The abdication of responsibility by the government

The government has five major responsibilities towards its citizens- Law and order, defence, education, transport and health care. We find there is a disturbing trend when we analyse our governments, both central and state, have fared in the last seventy years in all these sectors. Take law and order, for example. The middle class has almost given up on depending on the government for its security. Most of us live in an urban oasis in a sea of squalor, depending on security guards provided by private agencies for our security. Even the resident associations in the smaller towns employ private security guards who man the streets. Small vendors, markets, shopping malls, offices- all employ private security guards. It has become so common that we have stopped thinking about the abject failure of our governments in providing law and order in our cities.
The middle class has given up on the hope of getting even uninterrupted electric supply unless a private company does the distribution at an exorbitant rate as it happens in Mumbai. Every home has at least an invertor if not a polluting diesel generator. We feel sanctimonious by bursting a few crackers less during Deepavali or playing a dry Holi and claim we have contributed to lessening pollution, but no one talks about these dark fume spewing monsters that growl from each shop front in countless lanes of our towns. The government has abdicated the responsibility of providing uninterrupted energy to its citizens.
Take public transport and roads. Only roads that are worth travelling are national highways in some stretches. All these highways are manned by private toll companies. The toll charges are exorbitant, irrespective of the condition of the road. We have been drilled through clever propaganda that we have to pay through our nose for good roads. What they have made us forget is that we have been paying a huge tax on fuel, both petrol and diesel. We also have forgotten there is a road and infra Cess on fuel. If that is not enough, we pay 15 years an advance tax on our vehicles. Despite all these, we must pay a huge toll tax for every kilometre we travel to private companies. It is exasperating to think how we are being robbed to make a few rich for providing a basic facility like roads. But since we are drunk on propaganda and most of us have become swooning devotees, we shall continue to produce a handful of billionaires whose combined wealth is more than that of the 50% of our population. Meanwhile, we are made to dream about bullet trains that costs double our health sector allocation. There are hardly any state transport board that is not in debt.
The health sector is in tatters. When was the last time a reader of this article had gone to a government hospital? The government has conveniently given up its responsibility for the health of its citizens. The total union budget allocation for health last year was 52800 crores and adding this to the total allocations of all state governments, the figure was 200000 crores. To put things in perspective, if the national health policy objective must be met by 2025, the total allocation should have been 800,000 crores. This is the amount required to reach bare minimum standards. We have the lowest ‘hospital bed to per thousand people ratio’ in the world. We have the largest number of people suffering from malnutrition in the world. Except for Kerala or despite Kerala’s stellar performance, we are the worst performer among middle-income countries in the world in the health sector. Our performance is poorer than several neighbouring Asian nations, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and China in the last 25 years. We, the middle class, don’t care, for we can afford to get treated in private hospitals. Since the chattering class doesn’t care, our governments, both state and central, can get away with such horrible performance. They only need to dangle some glitzy one odd hospital in some state capital for making our devoted hearts swell with nationalistic pride and make us flood the social media with unabashed and often embarrassing jingoism.
We have long since given up on depending on the government for education. Except for a few centres of excellence like IIMs and IITs, primary and secondary education has gone into private hands. There are hardly a few public schools of excellence. The result is that the middle class strives hard to put their wards in private schools charging exorbitant fees with an aim to squeeze out those who can afford such education from the subsidised professional education in a handful of premium public colleges. The government also knows we don’t care about the state of public education in the country, as we have formed our oasis in private institutions and tuition centres. In a country that has the maximum population of under 25 years in the world, in a country that is supposed to become an economic powerhouse riding on its youth power and ironically, in a country that has the largest number of illiterates in the world, the allocation for education increased from Rs 81,869 crore to Rs 85,010 crore, an increase of Rs 3,141 crore or a paltry 3.84 per cent only in the last budget. That is lesser than what one would spend for building world record-breaking statues. This is at a time when the total revenue receipts increased from Rs 15.05 lakh crore (2017-18) to Rs.17.25 lakh crore (2018-19), an increase of 14.63 per cent.
Now, as far as their responsibilities are concerned, the state governments have abdicated all their responsibilities to private concerns. The union government has thankfully the defence sector left in its kitty, though it has abdicated all other responsibilities to its citizens and private sector. Ironically, both union and state governments are involved in producing things from condoms to scooters through its loss-making PSUs when they are not fulfilling their fundamental duties of providing health, education, law and order, transport and defence to their citizens. At least in the next elections, it is time for us to remind all political parties about their duties to us.