Kerala has also achieved it’s numbers through the Gujarat model of development says Columbia university professors!

In their new book – ‘India's Tryst with Destiny: Debunking Myths that Undermine Progress and Addressing New Challenges’, two renowned professors of Indian origin in Columbia university, Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, hails, Gujarat model of development over Kerala models on various grounds.

They have picked these two states as "Kerala Model" represents redistribution and state driven development where-as "Gujarat Model” represents private-entrepreneurship driven development.

Books says that the kerala has good health and education indicators post independence, as Kerala has access most of it’s education and health through private sector. As the book review in Economic times mentions…… “In health, Kerala's per-capita private expenditures are nearly eight times its per capita public expenditures. In education, excluding two or three tiny northeastern states, at 53%, rural Kerala has by far the highest proportion of students between ages 7 and 16 in private schools. The nearest rival, rural Haryana, has 40% of these students in private schools.”

Contrary to the believe, the book says that Kerala has achieved low levels of poverty by virtue of growth (read Gujarat model) and not redistribution. In health, Kerala's per-capita private expenditures are nearly eight times its per capita public expenditures. Kerala has been a rapidly growing state in the post-Independence era, which is the reason it ranks fourth among the larger states, according to per-capita gross state domestic product and first according to per-capita expenditure.

Now all the states and the whole of country need to follow the path of growth lead reforms, entrepreneurship lead reforms and Gujarat is showing us the way…

Traction Politics is taking birth in India !

India’s the biggest democracy in the world with around 790 parliamentarians representing their constituencies and states in New Delhi and around 4215 members of legislative assemblies in different state assemblies. Then there are numerous representatives in urban areas to municipal corporations, municipal councils and town councils.

There are no set ways, to enter into politics in India. Currently I see there are "Four feeder lines to politics":

• From political families or from the glamour world (sports, bollywood etc.)
• Student/college leaders Incubated by industrial tycoons to garner their interests
• Side-kicks/Chamchas of Netas after 15-20 years of mindless dedication
• Contractors  - who enter into politics to get more govt. construction business
• IAS officers turned politicians 

Someone from middle class, from a non-political family background has neither means nor any incentives to enter politics. The anti corruption campaign started by Baba Ramdev and later joined by Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejrial, Kiran Bedi and General V.K. Singh has a left a huge residual effect – It created a market/demand for political candidates with clean image and development focus. May be such instincts were always there is some/many among the Indian voters, but these campaigns have further strengthened the thought. This is the only tiny space opened, where normal people can engage with politics. I call it “traction politics” and it seems to be taking birth in India !

My Experiments with India !

During last couple of years, I was lucky to visit the length the breadth of India, visited many cities, districts, blocks, tehsils, panchayats and villages in more than half a dozen states in India. I got the opportunity to spend time with people, participate in panchayats, meeting with DMs, secretaries, ministers, NGOs, donors and gathered a lot of humorous, innocent, sometimes callous and sometimes very insightful thoughts. Following are some of the chosen ones and my reflections on them.

