In 2004 Jaya Bachchan, the wife of Amitabh Bachchan had been appointed as the Chairperson of UP Film Development Board by Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh government. She was then elected to the Rajya Sabha. A congressman who lost to her filed a petition to Election Commission for Jaya Bachchan’s disqualification citing Article 102 (1) (a) of the Constitution which ruled that no member of any house of the Parliament shall hold any office of profit under any government. On the recommendation of the Election Commission the President disqualified Jaya Bachchan from the Rajya Sabha membership as at the time of her election she was Chairperson of UP Film Board, an office of profit, in 2005.
The Congress and Samajwadi party were having very strained relationship then. Samajwadi party backed by other opposition groups hit back as many other members including Sonia Gandhi were holding some similar posts in various organisation. Sonia Gandhi was president of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Indira Gandhi Trust and J.L. Nehru Trust. She was not drawing any salary. But in an earlier case Supreme Court had ruled that a person comes under the purview of that Constitutional Act even if no salary was drawn because in some ways such offices carried some renumeration or benefits in other forms.
Opposition targeted Sonia Gandhi demanding her resignation from Lok Sabha making it a moral issue.The law could not be amended as the parliament was not in session. Issuing an ordinance involved getting assent of the President who may have declined on moral grounds because he had disqualified Jaya Bachchan. Manmohan Singh government was in a dilemma.
Another sacrifice
In a sudden move Sonia Gandhi resigned from the parliamentary membership and chairpersonship of National Advisory Council. She announced that she was sacrificing the positions to uphold the dignity of the august house and post on moral ground. Sonia Gandhi had again become martyr to the great admiration of the people and her party. She had again pulled the rug from under the feet of her detractors.
Sonia Gandhi went for re-election from her old constituency asking the loyal voters to return her honour by voting her back. The people had great sympathy for her as their choice had been made to resign on flimsy grounds. Priyanka and Rahul campaigned for the re-election of their mother who had made so many sacrifices for the people and the country. The result surprised no one. Sonia Gandhi won with a massive margin.
Meanwhile, the act had been amended to include a number of offices that would not come under the purview of the related law.
Sonia Gandhi returned to Parliament like a Phoenix from the ashes of martyrdom.
Stellar projects inspired by Sonia Gandhi
One failure of Manmohan Singh government had been to check unprecedented price rise of essential commodities that hit the common man hard. The kitchen budget of a housewife stretched to the limits. Such kind of inflation could have blown away any government but not Sonia Gandhi’s UPA government. The common man was anguished but his anger against the government was muted and definitely not against Sonia and Manmohan, very surprisingly. The pulses and vegetables were becoming a luxury. The government cited several reasons, the crop failures, drought, global economic recession, the famine in Australia, shifting crop pattern in Brazil from cereal to alcohol producing crops to substitute fuel and high sugar, vegetable oil and foodgrain prices in international markets making imports a very costly business that added to the price rise.
Many of these reasons were there in situations before but the people threw away governments even for a price rise of a single consumer item like onion. But the same people under far greater inflation pressure were still looking soft to Sonia and Manmohan.
What was the mystery?
The mystery was infact no mystery. It could only be a mystery for the insensitive leaders of BJP. For six years the people had lived in the communally vitiated atmosphere, bore with tyranny of its fanatical outfits, hatred spread by them, the abusive attitude of NDA leaders, communal discord created by local fanatics and the insensitive behaviour of communalised administration which was tearing up everyday life of the common folk. The suffocation and tension of NDA rule was so horrible that people preferred to live with the spiralling prices in UPA regime. It showed up when UPA won string of by elections. The aam aadmi was still with Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh inspite of the life becoming difficult due to price rise. To the credit of UPA some signficant programmes were launched inspired by the concern of Sonia Gandhi for the grassroot people. The programmes were so beneficial to the poor, extensive and innovative that their positive aspects almost covered up negatives or failures of the UPA government to the dismay of the opposition. Following are some of the schemes that redeemed UPA :
NREGA
National Rural Employment Scheme from UPA government was a historic step to provide jobs to rural people. The Act provided a 100 days guaranteed employment each year to one members of each rural household for doing unskilled labour work. The village folk no more had to go to cities or towns looking for jobs when there was no agricultural work at home. The scheme provided them work in their own area. It stemmed the migration of rural labour to urban areas for livelihood. This scheme was implemented through NREGA, a law that came into effect from February 2, 2006.
It indeed was a boon for rural people and a feather in the cap of Sonia Gandhi and UPA government. The very nature and prospect of this scheme enthused the rural folk who now had a guaranteed job for 100 days each year at their doorstep at minimum official wage rate.
First the scheme was implemented in a specific number of districts of the country. Its growing appreciation and popularity forced the government to expand the scheme to more districts and then entire country was covered.
The scheme had a double benefit scope. The first benefit was it provided employment to rural folk for a guaranteed period every year on minimum wages and second was that the labour had to be used in building roads, creating water bodies, sinking wells and other such productive works as the particular area needed. The infrastructure so created went to be overall development of the area. Never before had such scheme been devised for the benefit of the rural masses at such extensive scale and so directly profitable through an Act of Parliament. According to the Act, in case of the administration failing to provide work to a person registered under this scheme he/she shall get the wages nevertheless as his/her legal right. The responsibility of creating work will be on the administration. So well received and appreciated the scheme was that UPA declared it to be its pilot programme.
Sonia Gandhi was very proud that her grassroot level aadmi had got something out of her UPA regime. NREGA would prove a trump card that would win many stakes and cover up failures of the government. It was an important step towards redeeming the promises they had made during the election campaigns and in Congress manifesto.
There were bound to be some teething troubles for NREGA as it required extensive work about laying down procedures and modalities regarding the registration, funding, wage distribution, determining types of eligible work, agencies or bodies to be involved etc. It was a gigantic programme. Procedural shortcomings were bound to surface and they would need to be corrected as soon as possible. As the scheme is directly concerned with rural folk the modalities must be very simple and transparent. Too much paper work and documentation will frighten away the illiterate poor.
NREGA will need constant monitoring to make sure that the omnipresent corrupt officials don’t make it another source of their extra-income and swindle funds. By habit officialdom derive pleasure in harassing the rural folk. These are the problems the government must be alert about. It would be tragic if such a good poor friendly scheme fell to the greedy and unscrupulous officials or agencies or the inefficiency.
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