Performance pays

30/12/1998
Down To Earth

THE recent election results in Madhya Pradesh (MP) have surprised not just the leading political parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress, but also the media and other election observers. Though he denied it, the results must have come as a pleasant surprise even to Digvijay Singh, the architect of the Congress victory. In every way, the results were stunning. Singh had nothing going for him politically. There was chaos and infighting within the party, with various Congress heavyweights of MP pulling in different directions. Then there was the bane of every ruling party: the antiincumbency factor. Moreover, the usually reliable exit polls (which probably neglect remote rural voters) had predicted a loss for the Congress. Yet Singh came out on top.

Why is that important for the poor, their environment and their development - issues that this magazine usually deals with? It is precisely because Singh cared for these issues that he got re-elected and stumped politicians and political pundits alike.

I had the occasion to see the mp government's outstanding work in watershed development in the district of Jhabua. I had come away deeply impressed by what I had seen. This was a massive statewide scheme covering an equivalent of one per cent of India's land area. There has been no dearth of official watershed development schemes in India. But this was different. It was the first time that a government was attempting to start a people's movement to improve the land, water and forest resources. More than the ecologicalregeneration, the people's effort was extremely heart-warming. And all this was happening without any new laws, official entities or money. Government's existing resources and the bureaucracy were being used in a coordinated and intelligent manner. It was obvious that all this drive was coming straight from the chief minister.

Down to Earth reporters came back highly impressed after visiting the schools started under the highly innovative Education Guarantee Scheme, which has bypassed the entire education bureaucracy to hand over the charge of village education to the villagers themselves (see box:Missions possible).

I obviously wondered whether Singh would derive any political and electoral advantage from his efforts. So the very first time I came face to face with him, I asked him whether he thought he was going to get any electoral advantage as a result of his efforts in rural development? He simply smiled, nodded his head, and said, "I do not think so. I do not think elections are fought on these issues. I do them because I feel that is what needs to be done. Only those efforts which empower the people will work in this country." It is not an answer I wanted to hear. I replied."My respect for you is even more if you are doing all this even if you do not see anv political gain out of your efforts. But I think this is wrong. A politician who does good things must get political rewards- Otherwise why will politicians do good things? There is something really wrong with our political system."

It is easy to be cynical about the electoral and political process. The media, for instance, plays a very important role in creating public opinion, even if it limited to the middle class. But the media, even in MP, had given almost no coverage to the outstanding rural development programmes that Digvijay Singh had launched. Hardly anyone in his own part ' had noticed them. Without recognition, why would anyone give him respect for his work - in the public or within his own political party?

The election results were surprising, simply because the media never cared to find out what is going on in the countryside. At present, (he Indian media is obsessed with the urban middle class - its perceptions and interests. Currently, there are only two chief ministers in the country who seem to take a serious interest in developmental activities: Digvijay Singh of MP and Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh. Naidu has got a much better press and middle class attention because he has shown interest not just in rural development but also in urban and industrial development, whereas Singh has focused on rural development. Because of the media's lack of coverage of rural development, Singh's efforts had gone totally unnoticed. Till, of course, the election results came in.

Even more than Singh, I think the real hero of the 'Madhya Pradesh surprise' is the poor tribal. The election results show that poor people understand when a serious effort is being made and appreciate the leaders who make these. The mass of Indian politicians, who are out to woo votes in the name of an extraordinary total of three issues - casteism, communalism and regionalism - have a lesson to learn from mp. The poorest of the poor are intelligent and they can see when there is earnest governance. They rewarded Singh because he did not Spout Words about the poor but showed in deed that he cared for them.

The BJP lost badly because it had no development agenda at all except for some rhetoric. When Prime Minister Atal Behari Vaypayee told Parliament that water was going to be a key issue in the ruling coalition's national action plan, I was delighted. But when I tried to enquire what was it that the new government had in mind with respect to water, the answers made me realise that it was yet another mindless waste of the treasury that the ruling party had in mind. All that the government was planning to do was increase the expenditure on water resources development and supply. There was no serious attempt being made to address the reasons why water supply in India is in such a mess today.

In fact, Down to Earth reporters had gone out specially to interview Kushabbau Thakre, the president of for, to find out what his party had in mind- That interview is possibly the best exposition of the party's banality about serious development issues. In simple words, Thakre said point blank that water was not something about which politicians could give any answers. It was a subject that experts had to address. He lamented that experts never reached a consensus; they only disagreed among themselves.

It is here precisely that Singh proved he was different. Having seen Anna Hazare's outstanding work in transforming the poverty-stricken village of Ralegan Siddhi, he had made up his mind that it was exactly what he wanted to do in Mr. Unlike other politicians, he did not parrot his bureaucrats, who rarely ever want to do anything. He built up a team of officials who would materialise his vision.

Politicians should go to Singh's onceparched Jhabua to see the amount of water that exists in the wells of the district today. To see a well so full of water that it is literally spilling over is just about the most wonderful thing that one can dream. Singh helped the villagers to bring about this miracle.

India is today witnessing a social and economic crisis. But the poor tribals of MP and Digvijay Singh have shown that the political crisis underpinning the social and economic crisis marked by extreme poverty and illiteracy can be dealt with if political leaders were to show some courage and vision. Forget politicking, get serious about politics. Dear politicians of India, it pays.

---Anil Agarwal.

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