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STATES:
HIMACHAL PRADESH
Blame
It On The House
The stillborn
rebellion in the state BJP jolts Dhumal, but the party still wins panchayat
and zila parishad elections handsomely
By
Ramesh Vinayak
One
of the enduring ghost tales in Shimla is about Oakover, the official residence
of the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh. The jinxed reputation of this
majestic bungalow on the picturesque Mall draws on the fact - or coincidence
- that none of its occupants since the state was born in 1966 has ever
completed a full term in office. Three years ago, Prem Kumar Dhumal had
reluctantly moved into Oakover, but only after elaborate religious rites.
He even built a temple to ward off the curse.
Last month,
however, just when the BJP-led coalition Government
was about to celebrate 1,000 days in office, it appeared that all his
oblations had been in vain. The jinx returned to haunt Dhumal in the form
of an ominous revolt by half a dozen ministers and MLAs. And though the
crisis blew over, Dhumal, ruling with a wafer-thin majority, has since
requisitioned Vaastu Shastra experts to make changes in the interiors
of the palatial building.
Right now,
it is his political acumen and shrewd statecraft that is helping Dhumal
beat the Oakover jinx. Mid-December, despite ugly internal bickering in
the party, the BJP put up an impressive performance in the state-wide
elections to gram panchayats and zila parishads, even making inroads at
the grassroots level in Congress bastions.
In fact,
among the six states with BJP-led governments, Himachal is an exception
in that the party high command can draw some solace from it. Only in the
hill state has the BJP been able to survive the anti-incumbency ire and
debilitating internal feuds. Dhumal's achievement is significant considering
that he took over as an underdog chief minister heading a wobbly coalition.
A combination of hands-on governance and the assiduously cultivated image
of the common man's chief minister along with his easy accessibility have
given Dhumal the image of a quiet doer. He has shrewdly checkmated the
black-mailing capacity of the scam-tainted former Union telecommunications
minister Sukh Ram, whose five-MLA Himachal Vikas Congress (HVC) had provided
the crucial prop to the BJP to pip the Congress to the post in the scramble
for power in the evenly split Assembly. Reduced now to two legislators
including himself, Ram, once brazen in extracting a price for his support
to the Dhumal Government, is a mere coalition appendage.
His critics
say part of Dhumal's success is because the chief minister is shy of taking
hard decisions that could invite public ire. He is accused of running
the government through compromises. A couple of policy decisions-such
as the creation of new development blocks, privatisation of four government
hospitals and the shifting of seven public-sector units from Shimla-were
reversed by the chief minister soon after he sensed their negative political
fall out. "This is a rollback regime," charges Virbhadra Singh,
former Congress chief minister of the state.
Obviously,
Dhumal is aware it was unpopular decisions that led to the defeat of the
BJP government headed by Shanta Kumar in the 1993 assembly polls. One
area where he has been consistent-and controversial-is administration
transfers. His 33 months in power have seen as many as 60 bureaucratic
reshuffles. While Dhumal insists that these were mostly necessitated by
deputation postings, his opponents say they betrayed his uneasiness and
lack of grip on the administration.
Survival Tactics
What
makes up for his administrative flip-flops are his dogged efforts aimed
at time-bound development. He has given priority to small and low-cost
plan schemes such as link roads, schools, irrigation and water supply
schemes which are implementable in a short time span and make an immediate
impact at the grassroots level. Dhumal's novel idea of introducing efficiency
incentives for government officials executing development works within
the stipulated time and cost forms the key to his blueprint for the remaining
two years.
But he has
erred elsewhere. Instead of tackling the endemic financial crunch, Dhumal
has taken to the convenient way of borrowing to keep up the tempo of development.
Though the Rs 700 crore financial package by Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee was a temporary bail-out returnable with interest, Dhumal has
been able to use his good rapport with the Centre to get hydel projects
and four national highways for the state which got three in the past 50
years.
What has
bolstered Dhumal's report card is his decisive push to hydel power generation,
a sector in which the state has a potential of 20,000 MW but has tapped
only 3,800 MW. In the past two years, the Dhumal Government has moved
swiftly, clearing the decks for several projects totalling 6,100 MW, including
the 2,150 MW Parbati project-all of which had been hanging fire for long.
By 2010, Himachal Pradesh is expected to be a "power state"
generating 10,000 MW. If that happens, it could be the panacea for the
state's financial woes.
For the
time being, Dhumal is firmly in the saddle. But his truce with the rebels,
now a definable pressure group, remains tenuous. Shanta Kumar loyalists
still nurse the grouse of not being given their due in power and in the
party. The wrangling within the BJP even prompted the Congress to move
a no-confidence motion in the winter session.
Luckily
for Dhumal, the Congress is too bogged down by infighting, which touched
a new high during the recent organisational elections. "There is
lot of bad blood and the party stands demoralised," admits Singh.
Dhumal's performance coupled with the Congress' woes might just help him
exorcise the jinx of Oakover.
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