SIMPLICITY IN GOVERNANCE IS THE USP OF KERALA



Amitabh Shukla | Thiruvanandapuram/ Kochi 

Simplicity in governance and accessibility of those in power to the people — that in short is Kerala for you. The contrast is all the more apparent if you come from the northern States.

A visit to the State Secretariat in the Capital Thiruvananthauram or Trivandrum was an eye-opener.  There was no obtrusive and visible security, people could directly approach the officials, bureaucrats and the Ministers for work and all you could see was accountability and answerability writ large.

Walking down the corridors of the Secretariat, we could see the name-plates of senior IAS officials—all in a row. You could simply knock at the door and enter their office with your complaint or grievance. There was no intermediary — a security officer or a PA or an orderly who would obstruct you and ask questions. Simplicity was the keyword here. All that Principal Secretaries get here is a PA and no more staff. Tea is ordered from the common canteen and the vendor serves it as there is no orderly attached even with the senior officers, heading their departments and in the IAS for 30 years. The building itself is over a century old and was originally constructed for the Travancore kingdom. It goes to the credit of successive State Governments that despite the absence of modern frills and the comforts, they have resisted any attempt to shift the Secretariat to a swanky building with all the related paraphernalia as several State Governments have done over the years.

None of this is visible in the northern States of Haryana, Punjab or other States where power or position means a battery of employees, hangers on and security personnel in tow. Those who want to meet officials will have to go through a drill of appointments, Personal Assistants and others whose main task is obviously to create obstacles and reinforce the colonial concept that there is a ruler and there are the commoners who are ruled.

After interacting with several senior officials and having numerous cups of tea, coffee and snacks, we moved on to meet Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The septuagenarian leader who leads an alliance Government headed by the Congress is forthright. “People here are simple and so is governance. There is transparency and people are used to it,” he says, pointing to a CCTV camera in his office.

The CCTV camera in Chandy’s office telecasts whatever is happening in his office to anyone who logs on to the website of the Chief Minister’s office anywhere in the world. “Sometime back, a person was sitting on my chair in my absence. A person from Kerala, working in Dubai saw the live webcast and informed my office. He was sitting there only for fun,” the Chief Minister said, pointing to the transparency and the only CM office of the country where a live camera isn installed.

Even as we were talking to Chandy, several officials trooped in to have a meeting with the Chief Minister. Then, people with grievances and even MLAs walked in. It was like an open Durbar where anyone could walk in and talk to the Chief Minister. If someone needed to talk in privacy and not in front of everyone, Chandy merely stood up, went in a corner and listened to the person concerned before instructing officials to address the issue brought to his notice.

Chief Secretary Jiji Thomson shares, “we do not need to take appointments with the Chief Minister. We just see through the door glass whether he is available or not and walk in”. Thomson, who was on central deputation in New Delhi for 8 years before taking over as the Chief Secretary, said for the IAS officials working in northern States is an entirely different experience. “Here every move is scrutinised, the media is very active to the extent of being intrusive, there is no scope for any discretion as transparency and accountability is all pervasive,” he shares. His Executive Assistant Dr K Vasuki, a young IAS officer, also the Executive Director, Suchitwa Mission, says the work culture in Kerala is entirely different from other States and it was not only a challenge here but also professionally very satisfying. She was earlier in the Madhya Pradesh cadre and was posted in 3 districts as Sub Divisional officer there before shifting to Kerala after a change in cadre due to marriage.

Rural Development Minister K. C Joseph, who also has the charge of Planning, Cultural Affairs and Information and Public Relations, says that ever since he has seen it, extravagance of any nature is shunned and people do not like it. Surrounded by officers of his department, people troop in with their applications and it gets disposed then and there unless there is a scrutiny to be done.

Perhaps a trip of officials and Ministers of northern States to God’s own country is needed to assimilate the approach to governance for greater transparency, accountability and also people interface. (December 16, 2015)

(Amitabh Shukla, Senior Editor, was in Kerala at the invitation of the Press Information Bureau)

BIHAR VERDICT A LOCAL VICTORY OF NO NATIONAL IMPORT



VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA

Whatever the psephologists, exit polls and the media which parachuted in the State predicted, wrote or analysed, the victory of the Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) in Bihar elections was a foregone conclusion.

The reason was quite simple. The alliance started with a big mathematical advantage of 30 percent in the caste-ridden society (Muslims, Yadav and Kurmi voters) and the people of the State voted along traditional lines — the way they have done since Mandal politics came into being and shaped their thought process since 1989 onwards.

