Are we ‘Left’ or Right?

•-An odd piece of news was reported in the Guwahati edition of the Telegraph on 28 October 2009. It said that the Assam government has asked district deputy commissioners to keep a close watch on “pro-poor” organisations because the government suspects that many such organisations may be sowing the seeds of Maoism among the poor.  This kind of diktat assumes tremendous importance for organizations like ours, which works for development in the North-east. In the past the state government has been laudatory about social welfare organizations like ours. What has turned it edgy now?
My experience with government has shown me that it senses a threat when social organisations talk of violations of human rights. The term “human rights”, is not a comfortable one to many in the bureaucracy.
To cite an example, our organization asked for support from an aid agency for a training programme that we wanted to run for state and Block level officers in the Assam government. Our programme’s intention was to educate the officers in United Nations human rights mechanisms and the Indian government’s own pro-women laws and Acts. Our funding request was forwarded to the Department of Economic Affairs at North Block for the clearance that is mandatory for all applications for aid from foreign sources.
The Department turned our request down. Its objection was that we could not be allowed funding for work on women’s “human rights”. Informally, we were advised to rewrite the proposal if we wanted it passed. Change the term to “women’s development”, we were told, and we would get the clearance we needed.
In my understanding, human rights violations do not stop at atrocities committed by the state or non-state-armies.  Human rights violations include the denial of support services to women affected by violence or the lack of basic amenities and healthcare services. Organisations like ours raise awareness among the poor about the government’s pro-poor Acts like the Right to Information (RTI) or the Domestic Violence Act. Organisations also monitor programmes like the Integrated Child Development Scheme, the National Rural Health Mission or the Swadhar Schemes for abused women, and the like, in order to ensure that people benefit from them. In addition, we monitor the United Nations conventions that address the elimination of discrimination against women — all these conventions, incidentally, are ratified by the Indian government. Each of these Acts or schemes or conventions are inherently linked to human rights and social justice. Yet in the past, the bureaucracy has never lost its sleep over our work in these areas. Why now?
Clearly, the bureaucracy does not feel threatened by what it sees as development programmes. It is when social welfare organizations deal with or question issues of governance, social injustice and inequalities, that they become trouble-makers.  And in today’s political climate, from asking troublesome question to being branded a Maoist takes only one easy step.
The Assam government’s anxieties today may stem from the fact that some social welfare organizations have questioned their level of accountability.  The introduction of the Right to Information Act by the UPA government in 2005 provided citizens with a legitimate and powerful tool for such questions about accountability.  Through the RTI, scores of organistions or individuals have discovered that the money allocated for a certain scheme, for instance, never reached the people it was meant for. Bureaucrats who have been siphoning off public money in peace for decades have suddenly found that such theft has become a little less easy because of social welfare organizations that are galvanising the poor into public protests and public hearings to highlight aberrations in government spending.
What could be the most effective muzzle for such troublesome social organizations? What will most effectively banish them from public life? What will immediately cut off their sources of support? In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of India, bureaucrats and politicians are accustomed to finding ruthless and ingenious ways to be exploitative of the poor. They didn’t have to think too hard to reach an obvious easy solution this time: put a label on all social organizations that teach the poor to demand their rights. Call such organizations Maoist. Nobody will dare ask any more dangerous questions.
Monisha Behal,
North East Network