Aruna Roy, Bablu, and Nikhil Dey
The person standing is (I think) D. Srinvas, a state minister, the snowy-hair person sitting on his left is Raghuvansh Prasad Singh. The rest of the people are assorted ministers and bureaucrats.
The person is the pink shirt is Mr. Raju and the person next to him is the Anantapur District Collector. Mary is at the edge of the photo.
Okay, so I saw sooo many interesting/important people this time in Timbaktu/Anantapur. It was a really intense trip with lots of input into my mind for digesting, and hopefully I can get it all down on paper and out of my mind.
I'll start by trying to list out some of the people I met (or just gaped at) during this trip):
Aruna Roy (and Nikhil Dey): For those who care about or keep in touch with development stuff, Aruna Roy is superbig. She would be on my 'A' list of 'celebs I would like to meet'. She has been actively invovled with two of the most far reaching legislations recently (NREGA-National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and RTI - Right to Information). She and the group she works with (MKSS in Rajasthan) seem to be really productive in identifying and producing results on really key fundamental areas that can cause change. I first came across Aruna Roy in the book "Bapu Kuti" ( read my review :-) here , and an interview with the author here). To me it read as a fascinating story of how one person attempted to get deeper and deeper into the questions of development, empowerment etc. and found some solutions in things like Right to Information.
I spent a few lovely minutes along with Aruna Roy and several other people in a room generally chatting, though I was pretty mum throughout and just hanging on to her words. In that short interaction, she came across as a gentle, strong, intelligent, warm, caring, accessible person with a lovely smile.
Nikhil Dey is her comrade-in-arms. I didn't get to interact with him, just glimpsed him here and there. He left early.
Union Minister for Rural Development, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh: He addressed a couple of meetings at the end of the NREGA padayatra. He talked really loudly for a really long time like 45 mins. At the end of it, I don't know about him, but I was really drained. This was the first time I think I have actually heard a politician speak. I was really puzzled by the droning-on-and-on. Finally I came to the conclusion that at some level this kind of behavior by politicians is a demonstration of power. At the end of the talk I was so drained and I theorize at some level (perhaps not conscious) this is a demonstration of power ie. I can keep going until you accept defeat. (I'm not being very clear in explaining this). Anyway later in the conversation with Aruna Roy, it came out that this person is actually a good guy. He worked closely with the NGOs in pushing NREGA legislation through and she gave a nice quote from him, he was complaining about how difficult a time he was having: 'if I go to the PMs house to talk about NREGA, on one side I have to fight with Chidambaram, on another side I have to fight with Montek (Ahluwalia).' His speech was in Hindi so I didn't catch much, but there was some good stuff about how the govt. is willing to spend huge amounts for Delhi Metro, but not on the NREGA, and some good rabble rousing stuff, we'll never give up, we'll keep asking for more money, as much as we need to implement this program properly etc. Certainly a guy I will keep a lookout for in the news from now on.
Montek Ahluwalia (Vice Chairman, Planning Commission, and Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Commerce): No I didn't actually see them. They were supposed to come to Anantapur for this program but they finally skipped it. Disappointing. The interesting story though, is that these people are very against the NREGA as they feel that the money will get misused like all other govt. programs. So the point of inviting them for this meeting was to try to convince them that the program is good. In fact Aruna Roy was not planning to come, but decided to come hearing that they would be here, as she wanted to help convince them of the usefulness of the program.
Assorted AP state ministers: D.Srinivas, Raghuveera Reddy, and some others. I didn't see them much except quite obscured on a stage, and they didn't impress me at all. There was also a woman Union minister (Rukmini or something) and she too was not very visible and didn't speak so nothing to report.
Assorted senior bureaucrats: The most important of them was the AP Commissioner (or Principal Secretary) for Rural Development, one Mr. Raju. He was the key person in organizing this padayatra and came across as quite an intelligent committed person. The collector of Anantapur was there, but not that interesting. Also a couple of other senior women bureaucrats who were quite interesting but I don't want to go into too much detail as they are friends of Mary and I might be intruding on privacy and all.
Several other people from Aruna Roy's group, MKSS : They were here to help in doing the padayatra social audit. A very interesting, committed and fun group of people, I'll write more about them later in describing the padayatra.
