INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE

The India Today conclave of Chief Ministers could have gone down in history as a serious effort to bring back the agenda of ‘development’ to the national stage. Since ‘Operation Blue Star’ and ‘Ayodhya’, the discourse about development and its path have almost been eclipsed. Despite raising it to a glittering crescendo of Filmfare, like an Oscar Award winning ceremony, the appeal and the historicity of the event got somewhat diluted by the absence of several high profile Chief Ministers and a near walkout by the irrepressible Laloo Prasad. But unlike runaway successful films from Bollywood, from ‘Mother India’ to ‘Devdas’ (current), or Hollywood production from ‘Gone with the Wind’ to ‘Titanic’, the prizes for several categories of development, instituted by the India Today were taken only by the Chief Minister of Goa. In the absence of several Chief Ministers, Laloo ensured the TRP rating of the programme by his iconoclastic cockney antics. He resurrected the role of anti-hero and carried the film on his shoulder.

However, the programme should not be treated lightly. A new grammar of media management is emerging in the country, where both the generation as well as the taker of the news, are in house operators. Earlier the ‘Sun’ tabloid of England had shown the way to the world. It sponsored a multi-million pound surrender drama of a semi-paralyzed Great Train Robber of Yesteryears from a Latin American country to London. This farce was broadcast live by a strong contingent of international electronic and print media.

However, this methodology of India Today for generating news should not be dismissed. When Kerry Packer introduced one-day cricket, with outlandish colour uniforms, it was contemptuously referred as ‘a circus’. But soon Test Cricket with white flannel became marginalised before the more entertaining limited-over extravaganza. It is likely that in the future the dissemination of important ‘research findings’ will be done in this manner. The live coverage may determine the public opinion and in turn the political configuration. The research finding of India Today, where Goa is on the top and Bihar is at the bottom is essentially to be expected. Many people, though, would not only question the methodology of its finding but would also feel uncomfortable comparing Goa or Delhi with Bihar. Are these states really comparable? Instead of a pan-India comparison (comprising smaller states), it should have been between bigger states. States could have been classified either on the basis of linguistic configurations (Hindi Heartland) or on the basis of land tenurial systems (Zamindari or Raiyatwari or Mahalwari). Other classifications could have taken into account states that came earliest under the British spell or experienced massive investment ever during the alien rule. The above factors essentially determined the historical trajectory of growth. If India Today’s findings are scanned closely, states (other than small and union territories) that did better had a favourable combination of these four factors. No state in post-independent India has developed significantly, which was not developed in the pre-independence period. (The states that succeeded had faced the least wrath of British Colonialism, had entrepreneurial embedded land tenurial system, experienced strategic investment in the canal and road systems, and led social movements of enlightenment. Over and above, their artisans and traders were not only not exterminated, on the contrary any fiscal deficit of the respective states was met from the Bengal Presidency). Most of the southern and western Indian states had that advantage. On all of these counts, Bihar and the Eastern States were disadvantaged. Thus even before the vivisection of Bihar, the state could not surge forward economically. Bihar slid to the last position even during the reign of Shree Babu (1961) and the present regime inherited a stagnant economy and a bankrupt state exchequer (in 1990). Unlike states of the Raiyatwari area, where increased productivity and production are the measurements of success of the political leadership, in Bihar the dismantling of the regressive tenurial system was the only indicator of the seriousness of governance.

Thus even as Shree Babu unsettled the permanent settlement, in the backdrop of that achievement ‘freight equalisation’ was allowed to be enacted by the Central Government. The ruling elite did not realize how it could be injurious to the economic health of the state. Some of the mega processing projects of the Central Government killed the possibility of intermediate industry. Thus while we produced steel, the bucket was being produced outside to be sold in the Bihar market. While Shree Babu displayed limited economic vision (unlike his contemporaries like Kairon, Kamraj, B.C. Roy), he followed a socially inclusive policy of associating people from the lower strata of the society. His ministry gave breaks for the first time to different higher backwards like B.C. Patel, Mandal, Deo Narain Yadav etc.; while the economy stagnated, society became democratised. History repeated once again during the regime of Laloo Prasad. While the inherited stagnant economy could not be galvanised, the society got a new lease of democratic life by the empowerment of the even lower backwards. Bihar thus presents an ironic situation of a vibrant civil society and a democratic polity with limited economic development.

It is possible, however, that the unfettering of social factors for the first time since independence (like in other Raiyatwari area) has triggered agricultural growth. Bihar is self sufficient in food-grains now. Two former permanently settled states like Bengal and Bihar could do agricultural marvels through tenurial reforms and social democratisation. The India Today Study has failed to identify the quiet revolution on the agricultural front in these two states.

History should not be used to explain away all failures; the current paralysis of inaction on several fronts of governance should be banished in Bihar. What prevents our Government from identifying areas of reforms in the state sector? The dismantling of the state is in any case going on. Why can’t it be programmed? While we may not adopt the national or global indicators in order to measure our achievement, what is our indigenous measurement of success? To what extent have we lived up to our own measurement of success? The India Today conclave should be seen with seriousness. Bihar will have to enter into dialogue with national and international organisations. It is hoped that the dialogue should not be that of the deaf.