• Once I was sitting in the office of a district level officers in a district in UP and I didn’t find the usual ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ picture in his office. I was not able to resist enquiring about the same. He simple replied, even I have a conscious and I feel very guilty to do, what I do in this office under Gandhiji’s picture. So I have removed the picture. (Later in the talks he revealed that he is planning to do an MBA for one of the premier institutes in India/Abroad and leave this murky govt. administration job
• I got the chance to understand the business model of an old aged entrepreneur of a medium size enterprise, working in the rural economy of Madhya Pradesh. On the question of ‘who will lead the enterprise after him?’, he candidly replied – “Now my sons are trained enough in the business model and the business dealings, so much so that they go alone and bribe District magistrates (DMs). (It was quite interesting to see the standard set by the father to measure his sons’ readiness to handle his business
• While working in AP on an education project, one of the corporate partner’s senior staff members asked me for some of our children’s workbooks for reference to start their new program in Tamilnadu. I expressed my apprehension that I only have material in ‘Telugu’ and not in Tamil, to which she replied “arrre, Telugu, Tamil all same only na !!!.
• In a block level meeting in a district in UP, a local NGO raised the issue that 4 children of age below five years died in the block in the last month. On this the block level medical officer coolly replied, “that’s well with in the average child death rate of under five children of the district, so this is a non-issue”. (In the routine of daily official chores, data, figures and averages rule over human lives)
• While talking to a big gathering of primary government school teaches and inspecting officers of a district in AP, on the issue of lack of quality education in government schools, the district collector asked – “how many of you send your children to government schools?”. To my surprise, there was no hand raised. (Government service providers are so sure about the poor quality of service that their system is providing that they don’t want to jeopardize the lives of their family members, by consuming the same service)
• Very late in the day, I caught the DM of one of the poorest district in UP in bad mood. He just finished a long meeting, with a group of villagers who came full in a tractor trolley and were demanding money for the toilets under “Total Sanitation Campaign” and pensions under “Vidhva pension Yojana”. I caught him murmuring,” did I get through this prestigious IAS profession to make latrines and to be an agent to settle pension claims?
• Over months, I had developed quite a good rapport with the steno (very useful people to work with the government machinery) of a district level development officer. He told me an anecdote that how some his previous bosses used their creativity to fleece taxpayer’s money. One officer got rural wells sanctioned, constructed nothing and ate all the money. His successor has shown that the well (which was not at all there), is on the road, dangerous for the domestic animals and small children and should be closed and so he got money sanctioned and ate all the money. (Nothing was built or removed but human creativity on paper, made money flow to their accounts)
• While addressing a group of people on the theme of “small family, happy family”, the chief development officer of a district in UP was telling the villagers that girls are as good as boys and parents should not endlessly plan for children, in the hope of a boy. On the question of “Without a boy, who will extend our dynasty?” by a villager, the CDO angrily replied - “Which maurya or mugal dynasty are you from, which has to be preserved. Even those dynasties are no more, inspite of many boys in their family. Indira Gandhi, inspite being a girl in the family, made her dynasty still survive. Dynasties survive on ability and merit, whether it’s girl or boy, doesn’t matter”.
• When we were living in a small town in UP, my wife taught our maid to say, “welcome”, whenever she or someone else says her ‘Thank You’. Our maid further taught our milkman that say “bel come” (in her lingo), whenever the madamji says “Thank You”. On this the milkman innocently replied, “why should I say “bell come” (sounds like less bulls in hindi) when I have 3 bulls (bell), 2 buffaloes and 2 cows. (I always thought such phonetic comedies of errors are scripted only for movies. First time experienced a real one first hand
• I believed very much in the involvement of parents and community in the management and monitoring of government schools and worked heard with my team to institutionalize the same in govt. schools in Hyderabad. While talking to the parents in the old city of Hyderabad, I asked them what more you want the school authorities and our organization to do on the academic front. One of the burkha clad mother said, “till now our kids have learnt only ‘choti angrezi’ (small English) and now teachers should tech them ‘badi angrezi’ (big English)”. (Later in the discussion I realized that she wanted to say, till now they were taught only alphabets and small words and now she wants her kids to speak in English like the kids from good private schools. It was quite interesting to observe that how ‘speaking in English’ is one of the important parameter of quality education in parent’s perception)
• While taking a tonga ride (horse cart) in a small town in UP, I asked the horse-cart-man Mr. Imran Hasan about the economics of his business and compare it with the auto rickshaws. He said, I earn Rs 250 a day and my horse daily needs diet worth Rs 100 a day and unlike auto fellows even on a day when I am not on road, my auto (he meant his horse), needs fuel (he meant food) worth Rs100. So compared to auto rickshaws, his economic compulsion to be on work daily is far more high.
• Over my repeated visits on four wheeler vehicles to the different villages in India, I have noticed a very interesting pattern. Even in the narrowest looking road, people around will look at you vehicle and let it pass. That’s a tacit signal that your vehicle can go through. If the vehicle can’t go inside, even a small kid on the road will stop your vehicle and prohibit you from moving ahead.

