People’s manifesto for a just, equitable, and sustainable India

Context: In December, 85 people’s movements and civil society organisations released a ‘People’s Manifesto for a Just, Equitable and Sustainable India’.

Note: These suggestions can be articulated as a way forward when addressing topics such as inclusive growth, sustainable development, and government policy reform.

For accountability and transparency:

Provide public support to independent media in various forms, including by making state-sponsored platforms on TV, radio, and others truly independent.
Initiate processes that make information access free, or easier (through better connectivity) in places usually neglected, considered ‘remote’ or disconnected.
Establish an independent statutory licensing and regulatory authority relating to media, free from government influence.
A comprehensive policy and law to ensure accountability and transparency of all institutions of the state, political parties, corporations, financial institutions, and media houses.

For Law, Justice, and Customs:

Ensure the independence and integrity of Central Bureau for Investigation and Enforcement Director.
Abolish capital punishment.
Repeal the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, the National Security Act, the sedition clause under IPC, and other similar laws and legal provisions.
Prioritise measures of redressal, rehabilitation, and behavioural change over conventional forms of punishment such as imprisonment.
Facilitate a healthy relationship between formal, statutory law and social norms and customs, each enabling or checking the other in the interest of justice, equity, fairness, and sustainability.

For democracy:

Full democratic rights to gram sabhas and urban area/mohalla sabhas, including financial and legal powers, and mandatory prior informed consent for any activities affecting them especially related to land use.
Promote internal democracy and transparency within all organisations and institutions, including civil society groups.
Enact a law mandating social audits and mechanisms for citizen oversight to ensure that all welfare programmes.
Promote the autonomy and transparency of constitutional bodies, statutory bodies, and quasi-judicial bodies by establishing procedures that guarantee impartiality in appointments, ensuring transparency in the selection procedure, composition and deciding terms of service to prevent undue influence.

For society, culture, and peace:

Promote forums of inter-community understanding and dialogue, towards resolution of conflicts and promotion of peaceful co-existence, especially in areas prone to tension and conflict.
Encourage initiatives aimed at sustaining and promoting harmony and mutual respect among communities of different ethnicities, faiths, cultures, languages, beliefs and ideologies (for instance by encouraging collective inter-community celebrations in various festivals), and take immediate action against those who incite or promote hate, intolerance, misinformation.
Ensure women’s safety and dignity, countering sexual violence of various kinds, through inculcation of gender education in pedagogies from childhood.
Encourage democratic flourishing of the arts and sports, removing caste, class and gender discriminations embedded in some of them, making them accessible to all, and ensuring independence of public institutions promoting them.

For Environment, Ecology, and Climate:

Facilitate independent studies to establish the ecological limits and carrying capacity of the country, and of regions within it, and publicise the results widely.
Set up a National Environment Commission, with independent Constitutional status akin to the Election Commission and the CAG, to lay down standards, monitor compliance by state and other agencies, and provide a redressal forum for citizens.
Ensure that at least 5% of the national and state budgets are dedicated to the environment related problems.
Revisions of the National and State Action Plans on Climate Change, and Disaster plans, to fully support vulnerable sections cope with and adapt to the climate crisis and other disasters.
Framing of national land/water use plan and policy, through widespread consultation, for conservation of ecosystems and the commons, wildlife and biodiversity, ensuring collective rights to communities dependent on them (e.g. laws similar to the Forest Rights Act, for rivers, marine areas, grasslands, etc).
Budgeting for a country-wide programme of localised land/soil and water regeneration oriented at creating sustainable natural resource assets for local community economies.
Replacement of all chemicals and other substances that are harmful to human or ecosystem/animal health, by ecologically sensitive substances.
Mandatory environmental and social impact assessments of projects, programmes, schemes and sectors, through independent agencies, with full participation of affected communities, and ensure at least a full year of ecological assessments.

For health and hygiene:

Give high priority to preventing ill-health in the first place, by improving social determinants of health such as nutritional food, water, sanitation, mental well-being, a clean environment, safe transport, and a healthy social environment;
Ensure at least 3% of the GDP is dedicated to the health.
Programmes to ensure conditions for healthy living and health services for all.

