VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
On Sunday, Manohar Lal Khattar
became the first BJP Chief Minister of Haryana, scripting a new political
history for the small State, known for its agricultural prowess ever since the
Green Revolution.
Apart from being the first BJP
chief Minister of the State, what makes Khattar, the low profile, non assuming,
humble man of organisation from RSS, different from run of the mill politicians
is the fact that for the first time in recent years, someone contested his
first election and straight away was elevated for the top job of chief
minister. Except one, all his Cabinet Ministers are first timers and this will
certainly help the new government take bold and innovative measures for rapid
development, something which run of the mill politicians cannot take.
Haryana boasts of relatively high
per capita income and infrastructure. Now it would be natural for the people of
the State, who voted for the BJP enthusiastically, to expect that the new
Government headed by 60-year old Khattar would do another Gujarat
or perhaps emerge better than it in tandem with the vision of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.
For the small State, it is time
to take off. It was time to rewrite the script of economic growth and
prosperity. It was time to show to the country that it can excel not only in
wrestling, boxing and other sporting events but also become the role model for
the economy by combining tradition (agriculture) and modernity (Industries) to
produce outstanding economic indices.
It has all the natural advantages
to become the most developed state of the country though lopsided policies in
the last ten years prevented it from taking off to that stage. Located next to Delhi ,
it has geography as the most significant advantage along with hard working and
industrious people, decent infrastructure and a set up which can facilitate
high rates of growth. Many in the state now see it as a test case laboratory
experiment for rapid development by the joint efforts of both Modi government
at the Centre and Khattar government in the state. Some BJP supporters are even
arguing that it could become another Singapore
or Taiwan in
terms of economic development and per capita income in the next decade or so if
right impetus and direction is provided by a selfless, committed and
transparent government. They see Khattar in that role and hope that there would
be a complete transformation in the way one looks at government and there would
be visible change in the next few months.
Ironically, in the last 10 years,
in fact almost last two decades, the focus of the governments was only to
promote real estate and the most common scam was that of Change in Land Use
(CLU). Simply put, this was a gross misuse of the discretionary powers which
the government had. Fly by night operators sought and got help from the state
government, floated residential colonies and commercial space and used location
advantage of being close to Delhi
to their own benefit. Robert Vadra-DLF deal was just a symptom of the disease
plaguing the state. The disease has spread far and wide and it should be the
first priority of the Khattar government to check this.
Whatever Industries came to
Haryana was due to its proximity to Delhi
and was limited to the Gurgaon-Manesar belt. This belt also saw offices of
Multinationals, Call Centres, software companies and automobile industry. In
fact, over 60 per cent of revenue which the state gets, come from this area
alone. Not surprisingly, not only the opposition but even those in the ruling
Congress accused the previous government headed by Bhupinder Singh Hooda of
creating two different Haryana—one was the prosperous one in Gurgaon-Rohtak
belt and the other was the backward one in the rest of the state, except a
small pocket of development in Ambala-Panchkula belt. Khattar will have to break
this and ensure that the rest of the state too develops at par with
Gurgaon-Rohtak belt.
For sixty-year old Khattar, this
is his first brush with administration and governance in his 40-year long
political-social career and one challenge for him will be to overcome the
general perception that he is an “outsider” in the political system. He may be
an outsider in the sense that he has not held any government post in the past
but this is likely to help him and not become an obstacle as he would not be
conditioned by pre conceived notions and bias which a seasoned politician has.
Also, he will not have many people to please and compromise his governance as
he is new to the political system of Haryana.
That Khattar is close to his
benefactor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is well known now. Both have worked together in the organisation
not only in Haryana but also other parts of the country as well. The moment BJP
Parliamentary Board announced his name to contest from Karnal, party insiders
and those in state Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) knew that he was being
sent to become chief minister of Haryana if the party got a majority. This is
what happened. Never before in recent history had a political script gone as
accurate as in Haryana. What Prime Minister Modi and BJP President Amit Shah
visualized and planned, got executed on the ground. This rarely happens in
politics but it actually did.
Given Khattar’s grassroots level
work over the years in Haryana, albeit silently, he is aware about the caste
realities in the state where the Jats dominate the social and economic milieu.
For a non-Jat leader, one challenge would of course be to assuage the
sentiments of the dominant Jat community, comprising 25 per cent of the
population and used to the psychological factor of one amongst them being the
Chief Minister ever since the State was created 48 years ago. For almost two
decades after Bhajan Lal, the State had a series of Jat Chief Ministers-Bansi
Lal, Om Prakash Chautala and Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Khattar will have to
accommodate not only Jats but other communities also in governance and ensure
that there is no sense of being left alone or out of power.
He made an effective beginning in
this direction by inducting two Jat leaders in his Cabinet—Capt Abhimanyu and
Om Prakash Dhankar. As state BJP President Ram Bilas Sharma has also been
inducted in the Cabinet, there would be a new chief soon. The new name could be
from the dominant Jat community as the party wants to outgrow the perception
that it was only the consolidation of non-Jats which led to the victory in the
Lok Sabha polls followed by the Assembly elections.
The Cabinet formation has settled
some of the political issues, but Khattar would also be facing some
administrative challenges as well. Just before being voted out, the Hooda
Government had blatantly played communal card and stirred up a hornets’ nest by
passing a Bill for creation of separate Gurudwara management committee for
Haryana. This was strongly opposed by BJP’s ally Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab .
Though the legality of the issue is in Supreme Court, demands are already being
made to call back the passage of the Bill and make it null and void. The new
government will have to take a call on the issue and if Sikhs in Haryana are
opposed to it, it may get a fresh amendment bill passed in the assembly,
annulling the previous one passed by the Hooda government to get votes of the
Sikh community.
In addition, there are several
disputes pending with neighbouring Punjab for decades,
which includes sharing of river water, controversial Hansi-Butana canal,
transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab
along with the Punjabi speaking areas of the state etc. As Congress was in power in Haryana all these
years, these issues were always kept under the carpet. Now that BJP is in
power, it will have to reassess the situation and take a call. There would also
be pressure from Akali Dal-BJP Government in Punjab on
Khattar to expedite some of these long pending issues. Though Punjab Chief
Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son and Akali Dal President Sukhbir Badal
campaigned in Haryana against BJP as they had an alliance with INLD, the senior
Badal attended the swearing-in ceremony of Khattar, indicating that the past is
behind them and it was time to look ahead.
Khattar has made a good beginning
in his first meeting with officers after taking over. His no nonsense and
businesslike approach towards governance is being talked about in the
bureaucratic circles. Here, too he will have to make a sharp departure from the
previous government which was heavily dependent on bureaucracy for everything
on one hand and at the same was punitive towards it by frequent transfers.
Keeping bureaucracy on its toes would be the right way to go along with using
its expertise rather than being over dependent on a select few which was the
approach of the last government.
With Prime Minister Modi, several
union ministers and BJP chief ministers attending the swearing-in of Khattar,
he seems to enjoy the support of rank and file of the party, from top to
bottom. It was time to make the dream a reality. (October 27, 2014 )
No comments:
Post a Comment