Bihar Vikas Mission fails to live up to its promise

A year after the launch of Bihar Vikas Mission, it is falling apart

It was during the heat of the Bihar Assembly elections in October 2015. Nitish Kumar had returned home after bashing his then bête-noire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at rallies across the state. As he was preparing for the next round of campaigning, Kumar’s electoral strategist, Prashant Kishor, presented him with a set of polling numbers. The data brought a smile to Kumar’s campaign-weary face.

Encouraged by the pleasant numbers, Kishor broached an idea that he had been working on for a while to Kumar: a parallel model of governance to shake up the otherwise “lethargic bureaucracy”. Kishor had earlier suggested that model to  Modi after his electoral victory in 2014, but he had rejected it. Kumar, however, liked the idea, and promised to take it up after coming to power.

In November 2015, days after taking oath as the chief minister of Bihar for the fifth time, Kumar asked Kishor to prepare a blueprint of his model. A few months later, he was appointed as special advisor to the chief minister for policy programme and implementation. On January 28, 2016, Kishor’s idea took life, and the Bihar Vikas Mission was set up. Its mandate was to rope in experts to monitor the implementation of “the seven-resolves” — Kumar’s pre-poll promises — and other schemes related to agriculture, industry, infrastructure and human resources development.

Kumar’s promises included Rs 4 lakh to every student in loan for higher education; monthly unemployment allowance of  Rs 1,000 for two years for class 12 pass-outs; free Wi-Fi in colleges and universities; a Rs 500-crore venture fund for start-ups; pucca lanes ; drainage facility for households; free drinking water; free electricity; and toilets in every house. 

To implement these programmes, the government  planned to hire experts at salaries higher than the average salary of an IAS officer in the state. The state government roped in the Hay Group — a Philadelphia-based management consultancy — to flesh out the BVM’s organisational structure, and five top-notch recruitment firms were empanelled to hire 1,500 “high-quality experts”.

The newly-formed body was given a swanky office — fitted with modern gadgets — at 6A Circular Road in Patna, next to Kumar’s erstwhile 7 Circular Road residence. The BVM was vested with sweeping powers; it could fix priorities and monitor achievements against the targets set by the government.
 

Nearly a fortnight after it was set up, Kumar headed the first  meeting of the governing council of the BVM. In attendance were senior bureaucrats, state ministers and Kishor — who was made  a member of the mission. A visibly happy Kumar instructed the officials to have better coordination between the BVM and the bureaucracy to implement the government’s development goals. This is where problems came raining down.

The BVM was supposed to help the government machinery find solutions to overcome procedural difficulties. “A facilitator and force-multiplier”, the chief minister described the mission in one of his tweets.

Problems, however, started popping up soon after it came to life. The mission quickly ran afoul of the very people it was supposed to work with — the bureaucracy. Bureaucrats sniggered, calling the mission a centre of “power without responsibility”.

Within a fortnight of the first meeting of its governing council, senior IAS officer, with chief secretary-level-pay, Sudhir Kumar Rakesh, resigned. Rakesh, who was considered an uptight, hardworking and honest bureaucrat, did not disclose the reason behind his resignation, but it is said he was miffed with the sweeping powers vested to the BVM.

“The BVM is registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, which essentially makes it an NGO. How can the government set up an NGO? Most importantly, how come an NGO can monitor our performance? It’s the job of the executive and the legislative. The move has put a question mark on the effectiveness of the bureaucracy. It’s tantamount to privatising governance,” said a senior IAS officer.

Kumar tried to clear the air over the mission’s authority. “The BVM would not replace the government machinery but instead would work in sync with government officials as a facilitator,” he said.

However, the resentment against the mission runs deep among the state’s bureaucrats. Recently, many senior bureaucrats grouped together to block the roads leading to the under-construction Mission Secretariat at Shastri Nagar in Patna. They were protesting “infringement of their privacy”—because of the proximity of the mission office to their residences.  A 12-feet wall has now been erected to cover the portico of the mission building to block the view to the residences of IAS and IPS officers next to it, and the windows have been permanently closed with plywood boards.

The mission’s recruitment drive has met with only a lukewarm response. The first round of hiring for team leaders and associates was held in February-March 2016. Against the vacancy for 100 posts, only 24 applicants could be selected, and, of them, 16 joined. What’s worse, only seven of them stayed a year later. The BVM has now launched a fresh drive to recruit 542 experts for various departments of the state government.

“Our expectations were very high in the first round. We wanted only the top-notch experts, and, therefore, not all the posts could be filled. We have now asked the recruitment agencies to tone down the educational qualifications and focus mostly on the abilities of the candidates to get the job done,” state Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh told Business Standard. 

The mission’s main problem, however, lies elsewhere. “Bihar Vikas Mission was the brainchild of Prashant Kishor. Without a doubt, it looked brilliant on paper. He and his team, who conceptualised and drew the initial blueprint, had a vision.  But they couldn’t devote much time, and left Bihar soon after the first meeting of the governing council to concentrate on the Uttar Pradesh and Punjab Assembly elections. He hasn’t been back since then, and the whole idea has collapsed,” said a senior bureaucrat.

Those working in the BVM complain of discrimination when dealing with government departments. “It was supposed to be an elite organisation to help and support government offices. However, bureaucrats, especially those lower down the hierarchy, don’t want us here. It’s like we are encroaching their space. Most of them see us as competitors rather than facilitators. They despise the fact that we are paid more than them despite the gap in age and experience,” said an analyst on the condition of anonymity.

Political analysts blame Kumar for the mess. “The BVM was, basically, a political tool. It was constituted with one goal; the chief minister should have an upper hand in governance in the tug-of-war between Kumar and Lalu Prasad for control over the bureaucracy. As Prasad’s legal troubles increased, his focus shifted to countering them, and the need for BVM faded away. After he joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party, Kishor resigned. The mission has now lost both its context and its creator,” said a senior JD (U) leader.

The government denies it. “Has any government institution stopped functioning just because an individual resigned? It’s true that Kishor has resigned, but Bihar Vikas Mission would continue to function. It is a brilliant idea and the government is committed to seeing it through,” Singh told Business Standard.
 

Those who work at the mission, however, say it is falling apart. It is now mired in secrecy and red-tape — the very obstacles it had set out to counter, they add.