‘Nirmal India’ is eluding us !

Recently in a speech, Union rural development minister, Jairam Ramesh said that India is one of the filthiest countries in the world. After spending Rs 19,626 crore in last 10 years on Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), a large population of India is still defecating out in open. This is what a study of UN University says:

“India’s mobile subscribers totaled 563.73 million at the last count, enough to serve nearly half of the country’s 1.2 billion population. But just 366 million people — around a third of the population (31%) — had access to proper sanitation in 2008, said the study published by the United Nations University, a UN think-tank.”

The situation is no better today. Rural ministry claims that 27% of India does not have access to toilets. Government measures the success of TSC on input parameters – which is the number of toilets constructed. Not on ‘how many people are using it’ or how many people have ended open defecation. Experts believe that on the usage basis still more than 60-70% of India, defecates in open.

Shame on the roads

Go to any roadside village (at least I can bet for UP, Rajasthan, Bihar, MP, AP, Maharastra, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand & WB) in India in the evening. As soon as it gets dark you will be ashamed to see the women folk and girls, hiding them from your car’s light, as they wait eagerly for the sun to set to answer the natures call. As a result, they develop multiple infections, girls drop out of school after 7-8^th grade because of non-functional toilets in the schools, the bacteria travels home through footwear and lead to various health issues for the whole family.

Subsidy that’s not working

Under TSC, government gives subsidy of around Rs 2200 to BPL families and Rs 1500 to APL families to build toilets. In Uttarpradesh, government gives Rs 4500 to BPL families in Ambedkar villages (special villages selected every year in all districts in UP for focused development). A robust, long lasting traditional individual toilet costs between Rs 4000 to Rs 5000. In many cases, pradhan (sarpanch) and other officials of Panchayati Raj department (TSC comes under PRI in many states) syphon this money, without constructing any toilets or by constructing a shoddy unusable structure. Villagers don’t protest much against this misappropriation, as they are not quite inclined to use toilets because of their long held habit of defecating in open. More often than not, the villagers use the toilet structures for various different purposes, but for defecating. I have seen toilets being used for storing cow dung-cakes, being used as a kitchen, for storing agriculture produce, fertilizers etc.

Can Subsidy address Social apprehensions?

Villagers also report some other apprehensions to have toilets built in their houses. Some families have a notion that it’s not auspicious to have a toilet with in the house premises, some says they feel claustrophic to defecate in the toilet, some says toilet needs a lot of water vs. defecating in open and in many orthodox families father-in-law and daughter-in-law can’t use the same toilet. These apprehensions are not always tied with the economic status of the family. I have observed these apprehensions not only in the poor households but also in the households with more than 40 acres of fertile land. So a mere subsidy under TSC can’t change these complex social apprehensions. It needs very carefully designed messaging, suitable for the rural culture to promote usage of toilets and latrines. The 15% IEC (Information, Education and Communication) money, meant for this purpose is either syphoned off swiftly or sometimes used merely in some wall paintings and occasional messaging through folklore. The scientifically designed social frameworks like CLTS (community lead total sanitation), to do focused village level workshops in community and create disgust against defecating in open, do not have many takers against the subsidy based, Total Sanitation Campaign.

Niramal Gram Puraskar is not very ‘Nirmal’

To motivate the panchayats, the Ministry has also been awarding the ‘Nirmal Gram Puraskar’ (Clean Village Award) since 2003. Rewards are based on the population ranging from Rs 45,000 to Rs 5 lakhs. There was a dramatic increase from 45 Nirmal Grams in 2005 to 5,000 in 2007. Currently, more than 30,000 Panchayats have applied for the award. These figures look impressive but most of these villages, which received this award in previous years, staged 100% ‘open defecation free’ fabric of their village on the days of inspection to get the prize money. Visit to any of these nirmal grams (clean villages) today and one will observe the dismal situation on the field.

