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STATES:
CHHATISGARH
Separated
At Berth
Partition
has resulted in squabbles over sharing of people and resources
By
Sumit Mitra and Neeraj Mishra
Digvijay
Singh and Ajit Jogi are close contemporaries, both being in their early
50s. Both are mechanical engineers, having passed in the same year with
flying colours from their respective institutions. Both are aces of the
Congress, representing the 115-year-old party's upwardly mobile succession
generation. Besides, they have many common enemies in the Congress, spread
out in the two adjacent states they rule, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Like the Shukla brothers (Shyama Charan and Vidya Charan), Kamal Nath
and Motilal Vora. Both regard Arjun Singh, the ageing Machiavelli, with
distrust, if not awe.
 However,
politics being no respecter of natural alliances, the relations between
the newly-formed Chhattisgarh state and its parent, Madhya Pradesh, have
currently acquired some of the inherent properties of Indo-Pakistan ties.
Within weeks of Chhattisgarh's foundation on November 1, effigies of Digvijay
Singh were burnt at various places in the state, with angry protests against
a long list of instances of the Madhya Pradesh chief minister's "interference".
There was a bandh call given by the Chhattisgarh state Congress against
interference from the Congress-ruled state in the neighbourhood.
It is energy
sharing between the two states which tops the list of disputed issues.
Chhattisgarh is a power-surplus state, the normal generating capacity
of the power plants located in the state being 150 MW to 200 MW in excess
of its peak demand. It generates 35.66 per cent of the undivided state's
power but consumes only 23.86 per cent. Madhya Pradesh, on the other hand,
reels under power cuts for long hours every day, the peak-hour shortfall
being around 1,600 MW in the undivided state. Fearing that separation
of the State Electricity Board right away would have disastrous consequences
for Madhya Pradesh, a clause was added to the Madhya Pradesh (Reorganisation)
Act, passed by Parliament, providing for continuance of MPSEB for at least
one year.
However,
within a fortnight of assuming chief ministership, one of Jogi's first
moves was to constitute the Chhattisgarh Electricity Board (CEB). A few
days earlier, he had summoned the MPSEB chairman to Chhattisgarh's capital
Raipur, ordering him to stop load-shedding in the new state. When the
MPSEB chairman refused to carry it out, quoting from the law that enabled
Chhattisgarh's separation, a furious Jogi ordered the immediate formation
of CEB even though the new board could have little control on either generation
or distribution for a year. Still fuming, Jogi issued a summary order
stopping transfer of power revenues collected in his state to Bhopal.
The Digvijay
Singh administration retaliated by suspending the MPSEB officer who had
carried out Jogi's order, but Singh, true to his princely lineage, ordered
MPSEB's revenues to be deposited to the account of Chhattisgarh Government
at the Raipur branch of the State Bank of India. However, a public-interest
petition was promptly filed against the order before the Indore bench
of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which upheld the petition and directed
that the revenues should continue to flow into the MPSEB account. The
matter finally went to the Supreme Court which set the order aside questioning
the petitioner's locus standi.
Singh plays
down the incident, saying that "Jogi is always interested in MPSEB".
However, Singh's counterpart in Raipur is restless to extract the maximum
advantage from his state's power-surplus status. "We make power at
Rs 1.40 a unit, which we can sell to Madhya Pradesh, or anyone, at a premium.
In the separation of our state, we've got a raw deal in every way. Why
should we let go of our natural advantage?" Jogi says. While Singh
is careful not to precipitate a showdown, the bureaucracy under him has
its answers ready. Says Madhya Pradesh Chief Secretary K.S. Sharma, "For
its area and population, Chhattisgarh is currently power surplus. But
it would not have been so if the power plants had not been installed in
Korba and other places (in Chhattisgarh) by the previous regime."
