issue 10

June 16-30, 2010 | Vol. 01 Issue 10 | Rs 30

Not bad, ahmedabad!

24X7 water, power. Wide roads, great BRT. Cash-rich corporation. Something’s going on here. p.26

A couple’s soulful songs are working wonders and bringing in change p.08

Urban development secretary M Ramachandran on JNNURM p.38

Shiv Visvanathan on the cultural politics of sycophancy and censorship p.22

www.GovernanceNow.com 3

FoundeRS Team

Gautam Adhikari Markand Adhikari Anurag Batra([email protected])

26 Not bad, ahmedabad! From the congested city of the 1990s to the

sprawling metro of 2010, Ahmedabad offers lessons in urban renewal

16 home to the nation’s best assets managers The mandatory disclosure before elections was

to limit MPs’ runaway riches. In the absence of follow-up checks, it has ended up legitimising their questionable acquisitions

33 Stations of stench About 63 lakh people travelling by suburban trains

in Mumbai rely on patience or prayer if they need to answer the call of nature

46 highway heist Seemingly innocuous addendums are creating hav-

oc on the highways. Instead of the biggies, midgets and unmentionable cronies are having a field day

42 Gandhiji was right. We have been had. Our politicians have done to democracy and

governance exactly what the Mahatma predicted they would do!

38 Interview with urban development secre-tary m Ramachandran

“The idea is not just delivery of projects, but also an improve-ment in the ways cit-ies are governed”

08 Songs, for a change

A couple in Gujarat has turned to a novel medium for protests or awareness cam-paigns: they sing songs to bring about a change

44 biometrics is not sci-fi mythology

It will soon be an im-portant, and integral, part of all reforms in governance

50 Last Word Tragedy of Bhopal

contentseditor B V Rao [email protected]

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People’s editor Anupam Goswami

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assistant editors Samir Sachdeva, Kapil Bajaj

Special Correspondents Brajesh Kumar, Trithesh Nandan

Principal Correspondents Geetanjali Minhas, Danish Raza, Jasleen Kaur

Correspondents Shivani Chaturvedi, Neha Sethi, Sarthak Ray, Sonal Matharu

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Photographer Ravi Choudhary

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asst. manager HR Monika Sharma Design consultants LdI Graphics Pvt. Ltd. www.liquiddesigns.in [email protected] Printed and published by markand adhi-kari. Printed at utkarsh art Press Pvt Ltd, d-9/3, okhla Industrial area Phase I, new delhi, 110020. Tel: 011-41636301, and published at 24a, mindmill Corpo-rate Tower, Sector 16a, Film City, noida 201301. Tel: 0120-3920555. editor: B V Rao (Responsible for selection of news under the PRB act)

Volume 01 Issue 10

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Cover photo: Harsh Shah

GovernanceNow | June 16-30, 20104

Rediscovery of Gandhi-Nehrunarendra modi’s appropriation of Gandhi and rejection of nehru is political deceit, not sense of history

I f the future is bleak, turn to history. That seems to be the only intellectual diversion available to Bharatiya Janata Party leaders these days, that is whenever they are free of interne-cine feuding. In a gathering of some BJP chief ministers and senior leaders in mumbai, ostensibly for a workshop on good

governance, it was the turn of Gujarat chief minister narendra modi to give the delegates a lesson or two in history.

In his inimitable, rather “bullish”, style Modi discovered India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal nehru’s “phoney love” for children. To buttress his point, he said that the celebration of nehru’s birth anni-versary as “children’s day” has hardly improved their lot. But the real mantra for people’s welfare, according to modi, remains Gandhi’s tal-isman: “Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poor-est and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.”

Gandhi offered this talisman in 1948—as perhaps one of his last pearls of wisdom before his assassination. Since then it has adorned academic curriculum and has been frequently recalled by successive prime ministers and finance ministers whenever they need to re-em-phasise their pro-poor credentials. The practice still continues as no-body frowns upon a political master swearing by Bapu’s ideals, if not in deeds then at least in words. modi cannot be faulted on this count.

But what rankles is modi’s inference that nehru’s contribution to the country is heavily outweighed by Sardar Patel and Lal Bahadur Shastri’s sacrifices for the nation. There is nothing wrong if Modi holds a particular view of history. What is unacceptable is the inter-pretation of history in such a manner as to pit one icon against the other. modi was not only purveying distorted history but also trying to appropriate the legacy of Patel and Shastri, ignoring the fact that both of them served as close confidants of India’s first prime minister. and, after all, nehru was mahatma Gandhi’s choice.

It would be too naïve to expect modi to be historically correct. Given the shrewd politician that he is, modi is hardly ignorant of the fate of his party colleagues who dabbled in history. L K ad-vani found himself grossly margin-alised when he tried to read non-conformist history about Jinnah to the RSS leadership. Similarly Jas-want Singh found himself expelled when he tried to rewrite the histo-ry of India’s partition and extolled Jinnah’s virtues as a secular and progressive leader.

In fact, modi was instrumental in getting Jaswant Singh expelled at the party’s Shimla national execu-tive in 2009. He was the only chief

E D I T O R I A L S

modi’s rejection of Jawaharlal Nehru is just a manifestation of the Sangh Parivar’s deep-seated desire to tailor history to suit its tunnel vision.

Former chief justice of India a H ahmadi made an interesting observation while defending his decision to dilute charges against union Carbide executives in the Bhopal gas tragedy case. He said: “There

is no concept of vicarious liability. If my driver is driving and meets with a fatal accident, I don’t be-come liable to be prosecuted under 304-II (of IPC)”. That’s highly debatable but that makes Warren anderson (the then chairman of union Carbide Cor-poration of the uS, the parent company of the Bho-pal-based pesticide plant) the owner of the car and the eight who were tried and sentenced to a mere two years of imprisonment by a Bhopal trial court

the actual drivers! They were the ones running the pesticide plant in Bhopal—its chairman, direc-tor, vice-president, works manager, assistant works manager, production manager, plant superinten-dent and production assistant. They were directly li-able for the disaster by Justice ahmadi’s logic! But he diluted the charges against all of them mak-ing them liable only for negligence that would entail jail of only two years. So Justice ahmadi is defeated by his own usound logic.

The former CJI was bold enough to make two other comments to PTI in the same interview (June 8, 2010) worthy of notice. He said “(more) compen-sation could have been granted” and that “it was

unfortunate that anderson was allowed to go in the first place because he was the principal offender and unless the principal offender is there the sub-sidiary offender might say that if he can go scot-free, why do you want to punish us?”

note the contradiction in Justice ahmadi’s de-scription of anderson, ruling out his “vicarious lia-bility” at one point and then holding him “the prin-cipal offender” at another in the same interview. But that is not our point. The point is who let an-derson go? all that is known so far is that the then chief minister of madhya Pradesh, arjun Singh, re-ceived a call and ordered that anderson, who was in police custody in Bhopal, be freed and flown to new delhi on his way to the uS. Who ordered him to free anderson?

arjun Singh has refused to speak and so we would probably not know. as for the compensation, we know that the Supreme Court brokered a settle-ment with the union Carbide and accepted $470 million that the company was offering as against

What do we do when the three pillars of governance conspire against us?We must answer that to prevent the tragedy of the Bhopal verdict


$3.3 billion that the government of India, represent-ing the Bhopal victims, had demanded. This meant a paltry Rs 12,410 for each of the victims. We don’t know why the agreement was arrived at the lowest end of the bargain.

The Indian government had also gone to a uS dis-trict court to determine the parent company’s liabil-ity in the case but it was dismissed after our legal legend, late nani Palkhivala, argued convincingly on behalf of union Carbide that the Indian judicial system was capable of handling the Bhopal case. now we know better.

We also know that the district administration and other government officials who were responsible for giving the clearance to set up the pesticide plant which was using highly toxic methyl-isocyanate (mIC) gas and those who failed to monitor and en-sure that all safety measures were in place, especial-ly after the earlier incidents of toxic gas leakages, were not booked or prosecuted.

So, effectively, nobody is really held responsible or

made accountable, at least not by any substantive way for the world’s biggest industrial disaster that claimed about 15,000 lives and grievously injured several lakh others. now our law minister m Veer-appa moily says lessons have been learnt and a new law will be made to deal with such disasters.

The real issue, however, is not that our govern-ment has woken up to the fact that we need a legal framework to tackle disasters of the Bhopal kind. That could have been done very easily at any point in all these 26 years by simply adding a section to the Indian Penal Code to distinguish the Bhopal disaster from a road accident that it eventually became and prescribing a stiffer punishment. That’s all.

The real issue here is how do you deal with a situa-tion where all the three pillars of our governance—the executive, the legislature and the judiciary—fail or conspire against the citizen? That is the ques-tion we need to ask. The founders of the constitu-tion created the three pillars to counter-balance each other. not to stand against the citizen.

minister, even from the BJP-ruled states, to ban Jaswant Singh’s book.

In all probability, Modi’s superfi-cial rejection of Jawaharlal nehru is just a manifestation of the Sangh Parivar’s deep-seated desire to tailor history to suit its tunnel vi-sion. In the history of India’s in-dependence, the RSS and its icons find a place only as footnotes. This is why the RSS-BJP always tries to discover deep distrust between nehru and Patel and seeks to ap-propriate Patel’s legacy. Similar-ly, veteran BJP leaders like atal Bihari Vajpayee and advani used to envision themselves in the role model of nehru and Patel, respec-tively. That they turned out to be caricatures of their idols is a dif-ferent matter altogether. The six-year regime of the BJP-led nda emerged as a poor imitation of the previous Congress regimes.

of late, the Sangh Parivar’s fond-ness for history seems to have grown even more following its successive defeats at the hus-tings. modi and his ilk are seeking recourse to history to make up for their deficit in ideology and commitment. But it would be too naïve to believe that history could act as their saviour.

After excelling in fiction and non-fic-tion, Arundhati Roy has turned to an-other form of literature: clarifications and rejoinders. And we are reading

the fine print only because she is the only authentic source of the Maoists’ viewpoint—more so after she redefined embedded jour-nalism with her Dantewada visit. She recently made a rare clarification. She says she nev-er wrote the phrase “Gandhians with a gun”, used to describe Maoists in her March essay for Outlook. The phrase appeared in the sub-headline and Roy says it was written by the magazine. But then the British newspaper Guardian also carried the same article, un-der the headline “Gandhi, But With Gun.”

Addressing a public meeting in Mumbai in early June, Roy reiterated: “I never called them Gandhians with guns. It was a blurb car-ried by a magazine. What I meant was that they (Naxals) are more Gandhian than any other Gandhian in their consumption pat-tern...their lifestyle, which is in stark contrast to their violent means of resistance.”

We need to react to the clarification since we had also joined the debate (“Arundhati, propagandist with a fat dictionary?”). First-ly, the Outlook article was published in the March 29 edition, on stands March 22. Roy’s clarification, disowning the phrase, comes

more than two months later. If she disagreed with the three words, she could have pointed it out much earlier. She didn’t.

Secondly, it is not exactly clear why she was on the defensive. She did not, after all, with-draw her “Gandhi’s pious humbug” comment employed to ridicule the “superiority of the non-violent way” of rebellion. Or her making fun of the non-violent means of resistance like hunger strikes which she had supported and advocated in the past.

Importantly, Roy is yet to explain what made her change her mind on non-violence. In several essays (particularly on the Narma-da Bachao Andolan), she was all for non-vio-lence, all for Gandhian ways. One can certain-ly evolve one’s ideology, support Gandhi one day and (say) Narendra Modi the next day, but as a public intellectual, she is expected to ex-plain. She cannot be preaching non-violence one day and exhorting us to take up arms the next—without explanation. That’s the clarifi-cation she should’ve given, instead of blam-ing her ideological confusion on others.

In her Mumbai lecture, she explained this much: “(The) Gandhian way of opposition needs an audience, which is absent here.” Vi-olence, on the other hand, has a ready audi-ence, which according to Roy is the sole de-cider in matters like this. Sad.

How do you deal with a situation where all the three pillars of our governance—the executive, the legislature and the judiciary—fail or conspire against the citizen? The founders of the constitution created the three pillars to counter-balance each other. Not to stand against the citizen.

Roy rejoinder: No gun intendedArundhati’s delayed “what-I-meant-was” leaves much to be clarified


With passion, in simple wordsI finished reading Governance Now (May 16-31). I can say that I have read an Indian magazine cover to cover after a very long time. It was a compelling and engaging read. It is a magazine of integrity. It has a straightforward honest editorial style. The writers and columnists are not overbear-ing or pompous. They have passion and they express it in simple words. Many In-dian magazines and newspaper editorials are now impossible to read because they are fake voices of thesaurus. There is no show-off of knowledge or language skills in Governance Now. No false pathos. Such clear eyed journalism is lacking in India. The stories on sports (“Make the biggest contribution to Indian sport, Mr Kalmadi. Just go!”), the pink sari movement (“Robin Hood wears a pink sari”), on the Manmohan Singh government (“I need food, not Right to

Food”) are all very relevant, direct and bold. Ajay Goyal

Games politicians playThis refers to “make the biggest contribu-tion to Indian sport, mr Kalmadi. Just go!” (Governance now, may 16-31). The decision of sports minister m S Gill to restrict the ten-ure of the heads of sports bodies to a maxi-mum of 12 years is a step in the right direc-tion. many politicians have been running these sports bodies with huge budgets for years like their family shops. But the need is to altogether abolish the role of politicians in sports bodies.Being in legislature is in itself a very re-sponsible task which requires full-time at-tention of elected representatives towards

their constituencies and voters. Hence no parliamentarian and state legislator (includ-ing ministers) should be allowed to hold any post in private bodies and sports associa-tions, because they are public servants and paid by the exchequer to represent their respective constituencies and voters. all sports bodies including BCCI and IPL should have effective government control so that they may be answerable as public authori-ties under the RTI act for their working and budgets. Subhash Chandra AgrawalNew Delhi

This is regarding “Nithari and the collapse of governance” (Governance Now, June 1-15). When Nithari killings came to light in De-cember 2006, the entire word went numb for days watching mutilated body parts of innocent children being taken out from the nullah in the front and rear side of the house of the alleged killers. It was rightly called ‘India’s shame’. Now three and half years later our government tells us that they are not investigating the lapses and culpa-bility of those public authorities which were in position to save many lives but remained in slumber for years when killings went on.Does it mean our public authorities are not accountable? If that is the response of CBI to an RTI filed by Commodore Batra; our government once again has brought the nation and its people to shame.Why are our prime minister and our par-liamentarians mute spectators when it comes to providing justice to poor fami-lies of Nithari? These are the same peo-ple who shouted their lungs out when the killings came to their notice.Dear prime minister, before you talk glob-ally, save your thoughts for our poor who lost their children due to sheer apa-thy and callousness of our governance.

Swami AgniveshNew Delhi

We owe a debt of gratitude to you, Lokesh bhai, for keeping the Nithari killings in public memory. This particular case is the

most powerful testimony of the utter cor-ruption, callousness and criminality of our system of mal-governance. The failure of each and every institution in respond-ing to the disappearance of more than 38 children and young girls, blatant at-tempts to shield the guilty tells us that there is no such thing as rule of law in In-dia. Even though there are some honest of-ficers and politicians at every level, we are actually being ruled by a criminal mafia.But we have no choice but to go on, as you are doing. Wish you all strength in this battle.

Madhu KishwarEditor, Manushi, and professor, Centre for the Study of Developing SocietiesNew Delhi

Commodore Lokesh Batra’s commend-able struggle shows there are still indi-viduals amongst us who fight on regard-less of the media spotlight moving away from the case. I feel the horrific Nith-ari case must be thoroughly re-inves-tigated if only to pin accountability on the public authorities that failed to act when all the warning signs were there.

Sandeep UnnithanNew Delhi

R E A D E R S ’ S P A C E

Write to Governance Now We invite your suggestions, reactions to the stories and analyses and, of course, your own take on all matters related to governance. You can email or send snail mail. All letters must accompany your postal address.

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the man who keeps digging out truth of Nithari


peopleafter a forgettable stint at

national Knowledge Com-mission (nKC), Sam Pitro-

da has some new assignments. The man, who gets a lot of credit for India’s telecom revolu-tion, will now head ‘In-dia smart grid task force’.

The task force will suggest ways to use information tech-nology to improve electricity transmis-sion and distribu-tion across the country

– smart grid, in brief.designated as ‘Pm’s advisor on

public information infrastructure and innovations’, Pitroda is also reportedly working on setting up

a countrywide network of food banks for the poor, with

help from a Stanford uni-versity think-tank.

Let’s hope his efforts at efficient distribution of electricity and food would be more suc-cessful than those he

made at nKC to reform India’s education.

The government devises elaborate ruses to reward Gandhi family-loyalists. The

second one-year extension given to cabinet secretary Km Chan-drasekhar, for example, is be-lieved to be an exercise in clear-ing the decks for Pulok Chatterjee (59), a bureaucrat who enjoys the confidence of Sonia Gandhi and her children.

This will eliminate all contend-ers belonging to the 1972 and 1973 IaS batches from the race for cabinet secretary post next year, neatly placing Chatterjee at the top bureaucratic post.

His term as a World Bank execu-tive director ends in June ‘11.

It seems loyalty beats any other consideration when it comes to top bureaucratic appointments.

