NEW DELHI: The Nation a convention of SC & ST parliamentarians and legislators from across the country meeting at Mavlankar Hall reiterated their adherence to socialism while repudiating market friendly economic policies and the private sector as being against their interests.
The conventions SOci0-CCOnomic resolution which was moved by Buta Singh of the Congress(I) called for united mass action in collaboration with “other suffering sections like the artisans fisher folk women and the salaried lower middle classes” to achieve a “just national economy based on socialist principles.”
The convention attended by 352 MPs former MPs and MLAs demanded that the government should review the new economic policy in consultation with the representatives of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes “and their genuine friends.”
The resolution is critical the government and the finance ministry in particular for discussing the new policies with the industrial and business classes inside and outside India and with the organized labor unions but not with the “representatives of the most vulnerable sections of the country.”
Neither had the government consulted them while drawing up the Eighth Plan the document stated. The convention demanded a special sub-plan for the SC-STs for which they wanted a special meeting of the NDC to consider and approve it.
The document urges steps to involve SC-ST representatives at local levels to ensure that the panchayati raj and urban bodies do not become fresh instruments of oppression.
So far the document Says liberation and equality have been missing from the tones of Vajana bhraman. An amount no less than the proportion of population of SC-STs should be provided in the plan outlay of the Center and each state the resolution says.
A “true liberating plan” it says would contain a comprehensive national program of minor immigration liberation of scavengers: and bonded laborers and food: for education i.e. food grains to every rural and slum-dwelling child attending school. For all these there should be adequate outlays organization and implementation machinery and care for rehabilitation against loss of jobs or decrease of income. A new policy on minor forest produce fair to the Scheduled Tribes “the original owners masters and guardians of the forests” a statutory minimum wage for agricultural labor ceiling laws and distribution of land leasing of temple lands to landless poor people of SC-ST origin and a comprehensive strategy for prevention of indebtedness would be other aspects of a truly liberating plan the resolution holds It also proposes special courts for land reforms agricultural labor reservation bonded labor and scavengers all of them with appeal only to the Supreme Court.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 26, 1992