The Act
by which Chhattisgarh was created has a provision for referring unsolved
disputes between the two states to the Centre. However, nothing can be
more embarrassing for the Congress than a reference of the disputes between
its own chief ministers to the BJP-dominated NDA Government at the Centre.
Yet it happened when Singh met Union Power Minister Suresh Prabhu last
month, requesting him to virtually play the referee in the power dispute.
But the
fight is quite beyond Prabhu's reach, extending to most aspects of asset
sharing. At the newly built secretariat in Raipur, tempers are frayed
at the sight of creaky chairs, worn-out furniture and outdated computers
that have come from Bhopal. Jogi's Government is unable to buy anything,
being strapped of cash as most Madhya Pradesh departments have not sent
Chhattisgarh its share of the finances allocated.
The division
of bureaucrats has been even more one-sided. "Diggi (Singh's pet
name) has kept the best people with him," says Jogi. Of the 102 ias
officers in the Madhya Pradesh cadre, only 15 have agreed to be transferred
to Chhattisgarh. They're arguably not some of the best. Of the 278 IPS
officers belonging to the undivided cadre, only 17 have opted for the
new state.
Jogi and
Singh were long-time rivals in Madhya Pradesh politics, but now Jogi has
got an opportunity to question Singh's much-applauded skill at governance.
In November, Singh announced, as a part of a reform package, the termination
of services of over 30,000 casual workers employed by the state Government
on daily wage. From across the state-boundary, Jogi promptly offered to
take back his state's share of the sacked-a little over 4,000. In Bhopal,
Singh announced a plan by which the facility of free power supply to the
poor SC/ST families could be cut down from 10 lakh connections to 50,000.
In Raipur, Jogi announced there would be no reduction in such connections.
"I shall not reverse any of the anti-poor programmes in my state.
Instead there will be an increase in these."
There is
obviously an element of personal rivalry between Singh and Jogi in the
inter-state conflict-Singh allegedly having had a hand in a past campaign
questioning Jogi's claim of being a tribal-there is no doubt a lot of
pent-up grouse in Chhattisgarh against discrimination from a succession
of Madhya Pradesh leaders, including Singh.
"The
paradox of this state," says Jogi, "is that it is the richest
in India in natural resources but its people are the poorest." And,
in the state's new sub-national psyche, Madhya Pradesh is the villain
next door. Jogi's officials are prompt at trotting out examples: in Chhindwara,
Kamal Nath's constituency, 3,188 pump-sets were energised last year whereas
the share of Chhattisgarh's nine districts (16 now) was 1,975; the allocation
for welfare in the region has always been unfair; only 15 per cent of
area under crop is irrigated in the new state, but that figure was 25
per cent in the undivided state and it will naturally be more now. As
soon as Jogi came to power, he ordered introduction of English from Class
1, saying that poor knowledge of the language was one of the main reasons
for the region's backwardness. If you ask his officials why it did not
occur to the present and past Madhya Pradesh chief ministers, you're likely
to hear-"they wanted to keep Chhattisgarh backward".
Jogi and
Singh are high-profile Congress leaders of the post-Indira Gandhi generation,
but their family backgrounds are oddly dissimilar. Singh is a scion of
the Raghogarh princely family whereas Jogi was born in a remote hamlet
near Bilaspur, his tribal mother having supported the children with the
meagre income from tendu leaves collected from the forest. Jogi harps
on his origin in every speech that he delivers in his almost daily tours
across the state, in fluent Chhattisgarhi, with many iterations of a new-born
sub-nationalism in phrases like hamaar bhuiyan, hamaar mati (my land,
my soil).
There is
an additional reason why Jogi needs to play on emotion. He has only three
years to go before he faces his first election, the Assembly of the undivided
Madhya Pradesh being due to complete its term in 2003. With only three
Congress MPs from the state's 11 Lok Sabha constituencies, that's an uphill
task. The man in Bhopal is in his second term and under no pressure to
prove himself again. But Jogi has just joined the race.
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