Watered-down claim

Gujarat combines growth with good governance, claimed its chief minister, Narendra Modi, addressing the FICCI earlier this year. The state, he went on to say, is trying to create world-class infrastructure. There is a good chance that the CM, even as he pronounced these words, would have been aware that his flagship project, the Rs 3,000-crore Sujalam Sufalam scheme, neither reflected good governance nor represented world-class infrastructure. In fact, he could not but have known that a number of check dams constructed under it had melted away under the onslaught of last year’s monsoon because of shoddy construction.

The tenth report of Gujarat’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has revealed the cavalier manner in which large sections of the scheme was handled, with every norm — from public participation to a credible tender process — dispensed with. As an Indian Express report has just revealed, while the PAC was told that 72 different agencies were involved in building a 337-km length of earthwork under the scheme, in reality just a handful of contractors bagged the job despite not having the required qualifications to perform it. This is not good governance, it is criminally negligent governance. Last year, Gujarat struggled to cope with unprecedented floods, many of them caused by dam bursts. No one at that point made the link between corruption in the award of contracts and the tragedy that befell the state. Today the picture is getting clearer — and no thanks to Modi, whose government deliberately failed to table the PAC report in the state assembly, knowing full well its implications.

Modi has a reputation for being an able administrator with a commitment to probity in public life. But the full facts of the Sujalam Sufalam scheme dent this carefully cultivated image considerably. This cannot be good news for the Gujarat chief minister in a year in which he faces a crucial assembly election.