Scheming too much

Rural Development Minister C.P. Joshi has,throughout the tenure of UPA 2,narrowly focused on doing what he thinks is the most important component of his job. Unfortunately,his opinion about what his ministerial portfolio requires is not that he carefully evaluate and improve the delivery of services of the various mammoth Centrally sponsored schemes; he seems to think,instead,that he is the Congresss marketing manager-in-chief,responsible for ensuring the schemes are properly branded with the Congress election symbol. Heaven forfend that some of the credit for implementing the schemes go to the state governments that bear a share of the responsibility,and whose institutional capabilities as Joshi himself has admitted to Parliament determine the schemes success.

This tendency was on display again in a pronouncement from the rural development ministry that only members of Parliament and not state ministers or members of the legislative assembly would be allowed to inaugurate roads that are built under the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana. Thats a Centrally funded scheme,and so MPs will be able to give the roads a quality assurance test,according to a letter that Joshi sent out to states and to MPs. In actual fact,of course,the problem is that the Centre feels that if its spending the money,it should get the credit. Thats an argument thats petty,doesnt hold up logically and has had a giant hole blown in it electorally by the Nitish Kumar-led NDA in Bihar,which won after reminding its electorate that the money wasnt the Centres,it was the taxpayers.

The larger problem,of which Joshis attitude is just one symptom,is the Congresss anxiety about ownership of Centrally funded schemes. While its true that many of those were started on the UPAs watch,the rural roads scheme,for example,was an NDA initiative. If the Centre genuinely cared about the inclusive welfare state that it claims to be setting up,it would attempt to depoliticise its implementation. Especially since,in terms of pure realpolitik,there is absolutely no evidence that voters care whose idea a government programme was,originally. Instead,they endorse quality governance. And a key component of that,for them,is how effectively Centrally funded schemes are implemented. Its time Joshi and his party woke up to their real responsibilities as the party in power at the Centre and internalised an essence of federalism that voters have long been alert to.