"The Burning Issue"

By Dr DK Giri, Director, Schumacher Centre

Last week I was invited to visit Mohmadi Tehsil in the Laxmipur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh. The objective was to explore the possibilities for development interventions. I took the train from Old Delhi to Sahajahanpur, a journey of 346km which took 8 hours, less than 45 km per hour by an express train. When the developed world is introducing bullet trains with a speed of up to 500km per hour, our trains do not clock up to 100km per hour. We are yet to learn the essence of time and speed. 

However, I was met up by my host waiting with a flashy new van to drive me to our destination. Sahajahanpur was brightly lit at 1:30am, dispelling my doubt about the supply of electricity. I was taken to a ‘dhaba’ for a cup of tea to warm up in the cold night, before we drove 28 km to Mohmadi.  I was warned by my host that the 28 km may take an hour because of the road conditions.

Mohmadipur Tehsil has two blocks, one with Muslim majority, and the other with Hindus. I was taken around both blocks in two full days. What I observed was nothing sort of baffling – but eventually supported my long-held hypothesis that there is a mismatch between politics and development. Uttar Pradesh provides the best case for such understanding. UP used to send 85 MPs to 543 strong Lok Sabha – the new state, Uttarakhand, carved out of UP has taken away only 5 MPs. The state has given us so many of our Prime Ministers. Yet, the status of development in UP is lower than many other states in the country.

What I saw in terms of development deficits were: there was no regular supply of electricity. Mohamedi area falls under “weekly” supply of electricity, which means one week of supply during the day, and the following week is at nights. The landed peasantry has good crops round the year. But the small farmers, and landless who are the majority do not have incomes from the farm, and non-farm activities are almost nil. The education facilities are pathetic. The govt. school system is dysfunctional- higher education, from high school upwards is non-existent. The girl children are structurally less educated as it is not safe or practical for them to travel distances to go to colleges. The roads are unmotorable, the houses are worse than urban slums. Healthcare is completely absent. Only villages declared as “Ambedkar villages” have some semblance of roads, and public infrastructure like community halls etc.

As expected there was lot of excitement around the MLC elections. People like to talk more of politics than development. Politics encompasses all existence and defines lifestyles, but sadly, it is all about elections, and political gamesmanship, all sound and fury, but no substance.

I was introduced to a successful businessman from the Christian community. There are three Christian villages where villagers live as small farmers and daily wage labourers. They were mostly Rajputs from Punjab brought by missionaries. The businessman left home as a teenager in the quest for better life, and he made it by doing business in Maharashtra, Goa and Himachal. His wife, who was an IAS officer, took VRS to support her husband. The businessman and his bureaucrat wife decided to settle down in his village which is slightly better than an urban slum as it has a better habitat with clean air, trees and water.

His mansion in the village has all the modern amenities, piped water, power back up, etc. The gentleman was keen to contest as ‘Village Pradhan’ to improve the lot of his village. Surprising that he still thinks politics is the route to development. Yes, it can be, only when development drives politics not the other way round. The last elections, by interpretation and implication, not by definition and strategy, seem to have negated communalism, casteism and corruption, and have put development in the national agenda. The leadership of both the major parties, Rahul and Sonia Gandhi from Congress and Nitin Gadkari of BJP are both speaking the language of development. We only hope that India’s much vaunted democracy puts people before politics, development before party  political ‘dramas’; the signs are that the process has started, the hope is that it should be irreversible.  

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