‘Gujarat Model’ of Governance and Development: Reflections Based on a Field Visit
By V Santhakumar
The state of Gujarat is a relatively more industrialised part of India. It has been performing well in terms of economic growth. Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, to some extent, is the face of this development in Gujarat. His normative ideas of governance and what needs to be attempted for facilitating development seem rooted in his experience in Gujarat.
There is criticism on several accounts of what is termed the ‘Gujarat model’ of development. Researchers have noted the coexistence of relatively lower human development and higher per-capita incomes in Gujarat. There are other indicators of deprivation, for example, a relatively higher share of children, especially girls, drop out in secondary schools in the state. Commentators have compared the situation in Gujarat with that of South Indian states, like Tamil Nadu or Kerala (or with the ‘Kerala model’).
Not repeating what has already been discussed, this essay is based on personal reflections based on a short-period field visit to the Kutch district of the state. It is the largest but relatively underdeveloped district of Gujarat. Moreover, our field visits were mainly in two blocks of the district, which are also the least developed not only within the district but also in the state.
The visits and discussions with more than 25 village heads and others gave us a glimpse of the socioeconomic conditions in villages and also the kind of impact the government and its schemes have on people. Our sense is that it is incorrect to presume that economic growth has not addressed poverty (and severe deprivation) in rural areas. In fact, such a perception is not enough to explain the growing or overwhelming support for the party which has been ruling the state for the last 25 years. However, there are other `problems’ of underdevelopment. There is also a need to connect these problems to the persistence of the same ruling party for several terms. We make a modest attempt in this direction.
Economic and industrial development
There is enough data to demonstrate the industrial and economic growth of the state, as a whole. Such growth can be `felt’ even by those who spend a few days in a relatively backward district, such as Kutch. It was affected by a major earthquake in 2001. The post-earthquake period saw a spurt in industrialisation, including the development of ports (facilitated by its long coastline), extraction of coal (lignite), and production of electricity. The extension of irrigation to the area through the Sardar Sarovar Project has brought in more land into cultivation and led to an increase in agricultural productivity. There is a growth in employment and incomes for a section of people. All these new economic activities have also led to an increase in land prices, which has enabled a set of people to have better homes and motor vehicles.
What has happened in Kutch could be a reflection of what has been happening in other districts for a longer period of time. Industrialisation has a longer history in the state, with no major downturns. The Sardar Sarovar Project had a similar impact in many other districts (even where there were issues of salinity of soil or other such problems). This could be a reason that this project has such an emotional value in Gujarat that anybody who opposes it, for environmental or any other reasons, is considered almost an enemy of the state. Successive governments, especially those led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Narendra Modi, have taken the facilitation of this industrial and economic development as an important role of the state. It seems that the industrialists and successful farmers have become close supporters of this government.
It may be noted that the BJP (and Narendra Modi) has an honest and transparent approach towards the facilitation of the economic activities of industrialists (capitalists). They have no ideological confusion in this regard. They were not like the leaders of Congress governments at the centre/state immediately after Indian independence, who were suspicious of industrialists and capitalists on the one hand but developed non-transparent relationships with capitalists on the other. In many other states, leaders of state governments may have extracted excessive rents from capitalists. But the BJP and Narendra Modi have an open approach towards industrialisation. (Though there may be transfers between capitalists and the party, these may be seen as less extractive. The personal features of Narendra Modi may have facilitated such a perception). The Vaishyas, a social group of traders (to which most industrialists in India belong) were an important support base of the BJP. It may be noted that the traditional definition of Vaishyas included not only traders but also peasants. Hence, farmers who prospered because of the Sardar Sarovar Project also may have supported the BJP government (irrespective of their actual caste status).
Some trickle-down effect
The benefits of this economic growth have trickled down to the lives of poor people but not to the extent possible/expected. There can be different pathways for this. Employment is one but how many local people (especially from less developed parts like Kutch) could get better-paid jobs in the industries which have developed in the region is not clear, and this cannot be a significant way to enhance the incomes of local people. The price of land has gone up and this benefitted land owners, which can be an important route for enhancing the incomes of a sizeable section of local people. The intensification of cultivation through irrigation might have helped not only farmers but also agricultural workers. The transition to commercial agriculture, including the production of horticulture crops and sale in distant markets, is noted in the area. (The grassroots organisation which we visited is also involved in the long-distance marketing of farm products from this area). Moreover, the possible growth in less-skilled and unskilled work in all activities, like industrial, commercial, agriculture, infrastructural, and construction, in general, may have increased the demand and wages for local workers.
