States: Madhya Pradesh: Second Reign

India Today, December 21, 1998
Dec 21, 1998

MADHYA PRADESH
Second Reign

Fresh from a windfall victory in the assembly polls, Chief Minister Digvijay Singh will be under pressure to deliver on his election promises.

By Sumit Mitra

Phulo Devi Netam, the Congress MLA from Keshkal in the Bastar area, is visibly nervous. Rising to speak from her chair next to Digvijay Singh, the celebrity chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, she ties herself up in knots. But as the vichar manthan (policy discussion) continues in a closed hall at Dantewada, a dusty little town in the heart of Bastar district, Phulo Devi regains confidence. She says the quality of the paddy crop this year has been poor due to unseasonal rains and the government is refusing to procure it.

"Where is the district procurement officer?" Digvijay asks. The man with a harassed look stands up from a far corner of the hall, narrating his difficulty in accepting the grain below a certain threshold of quality. Digvijay's next question, this time to Chief Secretary K.S. Sharma, also on the platform: Is it possible to relax on quality standards this year because of the untimely rains? After a few minutes of whispering deliberations, the chief minister thumps the table to announce that the MLA's request has been honoured. The sound of clapping resonates in the hall.

In Digvijay's four-day-long thanksgiving tour of the state last week, during which he made 16 landings in a chartered Beechcraft and a seven-seater Bell helicopter and drove hundreds of kilometres in between, the aura about the man increased. The unexpected victory of the Congress in the assembly elections has just started turning the man into a legend. Stories are circulating of his picking up the thread of a conversation that had taken place five years back with a person he did not meet in all these years. Or of his remembering the subjects discussed at a small group meeting a long time ago, and who said what.

However, the Digvijay magic is not just a memory game nor is it merely charming people by bending the rules to their advantage. Much of his spell rests on his early rise in stature and the stability of his Government since 1993. In Madhya Pradesh, a state reputed to have more "tall" Congress leaders than the tall sal trees in its forests, the 51-year-old man, who became an MLA as recently as in 1977, is regarded as a political wonderkid. He became president of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) in 1984 when he was just 37. Motilal Vora, a typical "tall" Congressman of the state who was in the race for the chief minister's job this time round, could become the PCC chief at 55. His plight is compounded by his son's defeat in the assembly polls last month. Arjun Singh, the state's acknowledged heavyweight, of course saw success early, having become chief minister at 50. But Digvijay beat him on that count by becoming the chief minister at age 46. And, with the spectacular encore by the Congress in Madhya Pradesh under Diggy Raja, he has become the party's hottest property. On the other hand, Arjun Singh, after his two successive defeats in the 1996 and 1998 Lok Sabha polls, is distinctly a fading star. Just as the Shukla brothers, Shyama Charan and Vidya Charan, have faded out now.

Success may have a thousand fathers, but theories about what caused the success are numberless. Among Digvijay's fans -- and they are legion -- his repeat victory is attributed to reasons ranging from his political skills to even his looks. The lean, tall and stringy man is quite uncharacteristic of an Indian politician, notorious for getting out of shape with age and importance. Digvijay's political skills, however, are another matter. His loyal officers sing paeans to his well-publicised drive to empower the people at the local level. Digvijay himself believes that, though his famous modesty wouldn't let him beat his own drum too loudly. "I am very lucky," he says, though he does not exactly mean it. The state BJP leaders, cursing themselves for having lagged behind the Congress by a difference in vote share as slender as 1.38 per cent, are accusing Digvijay of winning by manipulating the electoral rolls. These are partial truths, at best. Digvijay's memory, and his knowledge of the state, are of course his great assets. "I value my memory," he says. To burnish it, he meditates half-an-hour every morning and ties up his eyes with a scarf twice a day even when he is flying or is in his office. Memory helps him to maintain a strong grasp of the state's topography and its people. His aides say that he can spot many villages from the helicopter. He put this ability to use in the "Lok Sampark Abhiyan" in 1996, a drive to identify the problem of children dropping out of primary schools by a door-to-door survey. In course of the survey, the chief minister would land in his helicopter unannounced in a village of his choice to inspect the progress of work.

Digvijay's obsession with primary education and its delivery has given him the first taste of international recognition, his Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) having won the Gold Award in the inaugural year of the Commonwealth Award for Innovation in Government and Public Action Programmes. Under the EGS scheme, the Government guarantees the teacher's salary (and training, etc.) wherever there is a demand from a community without a primary school within one kilometre. However, this demand must come from at least 25 learners in case of tribal areas and 40 in case of non-tribals. The stress on primary education has taken the number of primary schools in the state from 80,000 in 1993 to 110,000 now. His other programmes under the eight Rajiv Gandhi Missions, all begun in 1994, relate to quality of life. There is one for elimination of iodine deficiency disorders and another for control of diarrhoea.

Digvijay is a graduate in mechanical engineering. "I have the analytical mind of a technical man." His early orientation was absolutely non-political. Given the love of sports in his early years -- he was a state-level cricket player in school and a keen squash player -- he may have never joined politics but for a family tragedy. When his father died the municipal body of his native Raghogarh catapulted the young engineering student to its chairmanship. The body had three Congressmen and three Jan Sanghis, with a lone independent holding the balance. "I had the first taste of democracy in action and I enjoyed it."

Politics has been his staple ever since. But his non-political and development-oriented image sets him apart from most from his predecessors in politics, like Arjun Singh and Vora in the Congress and former chief minister Sunderlal Patwa of the BJP. It has also marked him out from his contemporaries like Laloo Prasad Yadav and Madhavrao Scindia, pushing him somewhat closer to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. "Naidu is a development-minded leader," he says, "though I think he's more on the side of hi-tech whereas my focus has always been on social engineering." For Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay has a distinct goal. "The state is a sleeping giant but it is perceived to be backward. In my present tenure I want Madhya Pradesh to be regarded as a forward state, with the affluence of a Gujarat and the equity of a Kerala."

But dreams alone do not make a leader win against incumbency. Under the bright public image of a post-modern public administrator -- the state under him brings out a World Bank-style Human Development Report and supports a battery of NGOs and environmentalists -- there is a master strategist. In the March Lok Sabha polls, when the Congress won only 10 of the 40 seats in the State, Digvijay was virtually written off, and Congress President Sonia Gandhi was looking for an alternative. He has turned the tide in these eight months but is still under pressure within his own party. After getting a free hand from 10 Janpath to choose his ministers, he played his cards well. Arjun Singh's son, Ajay, and Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi's brother R. Saloman were inducted into the Cabinet while nine ministers of the last cabinet were dropped. Among them is Subhash Yadav whom Digvijay had pipped to the post in 1993. But as former deputy chief minister and backward leader, Yadav wields considerable clout and can spoil the party should he join hands with Digvijay's known adversaries.

Diggy Raja has everything to his advantage -- age, ability and contacts -- to play a major role in the national arena if the Congress returns to power. The party, as even he admits, is starved of talents in the 45-55 age group. He says he's already experiencing "incumbency fatigue" and would certainly not try for a third term. And he is a dyed-in-the-wool Congressman who spurned an offer from Scindia in the early '70s, when the Gwalior scion was in the Jan Sangh, to join the saffron band. But he is too cautious a politician to put his cards before Sonia. Eating a frugal breakfast of fruits at the circuit house in Jagdalpur, Bastar, on December 9, Sonia's birthday, he stabbed the phone buttons to wish her. A very brief "many happy returns" before plunging headlong into the day's work. In Sonia's scheme of things, Digvijay is a candidate but not an applicant.

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