Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is the only senior politician in the country to openly admit that all politics is financed by black money. Since any effort to clean up the polity has to start with cleaning up political funding, getting someone to accept this reality is the first step. How has he fared, after admitting to this uncomfortable truth?
"I have tried to create a debate in the polity and in my own party on the subject," was his reply. And the result? "It is only a beginning and it will take time and more stakeholders will have to come on board," he said. What should be done, in any case, to clean up political funding? He had his answers ready, as he had earlier in the day when he had addressed a press conference and fielded questions on MP's development in great detail. The starting point, he feels, is curbing election expenditure. For this, state and Parliament elections should be clubbed together. "This used to be the norm and we must go back to this practice and we will save a lot of money." He is also in favour of state funding of political activity.
He also is a champion of direct election of the political CEO, the chief minister or the prime minister, to insulate him from blackmail by legislators of fickle loyalty.
The BJP had dislodged Congress CM Digvijay Singh back in 2003 raising three issues - bijlee (electricity), sadak (road) and pani (water). What has been the progress on making good the deficit in each?
The chief minister trotted out his numbers with evident relish. Since 2003, MP has built 80,000 km of roads, highways, village roads and everything in-between. In addition to the centrally sponsored Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana for building all-weather village roads (initiated by the BJP-led NDA government and carried forward by the successor UPA governments), the Chauhan government started its own Mukhya Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. In addition to building whole roads, this scheme lays stone chippings and tar to convert the earthen roads constructed under the UPA's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme into all-weather roads.
What about the power sector? "We have just backed down 870 MW, because the national grid cannot absorb it," he said. Installed generation capacity has more than doubled from 2,900 MW to 6,000 MW. "And by 2013, we will be in a position to supply power 24x7." The proposal, first put forward by energy economist Kirit Parikh, to build separate feeder lines for irrigation pumps and rural homes, and first implemented by Gujarat, is now being realised in MP. This allows subsidised power for pumps to be supplied for limited periods even as rural homes receive power without interruption.
The chief minister is even more proud of his achievement in irrigation: the irrigated area has gone up from 7 lakh hectare to 22 lakh hectare under his watch.
Why is such a development-oriented leader standing in the way of the country switching over to an integrated Goods and Services Tax (GST), abandoning the obsolete system of segmented commodity tax
For the first time in our interaction, the CM was less than completely sure. We have some concerns, he says, about loss of our constitutional powers of taxation. This, of course, is transparently absurd: GST would enable states to tax all services and imports and also goods at the stage of production, greatly expanding their taxation powers - currently, these powers are exclusively with the Centre. Another concern Chauhan raises is that there is no guarantee, as yet, of compensation by the Centre in case of loss of revenue as a result of switch-over to GST. Further, states stand to lose their power to set their own rates. "If these concerns, shared by other states as well, are addressed, we will support GST," he said.
On mining reform, he supports auctions, but in a manner that does not raise the cost of the mined mineral.
The Madhya Pradesh government offers a bonus to farmers in addition to the procurement price offered by the Centre. A tax levied on purchases by the Food Corporation of India and paid out of the Centre's food subsidy allows the state government to finance the bonus entirely from central funds, while claiming all the credit. That the tax drives out private buyers is a different matter.
Clearly, the MP chief minister is firmly part of the new paradigm of success in state level politics: development via effective, smart governance. Within this, he is also part of another paradigm established by his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi: overall development success to offset pursuit of divisive politics (in MP, Hindutva agenda in school education and a new law on cow-slaughter whose main yield is the potential to harass Muslim butchers and traders).
Having more than proved his mettle at the state level, will he now bring his leadership skills to the national level? No, Chauhan was firm and clear: his place is in his state
