Comment

Spiritual leaders like Ramdev and Sri Sri can help mobilise youngsters for monitoring various projects

It’s the same story every time, much as the experts would want otherwise — the government announces plans for the poor and allocates funds with good intention, but the funds don’t reach those people. Audits reveal the massive corruption and leakages; where Rajiv Gandhi talked about some 13% reaching the beneficiary, Rahul Gandhi now talks of 5%.

Do we learn at all? The instant example is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which has now been extended to all the districts and there is enough evidence to suggest that substantial portions of the benefits are not reaching the targeted segments.

Indeed, a survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation of the employment schemes provided during 2004-05 reveals that 72% of the job-creation claimed by the government was not seen on the ground. This is not only tragic but also cruel, to the poor.

The issue is simple. We refuse to recognise that significant segments of government employees are not just corrupt but also extortionists. And they are slowly becoming dacoits with unbridled freedom and nonchalance.

A poor mother has to pay Rs300 to a government servant (called helper) in a government hospital to see her newborn (for girls, it is Rs200 only) in Bangalore and one needs to pay 10 times more than the official rate to get a dead person cremated in Chennai. Similarly, the liquor trade is fully nationalised in Tamil Nadu and at the retail level, at least Rs2 more is collected from customers by government employees. Recently, hundreds of government milk sellers were rounded up for collecting Rs2 or Rs3 more than the mandated price.

Let us face facts as facts — that government employment is one of the largest organised dacoity systems. Nobody seems to be talking about this dacoity and economists are using sophisticated terms like “rent seeking” to describe this thuggery.

We need to recognise that our society is organised and the government is disorganised. Just look at the Kumbh Mela - millions assemble and disperse without any major issue. They come from different corners of our land, speaking multiple languages and with different dress habits and food habits. Imagine a crowd of say 100 million in Europe. There will be a hundred planes hovering above and thousands of cops in gear all over.

In our Kumbh Mela, food is never a problem since it is distributed free by thousands of organisations, mostly for free. Many temples in the South provide food in the noon free of cost. Visit Dharmasthala in Karnataka — kitchens run by Veerendra Heggde provide free food to thousands of persons every day.

The Akshaya Patra scheme run by ISKCON at Bangalore provide free midday meals to thousands of children and if you send them a donation, they give a receipt plus the exact amount received till date and the details of expenditure.
Thousands of Gurudwaras across the country provide free food in the langar.

We should realise that the State and civil society are completely divorced from each other. Civil society considers the State as a pest and at worst a hungry wolf to be feared. All organs of the State are despised. The middle class is so divorced that they have their own gated community with ground water pipes and generators for electricity and their own security guards. They do not need the State and they despise entering a police station or getting into any government office, whether it has to do with road transport, water, electricity, registration of birth and death, etc.

Under such circumstances, it is amazing that at least 5% of NREGS benefits reach the poor.

Once we internalise the fact that State and civil society are divorced from each other, we will not look for State-oriented solutions to our problems. What are the non-State organs people trust? Millions listen to and follow the likes of Ramdev, Sri Sri, or Amritanandamayi. So much so, no minister or expert will be given even a second look when they are around.

If we want inclusive growth and if we are interested in reaching out to the poor, then we should leverage our societal strengths. These have essentially to do with the Bapu Moraris and Anukul Thakurs. The State should involve them and their followers in monitoring the uses of funds, create citizens’ committees comprising these spiritual heads — not the rootless NGOs that can only mouth slogans and have heavy overheads for international seminars. Whether the government likes it or not, India listens to, accepts and reveres the thousands of these thought and spiritual leaders. There is no need to hand over money to these organisations, as that could make them State organs again. It is adequate to ask them with humility and reverence to provide “shram dhan”. These spiritual leaders can work miracles in terms of mobilising youngsters to spend time on the monitoring of these projects.

Secularists might object to this - “how can we involve these religious leaders?” Also, there would be objection from the unions as stealing from the government would become difficult. The Left might argue that a modern Nehruvian India cannot do this.

Since the fifties, we have kept the temporal and spiritual completely divorced and ended up with the current mess. We are a spiritual civilisation, which still listens to the voices of our rishis and thought leaders. The plunge would be difficult for the Oxbridge and Harvard denizens who want to as per the Fabian socialism of the earlier centuries.

The State solutions are doomed to fail since it does not recognise family, community and the impact of our civilisational roots. We may have a hundred seminars and thousands more working papers, but the dacoity by the government employees will continue. But, if we recognise our strengths and leverage on them, we can significantly alter the nature of global discourse instead of repeating Washington consensus or failed Moscow methods to abolish poverty.

The writer is Professor of Finance & Control, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and can be contacted at vaidya@iimb.ernet.in. Views are personal.