A couple of memorable characters in the Anantapur NGO scene -- Narendar Singh Bedi of Young India Project and Malla Reddy of Rural Development Trust. I don't know if I can be quite forthcoming about my impressions of them in this blog. Will write a little more about them later.
And a few more interesting minor characters, and probably some more people who I've forgotten about at the moment, but will come to mind later.
All in all an extremely gratifying week from celeb spotting point of view. I think I will have gotten over some of my awe of development 'superstars' as well as senior govt. poohbahs and politicians, as a result of this interaction and that's a welcome thing.
3 comments:
VK
I am surprised that you got impressed by someone like Raghuvansh - I guess you would be a hard-core Lalu fan. (given that Raghuvansh is a Lalu clone and disciple).
I dont know what your research in Anantpur found - but I too, like Montek's of India would suspect the efficacy of such an audacious project - when we all know the level of corruption and mismanagement govt funds go through.
An oft qouted statement of RG - "In India only 15paise out of a public fund rupee reaches the grassroot - rest all goes into unworthy corrupt pockets" (not exact words). And I think he overstated the funds reaching the deserving people. Only 5 paise reaches...
In such a milieu, its tough for an rational person to believe that such a huge project - given into the hands of corrupt officials will yield any worthwhile results.
Did Jawahar Rozgar yojna's, which have been there for same reason for decades, achieve anything? If yes, then why a new scheme. If no, whats new with this scheme.
Isn't NRGEA the same wine in a new label?
I basically agree with the previous post and am inclined to the view that all monopolies, including the government, are bad at providing any service to anyone.
However, 15% of one rupee that reaches the intended recipient is still better than the alternative of no outreach to the intended recipients. So in the absence of any alternative distribution mechanism, any rational person should still prefer to send the rupee in (via taxes I suppose) to the government scheme.
Arvind
Kustavan --nice comments.
I am not (yet!) a fan of Raghuvansh, I was quoting Aruna Roy's high impression of him. I would not expect Aruna to be taken with a run of the mill politician. Also a guy who is willing to take on the likes of Chidambaram and Montek to pass something like NREGA (unless you argue that he has a lot to gain from it, which is possible) is surely something ?
BTW - I have felt for a long time that Lalu gets an overl bad rap in urban India, because of some irrelavant failings, like his country bumpkin personality. Here are a couple of good things about him:
-- I am surprised by the level of his passion for secularism as evidenced in some of his statements
-- of course of late everybody is ga-ga over his performance as Railway Minister, though I think now they are going overboard the other way on this one.
Your criticism of NREGA is valid, and I found somewhat to my surprise that I haven't been thinking too critically about it. Here are some thoughts however:
-- the fact that the government is bad at delivering services should not itself signal a stop to delivery of those services. Arvind is arguing along those lines. This is a basic humanitarian thing. However it would be wrong to blindly keep delivering services without attempting to correct their flaws. NREGA is a superset of Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, Food for Work etc. So its a worthwhile thing -- its a genuine safety net to the poorest of the poor. Even with the corruption problems its a splendid achievement that we can be proud of (but we have cannot be complacent about, for the reasons you mention). When we are willing to spend huge amounts on defence, Delhi metro etc. , we should also be spending on rural development, (and doing whatever else is necessary to make sure the money reaches safely).
I'll write more about what happened in Anantapur, but there are two things that are relevant to what you said:
-- it was quite a striking experience to go into a village and hear the list of people who have benefited from the scheme: x got 2000 /= from doing some work, y got 1000/- from doing some work. Its very tangible that these people are getting subsistence money out of doing NREGA work and a *lot* of people were getting it and still more were queing up.
-- what we did in Anantapur (a 'social audit' ) is a striking and effective tool to fight the corruption. This is something that Aruna Roy's group came up with in Rajasthan and one of the things that I am so much in awe of her for. What happens is that the government documents (chiefly the 'muster roll' of those who attended work at each worksite) are read out in public and people are asked if the information there is correct. Lots of irregularities come out this way.
People like Aruna also argue that NREGA is also designed better than other schemes, to increase transparency.
I'll end with a snippet of something I read somewhere else: its necessary to 'situate yourself' within any problem rather than analyse it from outside. I think it behooves all of us to take some level of interest in the success of NREGA (or any other government program for that matter), and make sure it does not go down the drain like all other programs.
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