It would be wrong to assume that people of Bihar rejected the so called communal politics of the BJP-RSS and adopted the so called secular politics of the Grand alliance as some would like to believe. These issues were not the core of the election campaign though it surfaced time and again during the long five-phase election for the 243 member Bihar Assembly.

There were micro issues everywhere — every constituency had its own caste arithmetic and dynamics, different issue and the campaign shaped differently in each of these segments. Communalism or secularism hardly affected the voters in the rural areas and of course the State is largely a conglomeration of villages and except the district headquarters, there is little urban expanse. Communal polarisation was at best limited to a few urban pockets and the contours of the results remained unaffected by it. On the contrary, caste polarisation largely determined the outcome. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comments on reservations helped RJD create caste frenzy amongst the OBCs, a strategy Lalu Prasad has used deftly over the years.

The results showed that BJP held on to its urban support base to some extent but failed miserably in penetrating the rural hinterland and break the unwritten caste code of the last quarter of a century. The social coalition which the BJP tried to build by an alliance with Ram Vilas Paswan (Lok Janshakti Party), Jeetan Ram Manjhi (Hindustani Awam Morcha) and Upendra Kushwaha (Rashtriya Lok Samta Party) simply did not have the kind of arithmetical base which the Grand Alliance had in terms of caste.

Though Lok Sabha polls, almost a year and half back, saw the triumph of BJP’s social alliance with Kushwaha and Paswan without Manjhi, it was an aberration as the micro issues did not dominate the poll agenda then. At that time, it was the performance of the UPA Government under scrutiny, Narendra Modi versus Manmohan Singh as an issue and other macro issues which dominated the agenda of the entire country, including Bihar. Voters have shown an increasing tendency in recent years to differentiate between Lok Sabha polls, Assembly polls; Panchayat and Municipal polls and parties too adopt different campaigning methods and issues for each of them.

After the Lok Sabha elections, when the first experiment with Grand Alliance was made, by-elections for 10 Assembly seats were held in Bihar. That showed that despite rapid advances and aspirations of the youth, mathematical consolidation of caste still was the most important factor. The alliance won six of the 10 seats, setting the trend for the Assembly polls and in a way indicating how well this caste combination of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar was working in the ground in conjunction with Congress which hardly has any support base in any caste at this point of time.

It would also be wrong to assume that the Bihar results would have national implications as some are pointing out. Neither Lalu Prasad’s RJD has any preseince outside Bihar nor Nitish Kumar’s JDU. Of course, Congress made substantial gains but that was only because it benefitted from the caste alliance of the two parties and not because it has got strengthened in the State. In fact, the unity of the three parties was not on issues (except perhaps secularism) but their positioning in which they are natural rivals of the BJP either in State or national politics. Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out of this alliance on the eve of Bihar polls indicating how fragile such unity is and how difficult it is to form an alliance of diverse regional parties at the national level with conflicting claims and ambitions of each leader.

Also, the assumption that Nitish Kumar would emerge as a leader of the “secular alliance” for the next Lok Sabha polls is far-fetched. Now he has become a junior partner to Lalu Prasad in Bihar as he got fewer seats and first he will have to grapple with the demands of RJD in the State to remain in power and manage the contradictions. His entire energy would be concentrated in managing the diversities of this alliance rather than on any national objective. He will soon find that RJD is a tough customer to deal with as compared to the BJP with whom he had an alliance in governance for over 8 years in Bihar. There will be no single regional party leader in the country who would ever accept the leadership of Nitish. Also, can Congress with pan India footprint, ever agree to play second fiddle to Nitish at a time when its Vice President Rahul Gandhi is raring to go and sensing an anti-incumbency against BJP.

Not long ago, those perpetually in search of a national alternative to Modi, zeroed in on Arvind Kejriwal after his spectacular victory in Delhi. Now, can they come out and still assert the Delhi Chief Minister could be an alternative. Let Nitish Kumar concentrate on the unfinished agenda of Bihar, on development, creation of infrastructure, prevention of migration and sprucing up the health and education sectors. People would be keenly watching if he can come out of the stranglehold of Lalu Prasad, whose 15-year tenure in the State was synonymous with what BJP called as Jungle Raj and where the word development was looked with suspicion and ridicule.  

For BJP, the lessons would be many and I am sure they will take a stock of the situation. The party which prided itself for collective decision making sometime back would be wondering if Congress style concentration of power in one leader, however, charismatic he may be, is bearing fruits. After Delhi elections, Bihar is clearly an electoral setback and no amount of verbal camouflaging is going to help. Will the collective leadership concept of BJP come back due to this defeat? Will there be a change of strategy? We have to wait and watch. (November 9, 2015)