Govt stonewalling pro-growth agenda: Aruna Roy
31 May 2013 6:44 AM IST
Veteran social activist Aruna Roy, after refusing an extension of her tenure as a member of the National Advisory Council on Thursday, said that she wants to go back to full time activism and take up the critical pro-poor issues with the government. Roy, in an interview given to a TV channel, said that she had major differences with the government over the issue of minimum wages paid under UPA’s flagship rural welfare programme, MGNREGA. The most prominent face of the Sonia Gandhi-headed NAC further commented that she was upset at the stalling of important laws like the Food Security bill in Parliament.
She added that she felt her role lay in working towards ensuring implementation of welfare laws and schemes, not as an advisor to the government, but rather as an activist whose ‘constituency lay with the poor’ of India.
Roy criticised government’s tendency to proffer ‘techno-economic arguments’ to stonewall pro-growth agenda at the expense of pro-poor reforms, thus creating a ‘paradigm bias’ and putting too much faith in ‘mechanised solutions.’ She further said that instead of empowering the poor and increasing their minimum wages under MGNREGA, the government, particularly the Prime Minister’s Office, has been lackadaisical about the issue, which is considered the rock bottom guarantee or millions of poor. Roy, who described herself as a ‘pro-poor protagonist, a workers’ saathi’ said her role now rested in working outside the NAC.
She added that she felt her role lay in working towards ensuring implementation of welfare laws and schemes, not as an advisor to the government, but rather as an activist whose ‘constituency lay with the poor’ of India.
Roy criticised government’s tendency to proffer ‘techno-economic arguments’ to stonewall pro-growth agenda at the expense of pro-poor reforms, thus creating a ‘paradigm bias’ and putting too much faith in ‘mechanised solutions.’ She further said that instead of empowering the poor and increasing their minimum wages under MGNREGA, the government, particularly the Prime Minister’s Office, has been lackadaisical about the issue, which is considered the rock bottom guarantee or millions of poor. Roy, who described herself as a ‘pro-poor protagonist, a workers’ saathi’ said her role now rested in working outside the NAC.
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