Our discussions with the Sarpanches have indicated that there is a certain improvement in the life of poor people. There is an agreement in the community regarding the enhanced well-being and improved quality of life in all the villages over the last decade and the absence of extreme poverty. According to the community, most people in these villages are now able to afford at least two meals a day. The traditional community networks and give-and-take systems of these villages persist (due to the limited social transformation). However, one cannot consider this adequate to make a notable improvement in the human development of the region. Serious challenges persist in this regard, and some of these are mentioned in the following sections.
Access to public services continues to be an issue
There is no major improvement in the public services provided by the government, especially considering the specific disadvantages of this region. The population settlements are very spread out. This would mean that there may not be enough number of children to make a secondary school viable in every village. There may be a need for a secondary school which caters to several such villages, and this would mean that children from certain villages may have to travel 15-20 kilometres to reach it. Public transport is yet to connect many villages adequately. Such a situation leads to the dropping out of children from schools after primary education. This can be an important reason for the high rate of dropouts, especially among girls in the district and the state, as a whole. One may consider that such a problem is inevitable in Kutch due to its spread-out settlements, but our point is that a state concerned about human development should make local investments by considering the local disadvantages. Even when a viable high school may have to cater to a number of villages, there can be arrangements (say in terms of transport or residential facilities) to ensure that all children, including girls, can attend these schools. Gujarat, considering its economic growth, can afford to make these investments. However, the fact that such investments are not made adequately reflects the lower priority that the Gujarat government gives to human development.
Access to public services is also affected by the absence of the arm of the government in localities. In general, there are not enough employees in government offices, especially in rural areas (and in less developed areas like Kutch). This is the case in government schools,1 public healthcare systems and also the offices of local governments. Many posts of panchayat secretaries have been vacant since 2018, though there is a huge demand from the communities for filling up these vacancies. This has a negative impact on the provision of public services, affecting school-going children, pregnant mothers, and others seeking welfare services from the government. There is a general reluctance by the state government (probably due to concerns about the fiscal burden) to appoint an adequate number of government employees.
Less emphasis on decentralisation
We could observe certain features of decentralisation in the state. Though local governments are formed, elections are conducted (though not periodically in all panchayats), and there are reservations for women and Dalits among elected representatives, the extent of decentralisation or the positive impacts of decentralisation are somewhat limited in the state and the district due to a number of reasons. First, there is no major devolution of public resources at the state level to local governments through state finance commissions. This reduces the untied grants which reach local governments. This may affect those local governments which do not have that income from own sources (like building tax, etc.). Moreover, these local governments do not have much role to play in the design and disbursement of welfare schemes. Most of the welfare and development schemes that reach villages are those which are designed and executed by the line departments of the state and central governments. In that sense, decentralisation is minimal in Gujarat and line departments remain the nodal agencies for the implementation of almost all development and welfare schemes. This limits the local decision-making process and reiterates the dependence of local bodies on state and central governments, both for resources and programmes, which is in violation of the spirit of decentralisation that is envisaged in the 73rd Amendment of the Constitution of India.
Though there is a reservation for women and there are women representatives, their participation is limited. Though there are women sarpanches who are active, many of them are still in the clutches of social norms and patriarchy that exist in the villages. The system of panch patis exists wherein the decision-making power is taken over by a male in the family. The elected representatives as a whole are not in a position to influence government officials and politicians at the higher level. Even those belonging to the ruling party are not in a position to influence the state government so as to get enough employees appointed at the local level. It may be noted that the same party is ruling the state for the last 25 years, and the lack of effective opposition allow state-level politicians and governments to be somewhat indifferent to the demands from below (even if these come from local politicians of the same party). This seems to have implications for access to welfare services which we discuss in the next section.
