We must discuss the fundamental issues of governance affecting the day-to-day life of the people, find out the drawbacks and try and show the way forward, believes justice HL Dattu, chairperson, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). “We must give away this notion that with time, everything would fall in place and move on making only hollow promises.” 
 
He said that if the issues are addressed priority-wise, many problems affecting human rights at micro or sectoral levels may not even arise so as to need further legislation or rules to fix them.
 
Justice Dattu was inaugurating the two-day national consultation organised by NHRC in New Delhi to assess the human rights situation prevailing the country. Based on regional and national consultations, the commission would submit a report to the United Nations (UN) mandated Human Rights Council for the third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the human rights situation in the country.
 
He said that legislation, rules and regulations for everything do not always solve problems, rather too many of them create confusion in the minds of gullible masses and tend to compound problems. The general good of the people is decided by the minimum basic needs and amenities available to them as their absence becomes a reason for violation of their fundamental and human rights.
 
He said that the problem perhaps is more with the inconsistency in the implementation mechanism of several welfare measures due to the lack of awareness among the both the beneficiary and benefactor at almost all levels of society and even hierarchy in government machinery.
 
The NHRC chairperson said that the concerned governments, ministries and departments under them must involve philanthropists and corporates as part of their social responsibility in running mass-scale awareness campaigns on all aspects of public life and good in the interest of clean and transparent governance, which is the buzzword today.
 
He, however, said that the UN mandated that UPR should not be so much about putting holes as much as it should be about plugging holes in the scheme of things introduced and implemented for the cause of general good.

Earlier, NC Saxena, supreme court appointed commissioner on right to food, pointed out shortcomings in the implementation of various welfare programmes and said that funds allocated to different ministries are not being utilised and as a result the government is reducing them in each subsequent year.
 
Apart from the NHRC chairperson, members, senior officers, core group members and special rapporteurs, the participants included representatives from the union ministries of external affairs, home affairs, women & child development, health & family welfare, NITI Aayog and NGOs.