A historic march?
A relatively novel (novel in the recent past) development in our country has been the peaceful march of around 25000 people belonging to certain tribes to Delhi. These people belong to the fringe of our society – marginalized. They are landless, unemployed, under nourished and uneducated. Landless because they were evicted by the government from their traditional forest land, unemployed because they are uneducated and most jobs are concentrated in urban clusters. Under nourished and uneducated because our social programs are appallingly under funded and terribly mismanaged. Corruption & nepotism rules the roost.Under the current economic boom the challenge is to make it inclusive. Like the PM said in his Independence Day speech, we should create more jobs & take them to where people live in order to bring all-round prosperity and ease the urban pressure. (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme)NREGS and (Right to Information) RTI act are some potent tools that have out of our legislative in recent times. A recent study by an NGO found that NREGS was headed towards a predictable failure in some northern states owing to siphoning of the funds by the middle men and babus.
This silent protest by 25,000 citizens hasn’t gone unnoticed in the political circles. What is strikingly different about this walk is that the driving principle of the protesters is ‘satyagraha’ – no burning of buses, no damaging public infrastructure, no rioters but strong resolve to make a point and seek justice. What ails the social development machinery in our country is the perpetual leakage in the system. This could be another wake up call to tighten controls, plug loopholes, improve successful implementation percentages and deliver what is needed.
