<b>Aditi Phadnis:</b> Haryana still waiting for promised 'grand plans'

Hundred-plus days of the Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana have left people underwhelmed. While the verdict generally is that Khattar himself is a straight, incorruptible chief minister, his bureaucracy and ministerial colleagues are leading him by the nose and the state to a merry dance.

The story of the Haryana bureaucracy and how it switched sides is an interesting one. Two days before election results were declared, top bureaucrats in the state met late evening at a Chandigarh hotel. The meeting went on past midnight. There, the consensus was that a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was coming to power. They also had advance information that it was Khattar who would be made chief minister. The group then drew up a list of individuals who were likely to become ministers and also which bureaucrat should be posted where. The meeting was the talk of town: and when postings were finally announced, there was remarkable similarity between the list drawn up that night in the hotel and the final appointments. This was the first inkling that the Khattar government was ready to become a guided government.
 

More validation followed. Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu, a Jat, allowed all the Jat civil servants to congregate around him. This was as much a ploy to prevent the isolation of Jats (remember, the BJP government came to power on the plank of consolidating and empowering non-Jats, leading to a serious crisis of leadership among the Jats), as it was the resurgence of a bureaucracy that feared it would be adrift. "Transfers and postings have always been the prerogative of the chief minister. This is the first time, we are seeing ministers, even MLAs, dictate transfers and postings," said a close observer of Haryana politics.

Things began going wrong from Day One. The Baba Rampal episode was a shameful reminder that although a state government was in place, it had no clue what needed to be done. For days the police sat outside the ashram of a charlatan awaiting a signal. The chief minister seemed to be stuck in policy paralysis, made worse by the fact that the police bureaucracy comprised of appointees of the previous government. Somehow it crossed that Rubicon.

A lot of things needed to be done immediately. Virtually, on his last day as chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda made two important sets of appointments: chairmen and members of the Right to Service Commission and the Right to Information commissioner were named and sworn in a tearing hurry - so much so, that as the Governor was not available on that day, the chief minister called the new commissions to his residence and made them take oath himself! By rights, the new government should have changed that. Nothing has happened. The Public Services Commission is packed with appointees of the previous government.

When it comes to initiatives taken by the new government, they can be counted on two fingers. There was no purposive time-bound programme, which could have acted as a blueprint for what the government should do. Roads in Haryana are in a pitiable state. Power supply is unpredictable. But most of all, the political economy of CLU - change of land use - needed to be seriously investigated to deter land sharks. In his tenure, Hooda cleared around 18,000 acres of land under CLU and developers threw out farmers, built multi-storey buildings without ascertaining or informing the state government what provisions they had made for water, drainage, power and roads. The fee for CLU that was deposited with the state government is a minuscule part of what actually used to be paid. It is impossible to dismantle all that but it needs investigation. Nothing has been announced so far and those bureaucrats who played ball with the previous government are slowly exhaling in relief.

Haryana is now in the grip of a swine flu outbreak. The health minister and the health secretary of Haryana are locked in battle and neither is listening to the other. The result is a total absence of a strategy on how to tackle the problem.

The BJP prides itself on doing what it says. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was campaigning in the Assembly elections, he had made a number of announcements pertaining to the state government. In Sirsa, for instance, he said the state needed integrated development, it needs railways and road connectivity, internet connectivity. "If BJP comes to power, it will come up with a special model for the progress of the region," he said. The state is still waiting for some signal of a beginning of those grand plans. Maybe what is needed is a Promises Made and Implemented Commission.

The chief minister is a well-intentioned person. He lives simply and has told his aides that as he does not know what to do with a five-roomed house, they should shift in with him: so all of them stay in different rooms of the chief minister's bungalow. But he is in urgent need of guidance and direction.