More Dust Than Storm

The declaration by Ms Mayawati expressing her intent to divide Uttar Pradesh and the subsequent bill passed by UP Assembly has caused some ripples in the political circles of North India if not an outright uproar across the country. Electoral heat is building in UP for quite some time. Everyone wants to score a point. Ms Mayawati has played her stroke. She wants UP divided for sake of development. UP drags due to its size. This currency has been floating for quite a time. The masterstroke of development needs an efficient polity and administration. What a large state couldnt achieve is approachable for small state. After the F-1 race, fancy parks and a dose of new districts new states is the next item on development prescription of UP government. Now, the problematic of development having spilled on streets in a major way one cant avoid dissecting the curtain of opportunism rose on its name. And if this D word arouse suspicion it not without a cause.

The usual rhetoric by mainstream policy advocates that development requires political and administrative efficiency is at best a ruse to hide some more serious issues about development. Ignoring the questions of just distribution and equality it focuses exclusively on increasing wealth mainly by way of corporate profits and capitalist rent-seeking. Of course the rhetoric is, by necessity spiced by some nuanced equations of inclusive development etc. This has become the part and parcel of regular neo-liberal policy in the past 2 decades. Need not to remind our readers that even this spice was added only in the last decade of 20th century after aggressive Reaganomics and Thatcherism led to serious electoral reversals in USA and UK caused by onslaught on common people in these countries. However, the best this spiced recipe has led to is ngo-isation of development and a slew of populism to contain disenchantment caused by ruthless march of neo-liberalism carrying on its shoulder the burden of an epoch that has reached and crossed the limits of its historically necessary role. Anyways, what capitalism is and is not is a different matter altogether requiring a separate space to discuss.

The credentials of Ms Mayawati's government are not any different from the usual stuff about governments these days. It might look a bit complicated though for its mix of casino-style neo-liberalism with a vicious cult of personality lurking on the margins of feudal mindset that is typical of most of India. (One should know that Ms Mayawati is no exception in this matter).

So when the ruling class raises the banner of development we should definitely raise our eyebrows with plain questions and facts. More often than not development has taken a dangerous trajectory for the common people. Lakhs of farmers committing suicide, millions displaced, distress migration, one third of population living at levels of destitution (yes, thats what the BPL in India is, not poverty but destitution), rampant malnutrition and mortality in children and pregnant women. This is the package of half century of development including 20 years of LPG.

And what kind of development Ms Mayawati envisages? An F-1 series in each of these wretched states she promises to create (this at a time when hundreds of children have died of encephalitis which is curable)? Or some more fancy expressways and gaudy memorial parks with her statues? Or she wants to say that we need more states to build hospitals, schools and roads. The backwardness of UP has more to do with political economy than its size. Its better not be development! So what else?

Somebody might say bringing government nearer to the people. Of course, the new raj bhawans, secretariats and other such sarkaari paraphernalia would be nearer to the people. But the governance won't be. The core policy decisions are already outsourced far away from control of people or any accountability towards them. Out sourced to institutions and there henchmen far removed from the People. Out sourced to an ideology that has now thrown away even its guise of democracy. We just saw in Italy and Greece the PM's removed and replaced by handpicked candidates of international bankers and there clique. One can only say here that governments can be brought nearer the people only by thorough decentralization and democratization of the polity as well as the economy. This is clearly not in agenda.

Development or decentralization, therefore doesn't hold much ground to justify division of UP. Nor is there any substantial public demand in UP for division of the state except the

marginal grunt for Harit Pradesh i.e. western UP as a separate state. The only plausibility that can be reasonably believed is that its pure opportunism keeping an on eye the coming assembly elections in UP.

Meanwhile the news was that the bill on dividing UP was rushed through the House without any discussion. This reminded me of an old man disparaging the British Parliament as sterile and prostitute. This was about a century back. The rulers remain true to their legacy.