You will be surprised why Mahatma Gandhi will be happy with the chief minister Eknath Shinde and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and their recent decisions.
Gandhi always spoke about participatory democracy, one of his famous lines is, “I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.” Two decisions that the Shinde and Fadnavis government took this week have reinstated the same faith that Gandhi had put in democracy.
In the second cabinet meeting of the BJP-Sena held on Thursday, both Shinde and Fadnavis reapproved four decisions that were originally taken by Devendra Fadnavis government when he was the CM, and were revoked by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).
One of the decisions taken was to give voting rights to farmers in the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) elections, this was originally done by the Fadnavis government between 2014-19, but was later revoked by the Uddhav Thackeray led government. Now farmers who are at least 18 years of age and have 0.25 acres of land and have sold their produce for at least three times in a particular APMC market in the last five years will be eligible to vote. This means the markets where the farmers sell their produce, will now have a definite say in the process of elections. This in a way promotes the same ideology of participatory democracy that Gandhi has been promoting.
The second decision which is on the same line as that of Gandhi’s idea of direct democracy is the Shinde-Fadnavis government restoring direct elections for the posts of sarpanch and municipal council president. At the moment there is a process to elect the sarpanch from the gram panchayat members, Most of the states in the country have direct elections for the sarpanch.
This move will also get rid of the money power that enables the powerful to lure the gram panchayat members to get elected as the sarpanch. This was originally moved by the Fadnavis government during his tenure in 2017, but was overturned by the MVA government by tabling a bill in 2020.
The other decision reintroduced by the Shinde-Fadnavis government is to give pension to political activists who were jailed during the period of the emergency from 1975 to 1977. According to reports, there are some 3,600 such activists eligible for pension in the state. The pension amount ranges from Rs 5000 to 1000 depending upon the jail term. The MVA government had stayed this scheme too. The fight during the emergency was to save democracy.
