Get closer to people

The Government of India recently announced the launch of a People’s Plan Campaign from October 2, 2018 to prepare development plans for every Grama Panchayat in the country, to properly utilise the resources over which the Grama Panchayats have command, particularly Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme (MGNREGS) and the Fourteenth Finance Commission Grants. I read this important announcement with both pride and amusement – pride at having been an active player in the operationalisation of the People’s Plan Campaign in Kerala, more than two decades ago and amusement tinged with a bit of cynicism at the fact that in the state of its origin, it no longer excites most people, in spite of its huge potential to actually show what good governance can be. Recently, I read an article in a Malayalam newspaper written by Dr V. Ramankutty, director of Achutha Menon Centre, SCTIMST, in which he had commented that the reconstruction activities could re-ignite People’s Plan. I feel that this is the right time to go back more than two decades in time and recreate the most creative and idealistic phase in Kerala’s development history, suitably adapted to the present times.

The philosophical roots of People’s Plan can be traced to the Gandhian concept of village democracy and local development with special emphasis on antyodaya and Paolo Freire’s belief that people, ordinarily treated as mere objects, known and acted upon, are capable of becoming subjects of their destiny, knowing and acting.
The core objectives of participatory planning and development embedded in People’s Plan need to be reinstated.

They include:
i) Democratisation and humanisation of the State taking it to the door steps of the citizen.
ii) Enable people to have a formal role in local developmental governance, with special emphasis on the excluded social groups.
iii) Shift from official and political patronage to socially constructed norms and criteria for provision of benefits to people – fair and transparent.
iv) Incorporate local knowledge and wisdom and motivate people’s contribution.
v) Increase transparency and accountability — social accountability, in particular - and reduce corruption.
vi) Transform conflictual politics into a new politics of development.
vii) Facilitate a cooperative and creative public action.

Some of the core ideas and concepts of People’s Plan can easily be transplanted to the post flood reconstruction with great benefit. They are:
(i) Building a cadre of local resource persons drawn from the most competent and active sections of government, academia and the civil society to work very closely with the people.
(ii) Mobilising high quality technical experts and professionals from both within and outside the country on a purely voluntary service mode; the concept of Voluntary Technical Corps (VTC) propounded by no less a person than E.M.S. Namboodiripad himself, has fascinating relevance in the present context. With so much of international attention, experts from all over the world would be willing to volunteer with ideas and concrete suggestions and, some of them, even with their presence, to guide the reconstruction activities. This would enable multiple perspectives incorporation of the best knowledge inputs and transparent decision making.
(iii) An innovation of the People’s Plan was the preparation of the Development Report by every local government combining formal as well as participatory methodologies. This would be best suited in a disaster situation where the affected people can contribute with feeling to understanding what happened, why it happened and what needs to be done both for mitigation and prevention. This will ensure that people’s priorities based on their experience get the primacy and not narrow interests guided by extraneous considerations, partisan-political or rent-seeking.
(iv) People’s Plan also sought to ensure participation in implementation and monitoring, though it was not very successful. It can still be tried out learning lessons from experience.
(v) Probably, the most successful institutional innovation of the People’s Plan was the functioning of a high-level Coordination Committee, headed by the Minister for Local Self Government with full participation of the Departments concerned including Finance and Planning. It used to meet every Wednesday and it was empowered to take all decisions related to People’s Plan. It was easily accessible to even ordinary members of Local Governments who could raise any issue and be guaranteed that the government would respond with clarity in a formal way within a week or two. Such a mechanism is highly necessary to sort out the problems which would arise at different stages.
One of the unrealised ideas of People’s Plan was social audit which has been trivialised and domesticated in Kerala.

This is the right time to revitalise social audit and make it applicable to all flood relief works including provision of benefits. A strong political signal needs to be sent by government that really there would be zero tolerance of corruption and partisanship in respect of flood relief – as a challenge to validate the salary and crowd funding challenges. With this signal, participation and social vigilance can really be effective. It is well known that in disaster relief, diversion of funds from the intended activities and localities, wastage and corruption are rather high even in well run countries. But such corruption repulses people more than anything else, particularly those who have borne the brunt of the disaster and in whose name funds have been mobilised. It has to be particularly noted that social accountability even if it is inconvenient to local power structures, official and political, formal and informal, actually yields a lot of political dividend. A case in point is the firm decision by late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy to insulate MGNREGS from any kind of wrong doing in the undivided Andhra Pradesh.

A close analysis of the media reveals that during the hardest days of the disaster, elected representatives of the local governments were the first responders rushing into the relief work and trying to coordinate to the best of their ability (even though disaster relief is a subject not devolved to local governments). But now one gets the feeling that the Grama Panchayats, Municipalities and Corporations may be ignored in the planning and implementation of reconstruction works. This needs to be avoided. For whatever one may say, they are the closest to people and their accountability is direct and sharp. Of course, they have the risk of partisanship but this can be offset through transparent norms, genuine participation and pro-active accountability measures.

If Kerala could suitably adapt the practices which it had conceptualised and pioneered, in this attempt for Nava Keralam, it can develop an international model of quality and significance for post-disaster reconstruction.

S.M. Vijayanand is former Chief Secretary, Kerala