Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
The day Prime Minister Narendra Modi stole Gandhi’s Swachhta Abhiyan (cleanliness drive), preceded by a nerve-racking publicity blitzkrieg which hit metropolitan centers, Government offices included, with an intensity matched only by the weekend’s Hudhud cyclone, unwittingly, perhaps has added another celebratory day to the national calendar.
It was a show unlike any other headed by Mr. Modi himself, that must, according to hired publicists, have brought at least half a billion plus brooms on to the roads to do a cleanup job, the like of one never attempted before. I was tempted to say a billion plus brooms, Modi’s pet allusion to our population, but banished the thought knowing that lazy bones like me, constituting an uninspiring half of the population, wouldn’t have joined the hordes of VIPs — from ward representatives, to cabinet secretaries, MPs and Mantris – to liven up Mr. Modi’s dream of a Swachh Bharat.
Incidentally, the Abhiyan will ensure that each household in the country, the rural ones particularly, have a shauchalaya (toilet) of its own by 2019, something to do with Gandhiji’s 150th birth anniversary. Hold your breath, I told myself after witnessing the total lull in the Swachhta Abhiyan that followed the pompous display that marked its launching.
Am not trying to run down the campaign nor do I question the nobility of Mr. Modi’s thought process. It’s just that such campaigns, as long as they remain mere photo-ops, with TV crews breathing down every neck, including the broom-wielding VIP’s, giving it the appearance of a well-rehearsed farce; such Abhiyans will remain just that.
I read a two-page quick survey of two localities, the rich one and the poor one, the difference coincidently marked out by a place of worship, telling the opulent from the deprived, graphically reproducing the horror that it can be to keep a place clean. Cleanliness, truth to tell, can’t be foisted. It is not necessary that everyone who begins his day with a surya pranam on his terrace or on the patch of green outdoors is equally concerned about keeping his environs clean, the immediate environs. Gandhi believed in cleanliness and he wasn’t loath to clean up his own toilet or to insist that his wife Kasturba did likewise. It is no fault of Modi’s if people do not see the need for swachhta through the same prism as his.
That is not to say that such abhiyans tend not to work. When such movements are made out to be a sarkari ritual, more tokenish than real, they are bound to fail. Never mind the political mileage one may seem to have gained or even the good intentions that may initially have prompted such a drive. It is ephemeral and in the long run non-productive as well.
I am not questioning Mr. Modi’s motives .The problem, in fact, lies more with Mr. Modi’s addiction to sloganeering, his quick-fire responses/solutions. I have indeed lost count of the abhiyans the Prime Minister has launched or blessed in the first few months of his premiership. He obviously has a spirited team of back-up boys whose full-time job it appears to be to come up with fresh catch phrases, slogans to keep you imagining what it might be the next day.
The other day the Prime Minister came up with a new one : our development must be “demand driven” as opposed to “supply driven”. Whatever that means. It’s like Make in India and not Made in India. Or the latest one, that we must open doors to more constructive politics.
And the panacea as dictated by him is that each MP, each MLA should adopt at least one village each year for all-round development, the implementation of which will be aided by his/her MPLAD, the funds which every legislator has at his disposal for developing his constituency. This, says Modi, is not a scheme about money. It’s people driven, with people’s participation, with the MP’s leading the way.
These funds, in any case, have been available to the legislators for many, many years. How come hardly any constituency, parliamentary, assembly or municipal, has little to show, for the money spent on constituency development works. There obviously is need for spot auditing of all such expenses incurred in addition to what may already be included in the guidelines provided to the legislators when the scheme was initially introduced.
Failure to do so would only amount to opening yet another window of opportunity to the corrupt, legitimizing corruption at the grassroots, as it were. Mr. Modi believes that with the adoption of one village for a year by each MP 2500 villages would have been covered by 2019, the number going up by another 6000 villages if the MLAs too adopted villages similarly.
Sounds very nice. But the poor record of the legislators, when it comes to utilization of the funds at their disposal, doesn’t inspire confidence. But there is no stopping Mr. Modi as he goes about announcing developmental schemes rather gleefully and routinely at that.
Having invited both domestic and foreign investors to Make in India and not Made in India (frankly I can’t tell the difference) Modi during the week announced half a dozen other schemes that, his vision holds, will offer much relief to manufacturers from cumbersome labour laws and simultaneously provide skilled manpower to them. Something in the Margaret Thatcher mould which some might even describe as an anti-labour stance.
Mr. Modi has predictably chosen to provide a not so innovative title for his new package : ‘Shrameva Jayate’. Does that remind you of something? Of course, Satyameva Jayate. Experience tells us that truth does not necessarily always prevail. One hopes that with a whole new slew of labour laws, some of these of an earlier vintage but quite progressive will help growth, Mr. Modi’s magic mantra.
Then you have the Rashtriya Swasthiya Bima Yojana, centralised issuance of smart cards, third party audits and call centers. Very high sounding list, the newly enunciated Modi programme makes. Very impressive. But then you have the cynics pointing at the cat’s tail showing out of the bag; the scheme will be merged with the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension scheme to provide comprehensive health insurance to unorganised workers sector. Probably one of those UPA schemes which remained unimplemented for lack of will. Mr. Modi had at the same slipped back into the campaign mode, flitting in and out of Haryana where he hoped his party may finally be able to get the better of the Congress. Even more vigorous was his unduly prolonged campaign, for a Prime Minister at least, in Maharashtra where he has tallied some 30 odd poll rallies, dealing out the same old potions that had been his stock in trade during the parliamentary polls. Not a word about the unceasing price spiral.
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