<b>Aditi Phadnis:</b> Easy this far... and no farther

Now that Sikkim has an Opposition - in the real sense of the term - 2019 would be the real test for Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling, who would be seeking another term in office

Pawan Kumar Chamling, currently in his fifth term as chief minister of Sikkim, is set to become the longest serving chief minister of India. He called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week but his visit did not make headlines. He couldn't care less. He heads a state that has a fabulous record on most human development indices and most of these have been achieved during his tenure. True, there are allegations of nepotism and corruption swirling around his two wives, their offspring and their extended family. But the people of Sikkim have voted him to power repeatedly - although in the 2014 Assembly election, they waved some warning signs.

Chamling belongs to an agriculturalist family and wanted to study but couldn't afford to. He joined the police force as a clerk but because he is also a poet (he has authored around 20 volumes of poetry and is intensely proud of his publishing house, Nirman Prakashan), he got swayed by the political protest movements in Sikkim that sought that country's merger with India in 1975.

It is hard to tell the villains from the heroes in the annexation of Sikkim. The way the first Dewan of Sikkim, John Lall (ICS), described it, instead of honouring Sikkim's sovereignty and China's feelings, India imported mobs of Nepali-speaking people from Darjeeling and Kalimpong, told the Chogyal (King) that his people had rebelled against him and annexed Sikkim.

Chamling however, says (possibly because he's a Nepali-speaking native of Sikkim) that the original Lepcha settlers of Sikkim, who were subjugated for three centuries by the Bhotia tribals from across Tibet, perpetuated feudal systems and denied other tribals like the Limbus and the Tamangs equal rights. According to Chamling, the rebellion against the Chogyal was actually a revolution that overthrew the oppressive Qazi rule and radicalised scores of young men across Sikkim.

Among them was Nar Bahadur Bhandari, who went on to become chief minister. When Chamling won his Assembly seat, Damthang, polling 96.6 per cent of the vote in the 1989 elections, Bhandari sought to co-opt Chamling by making him a minister in the state government. Chamling had other ambitions. After two-and-a-half years of ministership, he quit the Bhandari government in 1993 and formed a new regional party, the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF). In the 1994 Assembly elections, the SDF got 19 out of 32 seats. In 1999, it got 25 seats out of 32. In 2004 it got 31 out of 32 seats in the Sikkim Assembly and in 2009 it won all 32.

How did Chamling achieve this? He fought for and won a struggle to extend reservation to castes like the Limbus and the Tamangs. In Sikkim, 20 per cent of the population is Bhutia-Lepcha and 40 per cent comprises Other Backward Castes including the Newars, a caste engaged in business. Limbus, Rais and Tamangs form around 20 per cent of the population. When they were included in the reservation net, they became Chamling's natural constituency.

It was not enough to rely on identity politics. You needed to perform as well. The erstwhile Planning Commission statistics tell us Sikkim recorded the steepest decline in poverty ratio from 30.9 per cent in 2004-05 to 8.2 per cent in 2011-12. You only have to read the 2014 Sikkim Human Development Report (HDR) produced by a United Nations Development Programme affiliate to understand the miracle. The HDR 2014 says that between 2001 and 2012, Sikkim's net state domestic product grew on average by 17 per cent every year - the highest among all Indian states - surpassing significantly the national average of 10 per cent.

The HDR notes that much of the growth was generated by expansion in industry and manufacturing sectors, backed by the services sector. The contribution of agriculture to Sikkim's growth has been minimal. As a result of high growth, real per capita incomes in Sikkim witnessed more than a fourfold increase from Rs 15,953 in 2001-02 to Rs 69,202 in 2011-12. Sikkim's per capita income today is the highest among north-eastern states and ranks fifth in India (after Delhi, Goa, Chandigarh and Puducherry). Between 2001 and 2012, the government consciously stepped up investments in the social sectors, particularly in health and education. In 2012-13, the government of Sikkim allocated 37 per cent of its total expenditure to the social sector - up from 27 per cent in 2001. This resulted in nearly a sevenfold increase in nominal per capita social sector spending - from Rs 4,810 in 2001 to Rs 28,661 by 2012. Between 2001 and 2013, there was, on average, an annual increase in Budget allocations by 12 per cent and 18 per cent respectively for education and health.

All this has made for good economics and good politics. So why did the 2014 Assembly election produce such a disappointing result for the SDF? It formed the government all right but got only 22 seats out of 32, the remaining 10 being won by a new party called the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, born in 2013 and led by Chamling's estranged colleague, Prem Singh Tamang, a four-time MLA. For the first time in five years, the Sikkim Assembly actually has an Opposition. This could be a function of the Sikkimese people asking for more; or the visible signs of corruption in the system. Either way, after Sikkim gets its first airport in 2017, Chamling will seek another term in office. In that sense, 2019 will be the test.