Conviction of Keshub mahindra (85) and other Union Carbide In-dia (UCIL) officials in the Bhopal gas tragedy only reinforces the belief that in India justice is de-

layed for so long as to be virtually denied. It’s nevertheless a very rare case: a super rich industrialist has been convicted in a country where the system turns a blind eye to the crimes of the wealthy.

The system often goes much beyond; it’s eager to glorify the rich.

In 2002, the nda government wanted to honour mahindra, who was non-executive chairman of uCIL at the time of the tragedy, with Padma Bhushan. He had declined the honour, citing the Bhopal law-suit while as-serting his innocence in the case.

The court that convicted mahindra on June 7 did not think so. The case is, how-ever, a bigger indictment of the system that sweeps the principle of accountability un-der the carpet when it comes to the rich and the powerful.

the buck never stops here

Will food, electricity benefit from Pitroda wizardry?Reformist VP?

Loyalty has its own merits

Presidents and vice presidents of India spend most of their time delivering speeches. So does Hamid Ansari, the current vice

president, except that some of his recently expressed views amount to well thought out suggestions for badly need-ed reforms.

For instance, he favours CAG audit of societies, trusts,

autonomous organisations, and public private partner-

ships (PPPs) so that fast grow-ing expenditure of public funds through these bodies could be made in a transparent and ac-countable manner.

Ansari’s views are in conso-nance with the CAG’s recent ob-servation that a large percent-age of government spending remains unaudited.

As chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Ansari has also been prodding political parties to

agree on measures to minimize the time lost in stalling of parlia-mentary proceedings.

If he continues in a similar vein, Ansari may well be recognised as our most reformist vice president.

8 GovernanceNow | June 16-30, 2010

Brajesh Kumar

People of mandal block were surprised when they heard of a couple from ahmedabad. It was may 2005 and this block

in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan was witnessing communal riots for two months. Houses were burnt, shops ransacked and leaders from the two communities continued to spew venom. In such a charged at-mosphere, what were the husband and wife going to do, singing songs of communal harmony?

Though Vinay mahajan, 47, and Charul Bharwada, 42, often known only collectively as Vinay-Charul, were coming on the invitation of the local eid-diwali samiti, some people did not want them there and went from house to house tell-ing people the programme was cancelled.

even the administration, which had failed to contain the violence, cranked up and appealed to the samiti to postpone the perfor-mance. The district collector him-self asked the organisers to recon-sider the plan, as the situation was quite volatile.

at six in the evening, an hour be-fore the performance, the samiti

“Yeh lashon ka bazar hai kyon/In lashon par takrar hai kyon/Yahan jine ka koi mol nahin/ mar jane ka ek lakh kyon?”

bards of ahmedabad

people politics policy performanceSinging For Change

(Why this bazar of the corpses/Why this squabbling over them/Where there’s no value for life/Why is a corpse worth Rs 1 lakh?)

9 www.GovernanceNow.com

started erecting the stage at the busiest intersection of mandal town. By seven, the couple, armed with a dafli and ghungharu, began with a song titled mandir-masjid.

as they rendered their self-com-posed lyrics in their haunting voic-es, ‘Mandir, masjid, girjaghar ne/Baant diya bhagwan ko/Dharti baanti/Sagar banta/Mat banto in-saan ko..”, crowds began to gath-er. (Temples, mosques, church-es have divided the Gods/divided the earth/divided the seas/Please don’t divide people.)

Their number swelled from a few hundreds to thousands by late evening. Was it the words that made them ponder their collective deeds or the singing, with a ring of concern and appeal, that soothed the ravaged hearts?

“People were so touched by the songs that many of them started singing along with us. We were surprised to see many of them in tears,” Vinay recalled.

as the evening came to an emo-tional end, some people came up to Vinay-Charul, confessed their involvement in the riots and want-ed to atone. Some sarpanches in-vited the couple to perform in their riot-hit villages.

“We have performed in similar, vicious settings, especially after the Gujarat violence of 2002, but

we had not expected this ‘truth-and-reconciliation’ moment ever,” Vinay said.

Weren’t they afraid, especially after the campaign against their performance? “There was some tension and we did discuss it, but there was no going back,” Charul added.

Their songs of harmony worked wonders and the area has not re-ported violence again.

For Vinay-Charul, such wonders are becoming commonplace: what happened in mandal was repeat-ed in a village in mehsana district of north Gujarat after the 2002 ri-ots. It was their soulful songs that brought about a change of heart among village elders who wanted minority families evicted.

It is precisely such moving reac-tions from their audiences from across the country that have kept the couple going after they quit their cushy professional jobs.

Chanting a new pathVinay, an Indian Institute of man-agement, ahmedabad (IIm-a) graduate, worked with a multi-national and Charul, an architect, was a consultant with an architec-tural firm before they formed Lok-naad in 1992. Since then, the cou-ple has performed in every part of the country and created several

songs, some of which have become anthems for campaigners working on issues such as the right to infor-mation (“Janane ka haq”), unem-ployment (“Haathon ko kaam”), militancy (“Beta jaldi ghar aana”) and communalism (“mandir-mas-jid...”, “Insaan hain hum”).

Born in Gurudaspur in Punjab, Vinay studied engineering at the Punjab agricultural university, Ja-landhar, applied for the IIms and got through to the top one. But he had not planned what followed, he said. “While I didn’t know what I would do with my life, I was sure I would not be a 9-to-5 man,” he said in his mild-mannered way with a disarming smile.

Though he had been writing lyr-ics since college days, he had nev-er seriously thought about making it his career. “I used to write po-ems and sing gazals in college but never took it seriously,” he said.

What added social-political sen-sitivity to his creativity was the communal violence of ahmed-abad in 1985, the year he joined the IIm. The wanton death and de-struction that he witnessed in the city led him to write his first song, “mandir-masjid...”, which went on to become one of his most success-ful songs. It remains highly popu-lar among activists.

“It was a terrible moment in my life. Coming from a border area in Gurudaspur in Punjab, where muslims live harmoniously along with Hindus, the blood thirst of the same communities against each other shook me up,” he said.

He penned that song and sang to his friends and activists, but full-fledged performances had to wait till he met Charul in the scenic IIm-A campus in 1987. They got mar-ried in 1989 and the couple start-ed singing in more formal settings.

Unlike Vinay, Charul finds it dif-ficult to pinpoint a particular mo-ment in her life that turned her into a singer activist. “It wasn’t like I met Vinay one day and decided to leave my job and turn into an ac-tivist,” she said. The change came more gradually for her.

as a student of architecture in mumbai, she had a keen inter-est in appropriate technology for which she often traveled to many

Vinay and Charul at their home in Ahmedabad.

photo: hArsh shAh


people politics policy performanceSinging For Change

states. during one of her visits to remote villages in Chhattisgarh, she witnessed from up close rural India and problems faced by its poor inhabitants. “The difficult life of villagers and tribals made me think hard on what I wanted to do in life.”

meanwhile, the meeting with Vi-nay happened, following which they kept in touch. during their frequent interactions, they realised their sensitivities were similar and both wanted to utilise their skills toward some sort of social work.

“We were sure of aligning our tal-ent for broader social issues,” re-called Vinay.

moreover, it helped matters that Charul too had a good voice. “ev-eryone in my family has had some background in music and people said I could sing well,” she said.

after their marriage, the couple chose ahmedabad to settle down. “one of us had to know the local language for our kind of work and since Charul belonged to the city and I too had spent a few years here, it was an easy choice,” said Vinay.

Initially, both of them carried on with their respective jobs in the corporate world.

In the day time, they would go to their respective jobs and in eve-nings it would be Vinay on daf-li, Charul playing ghungharu, and both singing songs of their own. However, soon they realised there was a glitch: the kind of work they wanted to do needed more time.

“moreover, there was sometimes a conflict of interest. We were pen-ning songs for the narmada move-ment even as I was working on a project for a five-star hotel. The two cannot go together,” Charul said.

Vinay added: “We were not sure where to begin so we started tak-ing up research study projects in Gujarat to know the state better and familiarise ourselves with the real, ground issues. So that’s how we waded into the social issues of Gujarat, whether it was water scar-city in Kutch, livelihood of the pas-toral community, tribal areas or salt workers.”

Wanting to know more about the people and the issues they face,

Vinay once set off on a 500-km cy-cle tour of Saurashtra. as they be-gan traveling, they gradually got a hang of a plethora of problems. meantime, their conviction in composing and singing also grew.

They were also inspired by a va-riety of performances in ahmed-abad including some by the Jana natya mandli, modern folk sing-ers from Kolkata, poets with a so-cial conscience and the Punjab Lok Sabhayacharak manch led by Gursharan Singh.

Words – with faces behind them“We zeroed in on songs as a me-dium primarily because we want-ed to communicate whatever we understood from our field visits,” Charul said.

“For example, take this report,” Vinay said, pointing to a fat vol-ume on the condition of salt work-ers that was lying on his desk in his office in Vastrapur. “Only a few people will bother to read it. It is technical. and, moreover, people in villagers don’t read such re-ports.” So, it made sense to trans-late their research in a few easy-to-understand, rhyming lines, which can be sung to people.

and the rapport they established with farmers and fishermen, for-est dwellers and tribals through their travels ensured that they found the right words for their songs, words that went straight to the heart of the common man.

“all those friends that we have made in our field study form part of our lyrics. So when we sing the songs we are not singing abstract lines, there are faces behind them. Kama Bai Rabari, from Saurash-tra, Sawabhai from Kutch. Their faces come to you, so you know these problems are not abstract. It’s not a poet or a singer singing. It’s the feeling, knowledge, learn-ing of a researcher who is singing about his friends. He is not singing about a community somewhere,” Vinay said.

Having said that, the creative process takes its own time. “The ideas for the song come easily, but it takes weeks and months to thrash out the wordings,” Vi-nay said. “While we both brain-storm on the lyrics, the tunes are

“All those friends that we have made in our field study form part of our lyrics. So when we sing the songs we are not singing abstract lines, there are faces behind them. Kama Bai Rabari, from Saurashtra, Sawa Bhai from Kutch. Their faces come to you, so you know these problems are not abstract. Its not a poet or a singer singing. It’s the feeling, knowledge, learning of a researcher who is singing about his friends. He is not singing about a community somewhere.” Vinay Mahajan


exclusively Vinay’s,” Charul added.The lyrics of “mare gam naave

pani (There’s no water in my vil-lage)”, one of their popular songs on water scarcity in Kutch, came primarily from Vinay’s cycle trek in Saurashtra. Vinay original-ly wrote the song in Hindi, but it was the Gujarati version (penned by Charul) that became a hit. “We have never sung the Hindi ver-sion,” Charul said. Written in 1993, it continues to find an immediate connect in large parts of drought-prone Kutch and Saurashtra.

“Lashon ka bazaar (The market of corpses)”, a powerful song on the politics of compensation doles meted out to victims of natural di-sasters, was written after they vis-ited Kandla following the devastat-ing cyclone in 1998. “Thousands who had died could have been saved had the state reacted fast,” recalled Charul. as the govern-ment announced a compensation of Rs 1 lakh for victims, there was a maddening clamour for the booty.

“Whoever found a body would come up to claim the compensa-tion; it seemed as if there was a market of corpses,” said Charul. The scene was so revolting that the lyrics came automatically: “Yeh lashon ka bazar hai kyon/In lashon par takrar hai kyon/

Yahan jine ka koi mol nahin/ Mar jane ka ek lakh kyon?” (Why this bazar of the corpses/Why this squabbling over them/Where there’s no value for life/Why is a corpse worth Rs 1 lakh?)

after “mandir masjid...”, they re-turned to the theme of communal strife in 1998 when they wrote “In-saan hain hum”. The song on iden-tity politics found its resonance in the aftermath of the 2002 riots.

an audio Cd, titled “Insaan Hain Hum: Lakeeron Se Banti Insaani-yat Ke naam” and containing their several offerings on the theme, was released after the riots with an appeal to say no to violence and hatred within and across the bor-ders. It came with posters, stickers and a two-hour ‘Insaan Hain Hum’ performance module.

The bouquet of songs has also been performed on stage more than 150 times across the coun-try. The organisers and audiences include schools, colleges, institu-tions, citizens’ forums, profession-als’ bodies, executives, business people and rights organisations.

Anthem of RTI campaignersTheir biggest hit and a song that made them a household name came in 2004. Titled ‘janane ka haque’, it became the theme song

for the Right to Information act that came into force in 2005. “Since many people associated with the RTI campaign knew us and our work, they wanted us to write a song for the RTI act,” Vinay said.

They composed the lyrics and sang it live at a national convention for RTI in delhi in 2004. The song has been translated into 13 lan-guages and nCeRT wants to include it in its syllabus. The song is also popular in Bangladesh and Sri Lan-ka. It is a minor hit on YouTube too.

What makes their songs so ap-pealing to the audience is their ability to communicate through the language people understand and their conscious effort to avoid being judgmental. “We never try to act as arbiters, and present the is-sue threadbare, leaving the audi-ence to decide what is wrong and what is right,” Vinay explained.

Sagar Rabari, secretary of the Gu-jarat Lok Samiti who has known the couple for many years, said it is the right mix of dil and dimag (thought and emotion) in their lyr-ics that move those listening to them. “I have heard them sing and the impact of their songs is power-ful and instant. They are impres-sive,” he said.

Harinesh Pandya who heads Jan-path, an organisation working on a number of social issues including RTI said the couple are the ‘dar-lings’ of RTI activists. “We could not have imagined the kind of im-pact their song ‘Janane ka haque’ has had on the right to information campaign. Their lyrics so beauti-fully delineate the expectations we have from the law. It has rightly become the theme song of the RTI activists,” he said.

So how do they feel when their songs move people and work won-ders? “It’s difficult to describe that actually,” Charul said. “obviously there is a sense of satisfaction, but more than that, it’s the realisation that there is a possibility of change that makes us happy,” she added.

To which, Vinay added: “The pos-sibility of such change of heart eggs us on and motivates us to keep composing and singing wher-ever and whenever we can.” n

[email protected]

The couple with students of Apeejay School in Delhi.


Jasleen Kaur

Scissor and Style, a modest one-room beauty parlour operating out of a delhi development au-thority-built flat in south Del-hi’s Kalkaji colony, is testament

to a proud achievement. When Santosh Bhavnot, a 44-year-old housewife, stepped out of domesticity and completed voca-tional training for six months, she imme-diately landed a job offer but decided in favour of setting up a business of her own. eight months later, she knows her parlour will take a while to get established. But, already, she is managing to pay Rs 4,500

as monthly rent for the premises and Rs 2,000 each to the two girls she has em-ployed as assistants.

Bhavnot, like many others, owes her leap to the 1992 asian marathon champi-on and arjuna award winner Sunita Go-dara who runs a training centre in Kalkaji.

This is one among 94 such Gender Re-source Centres (GRCs) functioning across delhi. The centre is being run under the delhi government’s mission Convergence, launched in August 2008, which evolved from the Bhagidari (partnership) scheme launched in 2000. under the Bhagidari scheme, the government sought to bridge the gap between the various government departments and the citizens by facilitat-ing regular interactions with the resident

at 51, asian marathon champion Sunita Godara is yet to hang up her running shoes. But now her goal is to empower fellow women to stand tall on their feet by teaching them vocational skills at a centre that she runs in association with delhi government

Run, Sunita, Run

people politics policy performanceGovernance By Partnership

photos: rAvi ChoudhAry

13www.GovernanceNow.com

welfare associations and traders asso-ciations. mission Convergence, on the other hand, aimed to provide 47 dif-ferent welfare schemes through a sin-gle window with a total budget of Rs 650 crore per annum. Such centres empower women from economically weaker sections through initiatives in health, literacy and income generation.

all such GRCs were launched in part-nership with civil society organisations to reach out to the women in target ar-eas with vulnerable families. The fami-lies were to be identified on the basis of residence, social status and occupa-tion. So homeless families and the fam-ilies living in notified slums, non-no-tified slums or resettlement colonies became eligible. So did the socially de-prived groups, including households headed by women or children and families having old or differently-abled people. The third group included the occupationally vulnerable groups, in-cluding those earning their livelihood as rag pickers, construction workers, street vendors, casual domestic work-ers or cycle rickshaw drivers.

as per the government’s estimate, more than 16,000 women have already benefited from vocational training and more than 55,000 women from legal aid.

Classes are held in two batches of 25 women each at these centres, which impart training in cutting and tailor-ing, embroidery, beauty culture and computer education free of cost.

“one day I saw a few girls from my locality going for vocational training at this centre and I also became interest-ed,” recalls Bhavnot. “Initially I was a bit hesitant because all the other girls were very young, but with my hus-band’s encouragement I joined and did a six-month course on beauty culture.”

eight months on, having set up her own beauty parlour, Bhavnot says, “Besides learning this skill, I have be-come more confident and self-reliant. I don’t ask my husband for money any more. In fact, now I contribute to my children’s education. my next goal is to buy a place of my own for a parlour.”

