Opinion Red corridor,red economy

According to reports,this additional money will be spent on roads,electricity and drinking water. Plus there is an issue of implementing the PESA (Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act. The issue that LWE cannot be handled as a pure law and order problem and there is a governance-cum-development deficit is a fair point. It was flagged comprehensively in Planning Commission’s April 2008 task force on “Development challenges in extremist affected areas”.

However,several questions arise. First,there has apparently already been a lot of public expenditure. During UPA-I,there was a special development package of Rs 20,000 crore,spread over three years and concentrated on these 33 districts and another 22 contiguous ones. Other than specific items (health centres,schools,hostels,skill development),this encompassed housing through the Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY),roads through Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY),rural electrification through Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY),employment through Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and telecom through Bharat Nirman. Government employees were given additional incentives for working in LWE areas. There was also supposed to be splicing with MPLADS. Other than drinking water (not explicitly covered),all other development activities proposed now were therefore already supposed to be covered. If that public expenditure splurge did not work,what makes us think the present one will?

To the extent information is available,the Planning Commission now has a website on what is happening in these 34 districts on PMGSY,NRHM (National Rural Health Mission),SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan),RGGVY,MGNREGS and drinking water. This makes for depressing reading and here are just two instances: 0.72 per cent of habitations in Khammam have been covered under PMGSY,7 per cent of BPL households in Kanker have been covered under RGGVY. It is a separate matter that this information is dated. Information is missing. If this new integrated action plan is being worked out by the Planning Commission,as has been reported,why can’t it work with other ministries and departments to collate information first? There has been another report that the Planning Commission will now become a Systems Reforms Commission.

Perhaps one should begin with 33 or 34 LWE districts,high on everyone’s agenda.

To the extent that states have to offer matching grants on Central schemes,why have these not been available? Why has money available not been spent (utilised)? When money is spent,why has it not led to tangible improvement in outcomes? Once upon a time,before the merger of PWG and MCC in 2004,the LWE movement used to work in silos and the merger seems to have increased synergy. Why do government ministries and departments continue to work in silos? Even more interestingly,why is there this variation in efficiency of public expenditure across states,and within the same state across districts?

There is another question that is intellectually interesting and not much research attention seems to have been paid to this. Roads,electricity and drinking water are important and so are poverty,literacy,female work participation rates,etc. On an average there is correlation between deprivation on these criteria and presence of LWE extremism. However,that is on an average. Not every district that is so deprived has LWE violence and not every district that has LWE violence is relatively deprived to the same extent on these economic criteria. Therefore,in looking at simple correlations with economic backwardness or shares of tribal population,we may be over-simplifying. For instance,beyond economic backwardness,there may be a sense of social and political marginalisation,non-existence of redress mechanisms,bypassing by the law and order machinery. Should one therefore have a centralised template,imposed top-down from Delhi,and assume it will solve the problem? Or should the integrated action plan evolve from below,from the level of districts? There is no doubt Balaghat needs roads. But that does not seem to be the primary issue for Aurangabad. Rural electrification is important in Rayagada,but less so in Rohtas.

Beyond inherent inefficiency in government delivery,there is also a point about acceptability of such public expenditure programmes by LWE groups. For example,is it universally true (across all districts) that LWE groups accept MGNREGS,but resist developmental activities? MGNREGS is an intriguing one. On an average,there is positive correlation between existence of LWE activity and larger shares of adult males in the population. MGNREGS is known to have reduced out-migration,chiefly of the male variety. Has it then also reinforced (instead of reducing) LWE violence?

The red corridor is also financed by a red economy and this is believed to thrive on 10-15 per cent levies,the favourites being traders and construction companies. If that is the case,roads delivered by private sector construction may be more acceptable than electricity and drinking water,delivered essentially by the public sector. In the former case,linkages presumably already exist,at least in some districts,perhaps explaining why road construction works better in Andhra than in Maharashtra. At the level of research,there is much we don’t know and consequently resort to generalisations. While in general development and governance deficits are issues,we need to disaggregate and decentralise plans. Else,like earlier public expenditure programmes,this template will also fail.

The writer is a Delhi-based economist

express@expressindia.com