NEW DELHI, APRIL 11: It was former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's unfinished agenda and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh was going to face up to it, even if he had to sound like Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.And though the promised Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) was never implemented on a national scale, as Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had announced in his 1999 Budget, it seems to be up and running in Madhya Pradesh.Already 26,000 schools have been set up under it, wherever the community has demanded it, and now with the launch of the website, fundaschool.org, in the presence of Sonia Gandhi and ``special guest'' Shiela Dikshit, Digvijay Singh hoped that the three-way partnership between the state government, the local administration and the community will be expanded to include the global community. For Rs 16,000 or $ 400, anyone who logs on to the website can choose a school and finance it for the year. In return, the government will offer quarterly reports on the progress of the children and a visit to it at the state's expense.Started in 1997, the scheme was initially refused permission for Central funding because it doesn't fall under the Non-Formal Education (NFE) programme but that has since been sorted out. But Singh used the opportunity to talk at length about his philosophy of governance: ``I believe the country suffers from over-governance. For instance, 68 per cent of the Madhya Pradesh government budget is spent on five per cent of its employees. It has become a government for, by and of employees.''He also lit into the adult education scheme, saying it had created more supervisors and fewer students. ``But I believe the community is the best supervisor.'' As he pointed out to ``Madam'', who had come to the India Habitat Centre dressed in an ikat saree with Sambhalpuri border, this was a vision shared by both Mahatma Gandhi and ``your husband'' Rajiv.Of course, it meant a bit of bashing of the government. ``We went on a gram sampark abhiyan and found in a remote village in Shivpuri that the Class V students of a primary school could not even write their names, and at an EGS school two km away they could do more.'' Apparently, thanks to an article in The Los Angeles Times by Dexter Filkins, already they've had one cheque for $ 400 winging its way to them from San Jose.Next Singh hopes to do something similar for health where he wants to universalise access to primary health care in his state. ``We believe people are not the problem, but the solution,'' he said. The EGS has already won the Commonwealth Gold Medal for the Best International Innovation (in 1998). Even Sonia Gandhi broke her habitual dour reserve to smile at Singh's success. ``I remember Mrs Gandhi, Mrs Indira Gandhi, said in 1981 that in the amount you can build an intercontinental ballistic missile you can actually create 60,000 primary schools. By not making primary education available to all, we are only widening the chasm between the haves and have-nots.''Dixit added her own loyal bit by saying the information technology revolution which Digvijay Singh had harnessed would have happened 10 years ago if Rajiv had been alive. The TV crew waiting outside, clamouring for Sonia Gandhi's comments on her diminishing flock, seemed not to have heard.
