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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Neoliberal Plan by Venkitesh Ramakrishnan

Neoliberal Plan by Venkitesh Ramakrishnan

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published Published on Oct 7, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 7, 2011

The Planning Commission's Approach Paper to the Twelfth Plan sticks with the neoliberal agenda despite claims of inclusive growth.

INCLUSIVE was one word that came up time and again in the early announcements of the Planning Commission on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. “Faster, Sustainable and More Inclusive Growth” was the slogan coined for the Plan and there was the promise of widespread consultations as never before as part of the processes involved in the exercise this time. The Commission created a page on the social networking website Facebook and solicited comments on what should be incorporated in the Plan. The consultative process also involved interaction with civil society groups, social activists, academics and political activists.

The Commission's own claims on this process were as follows: “In preparing the Approach Paper, the Planning Commission has consulted much more widely than ever before recognising the fact that citizens are now much better informed and also keen to engage. Over 950 civil society organisations across the country have provided inputs; business associations, including those representing small enterprises, have been consulted; modern electronic and social media are being used to enable citizens to give suggestions. All State governments, as well as local representative institutions and unions, have been consulted through five regional consultations.” On the basis of all this, there were also claims that this would be “truly a people's plan”.

However, as the exercise draws to a close with the Union Cabinet approving the Approach Paper in mid-September and the National Development Council (NDC) scheduled to consider it on October 15, the “inclusive” tag being appended to it increasingly appears hollow. A large majority of the civil society organisations and social and political activists involved in the consultations, which were initiated in October 2010 and went on for nearly a year, are dismayed at the projections made in the Approach Paper.

According to many organisations and individuals who were involved in the consultations, approximately 40 issues, including land rights, poverty alleviation, unemployment, food and nutrition security, health, right to education, ensuring transparency in governance, Dalit empowerment, minority welfare, and conflict resolution were taken up for discussion with the promise that the Approach Paper would reflect the spirit of these negotiations. “There was also the assurance that some specific proposals would certainly be incorporated. However, what has been prepared belies our expectations. The document does not speak much about human rights or livelihood of the people, but says a lot about growth and market. The slant towards more privatisation is evident and public-private partnership (PPP) is being projected as the basic model for common resource management, health care and education. This was not what we had in mind when we participated in the consultations,” said P.V. Rajagopal, president of Ekta Parishad, to Frontline.

The Approach Paper, as it has been presented now, contains 15 chapters apart from the overview. These chapters address the following issues: macroeconomic framework, energy, transport, sustainable management of natural resources, rural transformation, farm sector, manufacturing sector, health, social and regional equity, urbanisation, science and technology, services, governance and innovation.

The Paper also claims that “based on the intensive process within the Planning Commission” it has identified 12 strategy challenges in some of the core areas that require new approaches. One such strategy is about using “markets for efficiency and inclusion”. The strategy is explained as follows: “Open, integrated and well regulated markets for land, labour and capital and for goods and services are essential for growth, inclusion and sustainability. We have many sectors where markets are non-existent or incomplete, especially those which are dominated by public provisioning.”

According to a number of activists and organisations who were consulted, while strategy challenges such as enhancing the skills for generation of employment, decentralisation, empowerment and managing the environment do find mention in the Paper, the specific proposals on the same have fallen short of expectations even as those relating to the use of markets and PPP are etched out prominently.

After the nearly year-long consultative process, Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA), a collective of a number of civil society groups, compiled the recommendations and proposals that came up through the exercise into a document. Titled “Approaching Equity, Civil Society Inputs for the Approach Paper – 12th Five Year Plan”, it summarises the recommendations and thematic inputs in as many as 40 categories.

According to the WNTA, the broad approach that the civil society organisations presented in the conclusions raised the question: Who is to be served and empowered by development? It said the concept of inclusion in the planning process should be centred on mobilising the excluded as active agents of their own development and making their participation central to the design of the development process. It further pointed out that certain groups and communities faced social and economic exclusion and political marginalisation owing to their caste, class, gender, age, religious affiliation, region, sexuality, disability, marital status, education, or HIV infection and/or other stigmatised health conditions.

“Consequently, our primary attempt has been to focus on developing plans, policies and schemes to address this gap. All our thematic papers and inputs adopt approaches that specifically take into account the needs and desires of these socially, culturally, and economically marginalised groups and communities and attempt to work towards mitigating the effects of this marginalisation/exclusion to ensure social and distributive justice. In our view, these groups have so far been regarded as ‘not quite citizens' and certainly not full citizens,” the WNTA compilation stated. According to Amitabh Behar, convener of the WNTA, the participating civil society groups and social and political activists had doubts and apprehensions about the final outcome of the consultative process as also “the size of the window” that the process offered. However, he added, the Approach Paper in its present form marked a further downslide in terms of these apprehensions.

Failure on main concerns

Addressing the contents of the Approach Paper more specifically, the Centre for Budget, Governance and Accountability (CBGA) pointed out that in terms of policy action, the Approach Paper failed to address the major concerns of the marginalised sections such as Dalits, Muslims and women and children as well as the persistent problems in major sectors such as health, education, rural development and decentralisation, and water and sanitation. It also pointed out that “a critical aspect worth highlighting is the progression towards greater participation of the private sector in its various forms and avatars not only in implementing the various programmes and schemes but also in designing and developing initiatives in critical sectors that impact human development indicators”.

The CBGA note further states as follows: “Ironically, for instance, the subsection on ‘Land' under the chapter ‘Sustainable Management of Natural Resources' recognises that a lot of the productive/forest land belongs to tribal people and Dalits but ‘a fair land acquisition law' is the ‘way forward'. There is no mention of rightful ownership over land or forests and how the land acquisition law will be ‘fair' to all. The management of this natural resource is about managing to take it away from the rightful owners for ‘public purpose', which includes infrastructure and industry. In reality, this can mean shopping malls and hotels, maybe to generate non-farm jobs! The subsequent subsection on ‘Food Security' also seeks to ensure a no-barriers approach to land acquisition even in districts where the net sown area is less than 50 per cent of the total geographical area (the national average).”

The Approach Paper does raise concerns about the weaknesses in the process of implementation of policies and programmes meant for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and even talks about devising a new system to overcome the difficulties experienced in this sector, but fails to give any specific suggestion on this front. While the S.C. and S.T. communities at least get a sympathetic presentation, the development of Muslims is not addressed specifically. Clearly, the Planning Commission has not taken into consideration the 2006 recommendations of the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee.

Several women's groups have pointed out that while women have been recognised as one of the excluded groups and it has been acknowledged that special measures are needed in relation to women's health, there is no gender perspective in the Approach Paper. Women's issues do not find a mention in critical sectors such as employment and agriculture and even in basic services such as water supply and sanitation.

Similar are the Approach Paper's formulations on education. The persistent demand for allocation of 6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for education has been left unaddressed yet again. The document identifies secondary and technical education as the key sub sectors. While making this projection, the paper advances strongly the case for an increased role in them for the PPP model. The Paper does acknowledge that “rural local self-governance is critical to rural transformation”. But there are no concrete suggestions for enhancing rural self-governance.

There are more than 60 references to strengthening the market and its forces in the Approach Paper. One of these calls for the creation of a vibrant and liquid corporate bond market “on priority basis”. It also states that “reform of the government securities market is also essential for the establishment of a government securities (G-Sec) yield curve for all maturities against which corporate bonds can be priced. It also suggests shifting the system of fertilizer subsidy to a fixed subsidy with market determined pricing.

Commenting on this market-oriented thrust, Y. Venugopal Reddy, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, observed in a different context that the Twelfth Plan ignored the risks of a market economy and raised apprehensions about a lack of immunity in case of a meltdown. “Above all, India has many, very many, poor people whose capacity to assume or manage risk is extremely limited. The strategies for inclusive growth should, therefore, analyse and account for both macro and micro risks,” Reddy pointed out.

In the context of all this, the WNTA's Amitabh Behar asked: “Was this participation and consultation just to hear others or was it a serious process of taking inputs to design the Approach Paper and subsequently the Plan?” Only the Planning Commission can tell.

In the meantime, opinion is divided among participants and observers of the consultative process about what the future holds. Many like Behar wish to see the current engagement and the disappointment that followed as part of a comprehensive process that has to be followed up beyond the Approach Paper in the steering committees in the Planning Commission, the NDC and in the various Ministries.

There are also those like Manish Kunjam, president of the Adivasi Mahasabha and CPI leader, who feel that in the absence of a larger pro-people policy orientation such engagements and consultative processes will have to be seen essentially as platforms for airing one's opinions and grievances.

Commenting on the processes and their results as an observer, Professor Sudhir Kumar Panwar of the Kisan Jagriti Manch pointed out that this show of transparency and consultation was a game of neoliberal ideologues much in the manner of the much-touted ‘trickle-down effect' in core development.

Panwar told Frontline: “In many ways this is a continuation of the same line pursued in the laughable affidavit that the Planning Commission filed in the Supreme Court, which claimed a person living in an urban area earning Rs.32 and a person earning Rs.26 in a village a day would not be counted as below poverty line (BPL). The advocates of neoliberal policies know that they have not achieved much in terms of key concerns such as poverty alleviation in the last two decades and they are looking at new methods to advance their agenda. If the Planning Commission is serious about decentralising the planning process, what it should encourage is micro-planning and greater public monitoring.”

Similar proposals have been advanced in other forums, including Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance. The Chairman of the Standing Committee, Yashwant Sinha, has made a report on behalf of the committee recommending changes in the structure of the Planning Commission and calling for a redefinition of its role and responsibilities. The committee has also sought decentralisation of the planning process and enhanced public monitoring. Obviously, these proposals will not be taken up as part of the Twelfth Plan exercise. But the debate on the consultative process, the disappointment it has generated and the quest for some course correction at the level of NDC and the steering committees may well lead to a more involved engagement with fundamental changes too.

Frontline, Volume 28, Issue 21, 8-21 October, 2011, http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20111021282100400.htm


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