Foreclosure of a Dream?
RALEGAN SIDDHI. An enviable example of what human will and dedication can achieve against staggering odds. When Anna Hazare, then a jeep driver serving the Indian army, visited this drought-stricken village in Maharashtra"s Ambedkar district, the people here did not know what development meant. But now, they can probably teach the government a thing or two about it. Through a painstaking and lengthy process, the villagers, driven by Hazare"s insurmountable will and devotion, converted their drought-ravaged village into the proverbial land of plenty. Hazare had adopted integrated watershed management techniques to change the face of Ralegan Siddhi and make it the ideal Indian village.
Unfortunately, we have only one Anna Hazare. And no other rural development programme makes this more obvious than Adarsh Gaon Yojana (AGY) or ideal village scheme, a rural development project modelled to replicate Hazare"s success. Maharashtra state government"s brainchild, the project was launched in 1991 with the aim to create 300 ideal villages in the state. Three chief ministers and eight years later, the much-hyped AGY is yet to take off. Hazare, who headed the scheme, resigned in 1996 accusing the soil conservation department of corruption. Since then, the project"s history reads like a guide to how lack of political will and bureaucratic hurdles can curb an otherwise ambitious project.
The Maharashtra government launched the AGY in 1991 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Quit India Movement. With a budget of Rs 300 crore, the five-year AGY was hailed as "unique". The state government was participating in a people"s programme, probably for the first time. But then the first step itself became an annoying hurdle - the scheme took four years (1991 to 1995) to be implemented. And today, even after three years of its implementation and more than Rs 55 crore later, it is still struggling to achieve a mere percentage of what was planned.
"The government doesn"t seem to be interested in participating in a people"s programme," says Hazare. The AGY was an opportunity for the people of the drought-prone areas of Maharashtra to be self-sufficient and self reliant following the Ralegan Siddhi example. But now, that dream seems lost.
THE SYSTEM RESISTS "Lack of political will and bureaucratic hurdles have plagued the scheme from the beginning. No politician or bureaucrat was interested to give the AGY priority to facilitate its implementation," says Hazare. "The AGY was a programme where the politician had no roles to play. If politicians had control over the programme, it would probably have gained a faster momentum. But then, the purpose of creating self-sufficient villages would have been defeated," adds Hazare.
The money was not forthcoming as the AGY could not be given financial status. And that, say those involved, was only the first hurdle. The fund crunch created confusion among various departments involved in the state"s ministry of rural development regarding financial assistance to the scheme. "Initially it was informally discussed that money from different rural schemes (there are 58 such schemes in Maharashtra) would be pooled for the AGY. However, the necessary official instruction was not given," says a senior official of Maharashtra"s finance department. So in 1993, the government recognised the scheme as a district-level programme to avert this confusion. But even then, most departments were reluctant to allocate money for the programme.
The district and taluka (tehsil) level employees" inability to work directly with the people coupled with incessant political interference further delayed the project"s implementation. The local MLA, who would have gained extensive political mileage if the developmental work were credited to him, felt threatened by the scheme"s concepts of self-sufficiency and self-reliance and severely resisted its implementation. This confrontation between the local politicians and the scheme"s supporters is probably the central reason for AGY"S failure.
And though by this time the money was coming from the government, the local MLA still had no control over this scheme. Ashok Tanukar, a close associate of Hazare, says this was a major factor in AGY"S failure. "The local MI.A felt threatened by this approach." Says Hazare, "At the higher level, it became a political issue. Even Sharad Pawar, the then chief minister, began enquiring about his political benefits from the project."
Another reason behind the political resistance to the AGY was its provision of discarding the party-based election to the panchyats (village councils) of the adopted villages. Under the AGY, the sarpanch (who heads the panchayat) is elected by consensus rather than party-based elections. This brought the scheme in direct confrontation with the political set-up as doing away with party-based panchayats threatened the politicians who felt this would only erode their rural vote banks.
"Failure of subsequent governments to implement the scheme emerges from this dilemma - whether non-political grassroots institutions will hamper the government"s political interests," says Ganesh Pangare, Hazare"s associate, who was earlier involved with the project. "When the BJP-Shiv Sena government came into power, the local MLA came to me and told me that I could no longer work independently. He wanted me to seek his advise and keep him informed about the work being done in the village. He even told his followers in the village to propagate against me," says a sarpanch of an AGY village.
