Dinner with BS: Can't rely only on agriculture for jobs, says MP CM Chouhan

Chouhan tells Aditi Phadnis about his hunger for investment, why MP needs alternatives to agriculture and why he thinks his soft image isn't taking on a hard tone

Days before dinner with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan (62), clips of him at another dinner were viral: Chouhan and national Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya grasping each other by the hand and singing together lustily into karaoke mikes: “Yeh dosti, hum nahin todenge”.
 
Like everything else, there’s a political background to this. In the past, Chouhan and Vijayvargiya have been political rivals. In fact, Chouhan’s supporters had flagged the BJP’s performance in the West Bengal assembly election earlier in the year as a possible revival of Vijayvargiya’s fortunes. The election was deemed to have been won by the BJP, even though it did not get to form the government. This was the context of the reaffirmation of “dosti” by the CM, presumably to erase the bitterness of the past. I ask him about this as innocently as I can: “About your singing…” He understands instantly what I am referring to. “Oh, we keep humming and singing. Nothing very unusual about it,” he grins.

 
Dinner is at Madhyanchal Bhavan, the Madhya Pradesh government guest house in the back of Delhi’s beyond. The fare is simple: Low-oil, low-spice north Indian vegetarian food. There’s bhindi, tori, karela, daal, mattar paneer as a concession, and rasmalai and gulab jamun for afters. I’m stuffing my face but Chouhan eats very, very little. The karela is left untouched in a neat little pile on his plate. He carefully cuts one rasmalai into half and returns the rest to the kitchen. He’s lost weight since we met last.
 

He says managing the Covid-19 crisis has been challenging. “I couldn’t sleep, days on end. The crisis was especially acute because Madhya Pradesh does not have any oxygen plant — so we had to depend on other states for help. I’m not ashamed to admit that I got into a fight with CMs of the neighbouring states because they needed oxygen, too, and held trucks back at the border” he says candidly. He’s talking about Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Oxygen could not be airlifted because it is highly flammable. “We had to manage the logistics of empty tankers very carefully: At times, I spoke to the truck drivers myself to monitor the progress of the tankers to make sure they weren’t waylaid en route” he says.

 
There’s a shadow on his face. “More than anything else, it was the feeling of helplessness…. People converted barns and outhouses with rudimentary medical facilities and called them hospitals. That was not the time to insist on regulation. But then, they started saying: ‘Our oxygen will run out in two hours…’ and pleading for help. What they were running was not a hospital at all. The state government knew nothing about it… It was a terrible time.” Treatment was free in government hospitals, but the state fixed rates in the private ones so that patients, especially from low income groups, did not have to pay; the state government did. Is the state ready for a third wave? “We have done everything in our power to create backup systems — oxygen plants, health subsidy pools, beefing up hospitals via subsidies…But I’m hoping we never get to test all that,” he says.

 
And now the state, he adds, is on the path of recovery. Chouhan agrees that agriculture has been a shining spot in the broader economy. And MP has, in the past, made great strides in expanding acreage under irrigation (from 750,000 to 4.2 million hectares during his three terms as CM) to increase productivity. This year, MP procured more agri-commodities than ever before. Wheat procurement was higher than Punjab. That has put money in the pockets of farmers. But you can tell he is restless. Madhya Pradesh now has a problem of plenty. Part of that problem is storage. There is no place to keep grain; the warehouses are overflowing.

 
“I also keep thinking, how long are we going to rely on agriculture to give us jobs? Everyone talks about food processing. But how many ketchup factories can you set up? How many tomato puree plants?” he asks. “If I am to be truthful, people are in farming out of compulsion. If they had other alternatives, they would do something else. We have to move people away from agriculture into other occupations,” he says. The state, he adds, is looking at real estate development as one employment option. “We did not let up on spending on infrastructure even during the worst phase of the crisis. The result: We now have good quality roads crisscrossing the state”.

 
Chouhan has no compunctions about using all means — fair and not so fair — to pull investment. He says recently, ready-made garment manufacturers from Tiruppur have shifted to MP from Tamil Nadu. Really? Functioning factories don’t uproot themselves and migrate to anot­her state. He explains that MP made it worth their while to shift (by, for instance, dangling land and power sops). The Vardhman and Trident groups are the two textile manufacturers that have relocated to MP recently. Not just textiles, TCS and Infosys have both come to Indore to set up an IT faci­lity. Panna has diamond mines. But diamonds go to Surat for polishing. Why not start gem-polishing in Madhya Pradesh? Isn’t that like putting your head in the lion’s mouth — asking for business from Gujarat to relocate to MP? He shrugs as if to say: May the best man win.

 
Local businesses — micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) — from Madhya Pradesh are also being hand-held by the state government. Cho­u­han’s ultimate triumph will be to get into Madhya Pradesh those companies that are shutting shop in China and are look­ing for alternative investment destina­t­i­ons. It’s a project he is working on actively.
 
I ask him about a sensitive issue. He has the reputation of being one of the most even-tempered chief ministers in India. This balance extends to his attitude towards faith and religion. But lately, Madhya Pradesh has passed laws against something purporting to be “love jihad”: Men from minority communities marrying women from the majority just to convert them. And he himself has reportedly used language that is, well, most unlike him. “It’s almost as if you are trying to refashion your image along the lines of Yogi Adityanath,” I say, getting a bit tired of being diplomatic.

 
He looks startled and then a bit pained. “Every state has its own temperament and no two personalities can be the same. I don’t imitate anybody.”
 
And then he adds: “Let me be clear. There have been reports of men marrying innocent Adivasi girls basically to get claims over land. These girls go through the ceremony, the land titles are changed and then the young women are abandoned. I will not allow that,” he says, adding that he has all the data of such cases.
 
What about the sudden rise in communal violence in Madhya Pradesh, a state that has almost never seen rioting? “Earlier too such things used to happen. But now they are magnified because of the reach of social media,” he says. “All this is the work of criminal gangs who want to divert attention from their activities — for instance, the opium business in Mandsaur. We know what’s going on”.

 
I ask him another politically sensitive question: The newcomers from other parties (case in point, Jyotiraditya Scindia). “We believe in collective leadership,” he says piously. “Maybe not too collective?” I suggest tentatively. He starts laughing. “When we’re together, we work collectively,” he says.
 
It is almost midnight and getting out of the back of beyond will take navigation. We call it a day. That night I dream of being back in the heart of India, of gossamer Chanderi and the calm of the Narmada.