Making Our Laws -I

A television news channel carried the news report of a clutch of civil society organizations and NGOs getting involved in sensitizing voters in Madhya Pradesh so as to keep the BJP returning back to power in the coming elections. The channel showed the footage of left leaning activist Shabnam Hashmi as among those involved in the exercise. According to her and her fellow activists; a return to power by the BJP would ensure that key institutions would be irretrievably captured and compromised ideologically. Of course, given Hashmi’s political convictions, this thinking is not unusual; but what is important here is to recognize the role and platform that civil society institutions can and do provide to the common man to enter the hurly burly of politics.

Looking at the money and muscle power that seemingly casts a long shadow over the politics of the day, the common man may well feel overwhelmingly helpless in being able to do any thing at all to make a difference. There are many who would love to more involved in the matters of governance of the country than merely casting a vote once in five years or less. Not every one wants to be a parliamentarian or a legislator and be directly involved in governance but a lot of us surely want to influence the ways in which laws and polices are formulated and then promulgated and eventually enforced. Law making is not the preserve of elected parliamentarians or a bunch of elite bureaucrats alone though they make be the ones who are the institutional gate keepers. But to the extent that laws and policies affect directly or indirectly all of us, it should be the endeavor of all of us to try and be engaged in smaller or larger measure.

This is where civil society institutions can play an important role. Traditionally in India, policies and laws have almost been influenced not through open and transparent debate but through backroom intrigue – the reference to dalal salaam by the BJP recently has some background and history attached to it for it is them acting at the behest of powerful business houses (usually) who do all the lobbying and dealing and the wheeling and the dealing.

NGOs and civil society institutions can bring these hitherto hidden matters out of the closet and help shape public opinion by bringing out nuances in various policy alternatives and options and creating an informed voter base. In the ongoing matter of the Indo – American nuclear deal for example, how many of us can really stand up and be counted that we understand all the finer points? The debate has been confined to small sections of the scientific community and the political class and mostly they see and hear what they want to see and hear. For those like former President Abdul Kalaam, the deal is a panacea for the country’s chronic energy ills, while for others the nuclear deal will make us a client state of the Americans.

Now this is not typical NGO work and those who do engage in quasi political activity do so not so much in a evidence based, semi academic way, presenting and then debating all sides of the equation but rather driven by their own ideology and convictions as Shabnam Hashmi is doing. There is nothing wrong with that approach of course – to be driven by the strength of our convictions; but the problem is that many of us simply have not had the chance to develop our stand on many issues simply because we do not know all the material facts at hand on the basis of which we can make up our mind! And this is therefore an arena where we need some sarva shiksha abhiyan!

The Child Specialist from Chattisgarh

One would have thought that being a child specialist is a safe, selfless and innocent profession, especially when it is practiced among the poor and the disadvantaged of the country. Not necessarily so, especially if you happen to work among the poor in Chattisgarh and have the rare penchant of matching your walk by some talk. I say, ‘rare’, because most of us would find it far easier to talk rather than match it with some walk.

Dr Binayak Sen, a pediatrician worked in the Naxal-hit villages of Chhattisgarh for many years. He is a rare man as most pediatricians sit in cities and make money or go abroad. But Dr Sen was arrested recently and sent to Raipur central jail supposedly because of his Naxalite convictions. I do not know Dr Sen myself but I have friends who do. And they tell me that his profession was that of saving lives, especially those of children and no one who knew him could accuse him of having gone to someone’s house and shot them down with a gun or commit some other wanton act of terrorism which would deserve such an arrest.

On the contrary, Dr Sen seems to have picked up a calling to serve and work in a place where few would go. Possibly, he picked up the vision from his Alma Mater, the Christian Medical College in Vellore. In Chattisgarh, Dr Sen has been involved in the setting up of the Shaheed Hospital, an initiative of the great trade unionist Shankar Guha Niyogi who was murdered at the behest of rapacious industrialists.

The hospital, owned and operated by a workers’ organisation, remains unmatched anywhere in India as a voluntary venture. It helps the population of a backward tribal area, callously neglected by the state. Dr Sen was on an official advisory committee, which drew up one of the most successful community-based primary healthcare programmes in India, based on the Mitanin, the local barefoot health worker. Besides being actively involved in the Shaheed Hospital, Dr Sen is a very well respected member of Jan Swasthya Sahyog, which is committed to develop a low-cost, effective community health programme in the tribal and rural areas of Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh. He also donates his service to a weekly clinic in a tribal community in Dhamtari district.

Dr Sen has been contributing theoretical papers to books and journals on public health. He was honored with the Paul Harrison award in 2004 for lifetime work of medical care in the service of humanity. This is an award given annually by the Christian Medical College, Vellore to one of its alumni.

It is not unnatural for such a man with an obvious passion for the poor and who was a civil liberty activist in addition to all the other things that he did, to have strong convictions about what kind of policies and practices would benefit the poor. It is also to be expected that such a man would have the courage of convictions to speak out, which he did. With such a multi faceted personality and vision and a passion and energy to match, he was a trail blazer and a role model for all doctors – especially the deal cutting, commission fed cash cows that many in today’s medical fraternity have become.

Clearly the state government believes otherwise. The myopic and feudal attitudes fuelling the way the government is run there, obviously has decided that if it does not care about improving the manner in which the poor are treated, no else would either, and if they do, then they run the danger of falling afoul of the law as Dr Sen has done. Clearly with people with convictions and concern for the poor like Dr Sen out of the way, the BJP led Naxalite chasing government of Chattisgarh want to prove Jesus right – The poor will always be with us.