Godara, whose centre in Kalkaji has empowered several women like Bhavnot, was approached by delhi government in april 2007 to handle her Stree Shakti Kendra. The Kend-ra was later renamed as a Gender Re-source Centre. Godara, who became a national marathon champion in 1984,

married an army officer three years later and moved to Patiala. In 1994, she returned to delhi and started a charita-ble trust – Health Fitness Trust – to pro-mote health, fitness and sports. Soon she started organising various funds-raising programmes. “my sports back-ground helped me to pull in big names like the united nations and Indo-Tibet-an Border Police for organising such events,” she says.

The six-month certificate courses that she runs at her centre fetch her stu-dents up to Rs 5,000 a month. “Very few show the courage of opening their own parlours,” says Godara, “but most of our girls start working immediately af-ter finishing their courses.” More than 75 women trained at her centre are em-ployed, she says.

one of them is Rachna, once a stu-dent and now a trainer at the centre. Her family never allowed her to learn beauty culture, she says, so after her marriage she convinced her husband and enrolled for the course. now she is confidently passing on the skill to ap-ply just the right make-up to a bunch of would-be beauticians. She is particu-larly proud of one of her students, Poo-nam, who went on to work at a beauty parlour in the upscale Greater Kailash colony and earn Rs 20,000 a month.

Godara’s centre is notable for hav-ing included martial arts among the vocational training programmes. In fact, she made it compulsory for every girl at the centre to learn self-defence. “I felt it was important for these girls to learn this art,” she says, “But some government inspectors visited the cen-tre last year and pointed out that mar-tial art cannot be treated as vocational training as there is no guarantee of job placement after that.” That was when computer training replaced martial arts in the list of programmes. Yet, Go-dara saw to it that those who wanted to continue learning martial arts could do so. Four of her students, in fact, went on to acquire a black belt.

Ayesha, who has just finished her schooling, is among these black belt holders. She has been learning tae-kwondo for the past two years and has even participated in state-level com-petitions. Recently, she got an offer to teach martial arts to nearly 500 school-girls. “ayesha will start teaching the orphan girls who are hostellers in a school in east of Kailash,” says Godara, with unmistakable pride.

At this Kalkaji General Resource Centre, run jointly by Sunita’s NGO and the Delhi government, women are taught beauty culture.

Young girls such as Soni Sachdeva, a student of a government school nearby, train in taekwondo for self-defence.

Girls from government schools around Kalkaji hone their computer skills at the General Resources Centre.

Middle-aged women of the area getting tailoring lessons at the centre. Many women go on to set up their own independent enterprises.


ayesha’s batch mate and anoth-er black belt holder Soni Sachdeva, who is studying in eighth standard in a nearby government school, have been learning taekwondo for the past one year. “She is a sharp student,” says her coach, who adds that Sachdeva put the skill to great use by warding off a group of boys who teased her.

“I was coming back from my aunt’s house with my younger sis-ter a few months ago when three boys teased me. I did not pay at-tention till they passed comments but when they touched me, I was really angry,” recalls Sachdeva. “I asked my sister to step aside and let me teach them a lesson. I punched two of them really hard and both of them fell down. I feel

very confident. Now I can go any-where without being dependent on my father.”

Godara is happy her efforts have paid off. She has been encourag-ing all girls to focus on their health and fitness. “Building confidence among these girls has been one of the most important things,” she says. While beauty culture and tai-loring are mostly taken up by girls who are either married or have not been able to finish their schooling, she says, computer programming is helping girls like Hemlata who have not had the opportunity to be-come computer literate at school. Hemlata, 19, is studying in 11th standard in a government school which does not have computers. So she comes here every day and has

learnt the basics, which, she hopes, will help her get a better job. “I knew nothing about computers earlier,” she says, “But now, I feel this skill will help me earn more.”

despite such life-enhancing ex-amples, Godara says it is not easy to bring in girls and women to cen-tres such as hers. That is so even as she organises free legal coun-selling for victims of domestic vi-olence as well, besides a weekly health clinic. Besides that, her cen-tre also serves as a one-stop coun-selling forum for senior citizens and other vulnerable sections of society. “Like other such centres, we have to appoint community mobilisers who help us to reach out the community. They help us pull more women into these cen-tres,” she says.

It costs about Rs 1.5 lakh, includ-ing the salaries of the trainers, to run the centre, says Godara. The highest salary of a trainer is Rs 10,000. Since the state government is backing the project, funds are not a problem, she says, but timely receipt of funds is a constant issue. “Sometimes I invest my prize mon-ey from marathons into this cen-tre,” she says, “many government projects fail at the initial level be-cause of slow flow of funds. Only those survive where we can put in our own money.”

Godara continues to run the marathon even at the age of 51. She also works as an Indian athlete runners’ coordinator at the marathon clinics at airtel marathon, Bombay Standard Chartered marathon, to name a few. “I don’t depend on this centre for my bread and butter. I do this just for my satisfaction. The smiles on the faces of these girls are all I want,” she says. n

[email protected]

This is one among 94 such centres function-ing across Delhi’s nine districts. The project, being run under the Delhi government’s Mission Convergence launched in August 2008. The idea was to increase the reach of 47 different welfare schemes of the state government through a single window.

P Chidambaram to Digvijay Singh: Isn’t it better you suffer my intellectual arrogance than your own foot-in-mouth disease?

It JuSt occuRed to uS

people politics policy performanceGovernance By Partnership


politicsSpanish writer Ja-

vier moro and In-dian filmmaker

Prakash Jha bore the brunt of the Congress

party’s self-ap-pointed censors who appear de-

termined to de-ter any unpalat-

able resemblance to party president Sonia Gandhi. While Moro’s fic-tionalised account of the nehru-Gan-dhi family, ‘The Red Sari’, pro-

voked a legal no-tice from the Con-

gress spokesperson and lawyer ab-hishek Singhvi, Jha’s ‘Rajneeti’ invited an unprecedented pre-release viewing by the party members who forced a few cuts in the film.

Rajasthan’s Gujjar community returned to the path of agita-tion to press for its longstand-

ing demand of five percent reserva-tion. The Rajasthan Gujjar aarakshan Samiti led by Ramvir Singh Bidhuri rejected the one percent quota of-fered by the state government to the Gujjar group led by Kirori Singh Bainsla. Bidhuri slammed the accord, announced a six-point charter of de-mands and threatened a fresh agita-tion. The community, which figures among the other backward classes, has been demanding a lower sched-uled tribe status in the state.

There’s no escape if you let Warren Anderson fly the coop. Former Madhya Pradesh chief

Arjun Singh realised this when his role came under scrutiny after the June 7 verdict in the Bhopal gas disaster.

Singh suddenly emerged as the villian of the piece as it became known that he had facilitated Ander-son’s flight to safety. Even as his par-ty urged him to “come clean” on the issue, the Congress leaders appeared more concerned to keep the spotlight from shifting to the role of the central government, headed by Rajiv Gandhi at the time.

delhi chief minister Sheila dikshit hinted at a di-rective from the central home ministry to ex-plain the four-year delay

in clearing the mercy petition of the parliament attack mastermind afzal Guru. dikshit hinted as much in a TV

interview just over a fortnight after her government finally sent the file to the lieutenant governor. “may be what you are thinking is true,’’ the chief minister said in response to a query whether union home minister Shivraj Patil had directed her to keep the matter hanging.

Hang on, it wasn’t me, says Sheila

Beware of any resemblance to Sonia

Left with statistical solace

Gujjars regroup for reservation Arjun in spotlight

Nobody, not even the communists, expect-ed the Left Front to do

well in the municipal polls in West Bengal. Even after the Mamata Banerjee-led Trin-amool Congress trounced the ruling coalition, though, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Sitaram Yechury insisted on pointing out that

his party had done better than in the last Lok Sabha elections! That, too, after the Trinamool won 95 of the 141 wards in the key Kolkata Municipal Corporation while the Left managed just 33, down from 75, in its worst showing since the KMC was formed.

Anil Bairwal and Jagdeep S Chhokar

Possibly some of the worst fears of politicians may be coming true. The Su-preme Court judgment mandating the disclo-

sure of electoral candidates’ crim-inal and financial details at the time of elections, which was op-posed tooth and nail by all politi-cal parties, continues to bring out new revelations. The latest is the declaration of assets made by uttar Pradesh chief minister mayawati for the upcoming Legislative Coun-cil elections. according to media re-ports, she has declared her current assets at Rs 88 crore. Compared to her earlier declarations, in 2007 (Rs

52.27 crore) while contesting coun-cil by-elections, mayawati’s assets have increased by Rs 35 crore in three years, which is an increase of almost one crore rupees a month.

according to the website of the uP assembly, mayawati claims that she is a “lawyer, political and social worker”. It is difficult to imagine that any of these professions can help a person amass so much mon-ey in such a short time. according to publicly available information, she neither has business interests nor has she inherited these assets from her parents. an obvious and legitimate question is: How does one acquire assets at such a blind-ing pace?

mayawati is, however, not the only example of a politician report-ing such huge increase in assets.

most of our mPs beat dalal Street hollow when it comes to multiplying assets. The mandatory disclosure before elections was supposed to act as a limiting factor on their runaway riches. Instead, in the absence of follow-up checks, it has ended up legitimising their questionable acquisitions

home to the nation’s best assets managers

top Fund managers!

3,00

3%

Bharatsinh Solanki (Congress)

1,74

6%1,

267%

936%

642%

Asset growth over five years (See the table on the facing page)

Sachin Pilot (Congress)

Uday Singh (BJP)

Usha Verma(SP)

Venugopal D(DMK)

jAgdish yAdAv


S No Name 2009 Party

State Assets in 2004 (Rs)

Assets in 2009 (Rs)

Absolute growth (Rs)

%age growth)

Stated profession

1 Solanki Bharatsinh Madhavsinh

Congress Gujarat 9.96 lakh 3.09 cr 2.99 cr 3,003% Engineer, consultant, trader

2 Sachin Pilot Congress Rajasthan 25.19 lakh 4.64 cr 4.39 cr 1,746% Agriculturist

3 Uday Singh BJP Bihar 3.06 cr 41.90 cr 38.83 cr 1,267% Social worker

4 Naveen Jindal Congress Haryana 12.12 cr 131.07 cr 118.94 cr 981% Industrialist , sportsperson, social worker, pilot

5 Venugopal D DMK Tamil Nadu 76.85 lakh 5.70 cr 4.93 cr 642% Farmer, Social worker

6 Usha Verma SP Uttar Pradesh 9.76 lakh 1.01 cr 91.35 lakh 936% Farmer, architect , business woman, social worker

There are several other politicians who have declared as high or even higher increases during the same period. The association for demo-cratic Reforms (adR) did a compar-ative analysis of the declarations made by mPs from Lok Sabha 2004 re-contesting the Lok Sabha 2009 elections and found astonishing results. For the 157 mPs re-elected after the 2009 elections, on aver-age the assets increased by around 288 percent in a span of five years. While the full list of these mPs and their increases is available on adR’s website (www.adrindia.org), listed in the table above are some mPs with the increase in their as-sets—as declared by them in their sworn affidavits.

as can be seen, there are some mPs whose assets have increased well in excess of 1,000 percent in just five years. All these figures are based on the information provided by the mPs in their self-declared af-fidavits. While some sections of the population do seem to admire the capacity of the elected mPs to sig-nificantly and rapidly better their financial status, some other voters do wonder as to what is the magic wand that seems to come with be-ing elected that helps the elected

mPs in increasing their assets by such a large percentage while be-ing engaged full time in the service of the nation.

This trend is not confined only to our national politicians. The state-level politicians appear to be equally efficient in increasing their assets. The table below summaris-es the increase in assets for some of state assembly elections held last year, in comparison to the Lok Sabha elections held during the same year.

again, these increases are based on just their self-declared assets. The general feeling among people at large is that these assets have been under-declared.

There is also a clear connec-tion between crime and money which was first stated succinctly in 1993 by the then home secre-tary, n n Vohra, in what has come to be known as the Vohra commit-tee report. more recent data show that while the number of mPs with pending criminal cases related to violent crimes has come down in the current Lok Sabha, the num-ber of those with cases related to white-collar crime like financial frauds has gone up. In the current Lok Sabha, 162 mPs have pending

criminal cases against them with a total of 274 serious charges under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) (com-pared to 296 serious IPC charges on 128 MPs in 2004 Lok Sabha). Out of these 274 charges, 86 charg-es are related to cheating, dishon-esty, stolen property, forgery and financial frauds etc (compared to 81 similar charges against MPs in 2004 Lok Sabha).

It is clear that politicians are us-ing their clout to make money for themselves. While the problems of poverty, education, health and corruption continue to plague the country, our politicians have made good progress in making lives more comfortable not only for themselves but also for their suc-ceeding generations. The feeling of having been betrayed by their poli-ticians seems to be becoming more widespread by the day. This grow-ing disenchantment with the poli-ticians and the consequential loss of confidence in political processes is a grave danger to the democrat-ic way of life. This danger becomes exacerbated as the political class thwarts more and more attempts at making the politicians more ac-countable and trustworthy.

The need of the hourThis brings us to the question of what needs to be done. each study starting from the Vohra committee report (1993) through the 170th Report of Law Commission on elec-toral Reforms (1999) to the nation-al Commission to Review of Work-ing of Constitution (nCRWC) (2002) has stressed the need for transpar-ency and probity in public life.

The Supreme Court in its judg-ment of march 13, 2003 on Writ Pe-tition (Civil) no. 515 of 2002 (asso-ciation for democratic Reforms vs.

Elections Average increase in assets for re -elected MLAs/MPs (from previous elections) (in Rs)

Average increase in assets for re -elected MLAs/MPs (from previous elections) (in %)

Lok Sabha 2009 Rs 3.7 crore 288%

Maharashtra assem-bly elections 2009

Rs 2.45 crore 339%

Haryana assembly elections 2009

Rs 4.8 crore 388%

Arunachal Pradesh assembly elections 2009

Rs 1.2 crore 240%

Jharkhand assembly elections 2009

Rs 58 lakh 435%

people politics policy performancePaisa Politics


union of India and others), quot-ed extensively from the nCRCW report. Some of the paragraphs, quoted with approval, are:

4.14.1 (The large amount of money spent on elections) has progressively polluted the entire system. Cor-ruption, because it erodes perfor-mance, becomes one of the lead-ing reasons for non-performance and compromised governance in the country. The sources of some of the election funds are believed to be unaccounted criminal mon-ey in return for protection, un-accounted funds from business groups who expect a high return on this investment, kickbacks or commissions on contracts etc. no matter how we look at it, citizens are directly affected because apart from compromised governance, the huge money spent on elections pushes up the cost of everything in the country. It also leads to un-bridled corruption and the conse-quences of wide spread corrup-tion are even more serious than many imagine. (This) become(s) the foundation of the whole super structure of corruption.

4.14.3 Transparency in the context of elections means both the sources of finance as well as their utilisa-tion as are listed out in an audited

statement. If the candidates are re-quired to list the sources of their income, this can be checked back by the income tax authorities. The Commission recommends that the political parties as will as in-dividual candidates be made sub-ject to a proper statutory audit of the amounts they spend. These accounts should be monitored through a system of checking and cross-checking through the in-come-tax returns filed by the can-didates, parties and their well-wishers… also, the audit should not only be mandatory but it should be enforced by the election Commis-sion. any violation or misreporting should be dealt with strongly.

4.14.6 all candidates should be required under law to declare their assets and liabilities by an affidavit and the details so given by them should be made public. Further, as a fol-low-up action, the particulars of the assets and liabilities so given should be audited by a special au-thority created specifically under law for the purpose. again the leg-islators should be required under law to submit their returns about their liabilities every year and a fi-nal statement in this regard at the end of their term of office.

Possible remediesClearly, the first thing to do is to

make our candidates declare their sources of income, in addition to, and as distinct from, their assets. Currently, candidates declare all type of assets in their affidavits – vehicles, properties (both residen-tial as well as commercial), jewel-lery, shares in different companies etc. They should also declare how they got possession of these items. It is common perception that most people start with humble back-ground and make crores after they join politics. The self-declarations of their source of income in the form of an affidavit are the only way by which the citizen’s doubts about politician’s financial appro-priateness will be laid to rest.

Secondly, the Income Tax depart-ment needs to look into these dec-larations more seriously. It has the wherewithal and the statutory mandate to investigate any finan-cial increases beyond the known sources of income. Why it has not been investigating these increas-es in spite of the prodding of the election Commission of India is surprising.

after the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, the election Commission had sent affidavits of all the contestants on a Cd to the Central Board of di-rect Taxes (CBdT) with a request to have them analysed. It also asked the CBdT to take action against pol-iticians who had either declared their assets to be lower than the ac-tual or whose assets had increased beyond their known sources of in-come. Based on known sources of information, there appears to have been no response from the CBdT even though six long years have passed.

In addition, the affidavits of all Lok Sabha 2004 and 2009 election contestants along with contestants of all the state assembly elections are also now available on the web-site of the election Commission. If the Income Tax department wants, it can easily have the assets of the errant politicians checked. How-ever, nothing has happened on this front. most likely, the political powers are influencing the work-ing of the Income Tax department. This inaction of the Income Tax department in dealing with


illustrAtion: Ashish AsthAnA


political parties was brought out very clearly in the Supreme Court judgment in 1996, in what has come to be known as the Common Cause case (Writ Petition (Civil) no 24 of 1995). Writing for a division bench, Justice Kuldip Singh held “That the Income Tax authorities have been wholly remiss in the performance of their statutory du-ties under law. The said authori-ties have for a long period failed to take appropriate action against the defaulter political parties.”

