CHENNAI: Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has blamed the governance model adopted during the first 30 years after Independence for the high poverty in India as it enforced government intervention at all levels and effectively killed individual initiative.
Colossal damage was done in these 30 years, as the heavy hand of state intervention destroyed all sense of responsibility and private enterprise, specially among the rural people, the minister said while releasing the book, 'India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty', authored by Dr Abraham M. George, here on Monday.
Citing a recent instance where residents of a village wrote petitions from the panchayat president to President Kalam for sanction and funds from the district collector for desilting its water tank, Mr Chidambaram said: "Fifty years ago, the villagers would have done the job themselves, simply out of a sense of survival, sense of responsibility, sense of pride, but now they want the collector to get it done."
"The effect of this we-do-not-belong attitude among the rural population, which killed individual initiative, contributed greatly to the Indian poverty as a majority of its billion people lived in villages.
We paid a heavy price for this," the minister said, pointing to a dismal 3.5 per cent GDP growth that translated to a mere one per cent per capita growth. "It will take 200 years to wipe out poverty," he added.
"It required bold initiatives from the administrators to pull the country out of disaster. It was not easy but we tried to shift gears in 1991 and paid a heavy price as the party got defeated in elections," Mr Chidambaram recalled.
He said, "Again now, the UPA government is trying to shift gears by turning the focus to strengthening rural economy, to education, providing basic amenities to villages. It's not easy, there is resistance every step. What is worse, in the last 30 years, vested interests have entrenched themselves to preserve a model which ensured urban-oriented growth."
"With poverty-alleviation programmes hitherto implemented failing, there is now an urgent need to try other models. The best thing to do would be to hand over institutions such as the primary health centres, taluk-municipal hospitals, schools and fair-price shops to community control.
The biggest obstacle is the government and the huge machinery we have built in the name of governance," Mr Chidambaram said, adding that political support too was lacking to effect such changes.
In this connection, he recalled the objections to his suggestions for a contributory pension scheme and replacing ration shops with food stamps. "I was accused of trying to destroy the food security in the country. Are we so weak that we are afraid even to experiment?"
Regretting that state governments remained reluctant to devolve powers to local bodies even 12 years after the Panchayat Raj Act was enacted, the minister said the common minimum programme of the ruling United Progressive Alliance envisaged transferring all Centrally-sponsored schemes to state governments but there were not many takers. So too, the states were unwilling to devolve powers to local bodies.
"We must continue to exercise our powers of persuasion to devolve power, money and control to the lowest levels of administration," Mr Chidambaram said, while commending Dr George for making a sincere approach to poverty-alleviation issues in his book.
Arguing that poverty, specially rural poverty, was the biggest human rights challenge in recent history, Dr George sought bold initiatives for improving the deplorable human conditions in rural India. -By arrangement with Asian Age/New Delhi
