Opinion Time to change

On my travels in the state capitals of our vast and wondrous land,I have often met chief ministers who have complained bitterly about the financial constraints that the Central government binds them down with. When I have asked why a road or a rural drinking water project has been so delayed,I have been treated to tirades. The gist usually being that after a chief minister has finished paying salaries,there is little left for anything else. The mighty pay commissions that decide salaries are devised by the Central government and ever since Sonia Gandhi chose to become the Lady Bountiful of Indian politics,the welfare programmes that state governments are dragooned into are devised in Delhi as well. Which chief minister would dare oppose MNREGA? Which chief minister would dare declare publicly that the food security bill is a folly? Anyone who did would be pilloried by the Congress Party as being ‘anti-poor’ and that,dear readers,is the kiss of death in our land that celebrates poverty as if it were a badge of honour.

If we want better governance in India,it is vital that state governments be given greater financial control over their revenues and greater responsibility over expenditure. It continues to puzzle me why with so many powerful opposition chief ministers ruling major states,they do not collectively demand this. They came together to oppose interference in matters of policing but seem not to understand the importance of asking for more financial and administrative rights as well.

A chief minister is not meant to be hierarchically subservient to the Prime Minister but,especially in Congress states,it is common for even junior ministers from Delhi to turn up and start throwing their weight about. Some Congress chief ministers today dare not open their mouths without first checking with the ‘high command’.

Now let us discuss Mr Badal’s openly expressed disdain for municipal corporations. If state governments need more financial and administrative autonomy so do elected municipal corporations. Indian cities are today among the ugliest and worst governed in the world. This is entirely due to the absence of powerful city governments. Metropolises like Delhi and Mumbai already have larger populations than some of our smaller states and yet remain controlled by chief ministers instead of elected mayors. So in a city like Mumbai,half the population lives in slums that do not have the most basic municipal amenities like clean water and affordable housing. The absence of these amenities affects the rest of the city as much as it does those who live in the slums because of the diseases that breed in living conditions that would be considered unfit for human (or animal) habitation in more civilised countries.

So well done Mr Badal for spotting an important problem and now you must go further and put your money where your mouth is by insisting that in Punjab municipal governments will have more rights and more respect. If this does not happen soon,there is every likelihood in the near future that Punjab will be transformed horribly from rural idyll to a state of unmitigated urban squalor.

Meanwhile,can someone in Delhi’s remote corridors of power think seriously about ridding us of that expensive,meddlesome anachronism that is called the Planning Commission. Like the former Soviet Union,from whom we borrowed the idea that officials were the best people to run economies,it belongs in the dustbin of history. If our increasingly leftist government cannot do this because too many officials would be rendered jobless then let the Planning Commission be transformed into a think tank given specific charge of suggesting ways in which our colonial,British Raj methods of governance can be made more suitable to a modern,independent nation.

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