The third solution worth explor-ing is the setting up of an indepen-dent unit by election Commission to probe these increases in assets. The Supreme Court has mandat-ed the election Commission to pro-vide all essential information to the voters to help them make in-formed choice. In the absence of other ways for the voters to get this information, the election Commis-sion certainly can take a few steps in this direction. With the appar-ent unwillingness and possible in-ability of the Income Tax depart-ment to take legally justifiable and statutorily required action against politicians and political parties, may be the election Commission would need to set up something like an Economic Offences Wing of its own. If the election Commis-sion does, however, decide to set up such a unit, it will have to think over how it will staff and what will the overlap be in its functions

and powers with the Income Tax department.

another critical issue worth thinking about is: If all or at least the critical instruments of the gov-ernment stop doing their statutory duties as far as politicians and po-litical parties are concerned, will, and should, the election Commis-sion become a miniature state in itself just to ensure that the laws of the land apply to politicians and political parties? and is such a situation desirable? or, should the highest court in the land be in-volved in every such action against politicians and political parties?

The citizens of the country suffer innumerable losses because of this blatant and unethical hoarding of money by our politicians. The ille-gal use of money leads to unlaw-ful and unethical business deals, corruption in public sphere and nexus between politicians, busi-ness houses and underworld all of which takes a toll on the growth and development of the nation. It creates mistrust between the high-est offices of the country and the ordinary citizens. The country ur-gently needs introduction of mea-sures to bring in probity and trans-parency in the finances of our politicians. n

Bairwal is national coordinator, Association for Democratic Reforms (www.adrindia.org), and National Election Watch (www.national-electionwatch.org). [email protected] Chhokar is former professor, dean and director in-charge of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a founding member of ADR, and NEW. [email protected]

What needs to be done?Apart from their assets, election candidates should also declare how they got possession of these items.

Income tax authorities should investigate these declarations more seriously.

Election Commission should set up an independent unit to probe these declarations.

Which is the country’s best- performing mutual fund? Maya Mutual. 67% returns in three years or 22.3% an-nualised returns for the last three consecutive years!


Party funds are growing better than economy!

* Income for 2007-08 is not available

Source: Income tax returns of political parties for seven assessment years, analysed by the adR.

bJPAssets in 2002-03 Assets in 2008-09 Annualised growth:

2002-09

Rs 81.41 cr Rs 177.44 cr 11.8%

Income in 2002-03 Income in 2008-09 Aggregate income: 2002-09

Rs 44.22 cr Rs 123.78 cr Rs 533.90 cr

Top 3 sources: voluntary contributions (Rs 409.01 cr) , interest (Rs 49 cr) , Aajiwan Sahayog Nidhi (Rs 30.85 cr)

congressAssets in 2002-03 Assets in 2008-09 Annualised growth:

2002-09

Rs 65.37 cr Rs 340.26 cr 26.6%


Rs 61.50 cr Rs 220.81 cr Rs 1021.27 cr

Top 3 sources: sale of coupons (Rs 794.55 cr) , donations (Rs 139.72 cr) , interest (Rs 49.44 cr)

bSPAssets in 2002-03 Assets in 2008-09 Annualised growth:

2002-09

Rs 10.92 cr Rs 118.31 cr 40.5%


Rs 5.91 cr Rs 69.74 cr Rs 130.03 cr*

Top 3 sources: bank (Rs 118.52 cr) , contributions (Rs 78.55 cr) , membership (Rs 43.20 cr)

SPAssets in 2002-03 Assets in 2008-09 Annualised growth:

2002-09

Rs 13.86 cr Rs 144.14 cr 39.7%


Rs 8.65 cr Rs 32.30 cr Rs 224.26 cr

Top 3 sources: donation (Rs 193.39 cr) , interest (Rs 21.35 cr) , membership fees (Rs 8.36 cr)

cPmAssets in 2002-03 Assets in 2008-09 Annualised growth:

2002-09

Rs 52.83 cr Rs 156.81 cr 16.8%


Rs 20.06 cr Rs 59.69 cr Rs 275.87 cr

Top 3 sources: voluntary contributions (Rs 117.07 cr) , levy (Rs 89.56 cr) , election fund (Rs 41.37 cr)

cPIAssets in 2002-03 Assets in 2008-09 Annualised growth:

2002-09

Rs 5.53 cr Rs 7.07 cr 3.6%


Rs 0.70 cr Rs 1.23 cr Rs 5.62 cr

Top 3 sources: party fund, education fund, donation (Rs 3.63 cr) , interest (Rs 1.16 cr) , levy (Rs 0.56 cr)


Vishwa Bandhu Gupta

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.

– Errol Flynn

The swashbuckling Hollywood hero of the golden 1930s would surely have been overawed by uttar Pradesh chief minister may-awati who seems to have little prob-lem in flaunting, let alone reconcil-ing her net income with her gross habits. When she wore a garland of fresh, serial-numbered 1,000-rupee banknotes worth crores and crores at a party rally, she dared the law yet again even as she reiterated her signature political style.

That it was an open challenge to a sterile political, regulatory and judi-cial system is evident from the fact that there was enough in mayawa-ti’s appearance at that rally to war-rant a long overdue process of law. mayawati won the challenge hands down because politics intervened, as she was sure it would, and she did not face charges under either the Income Tax act or the Preven-tion of Corruption act.

It could, and should, have been otherwise.

The fresh currency notes had been withdrawn from a bank and the income tax department had all the statutory authority powers un-der section 131 of the Income tax act to force the bank to reveal de-tails about the currency notes, their

accounts of origin and names of the account holders. moreover, those who had made the garland should have been examined under oath, again under section 131, which grants the authorised officer judi-cial powers and the statement so recorded subsequently becomes admissible in any criminal prosecu-tion court.

Income tax sleuths in Lucknow did record statements of bank officers and all those who had been trans-ported from a southern state to Luc-know to weave the garland. Howev-er, these sleuths failed to cover the last mile and question mayawati, rendering the entire exercise incom-plete and eventually meaningless.

even if you were to believe may-awati’s assertion that her wealth has multiplied thanks to the dona-tions she has been receiving from her followers, she will still be re-quired to furnish details of each such offering to her party. Num-bered receipts are required to be issued for each sum exceeding Rs 10,000. Criminal prosecution is pos-sible on these two counts, just as it is on her even more glaring viola-tion of employing the so-called do-nations to her party for amassing real estate in her own name. ex-emption from taxation to a political party under section 13A of Income tax act does not permit purchase of residential and commercial prop-erties in an individual’s name. But mayawati’s sprawling bungalow under construction on new delhi’s

Sardar Patel marg, just one of the properties in her name, is alone worth Rs 54.08 crore as per her own declaration in late may ahead of the uP legislative council elections.

The case for her prosecution is rock solid.

The Prevention of Corruption act also comes into play simply because the declared assets are dispropor-tionate to mayawati’s known sourc-es of income. even as the central bureau of investigation and the in-come tax department are supposed-ly probing the case, the income tax appellate tribunal exonerated her last year on specious grounds.

Had the law taken its course, as it usually does for much lesser crimes, mayawati would have been prosecuted on at least three or four violations of the Income Tax act and also under the Prevention of Corruption act. each of these viola-tions carries a sentence of three to seven years. That spells at least 15 years behind the bars.

on second thoughts, then, Errol Flynn, the definitive celluloid Robin Hood, would have been horrified if he had a chance to get to know mayawati better. after all, she prides at having amassed her millions from just the kind of people that Robin Hood sought to protect.n

Gupta, a former chief commissioner of income tax, is an Indian Revenue Service officer of the 1976 batch. [email protected]

Paisa Politics


the case against mayawatiThe uttar Pradesh chief minister deserves to be prosecuted under the Income Tax act and the Prevention of Corruption act


Rajesh Bissa

The abuse of money has seriously compromised India’s democracy. Whilst political parties have been spending thousands of crores of

rupees to ensure for themselves a share in power, citizens have no choice but to vote for one among many unscrupulous con-tenders for power.

Election Commission’s efforts to curb this riot of wealth have proven to be weak and ineffective. Each assembly and Lok Sabha seat entails expenditure whose counting begins in crores of rupees – many times more than the ceiling set by the election commission. The candidates for 90 Chhat-tisgarh assembly seats in 2008 elections to-gether spent over Rs 200 crore, excluding the poll expenditure made by the political parties.

Candidates of modest means stand a chance of winning, if at all, only those seats where the opposing party candidates have lost their face or where there is a ‘sympa-thy wave’ for the former (or their party).

Ironically, the more the election commis-sion has clamped down on excessive poll expenditure, the more serious has become the illegal use of money; the candidates spend Rs 50 or more and declare only Rs 5.

They are increasingly shunning expen-diture that’s conspicuous or easily detect-able in favour of underhand transactions. earlier, for example, candidates would spend a part of their election allowance, according to their means, on ad space in

the media in order to present their case to the voters.

That has become impossible over the years because of stricter curbs on conspic-uous expenditure. ads are much costlier now. You breach the limit on ad spends in no time without making an impact. also, if you choose not to spend on ads, the in-creasingly greedy media might decide to take a very dim view of you.

So the media and the politicians have to-gether found a way out of this impasse. It’s called ‘media management’. an elabo-rate exercise in deception, ‘media manage-ment’ is done both at the party level and the candidate level.

during elections, a ‘news report’, an in-tro to a news report, a headline, a box item within a news report, the size in inches of a news report, and everything else that makes up editorial content is “managed”. The more money you have, the more me-dia management you can do. almost all media houses are involved in this treach-erous game.

The reporters or correspondents, who used to be a link between editors and polit-ical parties and candidates, have been re-placed by PROs (public relations officers). The poor reporter or correspondent has been reduced to writing what their bosses tell them to write to favour or disfavour a political party or candidate.

Then, parties and candidates also spend a lot – illegally -- on distributing clothes, alcohol and cash to some sections of the electorate.

Funds that political parties collect from legitimate sources – membership fee, rents from property, donations from industri-alists and others who support the party ideology – look derisory in comparison to their burgeoning expenditure on me-dia management, bribing of the elector-ate, and other illegal means of electioneer-ing. no amount of money is enough for the parties, each one of which has become a

hostage to this situation.It’s a very conducive state of affairs for

corrupt and cunning politicians and a vir-tual banishment order for honest people of modest means. That’s the bitter truth of our ‘democracy’ and the fundamental rea-son why corrupt behavior has become a norm.

The desideratum is to put an end to this black market for power. until some-thing concrete is done to take commercial wheeling-dealing out of electoral politics, all noble intentions and efforts will remain meaningless.

making public the income and expendi-ture statements of political parties and as-sets and liabilities of candidates has not helped. Look at how shamelessly some politicians are acquiring crores of rupees of wealth in the garb of ‘gifts’ from party members and sympathisers.

We can rid ourselves of this situation only if election commission prohibts all poll expenditure currently permissible to the candidates and take it upon itself to pub-licise the officially submitted particulars and details of a candidate. and the candi-date should only be allowed to distribute to the electorate pamphlets of a pre-decid-ed size in the nature of publicity.n

Bissa is a secretary of Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee. His RTI investigations exposing corruption in big-ticket government contracts in Chhattisgarh are well reported and bagged him Rahul Mangaonkar Award for Best RTI Citizen 2009.

Restrictions on poll expenditure have only led to exponential rise in illegal use of money. The only solution now lies in the election Commission taking over all publicity-related work in elections.

Manmohan Singh to the nation on completion of one year of his govern-ment: “Here’s my report card. I got 100 on 100. I even wrote it myself.”


calling ec...calling ec...


Sycophancy, censorship and Sonia: a fable for the congress

Shiv Visvanathan

The Congress today pres-ents strange imagination. For years, it was a living collage of diverse inter-ests, where elites and mi-

norities co-existed. It was a confusing, hypocritical, pragmatic, innovative mélange of competing interests that made the Congress, literally a Con-gress of conversations, dreams, and factions. Its everydayness of diversity was patented for political practice in India. dissent and factionalism were part of its dynamic and were the fac-tors that made its dreams of unity and diversity work. a party that handled confusions, contradictions, that made diversity work was a party that un-derstood India. The writings of polit-ical scientists like Gopal Krishna and more creatively Rajni Kothari showed the Congress was a microcosm of In-dia and succeeded because it cre-ated a grammar to mimic its differ-ing realities. What was a pragmatic rule of thumb, a genius for muddling through, constituted the genius of the Congress until the emergency.

The emergency damaged India but damaged the Congress more. It de-stroyed institutions of civil society and the normative structure of the banks, courts, universities and trade unions. But the engine of corrosion was syco-phancy. Sycophancy is a form of gre-gariousness which in an orwellian language states some are more loyal than others. Sycophancy created a dy-nastic rule which was initially also ex-tra-constitutional. It allowed the cre-ation of evil around Sanjay Gandhi, a phenomenon who was never clearly understood. dev Kant Barooah, a leg-endary sycophantic got it wrong. He claimed or trumpeted that Indira was India and India was Indira. In the

emergency, it was Sanjay Gandhi who was India and India of the future be-came Sanjay Gandhi.

Sanjay Gandhi was a thought experi-ment who became a political practice. He was an illiterate who was treated as a profound statesman; a Mafiosi mind who pretended Gandhian sen-sibilities. He understood little about machines or the mechanism of pol-itics and damaged both. The more damage he created the louder became the hosannahs around him. If tyranny is a form of illiteracy, Sanjay Gandhi was one of its populist gods, as quot-able as Mao or Gaddafi or Kim Sung. What dynastic sycophancy did was to magnify the mediocrity of the man, turn his every utterance into hagiog-raphy. Luckily a plane flight did more for democracy than all the forms of civilian resistance. But while Sanjay Gandhi disappeared, the sycophan-cy he created became endemic to the Congress. It muted it, it liberalised it, it made it more amiably populist but from then on Sanjay Gandhi was an imaginary, a continuous floating pos-sibility for the Congress.

This evoked three sets of possibili-ties. Sycophancy created a paranoid world where the leader had to be protected. Loyalty was not mere sup-pression of dissent but a macarthy-ite censorship. The dissenter became the other to be destroyed. It was also a form of political eugenics where all forms of genius were located in the dynasty. every act of illiteracy, me-diocrity became an anticipation of genius. It was not that the emperor had no clothes, he was seen as a liv-ing costume ball of historical imagi-nations. Sanjay Gandhi was improb-ably equated with Ramakrishna and other spiritual leaders. The more im-probable the comparison, the more seriously it was taken. Thirdly, loy-alty went beyond sycophancy to self-censorship, inaugurating a series

people politics policy performanceGodlike Leaders

Governance should allow not merely a right to information but the right to creativity. A Javier Moro novelistic biography or a Prakash Jha movie feeds on the humus of Sonia’s presence. It will add to its richness. Any attempt to erase it creates an artificial culture of paranoia. Let the Aandhis and Rajneetis multiply, they will only add to the myth of Sonia.


of cleansing rituals that insured the leaders’ pure image.

The politics of Sanjay Gandhi has been watered down but never dis-appeared. It was a wonderfully con-venient tool. If nehru’s relationship to edwina was embarrassing, one immediately banned the book and cleansed history. If the Shah report was an indictment of the sycophan-cy of the emergency, copies quickly disappeared. The odd thing about it was that our gods and goddesses had foibles, were jealous, made mistakes, were vengeful, but our dynastic poli-ticians became “immaculate concep-tions”, more virginal than any mary one could dream of.

Self-censorship combined an antici-pation of crime with its elimination. It involved the politics of chastity belts as hygiene. It was brahminic exercise in pollution control, the attempt to create homogenous universe where if the leader looked at the audience and said, “mirror mirror on the wall, am I the greatest of us all?” The answer was an inevitable “yes.” When popu-lism combined with dynastic politics, the leaders’ legitimacy was doubly defended.

The beauty of this is that the lead-er is a fiction, a myth created by his loyal followers, each cloned from the mentality of a machiavellian Pa. It is a programme in imagined pest control where every form of dissent, critique, threat is as a pestilence. It is a form of security management where a cordon sanitaire is created around the leader. The poor soul may not be aware of it. naïve about politics, she might actu-ally think it is a necessary ritual. She rarely realises that it is this cordon of sycophancy that destroys her political possibilities creating a form of para-sitism, clones of her imagined self to rule in her place, while she makes speeches and cuts ribbons. In an em-pire of sycophancy, the empress is the weakest soul. She has lost immunity to any criticism, to any form of dis-sent even of a constructive kind. It is like a form of political aids which de-stroys immunity to the highs and lows of politics.

The recent attempts at erasure of history are symptoms of an anti-pol-itics. The Congress while claiming to be democratic builds antiseptic ter-ritories around Sonia, Rahul and others. It takes Prakash Jha’s movie and refuses him the slightest

form of literary licence. They create out of a Tom Vadakkan a mini-inquisi-tion. Yet the question is ironic because the self censor assumes a lack of intel-ligence on the part of the citizen.

