As Medha Patkar of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) travels from one ward to another in Mumbai, she touches on a range of issues from infrastructure to development and AAP’s brief tryst with governance in Delhi. In an interview with Satyanarayan Iyer, she speaks about the priorities of the party. Excerpts:
If you win, what will be your priority areas?
First and foremost, the development planning process must be changed. It should start with the smallest unit, although it cannot end there. Otherwise, real local priorities are neglected and people’s participation becomes nil. So, it is very necessary that a ward and within the ward, the
The second priority is to check corruption. A Jan Lokpal Act at the State-level is a must.
The unorganised sector workers’ issues are very important because they form 96 per cent of the working class and they do not get pension or social security. So that needs to be changed. Contract labour is also unconstitutional. So I would like to question these labour policies. Equal work and equal pay should be the principle.
In education, the Right to Education provision that 25 per cent seats in private schools be reserved for the poor is not being implemented. Even the middle-class and upper-class are troubled by excess profiteering by schools. So, there should be better monitoring of private schools.
You are perceived as being anti-development and pro-slums. What would you say?
See, development is desirable change. Who wants change, what kind of change and through what process defines your view and perspective of development. Everyone wants development. Even we want development, but we want development that can be sustainable and just. We are not for growth without justice.
For instance, we want water to be managed and harnessed but in a de-centralised way. As a last resort, if there is a need for large dams, then the displaced people should be rehabilitated first. This is what the Constitution says. We want industries, but not at the cost of agriculture. We want industries which will be labour-intensive, which uses natural resources available locally.
Infrastructure in Mumbai is a big challenge. What are your plans to solve it?
A Member of Parliament has a duty towards making and remaking of policies. From that point of view, my effort would be to review the infrastructure on the basis of certain criterion — who benefits and at what cost? Crores of rupees are spent on infrastructure like skywalks in certain places that lie utilised. So that goes waste.
Another criterion is corruption. With a lot of padding in projects, the profit is absolutely unjustifiable and huge. They keep projects pending and delayed for long. The contractors earn a lot and a share of the profit goes to the ministers and bureaucrats.
For AAP, new people coming into the politics means they are ready for the challenge and see what happens. Everything does not end with one election. Will AAP quitting within 49 days in Delhi hurt the party’s chances?
I think people have questions but mostly the educated-class, the upper-class and some in the middle-class are questioning. I think by now they have got their answers. The answer is that the situation was such that with one MLA (Binny) taking sides with the Congress and two independents withdrawing their support, their government was thrown into minority.
In any case, when the Congress and BJP joined hands and did not allow him to even speak on the Jan Lokpal Bill, what was likely? It was likely that they would not allow the AAP to function and take any decision even before the code. So
obviously, the decision they took was right in a sense. They thought that they could resign and go back to people instead of just sitting there idle.