The many holes in the growth story

 India does not have a pothole atlas. Till date, no one has emulated the example of the irate Hampstead resident who named an unattended pothole on his street after a local councillor. But going by the woes of pothole-hammered urban Indians in this season of rain and water-logged streets, perhaps naming and shaming may get things moving where anonymous potholes have failed.

Last week, a national television channel took its viewers on a pothole tour of Mumbai. It successfully demystified the monsoon magic of old Bollywood songs. This could be a great idea for those in the alternative tourism business. But it was clear that for hapless commuters in the city, there was little that was poetic about potholes.

Alas, the story has a familiar ring. It is pretty much the same tale in every other Indian city. Crores are spent building roads. The first monsoon showers expose their fragility. Then, more crores are spent on supposed road repairs. Little changes on the ground. Many potholes, big and small, remain and the cratered streets expose pedestrians, motorists, rickshaw pullers and two-wheeler riders to great risk. Potholes claim lives, lead to injuries and dent pockets. They don’t have a great public image. That is why some municipal officials like to call them “bad patches” instead.

But potholes have their uses. They not only illustrate an enduring truth about urban India when monsoon magic degenerates into monsoon mayhem for millions. They also help us understand one of the raging debates of the day — is the government’s grand vision of food and nutritional security for India’s poor a gargantuan waste of public resources?

The debate has got shriller since the passing of the National Food Ordinance 2013. Most critics of the proposed law make the point that given the huge corruption and leakages in the Public Distribution System (PDS), a key piece in the ordinance’s implementation machinery, the money will be wasted. This is one of the compelling critiques of the proposed law, seen as the UPA Brahmastra for the next general elections.

Indeed, when images of soggy wheat and rice rotting in the fields flash across television screens, it is hard not to be cynical about the government’s motives. Much like the potholes, rotting grains are a familiar annual sight. There is much handwringing but little is done to significantly ramp up storage facilities and prevent wastage.

There are many examples of wasteful, unfruitful expenditure in public programmes and misappropriation of public money. Take flood-ravaged Uttarakhand. A 2010 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pointed out that construction of a school building on forest land in Chamoli district without prior permission from the forest department had resulted in stoppage of work and unfruitful expenditure of Rs70 lakh. According to the CAG, non-utilisation of life-saving equipment worth Rs85 lakh, procured more than four years ago, by the chief medical superintendent, Jawaharlal Nehru District Hospital, Rudrapur, not only deprived the patients of the intended benefit but also led to deterioration in the condition of the equipment. The report also refers to Rs1.07 lakh being remitted by the district social welfare officer, Hardwar, to a non-existent school.

These are a few examples from just one state. Many more are available around the country, and are being used to rubbish the proposed food security law. But the critics do not answer the fundamental question – is it leakages or welfare programmes per se that need to be drastically reduced? The proposed food security law may be flawed in design but should we junk the very idea of food security? As the pothole example shows, there is large-scale corruption in infrastructure projects as well. Should we then say ‘no’ to road-building?

A minority of those criticising the proposed food security law do so at a more fundamental level. They argue that expanding public spending on human development is in effect expanding state hand-outs and is inimical to economic growth. But is there really any evidence to bolster their argument? To the contrary, the many Asian countries that have achieved impressive economic growth in the past few decades — Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and so on — have all focussed on government spending for human development right at the start of the growth story. They have worked on the belief that government spending on education, healthcare, food, clean water and sanitation are not charity acts but interventions intended to equip the poor and marginalised to do better and help the growth story. And it has worked.

Within India too, some state governments have realised that enhancing capabilities of the poor is not a dole. It prepares them for the market and makes them productive members of the economy. On improving food security, for example, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu are already ahead of the rest.

Clearly, the emphasis should be on minimising corruption in all schemes, be they welfare measures for human development or infrastructure projects. Corruption comes down when the schemes are decentralised enough for local residents to hold the functionaries accountable. For that to happen, communities have to be first aware of their rights. A  2009 study found that 92 per cent of villagers in rural Uttar Pradesh were not even aware of the existing Village Education Committee (VEC), which supposedly monitored teachers and administrators. Community audits along with centralised monitoring is a good idea.

The bottomline — pothole repairs would cost less and there would be fewer potholes, if the roads were built properly to begin with. Likewise for India’s economic growth. There would be more money to invest in the basics, the building blocks of growth, if less money was wasted and misappropriated. The focus should be on making this come true.

The author is a Delhi-based writer. @patralekha2011