Aditi Phadnis: Wake up, chief minister

PLAIN POLITICS

Rajasthan is in a mess, thanks to CM Vasundhara Raje's inefficiency.

If you are a regular consumer of Saras ghee, produced by a Rajasthan government undertaking, (an excellent product, by the way, especially the ghee made from cows' milk) you will have noticed the product has a new brand ambassador.

The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia smiles down from Saras billboards, urging people to drink more milk, eat more ghee and consume more lassi. This would suggest time hangs so heavy on the chief minister's hands that she can sit for modelling sessions. It should not be so.

Since October 2004, nine farmers have died in Rajasthan from police firing because they asked for more water, in an area where "" objectively speaking "" there is no real shortage of water.

Tonk and Ganganagar, where the firings have taken place, are not desperately water-starved. Which is why intelligent political management could have staved off incidents that culminated in a police-people confrontation and earned for the government, the image of a brutal, repressive administration, which it is not.

Numerous farmers' agitations are going on all over Rajasthan, but even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliate Kisan Sangh complains bitterly that the chief minister has no time to listen to their demands. So unaffiliated, non-political farmers organisations haven't a hope in hell of being heard.

There has been no foreign direct investment (FDI) in Rajasthan worth the name since the BJP government came to power in December 2003. The chief minister presented her first budget that was hailed by both the party and observers, for the major tax reliefs it offered. But no one monitored on-the-ground implementation.

The Jaipur-Bisalpur water pipeline, for instance, has been pending for two years and continues to be at the floating-of-tenders stage. Rajasthan has seen no major industrial project being initiated and developed by the BJP government.

Instead, the government is buffetted by corruption charges. A new excise policy was put in place for country liquor that used to be sold by both bottlers and distillers. Abruptly, bottlers were banned from selling country liquor.

Rajasthan has three distillers and 19 bottlers. The distillers could not meet demand and prices of country liquor rose. The cheaper option was illicit liquor. Last week 35 people died drinking illicitly brewed country liquor.

There are other scandals too shameful to recount. The Rajasthan State Electricity Board imported 2 lakh metric tonnes of coal through a company belonging to a prominent business house.

The Opposition claims the price of the coal per metric tonne is about Rs 1,000 more than the price of Indian coal of equivalent calorific value. It reckons the state treasury has been done out of around Rs 20 crore in the deal.

The state government stopped all proceedings under section 90 B of the Rajasthan Land Revenue Act 1956 "" the section that permits change of land use. But then, the proceedings were opened "" for four days "" before being stopped again. Four days was all it took for two alert builders to get various clearances for change in land use.

If all this had been happening alongside resounding electoral victories, the party might have looked the other way. But that's not the case. When it came to power, the BJP's student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) controlled virtually all the universities in the state.

It has been wiped out. Panchayat elections were held in Rajasthan in February-March 2005. The results wouldn't have worried anyone if it hadn't been for the BJP's spectacular showing in the Assembly elections. Consider the contrast. After getting an unprecedented 160 out of 200 seats in the Assembly, the BJP won 2,201 panchayats and the Congress 2,310 in the Panchayat elections barely a year later. The reasons are straightforward.

The party and the government are at loggerheads. The chief minister says the organisation isn't supportive enough. The party says the CM isn't approachable and pays no heed to organisational suggestions.

Three ministerships are vacant and Raje hasn't undertaken any kind of performance-based review of ministers to figure out just what they're doing. A reshuffle is the best punishment-reward system. No reshuffle has happened since she took charge.

In 2003, the word used repeatedly for Raje was "hope". She was young, idealistic, new and fresh. She stood out especially when compared to Bhairon Singh Shekhawat whose skill for machiavellian intrigue was passed off as shrewd politics.

Out of 57 seats that the BJP has never won in Rajasthan in the history of independent India, in 2003, it won 37. It managed this partly because of a carefully crafted strategy of wooing caste as well as because of Raje's image and her hard work in the "parivartan yatra" that she undertook.

At around the same time as she won the Assembly election, a fellow PLU (Person Like Us) victor was old friend Naveen (Pappu) Patnaik, reelected as Orissa chief minister. Both are children of famous parents, not career politicians and used to be spotted attending the same parties till a few years ago.

But consider the journey the two have undertaken. Orissa is currently India's most happening state, a favoured FDI destination that's buzzing with electricity. And Rajasthan's notable achievement is introducing Vedic education in schools. Need we say more?