Mohan Dharia, former deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission and currently heading the non governmental organisation (NGO) Vanarai, says, "Hazare took a rigid approach towards politicians and government officials." So they, in time, fought back. Now that Hazare is no longer involved "the project is having no problems," he says. Hazare admittedly tried to keep the department functionaries and political leaders out of the decision-making process. "The project gives all the powers to the people, and not to the politicians. Then why should I listen to them?" counters Hazare.
The administrative structure for the allocation and distribution of funds at the village level was not accepted by district-level officials. There was great resistance from the scheme"s district soil conservation departments and the nodal government implementing agency. They felt that a chunk of the resources, routed through them earlier, would now be in the control of a local NGO and the community members. Further, to rule out misappropriation of funds, it was decided that there should be three signatories for each bank account: a village representative, a member of the project-implementing NGO, and the soil conservation department. Even here, the government departments were hesitant about being co-signatories, says Hazare. Officials" and bureaucrats" discontentment over losing their control - and undoubtedly some percentage - of the money that was earlier channelled through them caused the delay, feel some people earlier associated with the scheme.
Despite government resolutions instructing various departments at district level to make money available to the project, little moved for three years. Anna says he wrote letters by the hundreds, met ministers and even the chief minister on many occasions. "But on the ground, little moved."
Jaywant Mahalle, director of the Maharashtra"s directorate of soil conservation and watershed management and also the secretary of the state-level committee of the AGY, explains the reasons for the delay. The project money, he says, was to come from several existing schemes. Some 58 different government schemes from 13 sectors were to be implemented in these villages, but as one, unified scheme. As a result, the forward and backward linkages of the project had also to be sorted out. "We have received proposals from some 247 villages who proposed several programmes whose cost amounted to around Rs 237 crore. This was the first time the government was dealing with situation where funds were to be handled directly by the village community. Moreover, since this was a novel experiment with few large-scale development models to fall back on, clarity was bound to emerge only after some time," Mahalle says.
This "clarity" took as long as five years to emerge. Stiff resistance to the project at the district-level forced the government to declare the AGY to be a state-level scheme in January 1996. Money for the programme is now sanctioned directly by the government of Maharashtra and is routed through the department of soil conservation and watershed development. The sanction of these funds are now in the hands of the state-level committee of the AGY.
SELECTING VILLAGES
No one, neither the government nor Hazare, was clear about the process of selecting the villages that were to participate in the AGY. Hazare finally selected some 300 villages, but accord ing to AGY officials, this itself took almost three years.
Since AGY aims to regenerate the environment and empower villages, Hazare formed certain pre-requisites for selecting villages for the programme. Ideally, the village should be in a drought-prone area. Irrigation should be limited to some 30 per cent of the cropped areas, while the village"s population should not exceed 4,000 people.
Once the villagers decide they want to participate in this programme, they should acquire a two-thirds majority in the Gram Sabha that they will follow the five principles as laid down by Hazare. The commitment to provide voluntary labour for building various water conservation structures forms the core work of the programme. A minimum of one person from each family should work for two days per month. The community had to also suggest a volunteer from the village to oversee the work. They also had to either appoint or establish a voluntary organisation to provide assistance to the community in drawing up plans for development and implementation.
"Initially there was a lack of clarity of which villages should be chosen, but subsequently the situation improved. Moreover, the exact role that the village-level NGO would play was not very clear," says Mahalle. Even Hazare found that members in certain villages were unwilling to adhere to the five principles. As a result, a few villages, originally chosen for AGY, were later removed. According to Mahalle, from an initial count of 314 villages, only 251 remain in the scheme now.
In the recent meeting of the state-level AGY committee, working president Babusaheb Despande said more than 100 villages have applied to participate in the AGY while 90 existing AGY villages have violated the five principles. "Though action against these villages has not been taken, it shows the confusion as far as the selection process is concerned," says an AGY official.