The Indian voter sees Sonia for what she is and sympathises with her pre-cisely because of her problems. They sided with her because thye refused to endorse bullying, saw her as a woman learning courage step by step. So what if she was an ordinary student, or for a few days thought of returning to Ita-ly? She struggled with doubt and that made her commitment to India stron-ger. The real answer to censorship is Sonia herself. The gossip around nGos is that Sonia understands nRe-Ga, that she looks constructively at an aruna Roy or Jean dreze. The gossip is that Sonia senses the dangers of a narendra modi. The sadness is that rather than highlighting such forms of sensitivity we create a “queen can do no wrong” sycophancy which de-stroys the queen. The hangers-on will always survive and move to the next regime. But the damage they do lives after them.

a leader is a larger than life creature subject to curiosity, open to gossip, vulnerable to interrogation. Gov-ernance proceeds not just through administration but through the flow of gossip. It provides the lit-eracy of politics without an unnec-essary piety. Governance should allow not merely a right to infor-mation but the right to creativity. a Javier moro novelistic biogra-phy or a Prakash Jha movie feeds on the humus of Sonia’s presence. It will add to its richness. any at-tempt to erase it creates an arti-ficial culture of paranoia. Let the aandhis and Rajneetis multiply, they will only add to the myth of Sonia. any ordinary Indian could tell you that it is not Prakash Jha or moro Javier who creates the poli-tics of scandal. The scandal of pol-itics begins with sycophancy and self-censorship. It is the Indian ge-nius for gossip that the self-cen-sor and the sycophant do not un-derstand. Their illiteracy destroys the rich disorder of Indian politics which creates more meaningful politics and politicians. n

Shiv Visvanathan is a social scientist.


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For advertising details contact Gautam Navin. +91 9818125257. [email protected] strategic alliances contact Shivangi Gupta. Direct line: 0120-3920541. [email protected]

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performanceT he Four Passport Seva

Kendras (PSKs) – two in Bangalore and one

each in mangalore and Hub-li – were simultaneously launched as part of the Pass-port Seva Project in Karnata-ka to ensure speedy delivery of the document. The proj-ect aims to ensure that an applicant gets the passport

within three days of police verification. The project envis-ages opening 77 PSKs across the country in the public-private partnership mode with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). a call centre operating 24x7 in 17 languages and a centralised na-tionwide computerised system has been created for issuance of passports in three days.

all listed companies will have to maintain a mini-mum public holding at 25

percent, as the government has introduced amendments to the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules.

The existing listed companies having less than 25 percent pub-lic holding will have to reach the 25 percent level by an annual addition of not less than five per-cent to public holding.

management of the proposed in-frastructure fund, which has an initial capital of Rs 50,000 crore

for financing projects in this crucial sec-tor, can go to private companies if the Planning Commission accepts the recom-mendation of an expert group headed by deepak Parekh.

The group has submitted its reports to Planning Commission deputy chairman montek Singh ahluwalia. The idea of creating an Infrastructure Fund to chan-nel investment in this sector came from the plan panel and the expert group was constituted in may to study this proposal.

The group has also suggested that there

should be at least two companies to man-age this fund and each of them should have a stake of at least 10 percent in the fund.

India needs high growth in infrastruc-ture if it is to achieve the target of 10 per-cent economic growth in the 12th Plan (2012-17).

Nathpa Jhakri delivers record power generation

Passport Seva project on in Karnataka

Public shareholding threshold for listed firms raised

RBI to track applications online

Who will manage infra fund?

T he Reserve Bank of India has launched an online system to track applications to help the

public. The applications made to the various departments of the RBI can now be tracked online through the application tracking system (ATS). For this, the applicants will have to register on the RBI website.

nathpa Jhakri Hydro Power Sta-tion, the country’s largest hydel power plant, has re-corded more than 25 per-cent growth in power gen-

eration during the first two months of the fiscal compared to the corre-sponding period of the previous year. during april and may, it achieved a gross generation of 1,366 million units against 1,086 million units achieved in

the first two months last year. The generation is also 137 million units more than the mou tar-

gets of 1228 million units, according to H K Sharma, chairman and managing director of SJVn Ltd.

The 1,500 mW power station also achieved a plant availability factor of more than 100 percent during the period.The flagship project of public sector SJVN

Ltd., supplies electricity to the nine north-ern grid states.


optimum city

people politics policy performanceFuture City


Wricha Johari

Fifteen years ago, ahmedabad shed its past and stepped into the future. The past it left behind was murky,

full of dust, din and smoke. The soot from the chimneys of textile mills and the emission from au-to-rickshaws blackened the face and burnt the eyes of people who ventured out on the streets.

Known as the manchester of the east for housing over 100 textile mills, the city founded by moghul emperor ahmed Shah in 1411 ad had emerged as the commercial capital of Gujarat over the last 600 years. It was essentially a city of traders, some of who, un-der the influence of the westerly

winds from england, had set up British India’s first textile mills.

Though mahatma Gandhi had set up his Satyagraha ashram here in 1917, and founded the country’s first trade union of tex-tile mill workers on the noble principles of cooperation, in the late 1980s, the city was sitting on a powderkeg where stone-throw-ing, knifing, teargas, firing and curfew had become the order of the day. There were strikes and bandhs, squalor and stench from country liquor in the slums that dotted both sides of the Sabarma-ti river. There were women and children pulling hand carts, beg-gars and lepers.

The Sabarmati river, which re-mained dry eight months in a year, divided the city into two worlds. The world to the east was crowded and poor. In the west resided the burgeoning middle class and the wealthy for whom there were clubs, parks, stadi-ums, sprawling bungalows with their lush green lawns and swim-ming pools.

The east had potholes, over-flowing sewage, mosquitoes,

rodents and the accompanying cholera, malaria, tuberculosis and a teeming population of mal-nourished women and children. There were slum lords, loan sharks and hooch kings and their minions. nearly half the city’s 25 lakh people lived in slums.

There were ghettos within ghettos, formed on the basis of caste and creed, in which high-strung people resided, waiting to explode on the slightest pre-text, even a brawl among ur-chins over who should own the unclaimed kite that might have landed in the slum during the annual kite festival on January 14. The police and the fire-fight-ers remained on high alert dur-ing most religious festivals.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city witnessed an unprece-dented economic crisis caused by the closure of over 100 textile mills due to proliferation of pow-er-looms. over 1,00,000 workers lost their jobs. Given its past re-cord of unrest and riots, the city should have either exploded or witnessed a mass exodus. In-stead, ahmedabad showed how

From the congested city of the 1990s to the sprawling metro of 2010, Ahmedabad offers lessons in urban renewal

optimum city

photos: hArsh shAh


chaos can lead to a new order that has become a role model for other growing cities. ahmedabad pros-pered and flourished attracting in the last two decades over 20 lakh people who have made it their home. With a population of over 60 lakh now, ahmedabad has be-come a mega city, officially, the sev-enth metro of the country.

Resilience of the people to sur-vive a crisis and adapt to changing times is what makes the city thrive. The enterprising ahmedabadis captured the essence of the chang-ing economy that had been thrown open to the global market follow-ing liberalisation.

Today, the city’s 60 lakh people contribute about 18 percent of the state’s income, making up for over half of the total tax revenue gener-ated. While the city is the knowl-edge, industrial and financial capi-tal of the state, its influence extends nationally and globally. Falling on the proposed delhi-mumbai indus-trial and freight corridor, ahmed-abad is on its way to becoming the country’s hub for textiles, design, agriculture export, drug and phar-maceuticals, bio-technology, pack-aged food, information technology, logistics and technical education.

From red to blackWhile the city dwellers showed ex-emplary resilience and adapted to the changing economy, the ahmed-abad municipal Corporation (amC), the civic body charged with providing basic amenities like wa-ter, sanitation, health services and public transportation, too was hit by an unprecedented financial cri-sis in the late 1980s & early 1990s.

In 1994, when Keshav Verma, a senior IAS officer, took over as the municipal commissioner, the amC coffers were in the red, reflecting a deficit of Rs 92 crore. Because the civic body was on the brink of insolvency, many of the ongo-ing projects, including the World Bank-aided schemes of upgrada-tion of sewerage and water sup-ply works were in a limbo. To add to the burden of the already fund-starved amC, the newly elected civic body hiked the salaries of the civic staff. AMC was already under

a whopping Rs 150-crore debt.Faced with such a precarious fi-

nancial situation when he took over as the municipal commission-er, Verma embarked on a rigorous drive to strictly enforce tax collec-tion. There was huge evasion of octroi duty. Property tax was also not being paid by a large number of citizens who obtained stay from the courts on recovery measures.

Verma had inherited the colonial bureaucratic machinery of a civic body set up in the year 1857 which, over the years, had become bur-dened with paper work, pushing of files, palm-greasing of babus and municipal councillors. The corrupt and lethargic civic staff took shel-ter behind political connections and trade unionism.

“Keshav Verma inducted young professionals who specialised in finance, accounting and manage-ment. While plugging leakages in tax collections, he also brought in strict control over expenditure,” says deputy commissioner dilip mahajan, who joined Verma’s team after graduating from the Indian Institute of management, ahmed-abad (IIma) in 1995.

after securing an ‘aa’ credit rat-ing from Crisil in 1997, the amC issued four successful series of bonds that got an overwhelming response from investors. The civ-ic body received the ‘Best Finan-cial management System’ national award from Crisil. amC has com-pleted the redemption of three of the four bonds and is now plan-ning the fifth in the series.

Verma is also credited with intro-ducing the public-private partner-ship in the municipal corporation to undertake major infrastructure development projects. In exchange for advertisement rights, arvind mills rebuilt the arterial CG Road. denim manufacturer ashima, moulded plastic container maker Sintex and pharmaceutical major Torrent were roped in to develop and maintain public gardens.

In an initiative that in a stroke ended the well-entrenched red-tapism, AMC set up a full-fledged e-governance system enabling on-line access and accountability. The 2 mbps leased line with the backup

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city witnessed an unprecedented economic crisis caused by the closure of over 100 textile mills due to proliferation of power-looms. Over 1,00,000 workers lost their jobs. Given its past record of unrest and riots, the city should have either exploded or witnessed a mass exodus. Instead, Ahmedabad showed how chaos can lead to a new order that has become a role model for other growing cities.



of 1,300 computers on a wide area network (Wan) covers 26 civic centres and 55 wards in six zones of the city. applications, informa-tion, complaints, status tracking and even right to information are now available at the click of the mouse through internet access fa-cility to people. amC received a na-tional award from the government of India for its e-governance initia-tive (www.egovamc.com).

along with computerisation, amC also introduced profession-al asset valuation and transpar-ent and speedy payment systems through eCS/RTGS to suppliers and contractors. This reduced delays and hurdles in completion of infra-structure development works.

As a result of various financial management measures, amC was able to make an impressive turn-around. When in 2006, the present municipal commissioner, I P Gau-tam, took over the reins as the civic body’s chief executive, amC had a surplus revenue of Rs 280.02 crore. In 2009-10, its revenue surplus jumped nearly four times to Rs 827.83 crore.

Making of a mega cityIn the last one decade, the area

under the amC has more than dou-bled from 190 square kilometres to 464 sq km. This was done through the amalgamation of scores of vil-lages which were on the periphery of the city. after the amalgamation, the new areas came under the ju-risdiction of the amC, which could now plan and regulate the devel-opment of real estate.

“amC was able to plan and ex-ecute as many as 100 new town planning schemes. We could thus regulate the process of urbanisa-tion,” says Surendra Patel, former chairman of the civic body’s stand-ing committee and the ahmed-abad urban development author-ity. Patel, as the chairman of auda, is credited with having turned the farmlands of west ahmedabad into highly prized real estate by devel-oping infrastructure in the form of roads, drainage and parks.

Before the areas on the periph-ery of the city were amalgamated with the amC, the urban growth was haphazard and without the necessary infrastructure. auda introduced the scheme of volun-tary demolition of irregular struc-tures by the builders who were charged a fee for the development of infrastructure.

The biggest boost to the real es-tate market came after AMC con-structed a 132-foot-wide ring road and the AUDA developed a 76-km-long and 60-metre-wide SP Ring Road encompassing the entire urban conglomerate of Ahmedabad. A unique feature of the Sardar Patel Ring Road was that it was constructed in just three years and without using the land acquisition act.

The SP Ring Road has minimised traffic congestion on peripheral roads, segregated regional and ur-ban traffic and has increased con-nectivity. The ring road is guiding the development and expansion of the city. It defines the new bound-ary of ahmedabad.

While the SP Ring Road has been responsible for the development of residential and commercial areas along the outer areas of the city, the construction of the 132-foot-wide inner ring road with the proposed Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) has boosted the value of real estate – both resi-dential and commercial – in the core area of the city.

So charged up are the real estate developers of the city by these de-velopments that they have started

Ahmedabad’s own bus rapid transit (BRT), Jan Marg was implemented without any hassle. Public transport users are happy and vehicle owners (unlike their Delhi counterparts) are not complaining either.


selling the ‘dream ahmedabad’ aggressively even abroad with the hope that non-resident Gu-jaratis (nRGs) might want to in-vest back home in this fast grow-ing city.

The Gujarat Institute of Housing and estate developers (GIHed) joined hands with the associa-tion of Indian americans in north america (aIana) in organising the first international property show at the second ‘Chaalo Gu-jarat: World Gujarati Conference’ in New Jersey in August 2008. The first conference was held in New Jersey in September 2006.

The three-day conference-cum-exposition, in which nearly 50,000 nRGs participated, saw ahmed-abad-based realtors pitching for upcoming residential and com-mercial property projects worth over Rs 20,000 crore to nRGs. The expo also showcased ahmed-abad of tomorrow that would have mega projects like Gujarat International Financial Tec-City, Sabarmati riverfront project, and the new international airport and the internationally acclaimed Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS).

ahmedabad’s BRTS, popular-ly called Jan marg, has heralded a revolution in mass transporta-tion. The BRTS stole a march over all other cities of the world when earlier this year it won the Sustain-able Transport award for adopting an eco-friendly transit solution. It is because of road infrastructure projects like Jan Marg and the construction of ring roads that this city of 60 lakh people spread across 464 km does not face traf-fic congestions on the scale that one finds in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The BRTS project is part of the Jawaharlal nehru national urban Renewal mission (JnnuRm) which has sanctioned Rs 255 crore to de-velop 38 km radial and 4 km ele-vated corridor for its second phase.

Like other such systems around the world, Jan marg has a dedicat-ed lane for buses to speed their pas-sage through congested streets, en-ticing riders who would otherwise be stuck in traffic. The first 12.5 km of the Jan marg was opened

on october 14, 2009, and received overwhelming response.

Initially, Jan marg ferried around 24,000 passengers with an average income of Rs 1.20 lakh a day. after the extension of the BRTS in the 17-km stretch between the RTo circle, west of the Sabarmati river, and the Kankaria lake in the east, the swift model of transport is carrying around 30,000 passengers a day.

one of the major advantages for the ahmedabad BRTS has been learning from the mistakes of delhi and Pune’s BRTS corridors. “When BRTS was introduced in the national capital in april-may last year, there was chaos on the roads and long traffic jams as people were not aware of the right lanes, traffic lights did not work, bus stands were found to be in wrong places, among other things,” says u C Padia, executive director of Jan marg.

after Jan marg completes the second phase increasing the dedi-cated corridor to 88.8 km, central city’s Kalupur, Geeta mandir, asto-dia and Danapith AMC office will get connected to industrial areas like naroda, odhav as well as Gu-jarat university and residential ar-eas of Bopal and Chandkheda. The

entire Jan marg project, to be com-pleted by 2012, is estimated to cost Rs 960 crore. There would be 250 buses plying on the dedicated cor-ridor of the BRTS.

“BRTS becomes pertinent in ahmedabad as there are about 20 lakh registered vehicles in the city. In terms of composition, almost 75 percent of the total vehicles are two-wheelers. one of the ma-jor concerns for the city today is-rising number of cars which have already started choking major ar-terial roads of the city,” says mu-nicipal commissioner I P Gautam.

Gautam says BRTS and other ur-ban development projects under the JnnuRm could not have been possible if the amC did not have the requisite funds to match the aid from the central government. under the JnnuRm, the civic bod-ies of various cities are required to bear half the total project cost, while the central government would contribute 35 percent and the state the remaining 15 percent.

after the year 2005 was declared as urban Year, ahmedabad sub-mitted its city development plan to the government envisaging an investment of Rs 5,000 crore for areas under amC and of Rs 2,500



crore for areas under the auda.The city development plan sub-

mitted by the AMC was used as a role model by the JNNURM to prepare a ‘tool kit’ for all the 53 cities that are planned to be covered for infrastructure development.

Visitors from other cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad give credit to the foresight of town plan-ners and non-government groups of citizens for the planned growth of ahmedabad. First of all, the two civic bodies, the amC and auda, have put in place their perspective plans. Because of this, the real es-tate sector in the city became or-ganised and user specific.

“Because developed property has been available on the west-ern side of the Sabarmati river at one-fourth to one-tenth of the price of similar property in other met-ros, regional and national corpo-rate houses too have bought these properties to establish their offic-es,” says R narendran, a landscape architect from Bangalore.

“Though their factories are locat-ed outside the city, all major phar-maceuticals, chemicals and engi-neering firms based in Ahmedabad have their corporate head offices

in the heart of the city,” points out Sunil Parekh, advisor, Crisil.

