The Times of India: Rajiv
Shah: Tuesday, February 05, 2013.
It was nearly
two years ago. A representative of Ahmedabad-based voluntary organization,
Pathey, founded by one senior activist-turned-Congress politician, handed over
to me during a session of the Gujarat state assembly a four-page folder which
said, on the basis of a survey, that Gujarat government topped in transparency
index among a group of 10 major states. The state powerdom, obviously, went
gaga over it, seeking political gain. The index was based on queries regarding
transparency in budget making. The survey was carried out in alliance with New
Delhi-based Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA). What seemed
to provide credence to the survey was, it was sponsored, among others, by Ford
Foundation and Oxfam India. Covering budget-making in Gujarat every year after
being posted in Gandhinagar in 1997, I wasn’t just amused but irritated, as my
interaction with top state guns was just the opposite. Indeed, there was lot of
transparency when I began covering Sachivalaya for the Times of India in late
1990s, so much so that officials would willingly part with any data you wanted,
even if these told harsh realities. But after Narendra Modi came to power in
October 2001, things changed, so much so that inconvenient data began being
increasingly suppressed. Only those data which seemed convenient to Modi was
selectively released.
Recently,
senior academic Indira Hirway told me how she was getting frequent calls from
members of the Planning Commission wanting her to ask state officials to
provide latest state growth rate data. All states had “reconciled” these data
for 2011-12, except Gujarat. I don’t know the reason, but a Planning Commission
source says, much against the loud claims of the state government of double
digit rate of growth, state agriculture grew by 7.53 per cent during the 11th
five year plan. A good growth rate, it also seemed to suggest that it was
mainly because during one year the state agriculture grew by 27.05 per cent,
but slipped into the negative for two other years!
I was
instantly reminded of the Pathey survey during my during interaction with two
Ahmedabad-based Right to Information (RTI) activists, Pankti Jog and Harinesh
Pandya, who run Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), which provides hotline
service to anyone wanting to know on how to make an RTI application. As I sat
with them during a wintry afternoon, phone calls kept ringing. If ordinary
citizens wanted to know how to make RTI applications, government officials
tried to find out how to reply to particular RTI pleas. “There is no dearth of
phone calls from officials, who wanted to be acquainted of the rules under
which an application is accepted or rejected”, they told me, suggesting,
awareness on RTI rules was lacking at all levels in the government.
The activists
handed over to me a reply they had received to their plea to get details of
tours of ministers and other officials, both foreign and domestic. Jog wanted
these should be declared suo motu, as part of voluntary disclosure under RTI.
She showed me a Government of India order, which said that half-yearly suo motu
declaration, starting with January 1, 2012, be regularly made public and posted
on the web, so that public do not need to resort to the RTI Act to obtain it.
Gujarat
government, in its reply dated January 5, 2013, told Jog that though it had
received the Central order, it couldn’t give the information or put it on the
web, as the file on was “under consideration”. I wondered, if Gujarat
government was so transparent, why this reluctance? Or, was it afraid of
parting with some hard facts? It is common knowledge: Modi must ride the
chopper even if he has to go just 50 km from Gandhinagar. Jog and Pandya told
me that, voluntary disclosures, under RTI rules, should be made not just of
official tours of ministers but also about any concessions the government may
have given to entrepreneurs or organizations. As an example, they gave me an
order by Gujarat information commissioner RN Das, dated June 27, 2011, where he
quotes serial No (viii) of Section 4 (1)(b) of the RTI Act, which stipulates
the need to proactively disclose “particulars of the recipients of concessions,
permits, or authorizations” granted by a public authority. Jog had demanded
information on mining leases in Porbandar, given by the state, and it took full
four years for the state information commissioner to order it be given.
“Eighteen months after the order, the government hasn’t provided any
information, let alone put it on the web”, she told said. It wasn’t hard for me
to guess as to why concessions to the Tatas’ Nano car project, or Ford, or
other such mega projects aren’t made public either. The pretext is – it would
harm the corporates’ business interest!
In her
application dated July 9, 2007 to the district collector’s office, Jog had
demanded “details of the all the leases/permissions” for building stone (bela
patthar) mining in Porbandar district”. The information she had sought included
name of the lease holder and contact details, the date of commencement of the
lease, its expiry date, the date of renewal, the area for which the mining is
permitted or lease is allotted, nature or type of land on which mining is
allowed, the depth in feet till which mining is allowed, number of visits to
the mining site by the government officers from the date of the commencement,
and details of violations and action taken.
The illegal
mining issue, if anything, suggests the travesty of transparency of Gujarat
government. In mid-2000s, two IAS bureaucrats were posted, one after another,
as district collector, Porbandar, Sheila Benjamin and VN Chhibber. Both
exceptionally tried to fight illegal mining. At one stage Benjamin wrote
to the government how mafia was running
the show and she was helpless in the face of lack of support from the government.
She was summarily transferred. Chhibber actually took action against the mafia.
And, he was made to suffer – insiders confirm, a fake inquiry was instituted
against him on the last date of retirement, December 31, 2011. As the story
goes, Chhibber was posted in Porbandar with specific instructions from the
chief minister’s office (CMO) to “investigate illegal activities” of Opposition
leader Arjun Modhwadia, who hails from Porbandar. On reaching Porbandar,
Chhibber found nothing against Modhwadia, but found a senior BJP leader very
close to Modi deeply involved in illegal mining. This senior leader,
incidentally, is now a Cabinet minister under Modi.
Travesty of
transparency is strongly felt in budget making, too. As the last year drew to a
close, I would often approach additional chief secretary, finance, Varesh Sinha
– just promoted as Gujarat chief secretary – for details of the amount
collected by Gujarat government as value added tax (VAT) and registration of
real estate deals, as reflected in stamp duty collection. I told him, it would
suggest the impact of the slowdown on the state economy. Sinha, without mincing
words, replied he “didn’t have” these details. Once he said he would “look into
the matter”, but he never did. I approached his junior, economic affairs
secretary S Aparna. She promised me she would give me details. I approached her
half-a-dozen times, and she would either say she had “forgotten” or I should
approach her some other day. Finally, she told me to approach some other officials.
Interestingly, these details come to her and Sinha on a daily basis and were
part of their budget-making exercise.
In another
instance, a senior state official would in the past gladly hand me over details
of the amount spent by the state government under annual plan, for
developmental works. For the last two years, things became difficult for him to
retrieve the information because, as he put it, “Gujarat government doesn’t
make available comprehensive details of the amount spent to all secretaries.
Each department secretary is kept in the dark about the amount spent by all
other departments.” Insiders, of course, tell me, how at the end of each year
the government fails to spend huge sums, often up to Rs 10,000 crore, and all
of it is shown as “spent” by “parking” it with government boards or
corporations!