A worm’s eye view

Next, the Indira Kudiyiruppu Thittam (Tamil for Indira Awas Yojana) under which the government builds the fortunate few a modest single-room habitation, lit with a single bulb provided courtesy the Kutir Jyoti programme. Then, the complaints of how over the years the houses have deteriorated, leaking roofs, cracked walls, the structures leaning dangerously awry. I tell them the Union Finance Minister has set aside 15 per cent of the rural housing budget for repairs. They have not heard of it.

It is already one full quarter since the announcement was made; the guidelines are still to trickle down to the officers on the spot; it will be another quarter or two before the houses to be repaired are identified; in a rush in March next year, work that should have been spread over 12 months will be rammed through in four weeks. Little wonder the government’s performance budget bears so little relationship to its financial budget.

The other priority is what in Yojana Bhawan jargon is termed rural connectivity’. It is usually the haggard older women who complain of how when it rains the hamlet’s mud street turns to slush, the rain-water runs into their huts, and they are forced, to their shame, to hitch their saris up to their thighs to wade through the misery to their homes. I tell them our generous finance minister has put aside a massive Rs 2500 crore to carpet their hamlets with tar roads. The BDO whispers that the minimum prescribed length is 1.6 kilometres. Out goes any prospect of relief.

Nothing unites the hamlets like a funeral. They live together. They die together. And when the body is lifted the whole habitation collectively follows the bier to the funeral ground. Social custom prevents them from going through the village. So, they nimbly step across the rice paddies, slipping and sliding on the wet mud, terrified that the ultimate humiliation of dropping the body will fall upon them, out to the isolated range where they are permitted to bury or burn their dead. There, in the scorching sun or pouring rain, the final rites are performed. More often than not, the first priority of the community is for a safe and stable path to the funeral ground and a shed on the spot for the ritual farewell. Astonishing but true.

The single biggest change I find since my earlier term as an MP (1991-96) is that street lights are no longer the problem they were. It is not that the rural electrification infrastructure has undergone any dramatic overhaul. It is simply that panchayati raj has arrived and one of the few powers devolved to the gram panchayat is the right to purchase their own tube-lights. Therefore, the lights do not go out.

In two weeks of meeting thousands of the really poor, not once does the word "reforms" get mentioned. What they know about is the garibi hatao programmes. Out in Mayiladuturai, as in hundreds of constituencies spread across the country, reforms are unreal, programmes for the poor are tangible. A quarter century of garibi hatao has made a difference. The poor know about their programmes. They know the problems that beset them, the glitches to be ironed out, the weaknesses of beneficiary identification.

They understand local responsibility and local accountability. In village after village, there are complaints about the high-handedness of the elected panchayat authority. I tell them there is only one remedy: turn the scoundrels out when the local body elections come up next year. The notes may be in their hands, but the votes are in yours. There is instant comprehension.

It is only when a nexus is established between the concerns of North Block and the concerns of the poor that economic reforms will acquire a national momentum. Alas, reforming the poverty-eradication programmes bores the mandarins and ministers of Raisina Hill out of their collective mind. They do not regard poverty alleviation as their top priority.

In the decade of reforms, a succession of prime and finance ministers have relieved their consciences flinging a few more shekels to the poor, the better to concentrate on what really interests them – the market. But while a third of our population (larger than the entire population at Independence) is in the market, twice that number is on the fringes of the market or not in it at all. For them, drastic reform of the delivery mechanism for anti-poverty programmes is the immediate requirement.

Neither GDP growth nor increases in per capita income makes for the poor the most difference, for even a seven-per cent increase in their family income would add too small an increment. It is public goods that makes the difference: desilting; unblocking a drain; building a community hall; raising a culvert; constructing a revetment; a bathing ghat at the village pond; a latrine in the girls’ school; a bus-shelter, the kind of things for which the MPs’ scheme is so well suited.

I return to Delhi to a massive tome sent me by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation: "Economic Reforms for the Poor". Will someone please gift a copy to Yashwant Sinha?