By H H Mohrmen
The regional workshop on the theme of ‘Good governance, Development and Human rights organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in collaboration with the Government of Meghalaya was a thought provoking idea and a well intentioned attempt by these two agencies. But the question is whether we will ever be able to complete the triad. Can we achieve the three important goals of democracy considering that there are still numerous cases where basic human rights are denied to the citizen and in some cases even blatant cases of violation of human rights? Will the government be able to ever achieve the three important milestones of providing good governance, development and human rights to its citizens and if so, how long will it take for us to reach that goal.
The approach paper to the workshop introduced the theme by stating that the NHRC is responsible for the protection and the promotion of human rights as defined by the Protection of Human Rights Act as “right relating to life, liberty, equality, and dignity of individual as guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants.” Therefore this implies that protection and promotion of human rights is the primary duty of every government official be it the staff of the state or central government offices. But do the staffs see themselves as being responsible for ensuring basic human rights to all citizens? The other pertinent question is whether we have been able to even provide to the citizens of this country their basic right to food, shelter, healthcare and education?
The goal of every government should be to provide its citizens basic human rights, and, the objective of development and good governance is to come up with a system and a delivery mechanism which can act as a vehicle to and provide the citizens of this country their basic rights and give them dignity to live their lives as they deem fit. The note says that good governance should encompass three key words: transparency, accountability and participatory. But has the government been able to make the three triads meet? Or more specifically how can we make the three keys work.
The evolution of human rights which began with right to free speech and right to protest peacefully, has evolved to right to health, education etc., and now human rights in its fourth generation of rights to uninterrupted digital connection. It is our basic human right to have our mobile or even internet connection without any hitches and hindrances, but do we really enjoy that comfort? It is true that technology especially mobile phones have changed the way people communicate because mobile connection has reached to a large part of the state and even penetrated the remote corners of the state, but there are still many places where connection is a one way street because mobile signal covers only few places in the village. So even in this digital age we still have places in the state where there is no network connection at all; where the villagers’ only way to communicate to the outside world is to go to a certain high elevation spot where there is network coverage.
Recently people who live in along the Bangladesh border made public their plight and informed that they have to depend on Bangladesh mobile service providers to make their calls to India, and for that matter even city dwellers experience uncomfortable fluctuation of internet connection and we even have high call drops, so how can the government deliver good governance or ensure transparency and accountability in its day to day activity when the mechanism is not in place? How the Government is going to improve connectivity and ensure that we have connection without any interruption and that citizens enjoy their rights, is a million dollar question?
Obviously there is still a huge digital divide in the state; many students in the villages do not have access to computers because very few schools are equipped with computers in the rural areas. Students from the rural areas have to come to the nearest urban area to even fill their scholarship forms, because that needs to be done online. We are talking about ensuring the citizens their right to clean air or even uninterrupted internet or mobile connection when we have not been able to provide them their basic human So how can we bridge the gap or narrow down the digital divide?
The other pertinent question is whether we can expect the government to provide us our fourth generation sets of rights when our fellow citizens have not even received their basic rights to food, education, healthcare etc? We still have villages with no road connectivity and their only means of communication is to walk from their homes to their nearest road connection. Then we also have schools with very few or no teachers. So what happens to their basic human rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also guarantees dignity of every human but have we been able to accord the same respect and dignity to every citizen of this country? What happens when a poor farmer wearing only rags visit any government office? Do we always treat them with dignity? Do we give the same respect as we treat the educated or well to do citizen? First of all if there is no respect in the way we treat the poor and the marginalized citizen of the country, can we even start talking about providing them their rights?
Good governance, development and providing citizens of this state their basic human rights is an ambitious plan but how can we bring this to the level of the common people? In his inaugural speech Dr Mukul Sangma came up with a suggestion of organising similar workshop at the block level of the state to ensure good governance, development and human rights’ to citizens. This is a good idea. This perhaps is one approach towards achieving the goals, but are the citizens of the state in the rural areas in general and the students in particular even aware of their basic human rights? The need of the hour is to provide human rights education to citizens beginning at the college and then schools students and later the community at large. The state education department should include in the school and college syllabus the teaching of the different generation of human rights so that people will be aware of their basic rights.
The workshop jointly organised by NHRC and the state government is a step in the right direction but it is only the first step in a journey of a thousand miles. A beginning was made and one hopes that the workshop will not be the beginning and also the end at the same time. The state government and NHRC need to work harder to inform and teach the people about their rights and to motivate them to exert their rights because being aware of one’s right is one thing and to motivate and make the best use of those rights or to assert one’s rights is another issue altogether.
Until and unless the citizens of the country are able to assert their rights then ‘Good governance, Development and human rights’ will simply be empty rhetoric. It is only when the people are aware of their rights and the government is also able to fulfil its obligation to provide to all the citizens of this country their rights, will the triad meet.