From the new year of 2024, the government’s mandate that all wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee ACT (MGNREGA) scheme must be paid through Aadhaar-based payment system came into effect. This drew a lot of flak from activists and workers’ organisations who felt that the move could end up denying access to the marginalised classes, pushing them to abject poverty.
File photo of women workers returning to their village after digging a tank at Maradevanahalli village in the drought-affected Maddur taluk under the MNREGA scheme. | Photo Credit: SOMASHEKARA GRN
“People don’t fully understand the relationship between MGNREGA and a government at the Centre which is destroying it… When you come down to the grassroots many people who are in need of MGNREGA have voted for BJP, because they don’t live in the duality of Constitutional morality and traditional morality that we exist in,” said Aruna Roy, activist, former civil servant and founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.
Editorial | Laboured wages: On MGNREGS payments to States
She was speaking at the annual U.R. Ananthamurthy Memorial Lecture at the Bangalore International Centre.
“They don’t see one from the other at certain points of time. They voted for BJP and now many of them in Rajasthan face a problem because MGNREGA is shrinking. And they don’t know how to address the problem today,” said Ms. Roy whose works mostly focus on working-class issues in Rajasthan.
Ms. Roy pointed out that although Dr. Ambedkar drafted a Constitution that allowed people to use its provisions to achieve their demands, not many have learned how to do it. | Photo Credit: BHAGYA PRAKASH K / THE HINDU
The problem of duality
Ms. Roy spoke at length about the dichotomy created by the duality in which Indians exist and how we have grown up with two different kinds of moral authorities, the first of them being constitutional principles.
“I grew up with the knowledge of how important the Constitution was in taking India to the post-freedom era. My father always said that Gandhi was important in getting us independence, but without Ambedkar, there would have been no modern India or a structure through which we could have fought for equality, liberty and fraternity, and the dignity of the individual,” she said. But on the other side, we have been living with superstitions, dowry demands, and many other social evils, she pointed out.
“We never questioned the stranglehold traditional culture had on many people and we did not try to understand our own predicament of switching from one to the other -- not fully understanding, not fully accepting, not fully in consonance with it but still part of it. Many traditions have run this country. We have allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner and we must resist this position now,” she said.
Dealing with power
Ms. Roy pointed out that although Dr. Ambedkar drafted a Constitution that allowed people to use its provisions to achieve their demands, not many have learned how to do it. She noted that the idea of India as a pluralistic society was changing and a monocultural rationalism antithetical to it was growing.
“Dr. Ambedkar wrote that we should not be contented with mere political democracy. He said we must make our political democracy a social democracy and political democracy cannot last unless there lies at its base social democracy,” she said reading out from Dr. Ambedkar’s writings.
Speaking about the complexity of Indian polity, Ms. Roy said, “Western Rajasthan voted according to religion, whereas eastern Rajasthan voted for caste. For you and me it would make no difference whether it is a caste vote or a religious vote. But politically it makes a lot of difference. We need to look at such details which we haven’t.”
“Indian polity is as complex and as culturally different as all the other cultural things in India that we take for granted. We have not developed a technique, a technology and an understanding of what makes people what they are in terms of faith,” she added.
Role of middle class
Ms. Roy also held the middle class partly responsible for the state of affairs in the country today. The middle class has a politics of convenience and comfort and is compromised heavily due to people’s dependence on technology and the benefits from the state, she said.
“Today the want of convenience and comfort has taken over. People are dependent on technologies, but on the other side the government is using more and more technologies for surveillance. Our people are buying the myth that we are extremely well off when the government gives a mere ₹200 as old age pension in this country. It is a shame,” she criticised. Unless we get social justice, social development and welfare schemes, a large section of people who want to fight to get India to a better place will not be able to do it, she argued.
“We have to see that the battles for freedom of articulation are not just for us, but for the freedom of expression of the common person who can’t get daily rations. We have to evolve a polity which will bring it all together and link it together.”
“Democratic engagement with power has to be unpacked. We have to use the system, and question the system – how do you pass three laws that I don’t agree with, in my name? How do you pass a set of new criminal laws without public debate? But we haven’t asked that question. We are not using the power we have,” she said, pointing out the need for educating people on how to work democracy, do collective bargaining and use the existing laws to achieve public demand.
File photo of noted writer and Jnanapith award winner, U.R. Ananthamurthy. | Photo Credit: MAHINSHA S
Remembering U.R. Ananthamurthy
In 2014, Jnanpith Award winner U. R. Ananthamurthy commented that he would leave the country if Narendra Modi became the prime minister. The comment made him a target of right-wing hatred.
“I met Mr. Ananthamurthy shortly after he had been issued a ticket to Pakistan by supporters of the BJP,” recalled Ms. Roy. “A remarkable human being, who was a writer, a cultural person in the best definition of the term, who understood politics, literature, the condition of people, who understood that the division between various categories in life is thin indeed; That you don’t have to dislike Ramana because you like Gandhi or you don’t have to dislike Gandhi because you like Marx,” she said.
Ms. Roy, who has been re-reading Mr. Ananthamurthy’s seminal work Hindutva or Hind Swaraj, noted that the best way to remember him is by reading his books.
She said, “In Hindutva or Hind Swaraj, Prof. Ananthamurthy compares Savarkar and Gandhi and talks about Savarkar’s desire for nationhood, his desire to wield power. Gandhi, on the other hand, is inward-looking and deals with morality. We need Gandhi. We don’t need Savarkar, but we have to learn how to deal with the power that Dr. Ambedkar gave us through the Constitution.”
Published - January 08, 2024 09:00 am IST
