Aditi Phadnis: In the black

PLAIN POLITICS/ Uma Bharti's style of functioning has not gone down well with her partymen

Three sets of people are sending thanks to God that Uma Bharti is no longer the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.

One is Uma Bharti herself; another is a group of MLAs which represents the ginger group in the Madhya Pradesh BJP; and the third is Bharti's successor Babulal Gaur (whose second name, incidentally, is a nom de guerre.

When he was a child, his teacher used to keep having to tell him: 'Babulal, gaur sey suno': or Babulal, pay attention. The name Gaur stuck. What is worrying is that it has endured, suggesting that his attention-span has not improved over the years. This should be cause for concern).

Babulal Gaur was Uma Bharti's handpicked successor. When the crisis over her arrest blew up last week, it looked as if the youth wing leader of the party, Shivraj Chauhan, who is an MP, might become chief minister.

Leaders said this would be consistent with the policy of launching new faces as state leaders that the BJP has been following since last year. However, even before the central Parliamentary Board had had time to discuss the matter, Bharti declared categorically from Bhopal that the new CM would be elected by MLAs "" thus striking off Chauhan's name at one stroke.

It helped that Gaur "" Bharti's home minister "" was an Other Backward Class (OBC). Bharti was clear that an upper caste leader should not be appointed her successor for it would send the wrong political message.

Bharti's succession was managed so painlessly and quickly and her exit was so determined, it almost seemed that she herself was heaving a sigh of relief at quitting office.

This was in sharp contrast to the tantrums she threw when she was asked to give up a central ministership and lead the BJP into an election (at the time, when she was minister for youth affairs and sport, she was asked when she was going to Madhya Pradesh.

"For the moment, I'm only going to Manchester" she had replied. The Commonwealth games were on in Manchester then). Only briefly did Bharti allow herself to feel regret at what she had given away to Gaur, when she said at Hubli just before being arrested that she wished Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh had informed her earlier she was going to be arrested, for then she might not have had to resign.

But on the whole, surrounded by partymen and colleagues who were irritated at her style of functioning and seemingly intent on undermining her, Bharti appears to have viewed her resignation and arrest as a blessing in disguise.

Not only did it rid her of carping colleagues, it also catapulted her instantly into the big league where she displaced Sushma Swaraj as the principal challenger of Sonia Gandhi. Hence the campaign that it was Sonia Gandhi who had got the 10-year-old case of attempted murder resurrected against her.

Bharti's tendency to favour some people blindly and regard others with intense disfavour is not new. She has always had strong likes and dislikes and has never shied away from speaking her mind. While this works for a leader aspiring to get to the top, it is perhaps not the best strategy to lead a team.

Madhya Pradesh leaders like Deepak Kothari (who has publicly said that Uma Bharti is prejudiced against him) and Anup Mishra (former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's nephew and an influential Bharti-baiter) played their role in her downfall.

The coup de grace was dealt by her malcontent brother Swami Lodhi, who has flirted extensively with the Congress before coming to the BJP. The brother and sister have fallen out before and made up.

At that time, Bharti said she considered her brother like her 'father and mother' and said she was deeply pained at his 'rejection'. This time, family differences went so deep that they could not be bridged. It is arguable but Bharti might have had to quit anyway, given the depth of the revolt in the state against her. But that's another story.

In the few months Bharti has been chief minister, the bureaucracy in Madhya Pradesh has been shifted around extensively. Bharti's advisors say this is inevitable. With Digvijay Singh having had a 10-year stint, the bureaucracy needed a purge.

Bharti's regime has seen one decisive victory of the big dam lobby "" Harsud went underwater as the government, intent on building the Indira Sagar dam, went about its work. The inundation of the village and the homes of thousands of families caught the attention of TV channels for a few hours, but we did not see any rise in sympathy.

All kinds of anti-liberal conclusions about the width and depth of the environment movements that NGOs are so proud of, could be derived from this.

Allegations have been made that Bharti diluted the Panchayati Raj structure set up by Digvijay Singh but not all of the criticism is valid. Singh set up seven committees at the panchayat level, believing that more consultation meant more democracy.

But it also meant delays in decisionmaking and nothing got done, defeating the purpose of local self government somewhat. Bharti rationalised the village set-up to just two committees.

Now one acts as the delivery system for the paanch jas or the five Js which are defined as the priorities of the new state government "" jan (human resource), jameen (resources associated with land), jal (water conservation), jungle (forests) and janwar (livestock).

The other is the Nirman samiti "" the council decides how to allocate resources, invest surplus and collect taxes. Bharti has abolished the district planning committee, which is regressive because she has done it for the wrong reasons "" under pressure from ministers who saw their position undermined.

It is in the two areas that cost Digvijay Singh his job, that Bharti has done maximum work. The allocation for roads was increased by 36 per cent in the budget to Rs 1,500 crore, a healthy infusion that will ensure maintenance as well as new roads.

And the first thing she did was to ensure power reached the villages. Digvijay Singh was defeated by the villages to whom he had offered but could not deliver, power.

Now that Bharti is out of it all and will have at least 14 days to think about being chief minister again, she might regret leaving Bhopal. But her balance sheet is in the black at the moment.