The most attractive feature which makes ahmedabad a favourite destination for businesses is the ‘manageable’ prices of real estate, compared to other metros. This is one of the factors responsible for the proliferation of shopping malls and multiplexes in the city.

no wonder, JadeBlue, the larg-est menswear store of the country, is in ahmedabad and so are Sales India, the largest single-store con-sumer durable retailer, and Gold-en Times, the largest watch store of the country. The pharmacy retail-er, Planet Health, which is neither related to a hospital, pharmaceuti-cal company nor an mnC, has its origin in ahmedabad.

Ahmedabad was among the first cities in the country to have Big Bazar and Star Bazar departmen-tal stores. The large Reliance mega Mart was first opened in Ahmed-abad. The retail revolution in the city has also contributed to devel-opment in the areas of logistics, warehousing, transportation, com-munication, technologies, IT, de-signing, marketing and advertising services.

The pressure on residential com-plexes and housing colonies in and around the city is likely to increase with IT, pharma and multi-product SeZs coming up in the vicinity.

“Property rates are still low in ahmedabad compared with those in other metros. However, the real estate market is expected to expe-rience a sudden boom in the next couple of years by which time most of the infrastructure development projects will have been complet-ed. Those looking at investing in real estate have begun to explore property and land in and around ahmedabad,” says Suresh Iyer, a top executive of a housing finance company.

“all major real estate develop-ers such as the Rahejas, dLF and G Corp are looking at ahmed-abad while others like omaxe and Hiranandani are waiting in the wings,” he adds. “already, almost all retail majors have bought or taken on lease properties all over the city —both the eastern and

Former municipal commissioner Keshav Verma introduced the public-private partnership to undertake major infrastructure development projects. In exchange for advertisement rights, Arvind Mills rebuilt the arterial CG Road. Ashima, Sintex and Torrent were roped in to develop and maintain public gardens.

The Sabarmati, which once was a non-existent river, now flows round the year with Narmada waters. Now one of its banks is going to have a new look with embankments and pavements that would host markets in the evening.


western sides—to set up shopping malls,” he points out.

“ahmedabad is essentially a city of traders. It has all the character-istics of a mercantile city where everyone wants to earn through transaction of goods and services in the most peaceful and harmoni-ous manner. The principle of life is very simple—let everyone have a share of the cake,” says Sunil Parekh of Crisil.

Parekh, who decided to return to his home town, ahmedabad, 11 years ago, after having lived abroad and several metros of In-dia for greater part of his profes-sional life, says, “The quality of life Ahmedabad offers is dis-tinctly superior to Mumbai, Ban-galore and many others.”

“Ahmedabad has all the advan-tages of a metro minus its dis-advantages. It has the best of national and international con-nectivity — road, rail and air. It takes not more than half an hour to reach one corner of the city from another,” points out Vibhu-ti Bhatt, a public relations and ad-vertising professional who came to Ahmedabad in 1987 and has made it her home.

Born and brought up in mumbai and Nashik, Vibhuti finds work-ing in ahmedabad more comfort-able from a woman’s perspective. “If you want to be ethical and pro-fessional in my line of business, it is difficult to work in metros like delhi and mumbai. People here are more business oriented. There is no glam-sham. The clients here are concerned only with the deliv-erables,” she says.

“It is easier to start a business venture in ahmedabad because the real estate and office space is five to 10 times cheaper than in delhi, mumbai, Bangalore or even Pune. moreover, the city has bet-ter infrastructure like broad roads and uninterrupted electricity. un-like other metros, where commut-ing from home to office takes up a lot of time, in ahmedabad one can reach any part in about half an hour,” says nikhil Vaswani, 27, who set up Wellocity, a fitness and wellbeing studio in the upscale Satellite area of the city last year.

“People are exposed to the global culture, they have money to spend and they have desire to earn mon-ey. This is an ideal environment for starting any business,” he adds. For similar reasons, niraj Gemawat, a first generation en-trepreneur, too decided to start a software development company in ahmedabad 10 years ago.

“ahmedabad has emerged as a major knowledge centre and its institutions of technical education are producing a large number of skilled manpower. earlier, there was a brain drain of IT profession-als from ahmedabad to the uS and europe because of lack of oppor-tunities here. not anymore. Those who had migrated to cities like Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad in search of better opportunities are now eager to come back to Ahmedabad, even at lesser sal-aries. This is because the cost of living is less and the quality of life is much better here than elsewhere,” points out Gemawat.

The development of commercial and corporate office complexes in the heart of the city and the loca-tion of manufacturing units on the city’s periphery have gone hand in hand with the coming up of resi-dential areas in the suburbs and on both sides of the three main link roads between the twin cities of ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

“unlike Bangalore and Hyder-abad, which witnessed sudden spurt in the growth of IT indus-tries, the growth of the ahmed-abad city has been slow, steady and planned,” points out architect-cum-town planner Shodhan Shah.

Because of the colonisation of suburbs and the accompanying housing development, the pric-es of real estate have not shot up so alarmingly as in Bangalore, Hyderabad and even Pune.

“a middle-income group family can still dream of having its own house with a little help from banks and other financial institutions,” says Praveen mishra, a 32-year-old graduate from the national Insti-tute of design who has decided to settle down in ahmedabad. n

[email protected]

“Ahmedabad has all the advantages of a metro minus its disadvantages. It has the best of national and international connectivity – road, rail and air. It takes not more than half an hour to reach one corner of the city from another. People here are more business oriented. There is no glam-sham. Vibhuti Bhatt PR and advertising professional


www.GovernanceNow.com 33 www.GovernanceNow.com

Sudheendra Kulkarni

Recently I hap-pened to trav-el from delhi to mumbai by the corporate jet of a

business house. What caught my attention in the renovat-ed and vastly expanded delhi airport was the separate VVIP entrance and waiting lounge for politicians, senior govern-ment officers and, of course, owners of private aircraft. (The fleet of private aircraft in India has risen so rapidly in the past 10 years that they now actually outnumber the commercial aircraft operated by various airlines.) I had seen the previous VVIP lounge at the delhi airport, which was quite small. Though better looking than the general pas-sengers’ lounge, it was noth-ing extraordinary. The new lounge, however, is swankier and bigger than the one you might see in a seven-star ho-tel, providing the ultimate in

Stations of stench about 63 lakh people travelling by suburban trains in mumbai rely on patience or prayer if they need to answer the call of nature

Women’s toilets at Borivali

Trackside squatting near Bandra

men’s toilets at andheri

men’s toilet at Borivali

oRF’s reality check at mumbai’s stations

Women’s toilets at Govandi

urinals at dock Yard Road

urinals at dadar

Women’s toilet at Borivali

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luxury. I wondered: “If this is the

kind of luxury that our top po-litical leaders get habituated to, how can we expect them to worry about the most basic amenities, like sanitation, for passengers traveling by trains and state transport buses? In any case, when is the last time that they traveled by trains and buses?”

I have a reason for referring to my airport experience at the beginning of this article on the condition of sanitation fa-cilities at mumbai’s suburban railway stations. at a recent press meet to release a sur-vey-based report on this sub-ject prepared by the observer Research Foundation mum-bai, I pointedly described the contrast between the ultra-clean toilets at airports and the terribly stinking ones at railway stations. “In the past few years,” I said, “airports in India have undergone major improvement. However, most of our railway and bus sta-tions have remained as bad as ever. This is especially true in the case of sanitation and cleanliness. Why should there be this kind of ‘caste discrimi-nation’ between air and train passengers?”

a journalist later asked me in disbelief, “How can toilets at railway stations ever be as good as those at airports?” I said, “It is not technologically impossible. nor is it going to cost enormous sums of mon-ey. What is lacking is the politi-cal will, bureaucratic commit-ment and people’s pressure on the politician-bureaucrat-ic class. The trouble in In-dia is that our leaders are in-creasingly moving away, both physically and mentally, from the needs and problems of the common people. They seem to think that the common people who travel by train or bus do not deserve better facilities.”

What else can explain the shocking state of sanitation and cleanliness on mumbai’s suburban railway system,

which carries 63 lakh com-muters each day, almost half of the total number of passen-gers traveling on the Indian Railways’ network all over the country? Look at the findings of ORF’s report, the first-of-its-kind, aptly titled ‘a matter of Human dignity’:

The entire suburban railway network of 109 stations – from Churchgate to dahanu Road on Western Railway; from VT to Kasara-Khopoli on Central Railway; and from VT to Pan-vel on the Harbour Line – has a provision of only 355 toilet seats and 673 urinals. If we compare this to the standards adhered to in the best subur-ban railway networks in uSa, the uK and even China, the mumbai Suburban Rail net-work should have 12,600 toi-let seats to serve the needs of its commuters. In other words, the shortfall is more than 12,000 toilet seats!

The problem is not just quantitative inadequacy. San-itation in qualitative terms is even worse, not only at rail-way stations but also in the slums adjoining the railway tracks. (Those who come to mumbai by long-distance trains know that they realise the arrival of Mumbai first by smell and only thereaf-ter by sight! The mumbai Hu-man development Report, re-leased by the city corporation in 2009, revealed that “mum-bai has a deficit of 64,157 toilet seats in slums.”) The standard of cleanliness and maintenance at most railway toilets and urinals is deplor-able, so much so that the fa-cilities are used only by those who are desperate. most reg-ular commuters, especial-ly women commuters, go to great lengths to avoid using them altogether, at great risk to their health. The oRF sur-vey revealed that only “17 percent of the total number of toilets at suburban stations are meant for women. also, 93 percent of the toilets that were found to be ‘closed’ or

‘out of use’ are those intended for women.”

The report quotes dr Kamaxi Bhate, associate professor at the department of Preven-tive and Social medicine, Kem Hospital, as saying, “Lack of access to clean toilets and uri-nals at mumbai’s railway sta-tions is one of the main rea-sons for high levels of urinary tract infections (uTI) among female train commuters. uTI is more common among wom-en than men, the differential ratio of incidence being 6:1. Inadequacy of clean toilets forces women to avoid uri-nating for several hours while traveling. It is also well known that regular female travelers avoid drinking water or flu-ids to reduce the need to uri-nate. Women also suffer from lack of sanitation facilities for another reason: they cannot change sanitary napkins dur-ing menstruation. This too can cause uTI. Repeated bouts of uTI make women vulner-able to anaemia and urinary stones.”

“Lack of sanitation kills,” says dr margaret Chan, di-rector-general of the World Health organisation (WHo). “Improving sanitation repre-sents one of our best options to really accelerate health and social-economic develop-ment. For every dollar, yuan or rupee invested, there are benefits that can, on average, be valued at nine times as much.”

If this is what WHo says, how many rupees are being spent on sanitation on mum-bai’s suburban network? oRF’s study has revealed some startling figures about gross underinvestment by the Indian Railways. The an-nual sanitation budget for the construction of new toilets at Central Railway’s 73 train sta-tions in 2008-09 was a paltry Rs 14 lakh! Similarly, the to-tal annual capital expenditure on passenger amenities on the Western Railway subur-ban network in 2006-07 was

people politics policy performanceSanitation Scare

How can toilets at railway stations ever be as good as those at airports?” It is not technologically impossible. Nor is it going to cost enormous sums of money. The trouble in India is that our leaders are moving away, physically and mentally, from the needs and problems of the people. They think that the common people who travel by train or bus do not deserve better facilities.


Desiree Docome student, Wilson College, daily commuter “Toilets in shopping malls are much better than the ones in railway stations. I have not seen any rubbish bin on railway stations and people just keep throwing stuff on the tracks. There is no clean water available on platforms.”

Vandana Dharwad investment advisor, daily

commuter on Western, Central and Harbour lines

“I don’t use toilets on railway stations. If you stand outside

the toilet on platform number 4 of Dadar station,

the stench will make you nauseous. Forget spending

on new infrastructure; what we already have needs to

be maintained first. That’s the least that a taxpayer

deserves.”

Dominica student, Wilson

College, daily commuter between Santatcruz and

Churchgate

“I don’t use public toilets because they

are filthy. I don’t mind paying a rupee or

more if I get to use a clean toilet.”

Priyanka D’Souza Student, Wilson College, daily commuter “I would rather control myself than use an unclean toilet at a railway station. The platforms have also been becoming unhygienic because people spit paan and gutkha and urinate there.”

Brinelle Montero MBA student, commuter between Borivali and Marine Lines “Hygiene is getting worse and the authorities need to do something about it. More importantly, citizens must start to behave themselves – such as by not littering even in places that have rubbish bins and not minding when someone tells them not to litter.”

BorivAliMumbai

Pic: Gitanjali Minhas

Young mumbaikars are revolted by the state

of sanitation at railway

stations


people politics policy performanceSanitation Scare

Rs 1.47 crore, with not a sin-gle penny spent on improving sanitation. Such low invest-ment amounts to gross injus-tice towards mumbai, which unfortunately has gone un-protested by the political par-ties and elected representa-tives in the city.

There is an even bigger shocker in the oRF report. most people in the rest of In-dia do not know – and would not believe – that as many as 20,000 commuters died on mumbai’s railway tracks in the last five years – nearly 10 commuters die each day. The report states, “although there are several other reasons for this shocking and disgraceful tragedy in mumbai that goes on year after year, a signifi-cant number of those killed or injured are slum dwellers who lack community toilets and hence use railway tracks to relieve themselves.”

Can this situation be rem-edied? of course, it can be. oRF’s report, which was pre-pared by my young research-er-colleague Varsha Raj, has made several constructive recommendations. Take the case of underinvestment, for which the reason given by

railway authorities is: “We have no money. also, there are other priorities for develop-ment of railways in the rest of the country.” The fact is, mon-ey can be raised – from mum-bai’s suburban railway pas-sengers themselves. Let the Indian Railways create a ‘ded-icated Sanitation and Passen-ger amenities Fund’ for mum-bai to finance sanitation and other passenger amenities. With 63 lakh commuters us-ing the suburban system dai-ly, a surcharge of only 30 paise per passenger per day (that is, Rs 100 per passenger per year) would create an annual fund

of Rs 63 crore, which is suffi-cient to bring about a marked improvement. mumbai’s train passengers would not mind paying this surcharge, pro-vided they see that the money is well-spent for the targeted objective.

a second important recom-mendation is to empower the general managers and divi-sional railway managers of Central and Western Railway zones (both of which are head-quartered in mumbai) to take decisions that are appropriate to meet mumbai’s needs. Sad-ly, the Indian Railways follows a one-size-fits-all policy for sanitation all over the coun-try, which gives no flexibility to the local officers to change it to suit local problems. Since the departmental staff of rail-ways cannot provide satisfac-tory sanitation and cleanli-ness services, oRF’s report has suggested that Central and Western Railways “should ex-pand the use of PPP (public-private partnership) models for attracting better private players with a track record of providing superior sanitation services. Suitable incentives should be given to them in-cluding advertising revenue,

user charges, service con-tracts, etc.” In recent years, there have been some exam-ples of excellent public toilets being constructed and main-tained under the PPP model. notable among them are the public toilets built by Fuad Lokhandwala in delhi and mumbai.

Then, of course, there is the need to redesign subur-ban railway stations to make space for new toilets and uri-nals in a more aesthetic and functional manner. It is pain-ful to see that, at a time when almost all major airports in India are being redesigned and expanded, mumbai’s sub-urban railway stations – in-cluding the iconic VT station, where the Indian Railways was born in 1853 – look run-down and shabby, and are un-believably congested. each of the 109 stations in mumbai is in need of redesign and rede-velopment. In this context, we should learn a lesson or two from China, where some of the newly constructed or ren-ovated railway stations, such as the South Beijing railway station, are better and more attractive than even the best airports in China.

my experience in surveying and studying the problem of sanitation in mumbai’s sub-urban railway system tells me that it is not just the toilets that stink. The stink of apathy in governance is even worse to bear. n

Kulkarni is chairman, Observer Research Foundation Mumbai, a public policy think tank. The re-port on Sanitation on Mumbai’s Suburban Railways can be seen on www.orfonline.org.

Nita Ambani tries to keep her kids well-grounded and have mid-dle-class values. Like she doesn’t “send the plane to fetch them”.


Mumbai local trains transport 63 lakh passengers daily. Yet there are only 673 urinals to cater to this daily human tide. About 12,000 short of international standards!


policyWhile the centre is busy

redrafting the food se-curity bill, the delhi

government is set to introduce subsidised nutri-

tious meals to the daily wa-gers in the city.

For Rs 15, construction

workers, rick-shaw-pullers, vendors and

other daily wagers

will be able to buy a full meal.The project would kick off

sometime later this month from six locations. The meals would be dished out from midday meal and integrated child develop-ment services (ICdS) kitch-ens. eight nGos who run such schemes have been roped in for the purpose now.

It is supposed to be a self-fi-nancing scheme and the nGos would pool in the resources with-out the delhi government con-tributing anything to their kitty.

