Surjit S Bhalla: Let them eat snakes

CALLING THE BLUFF/ Who needs the CMP's education cess? CMP spends most to educate least

Is the connection between CPM (the Common Minimum Programme) and the CPM (Communist Party, Marxist) merely a jumbling of the letters or is it a deliberate, subliminal message sent by the wannabe "human" face reformers?

Whatever the connection, the fact remains that the CPM is the party of choice, having been returned to office, again and again. Since their entry into governance some 26 years ago, the Indian political scene has moved from Congress to coalitions, from stationarity to anti-incumbency.

There is today only one explanation for election results "" not leadership, not economics, not Hindutva, not swadeshi "" plain anti-incumbency. Except in West Bengal (WB), and to a lesser extent, Bihar.

Consequently, all political parties have made requests to the CPM to explain the basis for their success. And they have unabashedly, and with only a trace of false modesty, replied.

Their answer: good governance. The CPM has actually worked for the poor. Instead of lining the political party coffers with designated state expenditures for the poor, the CPM has delivered governance and responded to the people's needs, and done so especially in education and health.

This reasoning appears to have been bought both by the ideological Left and the Congress party. Thus, the "reform package" was named to resonate with CPM (CMP), with obsequious references to the need for a "human face" (read CPM face) of reforms. The face, it is contended, is the defining difference between the present government and all previous governments, not excluding the original Congress reform government of the early 1990s.

No sooner had the plaster dried on this face-lift when news came from Andhra Pradesh that suicides by farmers were continuing unabated. So it wasn't the lack of face on Chandrababu Naidu's part that did him in.

Somewhat more disturbing to the CPM/CMP model of governance was the recent news that starvation deaths were reported in CPM's own backyard, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks tribal village of Amlasol. To which a CPM functionary is reported to have said: "It is impossible for a tribal to die from starvation... They can always eat snakes."

How can the WB model of governance be subjected to a "logic" test? Elections can be won by other means, thuggery and intimidation being two. But it does seem like sour grapes to contend that the conscience-ridden Left would ever employ Bihar-like means to gain votes.

It must have been governance. One outcome of governance is increased schooling. The rich always went to school "" so increases in school enrolment reflect pro-poor performance. Another index is the female to male education ratio that is, for each one year of education that a male child gets, how much does a girl child obtain?

The WB model of governance is tested with respect to government data on expenditures and schooling. National Sample Survey (NSS) are available for the large sample (over 125,000 households) surveys conducted in 1983 and 1999-00.

These data are used to obtain two indicator variables on service delivery to the poor "" the change in school enrolment ratios for children between ages 5 and 16 and the change in the female-male school attendance ratio.

These data for WB, and that other anti-incumbency defying state of governance "" Bihar "" as well as for the rest of India (RoI). Since education is a state subject, the reports on the resources (real expenditures per student) that each state utilised for educating the poor.

If the WB government has genuinely performed, one should obtain each of three results: on the two indicators they should have done better than average, and certainly better than the worst-case scenario of Bihar.

Further, that the increase in per-student expenditures should be on the low side that is, significantly less than average. In other words, progress in education should not have been obtained by throwing money away on buildings, teachers' salaries, administrative expenses, etc; rather, good governance means accountable and efficient delivery of social services.

On all three indicators WB not only performs badly, but actually performs the worst. School enrolment: from a base of 50 per cent in 1983, the expansion is only 18 percentage points (PP).

Contrast that with Bihar which increased its enrolment rates by 15 PP, or Haryana, 27 PP or MP, 23 PP. The RoI (badly governed according to anti-incumbency election results) registers an increase of 23 PP, from 50 in 1983 to 73 per cent in 1999-00.

As per the advocacy of both the Right and Left NGOs (only item they possibly agree on) the enhancement of gender equality is the sine qua non of successful development.

Perhaps the WB model was concentrating in uplifting girl's education "" the truth is considerably further removed from "reality" than fiction. The female-male school attendance ratio increased by only 11 PP in WB, compared to an increase of 27 PP for Bihar and 21 PP for RoI.

Indeed, RoI was 17 per cent behind WB in 1983 "" in 1999, the gap had been virtually closed. (Not reported in the table are impressive performances in the bad-governance states of Haryana and UP "" from 56 to 92 in the former and 50 to 82 in UP).

A detailed state by state analysis indicates that WB, along with Gujarat and Assam, are the worst performers among all the major states in India; and on each of the above two indicators.

Maybe the WB government became poorer by delivering other services to the poor, so that it did not have enough resources for uplifting either education or gender equality. But reality bites hard on the human face.

WB registered the highest growth rate in educational spending "" an increase of 160 per cent between 1983 and 1999; this was more than four times the increase observed in the RoI (37 per cent) and more than twice that observed in the otherwise poor Bihar (107 per cent).

The increase in spending in WB is so large, and the observed effect on education so low, that it brings into question whether expenditures earmarked for "good face" purposes of education actually are spent on education. It's higher than necessary expenditures account for more than 1 per cent of the state GDP. One easy, and constructive, policy that Manmohan Singh's government can implement is the policy of "truth in expenditures".

If the CMP is to truly have a face tilted toward honesty and the poor, then the citizens need to know where the expenditure of all the ostensibly goody-goody policies (such as education, health, food for work, guaranteed-jobs programmes, etc) is going. It was after all a previous Congress PM, Rajiv Gandhi, who revealed to a shocked India that less than 15 per cent of expenditures earmarked for the poor actually reached the poor.

In the case of communist WB and casteist Bihar, that figure seems like a gross overstatement. If the ground reality is close to what Rajiv Gandhi had contended, then is it not most unfortunate that Ms Sonia Gandhi should be attempting to implement precisely the policies that her husband had so courageously warned against? And, oh by the way, neither WB nor Bihar won over anti-incumbency because they implemented policies for the poor.

Indeed, just the opposite. So what does that mean "" pro-poor growth policies are hazardous for being re-elected ? Is that why Messrs Narasimha Rao and Atal Vajpayee lost? Is that why the CMP eschews reforms and argues for politically (and electorally?) correct anti-poor human-faced policies?

ssbhalla@oxusresearch.com