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Influential activist Aruna Roy has asked that her tenure at the National Advisory Council (NAC) not be renewed when it ends this month. NAC head Sonia Gandhi, also head of the ruling coalition, has accepted Roy’s request, without commenting on the reasons Roy has cited for not wanting to continue.
Roy says the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has changed the lives of the poor but implementation remains a challenge. “There is a huge group of MGNREGA beneficiaries who are critical but supportive of the law. They are losing public and political space to a small, vocal, and powerful minority determined to undermine its basic objectives,” she says.
“It is extremely unfortunate the Prime Minister rejected the NAC recommendations on payment of minimum wages to MGNREGA workers and chose instead to appeal the Karnataka High Court judgment ordering (this). Even more distressing is the government’s refusal to pay minimum wages even after the Supreme Court refused to stay the HC judgement. It is difficult to understand how a country like India can deny the payment of minimum wages and still make claims of inclusive growth.”
Roy says she expects the NAC to press for pre-legislative consultations, as on the rape legislation; she says such a process would strengthen Indian democracy. She has also pressed for speedy passage of the food security Bill. “While questions of poor delivery of social sector programmes continue to plague us, the debates over the past two years have given us a very sound set of measures which should be enacted without delay,” she says.
Roy says she is opting out of the NAC because Bills relating to transparency and accountability need to be passed and pressure from the outside has to be created to get Parliament to clear these.
In a significant personal tribute to Gandhi, she has said in her letter: “I can say with absolute certainty that I have expressed my views fully and openly. It has never been even mildly suggested by you as the chair that I curtail my expression, either within or outside the NAC. This has given me the space to finish my term with the NAC, with the confidence that I contributed my best to its functioning; without intellectual compromise or negatively affecting my role outside.”
