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mission. It was focused on sanitation for all. And as for 2011 census, almost like 13%
of people defecate in the open in India. So, in order to address the situation, and to
provide subsidized toilets to each and every household. This program was launched.
There are several other components to it. But a significant component was that
from the highest political leadership, it received an attention. Not only sanitation
became a priority political issue, but it also provided and in a way invited citizens to
participate in the sanitation program. Then as you can imagine that with the growing
economy in India. There’s also a middle class and upper class aspiration. In order to
address those aspirations, this government came up with what we called Smart City
Mission. So, the government of India enlisted 100 smart cities, and the purpose is to
use or infuse technology in public services. When the Smart City planning was done,
in order to envision a Smart City, what is a Smart City? And what are the priorities?
Again you know a lot of invitations came from the municipality, State government,
and the National government to contribute ideas that how a smart city would look
like. But the difficulty with these examples, both in the case of Clean India Mission
and with the Smart City Mission, is that it did not create any new institution or even
use the existing provisions for what committees, or Area Sabhas, or Ward Sabhas,
based on which the citizen participation would be promoted. So, in anyway, it’s kind
of invitation we don’t giving or creating an institutional space. Therefore, it is up to
the government or up to the municipalities, and up to their capacities that whether
they can absorb this contribution from the citizens and those absolutely institutional
mechanism to do that. You know, only a political call from the leadership and to some
extent, from the technocrats and bureaucrats to participate. But there was no
institutional mechanism at all.
So, let me now focus on the invented or claim spaces for citizen participation.
And I would like to sort of categorize it into three groups.
One, the claim space is created through various kinds of protest movements.
In recent years, the last three, four years, it has been the case. But it has got some
prominence like farmers movement. It is partly coming through a rural distress and
the farmers sort of non-remunerative work. If I give you just one statistic that only
15% of GDP comes from agriculture sector. But how many people are dependent on
agriculture? About 55% of rural population is dependent on agriculture. So, you can
imagine this 15% of GDP share between 55% of the people. Therefore, the PAR
Capital distribution is very low; and therefore, it’s distress. And on top of that, It is
true that the government has come up with what we called MSP, the Minimum
Support Price, where government purchases crops from the farmers. But because of
this high input cost, whether agriculture and to… please keep this in mind that…
about 65% of our agriculture is dependent on rain and the regulars of the rain also
sort of adversely affecting the crop ill. Therefore, this tremendous disappointment and
resentment from the farmers. So, those focus movements are also creating spaces
for participation. ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ
