Bring government closer home

Bring government closer home
Yoginder K. Alagh

You are great India. Your achievements are important and so are your failures and it is good to recount them in the New Year. As I walk the villages in the rainshadow off the Western Ghats in the plateaux region of Maharashtra and see how we neglect the problems away from the city and fertile lands it is quite obvious that it was a very good idea to have created Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand.

We neglect the hill slope, the tribal area and rainfed valleys. It was important to let the people of these regions take control of their own destiny. Yes, they are short of resources. But development strategies more tuned to local conditions save waste and sustainable growth generates resources, so their future will, hopefully, be brighter. We have always known that our girls are the prettiest and very smart, but now the world is finding out. In those last few moments, it is their culture which holds them out.

Around the soil and climate evolves food and culture and it is not unlikely that the politics of this country will develop around its agroclimatic regions. This does not necessarily bode exclusiveness because larger loyalties are possible around local ones. Less then twenty kilometres away from Shirdi, in the villages one sees the power of a saint, a fakir, on the minds of men. In a very poor and dry area, he has bound together ordinary people belonging to the great religions of India. Logically, the three states are not an end but a beginning. No worthwhile policies have been implemented for the poor peasant of the region to make money from the spices which can be grown here, but that is another story.

The achievements of the year that was were cultural and political. Property rights of women were enforced by law. The weak movement for transparency and the right to information was shored up. The pressure for good governance became more strident. The more savvy chief ministers were making these arguments on power point, as I witnessed while chairing a committee on civil service recruitment reform. More civilised social contracts are around the corner. The younger generation of cricketers showed that when the dust settles down, the country can get back to business as usual very soon. The game has to be played.

At the end of the last year, the government sacked India's top soldier and did not make amends, and in the later part of the year it's top agricultural scientist. But this time around, the asinine nature of the decision went home and the government made graceful amends, thank god. One hopes the New Year will bring new styles of managing the expert and the specialist by the bureaucratic political machine in an increasingly complex world.

The bad news was from the economy front. When some were selling dream worlds, the Planning Commission lived up to its tradition of integrity. The savings rate was going down, they said. Government savings were falling anyway, but now private savings are also declining. The dream merchants were selling the good life too soon. There are no free lunches and so the growth rate is going down. Pull yourself together, they said, before it is too late. Jaded political parties cutting across the spectrum could not engage themselves in a serious debate. The Commission made a point this column has been making. Agriculture is facing a decade of neglect. Its annual growth rate has gone down from 3.4 per cent in the eighties to 1.8 per cent in the nineties. You have been very very lucky with the weather, but investment is going down. This has consequences for employment and poverty. The basics need reform, for efficiency becomes more important when resources are scarce. Delhi's cocktail circuits were unhappy at theparty-spoiling attitude of the Planning Commission, but one hopes the new year will bring more sense.

The worst news came on the AIDS front. The country's gentle Health Minister, who is like your family doctor, put advertisements in the national press in a matter of fact way saying that things were pretty bad and in some regions it was very clear that a full blown epidemic was at hand and lets do something about it. In a very traditional deeply religious rural area, in one of the biggest rural hospital complexes in India, my friend Dr Mhaske tells me that around three to four cases are coming every day and he doesn't know what to do. The skeletal face of the plague cannot be wished away. We need an intense awareness campaign. Our doctors also need facilities to treat the patients.

Society's response will come from you and me. The money for hospital facilities, operation theatres and medicines will have to come from the state and philanthropy for those who cannot afford it.

Jaded political parties cutting across the spectrum could not engage in a serious debate