For food, water and energy:

Ensuring universal access to adequate, safe food and water, and energy, through ecologically sensitive, decentralized, and democratic means.
All food production through organic, biologically diverse methods, giving priority to small farmers, pastoralists and fishers.
Decentralized water harvesting and management by communities.
Decentralized energy production including rooftop and on-farm methods.
Treat all water and waterbodies as public commons, not available for privatisation; add a Constitutional provision and legal measures to this effect.
Create awareness about the importance and value of the diversity of cuisines and diets in India, promoting ‘slow food’ and diverse nutritious foods such as millets over junk food.
Recognise the rights of waterbodies, including rivers and lakes, as entities in their own standing, following on the recognition of the rights of Rivers Ganga and Yamuna by the Uttarakhand High Court.

For economy and technology:

Enable the re-localisation of production and exchange, in all sectors where it is possible and feasible, and especially in the provisioning of basic needs, with the long-term aim of creating self-reliant.
Strongly regulate the private corporate sector to eliminate labour and environmental exploitation.
Replace GDP as the measure of economic well-being with multi-dimensional, qualitative-quantitative measures that including material, socio-cultural, ecological well- being aspects.
Strengthen fiscal decentralisation and federalism, enabling greater fiscal autonomy for States and local self-governments in revenue generation and economic decision-making.
Specific measures to reduce gross economic inequalities, including caps on salary levels, basic minimum income and employment guarantee for the most vulnerable, pension for all workers in the primary sector, high taxation on income, wealth and inheritance of the rich, restraints on luxury and wasteful consumption, and steps to curb the enormous ‘black economy’.
Reservation for micro/small/medium scale, especially handmade, of all products/services that can be made through community-based producer collectives (such as textiles, footwear, household goods).

For livelihoods and employment:

Extend the Employees State Insurance Act (ESI) provisions to all workers, including unorganised workers.
Highest priority to agriculture, crafts, and small manufacturing at decentralized levels, and ecological regeneration.
Extension of MNREGS and other employment security schemes to urban areas.

For Learning, Education, and Knowledge:

Create greater learning spaces for adults, with a diversity of creative approaches;
Facilitate the use of different communication and teaching modes, including arts, crafts, theatre, dance, and others.
Re-orient teacher training institutions and processes.
Allocate at least 6% of the GDP to learning and education.
Amend the Right to Education Act to enable a greater diversity of innovating learning environments to flourish, while ensuring minimum quality standards.
Encourage equitable cross-fertilisation and collaboration between modern and traditional, scientific, and non- scientific, formal, and informal, and urban and rural spheres of knowledge.
Promote initiatives making knowledge as part of the ‘commons’ rather than a privately owned or controlled commodity, including support to open source, creative commons, and other such systems.
Promote respect for various forms of transmitting knowledge, including traditional forms such as oral methods and storytelling.

For global relations:

Engage in widespread global dialogue re-examining notions of ‘nation-state’ and emphasising relations amongst ‘peoples’ of the world including through restructuring the United Nations to provide central say to non-state collectives and communities;
Re-establish India’s global role as a champion of human rights, peace and demilitarisation, and ecological sustainability.

For empowerment and facilitation of India’s youth:

Promote and nurture youth led, youth-centric organisations and empowerment centers at various levels.
Ensure widespread youth participation particularly from vulnerable communities in formulating, implementing and monitoring all laws, policies, plans and schemes;
Significantly increase participation of youth led and youth centric organisations in government schemes like NSS and NYKS to enhance life skills and core capacities of young people along with ongoing volunteering processes;
Set up youth empowerment centers for each cluster of settlements, that offer counselling, sports, recreation facilities and career guidance facilities that are focused on alternative livelihoods.
Establish a statutory youth commission for guiding and implementing youth related policies.

For Transportation and Mobility:

Give highest priority to sustainable, accessible and equitable means of transportation in both urban and rural areas, with highest priority to mass public transport (especially buses) and non-motorized means (cycling, walking); these should ensure last-kilometre connectivity for persons with disabilities and senior citizens;
Disincentivise private motorised vehicles, especially the automobile, with heavy taxation, areas/timing that are off-limit to them, and minimal road space;
Institute a cap on the speed of road traffic for safety and to optimise energy use.

For urban settlements:

Make ecological and social impact assessments, and area/ward/neighbourhood participation, mandatory for all urban planning and budgeting processes.
Encourage and incentivise sustainable construction, architecture and housing that is dignified and accessible for all.
Initiate measures to maximise local, distributed generation of energy, water harvesting and responsible use, and other basic needs of urban residents, minimising long-distance transmission, and the negative footprint of cities on rural areas.
Integrate biodiversity into urban planning, by conserving natural ecosystems, maximising indigenous vegetation including in plantations, and providing migration corridors.