The much-awaited bill on accountability of judg-es, the Judicial Standards

and accountability Bill, 2010, is ready for the union cabinet’s consideration. Terming the bill as “state-of-the-art”, law minis-ter m Veerappa moily has said it would make judiciary “ac-countable” for its acts of omis-sion and commission and “clear clouds over corruption”. The bill proposes that a judge can be warned, taken off work, cen-sured or admonished, depend-ing upon the misconduct. But if the violation is serious in nature, the judge can also be impeached. not only the Raman Singh

government of Chhat-tisgarh, even the Prime

Minister’s Office is upset with environment and forests minis-ter Jairam Ramesh for his rigid stand on declaring certain for-ests as “no-go” area for mining. It turns out that 48 percent of such areas contain high-quali-ty coal deposits and that has led to the conflict. So much so that the Pmo told the moeF that the yardsticks to declare an area as

“no-go” must be relaxed consid-erably or else it “may lead to in-crease in maoism!

at the centre of conflict is the Hasdeo-arand forest. It is learnt that the Pmo has pointed out that this forest contains more than five billion tonnes of coal re-serves. Chhattisgarh had in 2002 proposed an elephant corridor there. But in 2006, it discovered the rich coal reserve underneath and decided enough is enough about wildlife sanctuaries.

With Harsh mander, a former IAS offi-cer who chucked his job follow-ing the Gujarat

2002 riots, back in the new nation-al advisory Council, the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill may get a fresh life. It has been pending

since 2005—primarily because most states, especially those ruled by the opposition parties, oppose overriding powers given to the centre to inter-vene in case of communal violence. Last heard, law minister m Veerappa moily was talking about giving more teeth to the bill after Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod muthalik was exposed for making a deal to engineer riots.

New life for communal violence bill?

Food for the poorJudges’ Accountability Bill ready

Lure of black diamonds


It’s been five years since the centre launched the Jawahar-lal nehru national urban Re-newal mission (JnnuRm) and sought to change the way In-

dia developed and governed its cit-ies. Some cities have availed of funds under this mission. But, as a recent nationwide survey of sanitation fa-cilities across urban centres re-vealed, India is yet to have even a single clean, green city. In an inter-view with Danish Raza, urban devel-opment secretary m Ramachandran (Kerala, 1972) spoke about these and other concerns. edited excerpts:

Have we graduated to planning for the next 20 years, instead of trying to catch up with what we should have done 20 years ago?Before 2005, there were a limited number of schemes for very few towns and cities. development of cit-ies was a state subject and the centre was at the periphery. The JnnuRm gave the centre a big canvas. The ini-tial Rs 50,000 crore earmarked for a seven-year period, subsequently

enhanced to Rs 66,000 crore, sudden-ly meant a lot of work for the 65 mis-sion cities. It is a welcome change because cities generate GdP (gross domestic prod-uct, measure of economic growth) and employment. now it is a joint venture between the centre, state governments and the local bodies. Cities form the third level of gover-nance. States have to recognise this, transfer the functions they are con-stitutionally supposed to, empower the cities and make them as function-al as possible.

We need to do a lot of work, starting with basic infrastructure, water sup-ply, solid waste management, drain-age system and sewerage system. many cities do not even have 100 percent coverage of sewerage. Luck-ily, we have been able to approve projects, more or less committing the amounts which have been ear-marked. now it is about implementa-tion and spending the entire amount.

I must refer to the metro initiative taken by our ministry. Initially, only Kolkata had its metro. Then metro

happened in delhi and proved to be a success. now, the rule of thumb is that buses can carry 8,000-10,000 persons per hour. Beyond that, we need some better mode of public transport. That’s where the metro be-comes relevant. Further to the expan-sion of the metro project in delhi, we have been able to take up such proj-ects with the centre’s participation in Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai and with private participation in mum-bai. The national urban transport policy set the pace for all this. Cur-rently, we are in talks with the World Bank for a $1 billion aid for the Jn-nuRm. earlier, one never thought of credit rating for cities. We took it up to tell them where they stood so far as their finances were concerned.

Less than half the amount allocated to the JNNURM under the 11th five-year plan (2007-12) has been utilised so far. How do you plan to step it up?In the first three years, the pace of implementation was not that good. But it picked up in the fourth and fifth years. We have committed to

INTERVIEW M RA M AC H A N D RA N , S E C R E TA RY, M I N I ST RY O F U R BA N D E V E L O P M E N T

people politics policy performanceUrban Governance


provide close to Rs 28,000 crore over a seven-year period. most of the 65 cities have taken up projects and they have claimed a little over Rs 12,000 crore from the centre. That means, cities are getting used to taking up projects and imple-menting them. I am expecting that a substantial amount will be claimed by the states this year and by next year it will move even faster. We al-ready have a commitment from the states that they will be able to com-plete close to 200 projects this year against only 70 completed so far.

Which city or corporation has made the best use of the JNNURM funds?It is difficult to judge this national-ly. We have some cities with only 5 percent coverage of sewerage fa-cility. If such a city moves to a lit-tle more coverage due to some sup-port, it is a big improvement for that city. In maharashtra, Karnataka, andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil nadu, urban activities are more in the forefront.. But the states in the northeast have not been exposed

to such kind of urban requirement. Similarly, in north India there are problems. But there is growing awareness among all the states that they have to move forward.

Which are the showpiece projects of the JNNURM? I must mention the 24X7 water sup-ply: some cities have made a begin-ning in this regard. Then there are cities where segregated garbage is being collected from households and disposed of. BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) is another example. I call it the common man’s metro. We are supporting BRT in nine cities. There is a 16 km or so dedicated corridor and good quality buses are avail-able. If you board the bus at one point, you know you will reach your destination in this much time. These are some of the examples that stand out. But every project has a certain value in a city-specific situation.

Empowerment of urban local bodies is a prerequisite for claiming funds under the JNNURM. Why hasn’t that

happened?There are not very many occasions when a national mission runs on two principles—reform agenda and project agenda. The two can-not be segregated in the JnnuRm. For the reform part, a seven-year window was made available. But such changes cannot be expected to happen overnight especially when it involves a cultural change. The constitution mandates that 18 func-tions should get transferred from the states to the cities and the cities should be enabled and empowered to undertake those tasks. This is a big challenge, but the states have committed that by the seventh year, the transfer of functions would be complete. We have the example of West Bengal where it has already happened. But West Bengal already had such a culture; other states are doing it now.

Why have you decided on a third-par-ty audit of funds for JNNURM-II? We decided to put in place some independent monitors. The idea

“the idea is not just delivery of projects, but also an improvement in the ways cities are governed”

rAvi ChoudhAry


is to ensure proper implementa-tion. There was a discussion about elected representatives not being involved. We have issued instruc-tions that at the city and district levels, the members of parliament and assemblies concerned would also form a monitoring group.

Why has your ministry asked every city with a population of more than 10 lakh to set up a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority? The idea is to look at transporta-tion issues as a whole. at present, there is a transport department which issues permits and licences. Traffic management is by police. Then there are master plan-related issues. There are so many such fac-tors that play a role in contributing to a well-organised city transport system. There could be the subur-ban rail system, metro and other modes of transport. The idea is to look at these issues as an integrat-ed whole. We have also introduced the concept of service-level bench-marks in urban transport.

Why is it that such authorities scarcely hold any meetings, be it in Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad? They have made a beginning but a lot of back-up is required. It is one thing to say that all these issues need to be addressed and another to see that we have sufficient data. We need to have a mechanism where the required data is gener-ated, analysed and decisions taken accordingly.

Don’t we need service benchmarks in housing also? The question of providing housing is a larger issue. our sister ministry, for housing and urban poverty alleviation, has formulated a policy and is also in the process of developing a model legislation. We are thinking in terms of having a regulatory arrangement to address the concerns of people in delhi when they want to book a house. But yes, issues related to the implementation of housing schemes by private developers and

even authorities like dda need to be addressed. We are moving steadily in that direction to have a regulator to look into these issues.

How do you see the growing role of private players, given the mixed performance of PPP projects? While power distribution has improved in Delhi, for example, there have been complaints of overbilling as well.The urban sector is used to funds from the government, but user charges is not a very popular con-cept. We still have a long journey to cover even to have metered con-nections. Levying user charges is something we have emphasised in the JnnuRm. only when these ba-sics are in place, PPP will take off. Therefore, another reform mea-sure is to have a proper PPP policy. How much guarantee we can give to the private player that he is en-tering a regime where there would be fair play? That takes us to a dis-cussion about having an urban regulator also. We cannot have regulators for every segment and

section. one could look at the city as a whole and look at what sort of regulatory system would work. We have a lead from the finance com-mission’s report which talks about nine parameters which, if imple-mented, could lead to the local bodies getting performance grant.

What about assurances to the consumers? Will the urban regulator help in that respect?It depends on how it is structured. It should not become another sys-tem which adds to complications. maharashtra has a water regulator for the bulk water supply and not for the other areas of water supply. We have to look at such examples to see what can be learned and improved.

The Madras High Court recently ruled a PPP project delivering public utilities such as water must be considered a public authority under the RTI Act. Your views?This is a systemic improvement we have to bring about. What is being done should be shared with the public. The websites of the local bodies are expected to provide information about various projects. We also initiated a process of having an interactive mechanism so that people can come to know what we collect as information about the projects. This is currently in the process of being developed. There is a transparency legislation which is part of the reform agenda. after all, this is the age of right to information. The first ranking of cities on sanitation revealed that India does not have a single clean, green city... What we have talked about is just an open defecation-free city. more awareness generation can imme-diately lead to a substantial im-provement. That was the idea of the survey: to sensitise the cities about where they stood in terms of sanitation. n

[email protected]

“We have committed to provide close to Rs 28,000 crore over a seven-year period…. We already have a commitment from the states that they will be able to complete close to 200 projects this year. That is a good progress compared to the 70 projects completed so far (since 2005).”

people politics policy performanceUrban Governance


Sanjay Pandey

I grew up in a middle-class family in uttar Pradesh. dur-ing those days, students all around me had just one aspi-ration: to make it to the civil

services. This burning ambition cut across students pursuing all sorts of courses. I remember even some of the brighter minds at the Indi-an Institute of Technology compet-ing for civil services. despite being a student of computer science, I too opted for a combination of phys-ics and sociology to make it to the Indian Police Service. I was over-joyed at achieving my goal and so was my entire family. never could I imagine that one day I would actu-ally end up quitting the same force.

nothing had prepared me for the disillusionment that began as early as during the training right at my induction. For me, the dinner table had always been a casual affair. But it was not so in the police. one had to dress properly to eat in the mess. I found it terribly difficult to come to terms with this regimentation.

The mandatory unquestioning and undue submission to seniors came as a blow to my upbring-ing as a freethinking individual straight out of the intellectual at-mosphere prevalent at the IIT Kan-pur. While training in the north-ern part of maharashtra, I found the absolute dictatorial regime of some of my seniors unpalatable and unwarranted. Thinking that it was too early for me to take any drastic decision, I suffered several years of absolute dictatorial rule of my seniors.

While I suffered the harrassment of seniors during my early years in the service, later, during my stint with the economic offences cell, I came face to face with the reality

of absolute subservience of the ser-vice to political masters and the powers usurped by the political powers running the government.

Just when I thought I was doing a great service to the nation, inves-tigating a huge fraud of embezzle-ment of soft loans meant for cob-blers by big businessmen close to our political rulers in mumbai, I was moved out of my post. I was shocked that my work was no-where near completion and yet I was shunted out, in the guise of routine administrative transfers. I was relieved of my responsibili-ties even before I could brief my successor on the details of the eight months of investigations that I had done. Though a few well-wishers in the ranks offered me some mor-al support, they were helpless as they themselves were at the mercy of these powerful political masters.

a few years later, on the advice

of some well-meaning seniors in the service, I joined the elite group which looks after the security of the prime minister. I believed that in this assignment there would be no conflict with the political pow-ers, since there was no executive role to play.

However, within a few months I realised that this job more than anything else made me a person-al effect of political masters. In the name of providing security to the prime minister, I was primari-ly managing the tour programmes of the prime minster and ex-prime ministers. If I was not travelling with the prime minister and his predecessors, I was guarding their houses, maintaining the daily lists of guests and servants who visited his house. I was playing the role of a well-paid personal servant. This humiliated me as an IPS officer. It was this job along with my experi-ences with senior servants and po-litical masters that made me decide that it was time to move on.

no one wants to be a servant. most colleagues in service never even talk of themselves as being one. They refer to themselves as government officers. My 14 years in service made me realise that while the outside world referred to us as officers, in the system we were just glorified servants to the political masters. If any of us did not behave as a servant, punish-ments came swift and drastic.

Political masters call the shots and keep to themselves the magna-nimity of granting mercy petitions. once you get entangled, there is no way to get out I was lucky to have made a decision early on and built my career as an individual and not as a personal effect of either a se-nior servant or a politician. n

Pandey is now a cyber security expert. [email protected]

Indian Politicians’ Servants That’s what IPS has been reduced to, says one who opted out. 1/3rd civil servants think like him

Findings of a recent survey:n 34 percent civil servants have thought of quitting the job, mainly due to political interference, medi-ocrity, corruption, better pay in the private sector and conformity.n 81 percent officers across services believe political corruption takes place because there are some civil servants willing to collaborate in it.n 52 percent respondents believe that postings and transfers are not based on merit. n One-fourth civil servants believe very few officers have integrity.n 36 percent of the respondents re-ported that they had been a victim of harassment in their service. The Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, along with AC Nielsen ORG-MARG carried out the survey, which included responses from 4,808 officers of various services.

Working with tied hands?

people politics policy performanceWhy I Quit IPS


Ajay Singh

almost a century ago, Gandhi had referred to the British parlia-ment as “a sterile wom-an and a prostitute” in

Hind Swaraj, a book that he called a guide to his dream for India. His de-scription shocked democracy-lov-ing and english-educated Indians who saw their future in emulating the British model of governance.

even his political mentor Go-pal Krishna Gokhale was not amused. and his polit-ical heir Jawaharlal neh-ru chose to ignore the book as he found the vi-

sion outlined in Hind Swaraj

impractical.B u t v i e w e d

in to-d a y ’ s

c o n -t e x t ,

Gandhi’s uncharacteristically har-sh description of the Westminster model seems prescient. His prima-ry objection to parliamentary de-mocracy stemmed from his belief that self-seeking politicians would tend to feed their own greed at the expense of people’s welfare. Sev-eral recent examples vindicate his apprehension.

Consider agriculture minister Sharad Pawar whose connections with the bids for an Indian Premier League franchise through a family-owned firm have been unearthed by The Times of India. unfazed by the seriousness of the allegation, Pawar and his daughter Supri-ya Sule rubbished the allegations and went about doing their busi-ness as if nothing had happened. Pawar knows he is indispensable to the Congress party, which needs his support to stay in power in not just the centre but also maharash-tra, a state from which it derives its financial muscle. Despite the love-hate relationship between Pawar and the Congress party, nei-ther Sonia Gandhi nor manmohan

Singh can risk the centre and the maharashtra governments for the alleged “indiscretion” on part of Pawar. obviously, then, the entire controversy is bound to be allowed to die its natural death.

next, take the auction of the 2G spectrum, for which telecom minister a Raja threw all norms to the wind and virtually gave the contracts to his favourites on a first-come-first-served basis — an innovation to circumvent the rules. The union government lost more than Rs one lakh crore on account of Raja’s ingenuity. Being an econo-mist and former finance minister, prime minister manmohan Singh is well aware of the loss the exche-quer has suffered. But Raja, too, is indispensable. dmK chief m Karu-nanidhi flew down to New Delhi to plead innocence for Raja and said the latter was being hounded for being a dalit. Karunanidhi’s sup-port is crucial to the survival of the government at the centre. That is why, despite his overt “indiscre-tion”, Raja is sitting pretty. The po-litical equations are such that it

our politicians have done to democracy and governance exactly what the mahatma predicted they would do!

people politics policy performanceModel Of Governance

Gandhiji was right. We have been had.


would be difficult to act against him without annoying the grand old man of Tamil nadu politics. as a cover-up, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has been asked to look into what is really an open-and-shut case.

Satish Sharma, a nehru-Gandhi family loyalist, has been nomi-nated by the Congress party as a member of Rajya Sabha from ut-tar Pradesh. mulayam Singh Ya-dav supported his candidature. Why? Yadav said he was motivat-ed by the desire to keep the com-munal forces (read the BJP) at bay! Isn’t it a strange coincidence that at the same time there is a serious attempt by the central government to withdraw the disproportionate assets (da) cases against Yadav? Congress insiders admit that Ya-dav is keen to join the union gov-ernment, ostensibly to strengthen the secular forces. If the da cases against him are diluted or with-drawn, that will be a collateral benefit for a grand objective!

But a similar kind of drama was enacted in Ranchi when yet an-other national party, the BJP, tried to form a government with the Jharkhand mukti morcha’s Shibu Soren. after Soren voted for the government in the cut motions on the union budget, the BJP de-cided to withdraw its support in the state. Though the party’s par-liamentary board, the apex de-cision-making body, categorical-ly opposed any move to form the government with the unreliable Soren, Rajnath Singh and ananth Kumar acted to the contrary much to the chagrin of veteran BJP lead-er L K advani. even BJP presi-dent nitin Gadkari acquiesced to the machiavellian logic of form-ing a BJP government in the min-eral-rich state, with arjun mun-da as chief minister, which would come in handy for “resource mo-bilisation” during Bihar elections. BJP insiders also admit that an in-dustrial house played a key role in revising the BJP’s strategy on Jharkhand. The move failed not because of any sagacity displayed by the BJP. on the contrary, Soren spoiled the party for the Hindutva

forces by refusing to oblige Ra-jnath Singh and ananth Kumar de-spite their secret entreaties.