Sanitation promoters not even able to motivate themselves

Village level ‘Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA)’ working under health ministry’s flagship program, National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) are also supposed to play the role of a promoter to motivate people not to defecate in open. She is even incentivized for this (Rs. 40 per toilet constructed based on her persuasion). But more often than not, you will find that ASHAs don’t have toilet themselves in their houses and thus fails to set an example. Same is the case with the elected representatives to head the villages – pradhans/sarpanchs, many of whom don’t have toilets in their houses and thus hardly care for the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) at the village level.

‘Nirmal India’ is eluding us !

Complete failure in universal sanitation is becoming a health nightmare and in turn substantially high health burden on the exchequer. Government needs to completely redesign the TSC program. TSC needs restructuring and should largely focus on igniting and facilitating the change in the long held habit of defecating in open. First step can be to work closely with the change agents of the village – the ASHAs, the Anganwadis, the Pradhans and the primary school teachers to bring about this huge change in the mindsets of people. The IEC money should be well spent in educating people through models like CLTS. Mere subsidies and budget enhancements will not give us a ‘nirmal India’.

Voice of Talbehat: Reaching out to people

Bundelkhand region is known for it’s draughts, poverty and demand for a separate statehood. Governance and political structures are weak and not delivering at the grass-root level. Elected and selected representatives seem to make a little effort to connect with people. Government’s Bundelkhand revival package and plethora of national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are not able to make any visible dent. Human mind craves for hope and an initiative called “Voice of Talbehat” in a local town council in one of the district in Bundelkhand, gives that hope. The hope that at least someone is trying.

Talbehat is a block and a “Nagar Panchayat” (Town council) in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest district of Bundelkhand region. Mukta Soni got elected as the chairman of Talbehat Nagar Panchayat in 2006. Talbehat town has a population of around 25 thousand people. She and her team’s longing to connect with all these people in her town gave birth to the idea of “Voice of Talbehat”. It’s is a unique and simple concept, where a control room is set up in the heart of the Talbehat town and more than 225 speakers were mounted on the electricity poles in every nook and corner of the town. “Any message can be heard by whole of the town with minimum effort within no time.” Says Mukta Soni. She further adds that the cycle rickshaws canvassing different messages in the lanes of Lalitpur inspired her for the idea of “Voice of Talbehat”.

Council member, Dileep Pathak, and husband Vijay Soni, helped Mrs Soni to give shape to her brilliant idea and all the other councilors supported this new concept and unanimously approved Rs 10 Lacs from the town council’s budget for this initiative. In January 2009, VoT started with modest one or two messages a day and today after three years, it’s an integral part of Talbehat’s public communication system.

“Messages broadcasted form “Voice of Talbehat’s” control room involves information on “Tahsil Divas”, urgent requirement of blood for patients, free advices from doctors on seasonal diseases, information about weather, train schedules, religious greetings, information about lost and found items in the town, messages form police to maintain peace in the town, information about government schemes etc.”, says Narendra Goswami, the main announcer who lends his voice to this initiative form the control room.

A four-member team from ministry of information and broadcasting, government of India, came to study the VoT system, it’s inception, process of setting up and reception among people. After being thoroughly impressed with the idea, the team is planning to recommend the similar system to other town councils in India. In the electronic age, where technology companies are adding new dimensions to the world of communication and giving us multiple platforms to engage and connect with people every minute, this simplistic but extremely effective innovation in a small town of India seems like a great step by some motivated bunch of town councilors to connect with it’s people.

Will Vimla Devi survive the burden of Millennium Development Goals?

Meet Vimla devi, a committed anganwadi worker (AWW) in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state of India. Anganwadi is a village level institution under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), one of the most talked about flagship program of Indian Government.

The children make up forty two percent of the total population of the country. But when it comes to the union budget for the year of 2010-11, they have got the share of only 4.63 percent.

