislation that ensured transparency and openness in governance.
The Right to Education (RTE), or the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, inserted Article 21-A into the Constitution of India to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group 6-14 as a fundamental right in such a manner as the state may, by law, determine.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which represented the consequential legislation envisaged under Article 21-A, means that every child has the right to full-time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school that satisfies certain essential norms and standards. Article 21-A and the RTE Act came into effect on April 1, 2010.
The Forest Rights Act, also called the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2005, sought to recognise the forest rights of Forest-Dwelling Scheduled Tribes who occupied the land before October 25, 1980.
“Manmohan Singh was a champion of neo-liberal globalisation but had also very early in his tenure as Prime Minister recognised the fact that the fruits of globalisation had left large sections of society untouched and therefore was keen to correct this, which to me he did through the plethora of social-sector legislation,” said Nikhil Dey, founder member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan and National Campaign for People’s Right to Information.
Dey, who had been associated with lots of people’s movements that ultimately led to the framing of much of social-welfare legislation, said Singh might have had disagreement with some of the contents of the legislation but was always open to discuss them and find middle ground.
“I remember, for RTI, there were some 158 amendments made to the government draft based on recommendations by the standing committee. Singh had some apprehension about a clause on penalty but was willing to patiently hear all sides. Eventually, although diluted, an important penalty clause was retained,” Dey recalled.
He said the end result was that the legislation passed had stood the test of time.