Capital story | Delhi govt follows ‘Antoday’ policy at cost of middle class
Last week at a media briefing on the completion of 100 days of BJP-led Delhi government, city Education Minister Ashish Sood said that his government’s policy was ‘Antoday’ oriented that is targeted towards the uplift of the last person in the queue. He went on to state that his understanding of social upliftwas inspired by late ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay and the policies of the Narendra Modi government.
Now first understanding Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s Antoday. The late leader had said, ‘The success of economic planning and economic progress will not be measured through those who are at the top of the society’s ladder, but through the people at the lowest rung of the society.’ Antoday means the welfare of the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Upadhyay had further enumerated, ‘It is our thinking and principle that these uneducated and poor people are our gods. We have to worship them. It is our social and human dharma.’
Upadhyay’s Antoday in many measures carry a similarity with Gandhian social principle of Sarvoday. While both aim for inclusive development, Sarvoday is more idealistic and universalist in approach, whereas Antoday is more pragmatic and nationalist, emphasizing targeted policy action for the poorest.
Together, they reflect Indian models of human-centric development with moral and cultural foundations. However, Antoday, or ‘rise of the last person,’ proposed by Upadhyay, sharpens the focus by prioritizing the welfare of the most deprived individual. Sood further went to list the decisions of his government in the first 100 days which indeed in spirit looked to be targeted for upliftment of the poorest of the poor.
But then the Rekha Gupta government in the national Capital is not the first government in the city to be inspired by the ideas of doing good for the poorest of the poor. In fact her predecessor Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party government implemented the same model albeit in corrupted form unveiled through a regime of freebies.
This helped Kejriwal reap a huge political and electoral harvest winning back to back assembly elections in 2015 and 2020. During the polls held earlier this year too, the ‘poor voters’ stayed largely with Kejriwal’s party and now the Rekha Gupta government through her policies want to wean away Kejriwal’s support base.
However, in the midst of planning this heist of voters, the BJP government should not lose sight of the fact that their return to power in Delhi Secretariat after 27 years in wilderness has largely been facilitated by the shift of the middle class voters in their support from AAP. The government is still to deliver on schemes focussed on serving the middle class.
One such proposal was to bring a Bill to regulate the fees in the private schools. The direct beneficiaries of this Bill would have been the middle class community. However, somehow the delay in the passage of the Bill and the notification of the act has come to be shrouded in mystery.
This is not to say that no such policies are being followed which would benefit the middle class. Initiatives like clearing, 111.84 lakh metric tons of legacy waste, which is 41% of all garbage accumulated at Delhi’s three major dumpsites, in just 100 days, increasing subsidies for installing solar power plants in houses and building technological infrastructure to strengthen smooth and fast functioning of the courts would all help all sections of the society in the long run including the middle class.
However, these doesn’t build narrative focused to attract attention of a particular section. One need initiatives like the income tax relief which Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gave ahead of Delhi polls, which in turn helped BJP to sway middle class voters in its favour.
Some may point out that unlike the AAP, BJP is an ideologically driven party and Antoday is integral to its policy thought. In the same vein it should also be pointed out that BJP’s ideology of Antoday is deferential to the Gandhian thought and principles of Sarvoday that is progress of all. Both Upadhyay and Gandhi did not weigh their thoughts in the terms of electoral gains, so should not the Delhi government.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice