It is difficult for any one person to keep tabs on all the schemes and programmes launched by the Union and State Governments for economic and social progress – there are so many. Each of these is designed and targeted to improve the conditions of specific groups of people. Overall, they are having a significant impact on the targeted communities and yet the necessary service culture needed to cover the last mile is still inadequate. This means that individuals continue to face hardships at the personal level.
People vote for leaders often because of issues that impact the nation in their entirety, or the party they belong to. As such, the particular leader who directly impacts their lives may not be elected because of his or her ability to do the allotted task as an MP, MLA or as a Member of the Municipal Board. As such, the required services become unavailable due to incompetence or lack of intent. Similarly, government officials who have qualified for tenure appointments of various categories often lack the motivation to serve as the objective was to get the job, not the responsibilities that go with it.
As such, any public representative or official that actually does the job to the level necessary stands out as ‘extraordinary’, when it should be the standard maintained by all. Because of this, the number of citizens denied their basic rights stands at unacceptable levels. So often policies ostensibly prepared with noble intentions end up doing harm to the supposed beneficiaries. It is not surprising that the most affected end up being senior citizens and other disadvantaged folks who do not have the strength or the means to make the rounds of the offices to get their problems solved.
Take, for instance, the policy on re-registration of cars after fifteen years and then twenty years. It seems directed primarily at benefiting car manufacturers. It has been repeatedly pointed out that they condition of cars depends mostly on how they have been maintained and how much they have been driven, not for how long they have been owned. Do they expect senior citizens to buy new, increasingly expensive cars in their seventies and eighties even though the ones they already own are still in top condition? The intention is to lower pollution levels, but lack of deeper consideration ends up creating difficulties for individuals. There are similar examples in almost all ‘well-meaning’ policies that require better application at the individual level.
