Rajasthan legislations impressively move from schemes to laws, ensure rights of people

Rights, not revdi: A civil note on media conference on Rajasthan model for social security and social justice:

***

The Suchna Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan (SR Abhiyan) and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) welcome the progressive legislations passed by the Rajasthan Government this year, in line with its commitment towards guaranteeing comprehensive social security for all in the state. Civil society organizations have been at the forefront of leading public campaigns for the passage of these laws, and consider it a significant development for democracy that the Rajasthan Government has responded to these assertions. These include:

Rajasthan Minimum Guaranteed Income Act, 2023: The legislation doubles the minimum pension to Rs 1000 per month for all elderly, widowed and disabled, with an inbuilt guaranteed annual increment of 15% per year. The law has an enhanced entitlement of 25 days per rural family for work under MGNREGA, and an entitlement of 125 days of work under an urban employment programme. Rajasthan is the first state in the country to pass such a legislation.
Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023: This Act will ensure registration of platform based gig workers in the country; Introduction of a dedicated welfare cess fee on each bill generated by the aggregator to the customer. The fee collected from individual transactions will be credited to a social security fund which shall be used towards financing schemes meant for the welfare of platform-based gig workers and setting up of a tripartite board with the representation of aggregators, worker organizations and Government tasked with the powers to register platform-based gig workers in the State, notify and administer social security schemes for them and monitor the implementation of the Act. Rajasthan is the first State in the country to pass such a legislation
Rajasthan State Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Development Fund (Planning, Allocation and Utilization of Financial Resources) Act 2022: A dedicated fund of Rupees 1000 crores will be available for spending towards economic and social empowerment of SC and ST families and improving the physical infrastructure of villages and towns where SC and ST communities live
Right to Healthcare: All residents of Rajasthan will have a right to free medical treatment in all Government hospitals in the State. When people are facing a life threatening illness or injury, they can go to any hospital with more than 50 beds and avail medical care free of cost.

The above are in addition to a series of other policies for empowering women (through subsidized bus travel), children (enhancement in mid-day meal), performing communities (minimum employment of 100 days), orphaned children (enhanced social security of guardians), exam aspirants, the homeless (a dedicated policy for identification and welfare), nomadic communities (a dedicated policy for identification and welfare) etc. The comprehensive social security framework guaranteed by the State with ensured budget provisioning will cater to a wide range of vulnerable and historically marginalized communities.
The SR Abhiyan organized a press conference in New Delhi on 26 July 2023 to celebrate the victory of workers in the state. The panelists included Prabhat Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Nikhil Dey (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan), Naveen Gautam (Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent), Kavita Srivastava (People's Union for Civil Liberties ) and Shaikh Salauddin (Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers).
At the press conference, Nikhil Dey highlighted the process of pre-budget and more importantly, post-budget consultations held by the Rajasthan government with more than 2000 members of civil society organisations in Rajasthan. He also reiterated the importance of involving entitlement-holders in the process of planning, designing, implementing and monitoring government welfare policies.
Prabhat Patnaik said that the “Rajasthan legislations are very impressive as they have moved from schemes to laws to secure rights of the people in Rajasthan” and that “these legislations are a step forward in the direction of ensuring fundamental economic rights for the people of India”. In response to the ongoing debates around “freebies / revadis”, he underscored the importance of ensuring minimum entitlements with regard to health, education, and food being fundamental to the participatory democracy and added that calling such rights based laws “freebies” are “anti-democratic and anti-poor”.
Shaik Salauddin underscored the importance of inbuilt accountability and transparency measures within the law around ensuring social security for the gig and platform-based workers in Rajasthan and said that the “tripartite board has given gig and platform-based workers an opportunity for collective bargaining with the aggregators who otherwise would not even acknowledge them as their workers”.
This is a strong response to the discourse being pushed by the BJP equating welfare rights to "revadis" and "freebies". We welcome the progressive steps taken by the Rajasthan Government to honour its obligations towards guaranteeing the implementation of the Directive Principles of State Policy and hope that such a model of development grounded in social justice and inclusivity will serve as a beacon for the rest of the country.

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Counterview

Search This Blog