Opinion The road forward

A part of Obama’s stimulus packages is helping small business technology in agricultural and small business sectors. Also,on providing water and energy and housing assistance for the poor. There are technology initiatives for the private sector by the dozen. In India,there has been nothing new in all these sectors,but all of them can be addressed in a hundred days. The Obama administration’s briefings to Congress help with design blueprints.

There have been many committees on government reform. The ARC’s reports alone incorporate the earlier work of the Alagh Committee,the Hota Committee,the Surendra Nath Committees,the MOPR and the DOP. More transparent evaluation of government spending by autonomous agencies is good,but not enough. It is high time to address some of the structural issues on recruitment,training,accountability and the relationship with the political executive.

Food security will be as important,if not more important than the employment guarantee,but cheap food cannot be allowed to restrict the spread of widespread agricultural growth. The rural hungry are in the poorer region,where agricultural growth is required and is indeed picking up,as in the eastern region. Deciding to sell food cheap and buy grain expensively is only half of the solution. Prices have been shown to be falling below their minimum support in the most backward regions. And the fiscal space will restrict monies available to bridge the gap between the MSP and cheap food on an unlimited scale.

Remember,the Gandhians still send a bag of grain to houses in which the chula does not light up twice a day,before they talk of social reform. The really hungry have to be fed. A part of the answer is to support the neediest,who come to the state for employment support,for longer periods. Girls in school,the nutritionally vulnerable participating in any public health programme,the poor pregnant woman,the lactating mother — all must be covered. We could even buy food and give it to those who have fed people well,gurdwaras,big temples,the Waqf and others. We could give grain to those who could work to build our common future in the commons. I believe that if we put our mind to it,we can design the national food security network as a part of,and not at the expense of,processes of widespread agricultural and rural growth.

On educational reform,the deafening noise is confusing. The UGC is a constitutional body and abolishing it is not possible for a coalition government since it cannot easily amend the Constitution. A lot of good work done on building the profile of autonomy,accountability and inclusiveness is being pushed aside by asinine talk of a thousand universities coming to India. When I was its V-C,JNU was (and has been) the only general university in India to be rated among the world’s best,because it had then a culture of autonomy. Our experience is that the best don’t easily come,and that it needs different mindsets to build new alliances. Meanwhile,our great achievement? Announcing that the CBI,no less,will investigate the charges of a bureaucrat who didn’t pull along with Sukh Dev Thorat,the UGC chief. Thorat is an acknowledged global expert on rural development; his book,with meticulous district-level data,has been published by DC’s International Food Policy Research Institute. The three books he has published,under Oxford’s imprint,on education and inclusiveness pay the same attention to detail. But Delhi never had the time to read. But the idea of an overarching advisory Education Council,at the highest levels,is a good one. We may at last be beginning to see real reform.

The writer,a former Union minister,is chairman,Institute of Rural Management,Anand express@expressindia.com