The outbreak of dengue in Delhi which has resulted in 34 deaths and choked hospitals in the national capital, and chikungunya down south which has infected 1.3 million people in Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh causing an estimated 525 deaths, has once again brutally impacted the issue of neglect of public healthcare upon the national consciousness. It is pertinent to note that the carrier of both these deadly diseases is the mosquito aedes aegypti, which breeds and thrives in stagnant pools and shallow troughs of garbage-infected water. Decades of neglect of preventive healthcare issues and services have prepared fertile ground for germination of deadly strains of insecticide-resistant pests and viruses which are running amok within shining India’s exploding cities and neglected rural hinterland.

Despite widespread awareness of continuous migration of citizens from rural to urban India as the share of agriculture in the national GDP has declined from 70 percent in the 1950s to 24 percent currently, very little effort has been made to prepare industrial urban India for this huge inflow of rural migrants which over the past half century has multiplied the number of cities with a million plus population from a mere handful to 35 currently. Consequently there is a severe shortage of housing units estimated at 30 million countrywide.

Moreover municipal and local governments are insufficiently empowered to cope with the demands of the nation’s collapsing cities. Property taxes — their main source of revenue — flow into state government coffers and are only partially redistributed to municipal governments. Worse, property valuation which determines property tax revenue, is also knocked askew (because of archaic rent control legislation) by state governments and the revenue stream that flows into civic government coffers is reduced to a trickle by widespread corruption. Therefore the prescription to revive India’s collapsing cites is genuine local self-government with the right to determine property values conferred upon ward committees of citizens envisaged by the 74th Amendment of the Constitution for this very purpose. But unfortunately the devolution of power envisaged by the 74th Amendment has been continuously stymied by state governments.

Clearly, given the scale of the problem, there is no alternative to devolving real civic governance powers to the lowest unit of local government. Only ward committees comprising property owners resident in each ward have sufficient motivation to enforce hygiene and cleanliness standards, even if only to preserve their own health and property values. Moreover ward committee members are the best judges of property values in their wards. As such they need to be empowered to levy and collect property taxes with the authority to spend a major share of accruals for local development and maintenance purposes. This is the norm in all western democracies and the explanation behind their neat cities and suburbs. The logic of such devolution of power is that if every ward keeps its backyard clean, whole cities will become as good as the sum of their parts.

The alternative to application of these common-sense solutions is too dreadful to contemplate. Over 21st century India’s dank and pestilential towns, Death is looking down.

Reckless imprimatur on against child labour
The ban on employing children below the age of 14 in restaurants, eateries and in domestic households which came into effect on October 10, is characteristic of the casual recklessness with which the Central and state governments address the management of complex child-related issues. Obviously embarrassed by persistent media exposes of little, out-of-school children working grindingly long hours (often in the homes of government bureaucrats themselves) in unsanitary, unhygienic conditions, the Union government has issued a prohibitory order banning domestic child labour. Employers or home owners who hire or put children below age 14 to work, could be fined upto Rs.20,000 and suffer 12 months imprisonment following amendment of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986.

No sensible person is likely to differ with the intent behind this overdue ameliorative legislation. It’s indisputable that children are entitled to enjoy their childhood and should be in school rather than slaving in factories, farms and dingy kitchens. Yet it’s pertinent to note that only 5 percent of India’s massive army of working children are employed in restaurants and households. The overwhelming majority slaving for pittances in the agriculture sector is untouched by this purportedly child-friendly legislation. Moreover it’s an open secret that a previous ban on employment of children in the hazardous glass-blowing, match-sticks, firecrackers, coal mining and several other industries is being flouted with impunity across the country.

Against this backdrop when an estimated 25 percent of the country’s massive child population of 415 million is out of school for various reasons — there aren’t enough schools, those that are operational lack basic infrastructure, one in four teachers is absent on any given day, little learning happens in school etc — one wonders what beneficial purpose could be served by the peremptory ban on domestic child labour. Surely the ground should have been prepared by seriously addressing the glaring infirmities of the government schools dominated primary education system so that displaced children — most of them sold into domestic slavery or runaways from abusive homes — could be smoothly absorbed into residential schools and childcare institutions. Yet there is no evidence of a single additional childcare institution as a precursor to the proclamation of this ban.

Consequently far from indicating that the Union government’s heart is in the right place, the likely outcome of this hasty decision is that thousands of children who have food and shelter — however meagre — will be thrown into the cruel streets of urban India and become easy prey for the flourishing tribe of drug pushers and flesh traders. About a year ago in a fit of moral indignation, bar girl dancers in Maharashtra and Karnataka were banned from practising their profession. Since then most of them have been driven to penury and prostitution. Alas, a similar fate awaits children driven out of domestic employment by this hasty diktat.