The inference from these instanc-es is unambiguous: in an elector-al democracy, parties are more guided by pragmatism than ethi-cal concerns to retain power. In this era of visual media, some pic-tures are firmly etched in people’s perception about prevailing cor-ruption in politics. Bangaru Lax-man earned a place in India’s po-litical history by accepting a wad of currency notes as donation dur-ing his term as BJP president. He paid the price for not being cau-tious enough to not get caught on camera. That the party with a dif-ference has evolved a sophisticat-ed mechanism to collect donation is evident by its growing coffers. Just before the 2009 general elec-tions, a few crores in cash were allegedly stolen from the party’s headquarters. But the issue was hushed up by the BJP leaders.

Similarly, towards the fag end of the previous Congress-led united

Progressive alliance, some BJP mPs displayed a bagful of cur-rency notes given to them to buy their votes for the no-confidence motion against the manmohan Singh government. The initial shock gave way to brazenness of the ruling elite to cover up the ep-isode. ultimately, a parliamentary probe proved to be sterile. If such incidents are not enough proof of greed and caprice of the political class, uP chief minister mayawa-ti’s garland of crisp currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination hit the nail on the head. The preliminary investigation by the IT authorities revealed that the currency notes were withdrawn from bank ac-counts and were not donation from the BSP cadres. But mayawa-ti’s dalit antecedents and her util-ity to the central government pro-vide the insurance against all legal scrutiny.

Gandhi was ahead of his time so he could foresee that governance and democracy based on the West-minster model would have in-herent vulnerabilities that would extentuate the baser human in-stincts. His description of the Brit-ish parliament as “a sterile woman and a prostitute” was based on his assumption that parliament did not do anything worthwhile on its own and was always beholden to the prime minister and ministers who keep changing. Right, as he always was!n

[email protected]

Gandhiji’s description of the British parliament as “a sterile woman and a prostitute” about a century ago was based on his assumption that parliament did not do anything worthwhile on its own and was always beholden to the prime minister and ministers who keep on changing.

Why did Pawar take only a mi-nority stake in an IPL bidder company? Because he is com-mitted to the minority cause!

We must believe the prime minister when he says he did not cut a deal with Mayawati to save his government. He just explained to her how badly the country needed his leadership, Maya understood and acquiesced in national interest!


BJP members of Lok Sabha flash currency notes they were allegedly offered as bribe to bail out the govern-ment in July 2008


Vikas Singh

as India embarks on the census count along with the uId project, one of the largest citizen map-

ping and identification initiatives in the world, the issue of using the right blend of technologies will hold the key to its success. But be-yond the way multiple technologies will seamlessly interact with data-bases, it’s critical that for the end beneficiaries the technology trans-lates into something which is user-friendly yet tamper-proof.

application of biometric solu-tions makes immense sense in a country like India struggling with the problem of maintaining home-land security. For decades, many highly secure environments have used biometric technology for en-try access at airports, borders etc. There have been various challeng-es in identity management like Id duplication. Such unproven iden-tities are high in number, especial-ly in case of the poor and they are ones that depend on government giveaways that depend on credi-ble identity for effective delivery.

Inability to prove identity is one of the biggest barriers preventing the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies designed for them. These problems can be brought to an end using biometric solutions. Biomet-ric techniques are gaining popu-larity in all financial institutions and fingerprinting technology is being used extensively by all the law enforcement organisations for criminal tracking and prosecution.

For eliminating the menace of identity theft, there should be lay-ers of identification for determin-ing the identity. This gives scope for technology like biometrics that has fast emerged as a promising tool for authentication and has already found place in various areas like security and identity management.

There are several examples which can be emulated in Indian environment like the uK biometric passport — a single chip inside the passport contains complete infor-mation about its holder. The chip containing the biometric and per-sonal details has an antenna which can be read electronically. using it, biometric checks can be used at border controls, especially at auto-mated passport control gates.

Recently, the Gujarat government tied up with one of the largest oems

(original equipment manufactur-ers) in India to introduce a bio-metric attendance system in gov-ernment schools. This programme intends to monitor the attendance of girl children in schools and en-able provisions to decrease the dropout rate. If successful in the pi-lot stage, the project plans to cover over 7,000 schools in the state with over 1,000 schools under the tribal department and over 6,000 schools under the education department.

more initiatives such as these will be taken to introduce biometrics in the field of education, health-care and ancillary industries like insurance. a number of biometric specialist companies have started working with state governments to make healthcare insurance avail-able to the rural population, while the usage of biometric component helps prevent unauthorised access at the point of authentication in the hospitals, it helps contain misuse of government machinery and funds.

The true value of biometric solu-tions can be realised only if put to use in simplifying the lives of com-mon people. But this will require the cooperation of different or-ganisations involved. For example, processing the workers’ month-ly wages into the respective bank

not anymore. It will soon be an important, and integral, part of all reforms in governance

people politics policy performancee-Governance

biometrics is not sci-fi mythology



accounts will require that the banking authorities work in tan-dem with the local government administration, with the biomet-rics serving as a base for authoris-ing the transaction. Government schools today are beset with ab-senteeism and are at the juncture of a total revamp. many teachers today have poor attendance rec-ords and some parents are misus-ing incentives offered for educat-ing a girl child through various social schemes. Technology lies at the heart of the reform and it should drive change in the right direction.

It would be unwise to under-mine the importance of biometric technology at any level. If utilised well, it can come handy in ensur-ing transparency and account-ability in important sectors which further will benefit the under-privileged population. ambigu-ous terms like financial inclusion will take concrete shape and will be instrumental in formation of an egalitarian society. This will not only curb malpractices but also add credibility and institutionalise the entire process of authentica-tion and verification.

There is a popular tendency to regard biometric products as sci-fi mythology, but the reality is that biometrics is here to stay. It is quickly becoming recognised as the most accurate identification technology in the market, with cre-dentials to back it up. The impact of biometrics in our lives is bound to be of significant importance. While today we see the imple-mentation of the technology only

in pockets, at the rate at which its popularity is growing, it will gov-ern our lives at every step. Biomet-rics is moving towards building a life cycle of identity. It is likely to create and store the individuality of 1.2 billion people.

Projects like these can deter-mine the identity of an individ-ual, authenticate a citizen on a standalone basis but can, possibly, throw up a history that tracks ev-ery progression of a person from education to marriage and reflects even the minutest details like those relating to a ration card or gas connection. In a way a single number will define a person’s life and build a life cycle that authen-ticates him. Hence, it goes beyond just authentication and record maintenance; it is symbolic of ev-ery citizen’s life history that sits on a single number residing on high-end biometric calculations.

Biometrics will soon play an im-portant role in reforming identity life cycle and bringing about re-forms at every level; from educa-tion, land records and hospitals to the social schemes rolled out by the government.n

Singh is country head, services & SI, NEC India Pvt Ltd.

Recently, the Gujarat government tied up with one of the largest OEMs in India to introduce a biometric attendance system in government schools. This programme intends to monitor the attendance of girl children in schools and enable provisions to decrease the dropout rate. If successful in the pilot stage, the project plans to cover over 7,000 schools in the state.

Samir Sachdeva

M inister for Communication and IT A Raja was to travel to Estonia to learn lessons in e-

governance with a 26-member delega-tion but he had to cancel his trip as he

did not get permission from the Prime Minister’s Of-fice (PMO). The delegation had three MPs and 22 of-ficials as well.

It was strange that the minister who had no time to attend the 13th annual conference on e-governance at Jaipur, organised by his own ministry, had enough time (June 7–13) to travel to the Baltic nation to at-tend the 20-hour conference along with important officials of his ministry.

Estonia, ranked 20th in the Global UN e-Govern-ment Survey, could have offered few lessons to India as the country is very small compared to India in size and population. If international best practices have to be studied, then countries like South Korea, the US, Canada and the UK should be the benchmark as they are the leaders in the global e-government ranking.

India is a complex and diverse nation with multiple states, multiple languages and multilayered gov-ernance structures. Whereas India has to issue UID numbers to over 100 crore residents, Estonia had to issue it to just a few lakh. India plans to estab-lish 1,00,000 rural Common Service Centres (CSCs) across 28 states and seven union territories, but Estonia can boast of just 700 Public Access Internet Points (PAIPs) or telecentres, which is just 0.7 per-cent of the Indian target. There can hardly be any lesson that a vast nation like India could have learnt in e-governance from a small nation like Estonia.

Another reason for the PMO’s refusal could be that the prime minister is reportedly planning a cabinet reshuffle. If the minister’s portfolio changes in July, all lessons learnt from Estonia would go waste. So has the PM shown his foresight in putting brakes on the minister’s trip or it is just another routine matter?

But it is not clear what the minister wanted. Was he trying to get away from the heat of Delhi or the heat of 2G scam? The minister these days is said to be avoiding meetings where the media is present in order to avoid tough questions on the 2G scam. With the revenues from Broadband Wireless Access and 3G auctions crossing Rs one lakh crore, the loss from 2G (benchmarked at the 3G auctions) spectrum sale can also be pegged at over Rs one lakh crore.

Now that the trip has been cancelled, the minis-ter may explore using the e-governance route of vid-eoconferencing or webcast to learn more about e-governance in Estonia. Anyway, we have a lesson for the minister. The governance part is more important than the ‘e’ part in e-governance!

[email protected]

e-Gov lessons from estonia!

What was that wretched soul trying to do? Teach Sri Sri Rav-ishankar the Art Of Leaving?



Rohit Bansal

driving at 110 kmph on the Jaipur-ajmer high-way is hardly the place to carp about the deci-sions of the almighty

babus managing our national high-ways strategy. But apart from the smooth ride on some select high-ways, whim and nepotism is fast becoming the rule of the game.

So much so that the babus seem callous about the obsession of their boss, minister of road transport and highways Kamal nath, to present a serious and transparent image of the government.

Just a few examples would suf-fice. Nath’s aides have issued ad-dendum no.2 dated February 11, 2010 and addendum no.6 dated april 22, 2010, and addendum no.4 dated February 15, 2010, in the six-laning of the prestigious delhi-agra Section of nH-2 from 20.500 km to 200.00 on dBFoT (toll) basis under nHdP V. Here they have inserted a Clause 2.1.18 in the Request for

Proposal. now, why should a col-umn such as this bother about an addendum! Because these adden-dums can ensure highways like Jaipur-ajmer don’t come up in the future.

This is what one of the addendums actually states: “a bidder shall not be eligible for bidding hereunder if, as on bid due date, the bidder, its member or associate was either by itself or as member of a consor-tium, has been declared by the na-tional Highways authority of India as the selected bidder for undertak-ing three or more projects and the bidder is yet to achieve financial closure. a bidder shall be consid-ered as declared selected bidder for the projects of nHaI, where the let-ter of awards has been issued.”

In another addendum, which fur-ther modifies Clause 2.1.18, it is stated that a bidder shall not be eli-gible for bidding, if:

“(i) For projects with TPC (to-tal project cost) less than Rs 3,000 crore, as on bid due date, the bid-der, its member or any associate, ei-ther by itself or as member of a con-sortium has been declared by the

nHaI as a selected bidder for un-dertaking three such projects and the bidder is yet to achieve finan-cial closure;

(ii) For projects with TPC in excess or equal to Rs 3,000 crore, a bidder shall not be eligible for bidding if, as on bid due date the bidder, its member or any associate, either by itself or as member of consortium has been declared by the nHaI as a selected bidder for undertaking two such projects and the bidder is yet to achieve financial closure.

Subject, however, with the provi-sion that total number of projects under (i) & (ii) above for which the bidder is yet to achieve financial closure shall not exceed three.

a bidder shall be considered as a Selected Bidder for the projects of nHaI, where the Loa (licence of award) has been issued.”

These seemingly innocuous re-quirements have been justified as necessary to prevent bidders from overstretching themselves. But they have ended up creating an in-surmountable roadblock for all se-rious players. many of them have been boxed in three small projects

Seemingly innocuous addendums are creating havoc on the highways. Instead of the biggies, unknown midgets and unmentionable cronies are having a field day.

highway heist people politics policy performance

Road To Governance


and thereby excluded from bid-ding for the mega projects now up for grabs. So, instead of the biggies, unknown midgets and unmention-able cronies are having a field day. In one case, nath’s aides refused to open a bid on the ground that the bidder had already been awarded her third project, a status the bid-der vehemently denies!

In another case, a friendly com-pany which already had two finan-cial closures pending, was award-ed three Loas on a single day. This “coincidence” allowed the compa-ny to surge ahead of its rivals (and have five financial closures pend-ing) without Clause 2.1.18 being flouted! The same company got it-self disqualified in another bid, where it had accidentally over bid, this time benefiting from a techni-cal interpretation of 2.1.18.

Unjustified restrictions midway of a tender process are a bad idea. also, issuance of addendums is against international best practic-es. Furthermore, the fundamental right of bidders under article 19 (1) (g) of the constitution of India guarantees them the freedom to

carry on trade and business. These are being violated, as the imple-mentation of addendums means that the serious bidders are barred from future tenders. The concept of level playing field does not per-mit nath’s aides to vary materi-al conditions of a tender, taking away the very fairness and trans-parency of state action. Fairness in state action is the soul of good governance. every action of the state where it infringes the consti-tutional mandate or is opposed to basic rule of law suffers from the infirmity of patent arbitrariness. So, much against their wishes, con-tractors might have to seek judicial intervention.

Ironically, nath’s aides are end-ing up barring bidders with the re-sources and the expertise to take on more than three projects. The essence of a tender process is to get the best company in the market to execute projects of national impor-tance. If the biggies are no longer in competition, the midgets and the cronies will have no incentive to lower their prices. Quality of exe-cution will be the natural casualty.

It isn’t hard to guess that if a com-petent bidder is barred on grounds of discretion, it would invariably lead to compromising on stan-dards of quality.

Some would argue that the gov-ernment has the right to discre-tion. Well, discretion means sound discretion guided by law, governed by rule not by humour; it must not be arbitrary, vague and fanciful, but legal and regular. If the inten-tion of nath’s aides was to restrict the number of projects awarded to a selected bidder to three, the same could have been achieved for future projects. Legal certainty is an important element of law. Had the bidders known rules would be changed, they would have picked projects more selectively.

If a competent bidder has the resources, finances and the techni-cal capability to execute more than three projects and is held to be the highest bidder in a competitive bidding, who should grudge her the victory? n

[email protected]

If a competent bidder, has the resources, finances and the technical capability to execute more than three projects and is held to be the highest bidder in a competitive bidding, who should grudge her the victory?

Ashish Mehta

Think of all possible ways to pay hom-age to Mahatma Gandhi. Your list is not likely to include a big-budget, grandi-ose ‘temple’ that will also be a sort of club for industrialists. And that’s what

is coming up in the capital of Gujarat. But, then, this is none other than chief minister Narendra Modi’s way of paying tribute to Gandhi.

The 34-acre project is going to cost Rs 135 crore. Going by the designs and models, it has the worst of postmodern architecture, with fanciful bridges and land-scapping and what not. For visitors, there’s even a food court. There’s a convention centre, which will host the Vibrant Gujarat investors’ meet next year (in which investors like Nirma will come up with projects which will invite protests from Gandhians while the state government and its lawyers will do everything non-Gandhian). As an afterthought, the place has a Gandhi museum. Modi has a fine sense of humour but at Rs 135 crore, this is a bit costly joke on the Mahatma.

Gandhians of Gujarat have protested. Chunibhai Vaidya, Ilaben Pathak, Prakash N Shah and Sudar-shan Iyengar wrote to the chief minister in April, pointing out that the Mahatma’s name was put to an “improper use”. Chunikaka, along with the rest, has stated: “Such a grandiose memorial is in contra-diction with Gandhi’s philosophy. If this project is meant to honour Gandhi’s legacy, it is actually an in-sult of the Gandhian philosophy.” More importantly: “ Till the state’s ruling party and its leadership does not state where it stands with reference to the ideol-ogy that created the atmosphere for Gandhi’s assas-sination and justified it, there was, is and will remain the possibility that they are doing this to camouflage their role (in killing the Mahatma). Moreover, when the accusation of state-sponsored violence (in 2002) still stands, obviously this government does not have the moral authority to build the Mahatma Mandir.”

It’s not just Gandhians. When L K Advani on his blog praised Narendrabhai’s plans, even his follow-ers wrote back to say that grandiosity was the last thing you could associate with Gandhiji.

If Modi wants to pay a grand tribute to the apostle of peace and nonviolence, the kind of tribute that the world will remember for a long time, if he truly wants to do that, he knows what he must do. If that is too difficult for him, then he should let Gandhi be.

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modi’s Rs 135 crore joke on mahatma Gandhi

rAvi ChoudhAry


people politics policy performanceParting Shot

text: B v rAo



To find out the truth about how Warren Anderson escaped, Jayanti Natarajan says, we will have to explore “all avenues”. So, hit the road Jay-anti. North Avenue, South Avenue, Rouse Avenue. Or Rajpath, Janpath, Shantipath. Even Nyaya Marg, Neeti Marg...!

In law minister Veerappa Moily’s mythical court, the “case against Warren Anderson is not yet closed”. Next he’ll tell us Ravan is still facing charges for Sita’s kidnapping and illegal confinement!

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