As per Section 8.1 (BUDGETARY ALLOCATION) in GoI, ICDS website, alongside gradual expansion of the scheme, there has also been a significant increase in the budgetary allocation for ICDS scheme from Rs.10391.75 crore in 10th five year plan to Rs.44,400 crore in XI plan period. The details of budget allocation and expenditure for the year 2007-08 to 2009-10 in respect of ICDS (General) and supplementary nutrition are given as under:

S.No.	Year	Budget Allocation (Rs. In Lakh)	Funds released under ICDS(G)	Funds released under Supplementary Nutrition
1	2007-08	529300	310803.27	206231.05
2	2008-09	630000	401319.16	228131.33
3	2009-10	670500	177894.15	182001.76

Under 2010 – 11 budget, ICDS received Rs. 7, 932.71 crore against Rs. 6705 crore in 2009-10, nearly 18 percent increase. But even then it far below to universalize the ICDS scheme in all villages of India. The assessment made by CBGA says that the magnitude of funds required from the union budget 2010-11 to universalize ICDS would be in the range of Rs. 45,355 crore to Rs.75,055 crore depending on the number of anganwadi centers taken into consideration and the proportion of them that need construction of pucca building.

Government of India is spending about $1.7 billion/year on ICDS with around 75-80% utilization. But is this budget sufficient? Is it being spent on the appropriate heads to target the millennium development goals of reducing Infact Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR).

Vimal Devi has to provide six services to the children and women in her Anganwadi, which intern are designed to reduce Infant Mortality rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality rate (MMR), to reduce hunger deaths among children and to prepare the children for elementary education. These targets are linked directly to at least four millennium development goals (MDGs 1,2,4 &5)

Each of these six services are quite demanding and designed assuming, various kind of skills in the anganwadi workers i.e community mobilization skills, technical skills, dealing with children, documentation and many others. Let’s spend a minute on each of these six services

· Supplementary Nutrition – There are four types of supplementary nutrition powders (called Panjeeri) targeted for four different kinds of beneficiaries - children (one group of 0.5-3 years and other of 3-6 years), pregnant and lactating women and for the adolescent girls to check different kinds of mal/under-nutrition among women and children. Different quantities of each of these powders should be measured and given to respective beneficiary and anganwadi worker has to maintain at least 7-8 registers to manage the procurement and distribution of these nutritional supplements. Apart from this they have to prepare hot cooked meal for the children of 3-6 years of age, with the help of the helper appointed in the anganwadi. Procurement of these “nutritional supplements”, ration for the meals and tracking the money for the meals is also their responsibility. This directly targets millennium development goals (MDG) 1, 4 &5, which commands a huge international attention but Vimal Devi is quite oblivious about the same!

· Immunization – Vimal Devi has to help the health workers (ASHA and ANM) in routine immunization of children and women and the village. She needs to mobilize the beneficiaries for the immunization and convince and educate the one’s who are refusing for the service. The developed world is quite concerned on the low % of immunization in India (Uttar Pradesh being at < 35%), in the fear of any chance of trans-border travel of these fatal diseases to their countries and they have left it on the shoulders of Vimal Devi. Here Vimla Devi is working unknowingly on millennium development goals (MDG) 4&5.

· Health check-up – Vimla Devi needs to assist the health workers (ASHA and ANM) to check and monitor the health of children and pregnant/lactating in the village and maintain all the data in separate registers.

· Referral services – All the children who are severe mal nourished, need to be referred to Nutritional Rehabilitation Center (NRC) to save their lives and here Vimla Devi directly work on to reduce IMR under millennium development goals (MDG) 4

· Nutrition & health education – Vimla Devi needs to spread the awareness of health, hygiene and other practices for the good health of women and child to the adolescent girls and other women’s group in the village

· Pre-school non-formal education – While doing all the above, Vimla Devi needs to engage 40-50 children in her anganwadi for 2-3 hours daily for pre-schooling education, to prepare the children for class 1 in the primary school. Needless to say that she needs to maintain some more registers for the same and the above five services hardly leaves any time and focus in her for this very important component.

