Haryana is shining but Chautala can’t talk about it

And Ramkishen Yadav of Chandugaon, who tills only five acres but has bought a Maruti 800, says, ‘‘I did it.’’ No credit-sharing with the government in Chandigarh.

Not everything about Shining Haryana is surface gloss. The money rolling in is hard-earned and stable. The hookah-smoking Jat elder watches television with the DTH dish by his side. Every day, local bodies have to process applications for new English-medium schools. Sugarcane trucks move in impressive processions along the National Highway.

But ask the prosperous Haryanvi about the government’s performance, he says grudgingly, ‘‘Chautala did a little.’’ He asserts, ‘‘Chautala could have done much more.’’

Expectations are too high. And reduced government interference is interpreted as bad governance. True, the success story has been inscribed mostly on both sides of the highways. Well-being is etched on designer houses and glass buildings along main roads in urban centres.

Why isn’t Om Prakash Chautala touting his achievements? That he has reached 738 million units of electricity to Haryana homes daily, created 5,273 km of new roads and dug 1,467 irrigation canals? The chief minister’s son and former Bhiwani MP, Ajay Chautala, smiles, ‘‘We have seen the India Shining campaign fall flat on its face only eight months back.’’

For the INLD leadership, this is the dilemma.

Development electioneering might have stemmed the anti-incumbency tide as Sheila Dikshit showed in Delhi. But they know that their achievements and people’s aspirations do not make a simple equation.

There is also the other half of the whole truth. Dirt tracks between sugarcane fields leads you to a different economic and time zone where Haryana is as dull as most of the country. But a fine distinction has to be made. Nowhere, not even in the blue-plastic-tent existence of the nomadic Lohars do you get to see a dehumanised Bihar or a hopeless UP.

Chautala’s camp managers say their boss is into reforms. And reforms are not tangible like bijli, sadak and pani. Argues Bhim Singh Maini of Hassangarh, a relative of the INLD candidate, ‘‘Voters want more. There was no village road five years ago. We have laid a new road but people want it wider and longer.’’

‘‘It is not so much paani,’’ says Jagpal Singh Fauji of Basaigaon on the fringes of Gurgaon trying to explain why Chautala’s popularity has plummeted. ‘‘Without irrigation, Haryana would not have survived annual droughts,’’ he adds. Jitender, a BSP functionary of Badli, insists bijli is where Chautala’s troubles lie. ‘‘Forget the Jats, not even the backwards accept six hours of power a day.’’ Sadak is another key issue. The quality of state highways and roads cannot be compared with the smooth, suspension-friendly surface of the national highways.

Dr Raghuvir Singh of Rohtak says, ‘‘Politics and governance have nothing to do with Haryana’s money-making talent and its prosperity. People have the drive. It would have happened anyway.’’ Chautala’s supporters argue that if they have lost ground it is because anti-incumbency comes with election success now. As though the electorate fixed your term. Five years. No more.

Indeed, just last week, INLD candidates stepped out tentatively with pary pamphlets and holding aloft their manifesto. They are finally touting their ‘‘achievements’’ but they have removed that accursed word ‘‘Shining’’ from their vocabulary.