MONEY TROUBLES
As mentioned, the AGY budget is sanctioned by the state government, routed through the department of soil conservation and watershed development, and disbursed by the state-level committee directly to the villages. Secretary of the department of soil conservation and watershed development, Vidhyadhar Kanade, explains that the money for the core work is routed through the department while other departments functioning at the rural level take care of the non-core works.
Says Mahalle, "Till now, only about Rs 30 crore have been spent on the AGY. Of this, about Rs 8 crore have been spent through the NGOS on core works, and the rest by other departments for non-core works. In 1996-97, soil conservation and watershed development department spent some Rs 17.35 crore. In 1997, the budgetary allocation for the AGY was about Rs 11 crore, and till mid-January this year, only Rs 2.37 crore have been spent. "Spending money is not the essence. It can be spent easily by March-end. But before that we must create situations where the money will be spent usefully," says Mahalle. Bad weather is one reason for not spending the money, say the officials. Unseasonable rains, for instance, have been a hurdle for implementing the scheme in the villages.
VILLAGE VOICE
Despite accusations that the state government has lost interest in AGY, officials say it still ranks pretty high in the list of projects the chief minister is interested in. The villagers, however, voice differing opinions: "Adarsh Gaon Yajona has lost its adarsh (ideals)," says a Ralegan villager, talking of Hazare"s resignation from the scheme. But Popat Pawar, sarpanch of Hivri Bazar, the best adarsh gaon of 1997, says, "Anna Saheb remains the inspiration for the people and without him the AGY has not lost direction."
After Hazare quit AGY, the scheme has undergone many administrative changes. The first was making the state agriculture minister the president of the apex state-level committee and making provision for a full-time working president. "With this change, the scheme has now got a political look. The minister can"t give time to the scheme and the working president, though a full-timer has to take advise from him. Even the current working president seems to be a political appointment," says Pangare. "The working president actually works for the scheme whole time has to shuttle between Pune (the headquarters of AGY) and Mumbai, the state capital," says a senior soil conservation department official.
This means that files do not move for months as the minister is unavailable. It has delayed the AGY further, he adds. For the state-level committee"s meeting in Pune in June this year, it took almost three months to get a confirmed date from the minister, AGY officials point out. What does this mean in terms of valuable project days lost? Villages already selected in 1996 are yet to get their money to start work. And of the 251 villages currently under AGY, work in 180 villages began as late as last year.
Till now, projects worth some Rs 237 crore have been received from the 247 villages covered by the AGY. These project proposals have been drawn up to cover both watershed activities and other development work over a period of five years. Of this money, Mahalle says some Rs 100 crore is for watershed activities. Given that the allocation so far has been only about Rs 10 crore to Rs 20 crore annually, he is optimistic about the availability of money to implement the project. He and Kanade think that by 1999, the allocation is likely to be raised to Rs 25 crore, sufficient to complete the work. According to them, even though the AGY has run into hot water politically and Hazare has distanced himself from it, the project would still be a success.
Another major change has been the structure of expenditure. Adopted in June this year, 75 per cent of the money is slated to be spent on development work and the rest for infrastructure such as salary and logistics. Before Hazare"s resignation, 75 per cent was for developmental work, 15 per cent was the administrative cost given to the implementing agency, and the rest to the Hind Swaraj Trust, set up by Hazare for training technical coordinators and volunteers. The new structure gives 75 per cent of the funds to development work and the rest goes to the implementing NGO. "But many of the NGOs don"t have the technical expertise but have the money. Even if the money is not used, the villages wouldn"t get the technical help as far as watershed development is concerned," says an official of AGY.
It seems that the most visible loss to the project after Hazare"s resignation is his moral leadership. "Anna Saheb"s presence was enough for preventing corruption both at the high level and the grassroots level.
The members of the AGY apex body did not support him in his anti-corruption drive, leading to his resignation. This gave the scheme an avoidable image of corruption," says a state-level AGY committee member. He says the present leadership is motivated by the politicians" own interests, making Hazare"s moral leadership conspicuous by its absence.
The AGY working president had, perhaps, what could be the last word on the programme"s record of success: "After all the controversies and delays, the project finally took off in 1996. You can"t make an assessment whether it is successful, especially because it"s still too early."