So in total she maintains 20-25 different registers, procure food, cook the same and distribute it among the children, engage children in pre-schooling sessions, ensure immunization, mobilize the beneficiaries to avail these services, take care of all the pregnant and lactating women in the village and thus help Indian Government and International agencies to achieve their millennium development goals. And for all these she gets a salary of Rs 1500 per month ($35/month). Our kindhearted government made it Rs 3000 per month ($70/month) in the last budget, but even that is not realized in states like Uttar Pradesh and many others.

After running the ICDS for 35+ years, even today India’s IMR and MMR measures are abysmally poor and comparable only to Sub Saharan Africa and same is the case for % of malnourished children in the country. Infact ‘Eeshani Kandpal’ writes in her paper that budget allocation between states and villages also varies as per the voting pattern in that area. Ministry of ‘women and child welfare’ needs to have a hard look at the budget allocation to ICDS and/or reprioritizing the allocation of existing budget towards strengthening ICDS program at the ground level. Anganwadi workers should be empowered for the success of the ICDS scheme and for realizing the set targets of IMR and MMR.

But as of today, hope seems to be distant and the plight of Vimla Devi is endless. While performing these six mammoth responsibilities, she needs to regularly bribe her supervisors for not giving a negative report on her during their monitoring visits, the nutritional supplement is being sold in the open market before it reaches Vimla Devi and on any small irregularity on these 25+ registers and six services, she faces cuts in her salary or suspension from the job.

As of December 2010, Vimla Devi has more than 12.5 lacs fellow anganwadi workers in India, somehow surviving the burden of these four millennium development goals (MDGs) in Rs 1500/month.

Shall we form our own Children’s Union ?

Sam and Simmi go to a government school in grade 4th in a city in India. They have been going to this school since last 4 yrs and they say they are quite regular. Once they were picked by a ‘kind hearted’ NGO to participate in an essay writing competition for a CSR activity of a big ‘kind hearted’ corporate. The topic was, ‘my school’ !

Sam took the permission to write in the vernacular language and started….My school’s name is Government Primary School (GPS), in Good-Good-Nagar. It had 300 children 2 years back, 130 children last year and now we are a small elite group of 43 children in the whole school across 5 grades. Head master of my school is a very nice person but I think he has some family problems as he comes to school only once a week. My favorite teacher is Sarita, a class 5th girl. My class teacher madam appoints her most of the times to take care of our class as she is busy most of the time in staff-room in talking to other teachers and motivating them. Cooking of mid day meals for us also keeps her busy. I always get curious that why she takes such a special interest in mid day meals ? She might be interested in cooking for us. My home is not very far from the school. I go there around 5-6 times a day during the school hours to visit the toilet and drink water as my teachers alone cannot manage the water arrangement and toilet cleaning at school.

Simmi, daughter of a small time basti leader had a different take….She pretended that her hand is paining and asked the NGO volunteer to write as she narrates her essay …She started like this ….My school’s name is Government Primary School (GPS), No-One-Cares Nagar. Strength of the school is decreasing every year as most of the children have started going to the road side ‘Ravi Convent School’ paying Rs 300 per month. My Head master Mr. Ravi owns that school and that’s why he rarely comes to our school. Our teachers keep on gossiping in the staff room and send 5th class children to control us. Some teachers manage the whole mid day meal and my father told me that they get money for 100 children as per the register, bud hardly 50 children come daily to school. There is no water facility in the schools and being a girl I feel so ashamed to go to toilet in open. And the truth is that after being in school for 4 years many of us including me can’t even read and write properly even in our mother tongue. My father gets paid and goes for many rallies, dharnas and bandhs BUT he never does a rally for me, for us, that we are not learning, that our teachers are not taking care of us, that we don’t get proper food in the school, that we don’t have water and toilets in the school. Can you all “kind hearted’ people, please pay my dad, so that he and his friends can do some dharna to save us.

Or may be all 43 of us can make a children’s union and do the dharna ourselves!