Citizens' rights and bureaucratic apathy: Three case studies from Maharashtra

Rarely do the mighty mandarins in the Indian Railways bow down to people. Well, last week they had to, that too to protesting residents of a little-known suburb of Mumbai. What made it worse for them was that the decision these angry commuters forced them to revoke involved their prestigious air-conditioned local trains.

From the time they were introduced in Mumbai in 2017 after years of announcements, the Railways have had to revise the unilateral decisions they've taken about these trains: from halving single journey fares to the latest cancellation of their entire new schedule for the central line.

Had these mandarins deigned to consult commuters' associations, they might have learned what every average commuter knows: that the majority of the 7.5 million local train commuters in Mumbai aren't enamoured of these slick beauties, simply because travelling regularly in air-conditioned comfort means shelling out seven to ten times the fare they do in ordinary trains. The commuters who occupied the tracks at Kalwa station pay Rs 190 for a monthly pass to downtown Mumbai; the same pass for an AC train costs Rs 1730. Yet, the Railways introduced ten new AC locals from Kalwa to CSMT (Victoria Terminus), to replace non-AC locals. The crowd travelling to work in peak hours kept swelling as empty AC trains whizzed past.

Also Read: Maharashtra: Commuters squat on rail track at Kalwa to demand resumption of non-AC local in morning

Whether it was because of the commuters' wrath or the backing they got from politicians across parties, the Railways had to eat humble pie. But who will force Maharashtra's Education Department to do the same? The latest diktat from the Directorate of Primary Education prevents children in Maharashtra from getting the midday meal until they can show their Aadhaar card, only because a few schools have been caught inflating student numbers. This order is illegal: it violates the 2018 Supreme Court Aadhaar judgment, which categorically declared that no child should be denied the benefit of government schemes for lack of an Aadhar card. Indeed, the judgment recorded that Attorney General KK Venugopal had also stated this. The order also violates the children's fundamental rights, for the 2013 Right To Food Act includes the midday meal, and in 2015, the Modi government notified the Rules pertaining to this under the Act. Significantly, the decision was taken in July - a month when there were only two ministers in Maharashtra: CM Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis. With both busy flying to Delhi to get clearance from their common High Command for their Cabinet, bureaucrats were running Maharashtra. Reports said the latter were understandably hesitant to take important decisions. Obviously, the Director of Primary Education had no such doubts. Could it be because he was joint director when the same decision had been taken in January 2019 by the then Devendra Fadnavis-headed government? Soon after, Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were announced, and then, Fadnavis was no longer in power. Now he's back.

Incidentally, this same department had to be beseeched by schools to re-start the midday meal programme this year, after they resumed physical attendance in January after a long lockdown.

It is well-known that the midday meal is, for the majority of its recipients, the only meal of the day which is both nourishing and filling. Additionally, Maharashtra has had a chronic malnutrition problem in its tribal areas. As the Bombay High Court said, just a fortnight back, it had passed umpteen orders on PILs filed on this issue since 2006, but the problem hadn't gone away – 18 tribal children died in just one region in the last one month. Yet, the tribal welfare minister told the Assembly last week that not a single child had died of malnutrition in the state's 16 tribal districts in the last five years! This information had been provided by the state's health department.

Why are bureaucrats so keen to deny the majority of citizens their due? The common link in all these three cases is government spending on citizens. Once malnutrition is acknowledged in the Assembly, the government would have to explain to the Opposition what it was doing to tackle it. Refusing to reduce the fare for AC monthly and other passes, the Railway Board Chairman said that Mumbai's commuters could afford it, adding that such "freebies" had ruined Sri Lanka. As if to punish all Kalwa commuters, the Railways cancelled all 10 AC trains, not just those during peak hours. The cost of a primary student's mid-day meal is a paltry Rs 4.97. Even that was grudged.

The money spent by the State on ordinary citizens comes from the people and belongs to them. Aren't bureaucrats taught this in their training?

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.