|
Rural energy Resources and People' Rights
Democracy can be best defined as to how the sovereign people would like the nation to be governed. Given the choice, the vast majority of common people will retain ownership over local resources at the local level to handle all local matters such as administration of justice, police, education, healthcare, land water systems and forests. They would devolve a fraction of their local revenues to the state for higher level functions and coordination, but not allow it to interfere in local matters. They would ensure that their elected and appointed servants are directly accountable to them, and not to a higher functionary. Finally, like any sovereign, they would institute their sovereign rights to information, consultation, participation and referendum. Derived from simple logic, this is the basic structure of universal democracy. Presently India is a fake democracy.
Hindu dharma has two components. The first is rituals and practices for self development as in all faiths. This nurtures personal ethics. The other is the rights and duties of various functionaries of society such as the state, business, parents, teacher and the youth. This nurtures societal ethics. According to Hindu scriptures, the dharma of the state is to allow every local entity to govern itself and demand not more than one-sixth of local revenues for higher level functions. Such true democracy is symbolised as Ram Raj, articulated by Gandhi as Gram Swaraj. India with the experience of such true democracy for several thousand years is truly the mother of democracy. The dharma of business is to innovate and enterprise to produce goods and services useful to society, generate respectful employment, and generate wealth for expansion to meets the needs of society, and for philanthropy, but not for ostentatious consumption. It truly is capitalism with a human face nurturing an egalitarian society in which all have equal social, environmental, economic and political rights and opportunities. Today all nations of the world need such egalitarian democracy, if the earth’s resources, especially energy, are to be used in a sustainable manner.
Both urban and rural areas depend upon rural areas, the abode of natural resources such as water, timber, and minerals, for their needs. Unless the health of the rural environment is rejuvenated by restoring total control of village resources under the village parliaments, we are heading fro a major environmental disaster. Initiatives of voluntary organizations in rejuvenation of the environmental resources are welcome but not adequate. Voluntary organizations presently wear various mentles such as community worker, power broker, scholar and business executive, often having little interest in the problems faced by the community. They must act as consultants to local communities accountable to them. Local communities will ensure that the funds are not misused and are properly utilized. q
|
manage
their local resources. Programmes such as joint forestry and
watershed management are considered major concessions in this
direction. The cruel truth is that under the so-called panchayati
raj effective control over village resources is still with the state
bureaucracy and legislators. Furthermore, the village sarpanch
elected for five years through the processes of the State Election
Commission cannot be removed by the village parliament (gram sabha)
as it should be, and connives with the state bureaucracy and
legislators to abuse authority. If we are serious about rejuvenating
the resource base of our villages, we need to understand the logic
of democracy and institute it.