Social justice

India is one of the developing countries that has come out with WASH schemes to address the challenges of health and sanitation in urban and rural areas. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan for urban and rural areas is one of the manifestation of the importance of WASH schemes.

There has been huge disparities in access to WASH services across different segments of the population. In India, around 128 million lack safe water services and about 840 million people don’t have sanitation services. Thus there is an urgent need to identify the different kinds of beneficiaries and communities whose accesss to WASH services need to be enhanced. The outcomes need to be enhanced in terms of adequacy, accessibility, affordability, quality and safety of the WASH services.

WASH sectors come under concurrent subjects and both central and state governments can legislate on it. The collection of data related to WASH schemes are generally done at state level but it suffers from many discrepancies. The needs and barriers for segments of the population differ and consequently the strategies also need to be customised for the different segments. Therefore, policymakers are gradually moving away from a “one size fits all” approach to a more beneficiary-centric approach.

A traditional approach has been to segment the beneficiaries on the basis of geographical and social context (GSS). Population was therefore segmented as rural, urban, low income and so on. Recently there is a trend to segment the beneficiaries on the basis of the human life cycle (LCS). Beneficiaries are thus segmented as children, adolescents, adults, senior citizens, and so on.
To be able to achieve our WASH targets, it is important that our policies adopt both the LCS and GSS approaches.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 replaced the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 to comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It has come as a breather for estimated 70-100 million disabled citizens of India. Main provisions of the act that ensure inclusion and empowerment are enumerated below–

• The act aims towards more inclusive coverage of the disabled population by increasing the types of disability from existing 7 to 21. Speech and Language Disability and Specific Learning Disability have been added for the first time. Acid Attack Victims have been included.
• Every child with benchmark disability (at least 40% of the specified disability) between the age group of 6 and 18 years has been given the right to free education. It also recognises the right of a disabled child to study in a main stream school.
• Additional benefits such as reservation in higher education (not less than 5%), government jobs (not less than 4 %), reservation in allocation of land, poverty alleviation schemes (5% allotment) etc. have been provided for persons with benchmark disabilities  and those with high support needs.
• Stress has also been given to ensure accessibility in public buildings in a prescribed time-frame.

This act stresses the principles of non-discrimination, full and effective participation and inclusion in society, equality of opportunity, accessibility and respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities. Emphasis has been given to right based approach with focus on right to equality and opportunity, right to inherit and own property, right to home and family and reproductive rights among others.

The act has also been criticised as it misses on special provision to assist persons with mental illness. Many states also could not frame rules under the act within the stipulated time limit. In absence of rules, several key provisions of the act could not be enforced. 

While the 2016 Act provides many reassurances, brings domestic law in consonance with international standards, and is a huge step forward, its implementation should be monitored carefully to ensure that the needs of persons suffering from disability issues are being comprehensively met.

From a famine affected third world country that depended on import of food grains to feed its population to a food secured nation, India has come a long way. Various steps taken by successive government to deal with hunger and poverty are discussed below–

• Green revolution in the late 1960s assured that India became self sufficient in food grain production. There is clear evidence that level of hunger declined in most of the states.
• “GaribiHatao” (Removal of Poverty) gained prominence during 1970s with emphasis on welfare of the masses.
• Food for Work Programmes implemented from time to time aimed towards providing food in lieu of work also met with some success. It was felt that it would address the dual need of the employment and food.
• The accessibility issue of food was assured by Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) introduced in 1997. Better targeting ensured reduction in levels of poverty and hunger.
• More recently, employment generation programmes like MGNREGA and DeendayalAntyodaya Yojana have met with unprecedented success in improving livelihood of the people.

But the challenges still remain.  According to the latest Global Hunger Index (2017), India got a lowly 100th position out of 119 countries. On poverty front also, around 21.9% of India’s population still lives below the national poverty line. Measures that could be taken are–

• All the above programmes and schemes are mired with leakages and problems of last mile delivery. This issue need to be addressed by better targeting using JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile).
• Low performance on hunger index can be improved by moving towards nutritional security by way of promotion of nutri-cereals and other supplements.
• Better facilities of healthcare and education will indirectly help in reducing out-of-pocket expenditure and thus will help reduce incidence of poverty.
• Steps towards realisation of goals of Universal Basic Income and Basic Minimum Services will go a long way in addressing vicious cycle of chronic poverty.

Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are informal associations of people who choose to come together to find ways to improve their living conditions. Such groups work as a collective guarantee system for members who propose to borrow from organized sources. The poor collect their savings and save it in banks. In return they receive easy access to loans with a small rate of interest to start their micro unit enterprise.

Role of SHGs in Development Activities

• SHGs ensure financial inclusion of the poor and marginalized by operating as a mechanism for delivery of micro-finance services to them.
• By encouraging and providing opportunities for self-employment, SHGs play a critical role in poverty alleviation.
• SHGs build social capital among the poor, especially women and marginalized sections like SCs and STs. Most of the beneficiaries of government schemes have been women from weaker and marginalized communities.
• Participating households spend more on education than non-client households.
• Better income levels due to participation in SHGs have led to improvement on health indicators.

Measures taken by Government to promote SHGs:

• As part of the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) or Ajeevika, government facilitates women-led self-help groups (SHGs) by giving them bank loans at easy interest rates. This interest subvention provision has been further extended to more districts.
• The government has promoted the Self-Help Group (SHG)-Bank Linkage Programme to be implemented by commercial banks, regional rural banks and cooperative banks for providing micro-finance to SHGs.
• NABARD promotes SHGs by providing grant support for training, capacity building, skill upgradation, exposure visits etc.
• Scheme for promotion and financing of Women Self Help Groups (WSHG) is being implemented by NABARD across backward and Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected districts. 
• A fund called “Women SHGs Development Fund” with a corpus of Rs.500 crore to empower women led SHGs has been set-up. It is to be operated by NABARD.
• Rashtriya MahilaKosh provides loans to intermediary organizations which further lend it to SHGs.

Given the important role SHGs play in development activities, the government should continue to act as a facilitator and promoter by providing a supportive environment for SHGs to operate vibrantly.

In the last 15 years, India has seen the adoption of an ‘alphabet soup’ of ambitious national anti-poverty programs. However, the effectiveness of these programs has always been questioned. Below Poverty Line card, traditionally the main point of access to government welfare schemes has turned out to be a failure. According to reports as many as half of India’s poor households do not even possess a BPL card as their allocations have been discretionary.

The plethora of programmes that have been launched by the various departments, more or less for the same objective, covering by and large the same target group in the same area, has created quite a bit administrative confusion. Another weakness in the implementation side relates to the lack of political will which is quite obvious in the rural development area. The main point of deficient implementation can be summarized as under:

• Half-hearted implementation of the programme
  
• Lack of political commitment or strong leadership behind it
  
• Faulty administrative structure and also its incapability in translating policy into programmes and plans into action
  
• Limited ways of checking corruption and leakages that diverts the flow of benefits.
  

However, not all can be termed a failure. For instance, NREGA, another flagship scheme is universalistic by design, promises employment and a guaranteed income to households. It has been hailed by politicians and experts alike.

Causes of failure

• There is no systematic attempt to identify people who are in poverty, determine their needs, address them and enable them to move above the poverty line.
  
• There is no commitment by the government to support an individual or a household for getting minimum level of subsistence through any program.
  
• The resources allocated to anti-poverty programs are inadequate.
  
• There is no method to ensure that programs reach everybody they are meant for.
  

As things stand, many of those living in poverty today will continue to remain poor over time. The magnitude of the problem, demands that we address the poverty challenge on a priority basis.