There is an attempt to digitise the provision of welfare services in Gujarat. The idea of governance is one which combines a certain centralisation (or inadequate use of decentralisation) with digitisation which would enhance access to public services, reduce transaction costs and, possibly, corruption and favouritism in the delivery of these. There is some indication that if a beneficiary could complete all the formalities in the online service platform, they will get the benefits within the stipulated time and without any notable corruption. Sarpanches and people whom we met note that there is not much corruption in the line departments while sanctioning welfare entitlements.
However, the assumption that digitisation would enhance access to welfare services may not be based on ground realities. This is discussed in the following section.
Need for intermediation in the delivery of public services
For various reasons, many people, especially poorer and older ones, who are expected to be the beneficiaries of government schemes may not have access to welfare services. The digital divide, especially in a disadvantaged district of the country where one-fifth or more children drop out of school even currently (and this rate was much higher decades ago), should be obvious. The issue is not merely access to the internet but also the ability to fill up and upload all documents online. As noted earlier, the Kutch district is very spread out over nearly 400 km from one end to the other. The distance between two ends within a block can also be 70 to 100 km. The distance for some villagers to reach the nearby town where private internet booths are available can be 20-40 km.
In states where decentralisation is advanced, there would be panchayat offices which are not very far from population settlements. However, that is not the case in Kutch due to the distance between villages and the shortage of government officials at the local level. A panchayat secretary may be in charge of two to three panchayats, and there are no other employees for local governments. This also reduces the access of poor people to the welfare services of the state government.
In contexts such as Kerala, one can see elected representatives of local governments playing the role of intermediaries.2 If the elected representatives are, on average, more educated than the poor citizens (as in the case of Kerala), the former may be able to serve as such intermediaries. This mediation may be seen as the responsibility of these elected representatives. Or there can be a give-and-take relationship between these representatives and their voters with the vote seen as the reward for the help the former provide to get services from the state. Somehow, the elected representatives of local governments in Gujarat seem not that able to provide such intermediation service adequately. This may be due to the following reasons: (a) many such representatives are not adequately informed and capable of providing the service; (b) these representatives themselves may not have much of a role in the provision of welfare services since these services are mostly designed and implemented by line departments which come directly under the state government; (c) the politics in Gujarat is such that the election victory at different tiers of government may not depend much on ensuring that poor people get welfare services.
In such a context where elected representatives of local governments cannot help much in the delivery of welfare services, other intermediaries may emerge. There are private agents operating in small towns for this purpose. Those who are needy, approach such agents. Agents charge a significant amount of money as commission. The money that is paid to an agent is an effective drain on the welfare recipients. This can be seen as part of the higher transaction cost due to the longer `distance’ between the government and its citizens.
In certain cases, not-for-profit organisations may serve as intermediaries. For example, the Panchayat Resources Centre (PRCs) sponsored by an NGO, namely, Setu Abhiyan operates in the two least developed blocks in the Kutch district. Though these centres function in collaboration with the association of Sarpanches in these blocks, the association alone is not in a position to sustain these resource centres. These PRCs help people to submit online applications to get welfare support; they also follow up on their cases.3
The different problems of governance which we have discussed can also be connected to the fact that the same party is ruling Gujarat for the last five terms. There is no strong opposition in politics and democracy which can compel the state government to meet the need of its people, especially poor people. What could be the reason for this state of politics in Gujarat is discussed briefly in the following section.
Why is the same government re-elected again and again in Gujarat?
Gujarat has been ruled by the BJP for the last five terms. The state was by and large a monopoly of the Congress before the emergence of the BJP. The latter is a mobilisation based on Hindu majoritarian identity. It could emerge in Gujarat as the only viable opposition to the Congress party. Hence, there is no surprise that it came to power after the Congress had ruled in Gujarat for several terms successively.
The BJP has consolidated its political position after coming to power. This could be partly due to the reason that Hindutva as an ideology is strong enough in Gujarat to bind the majority in a populist manner (by bringing together people belonging to different classes). This may be due to the events in history and the recent past in Gujarat or the region. When politics is not advanced adequately, voters’ choice of the ruling party can be determined more by social identity than by the problems of governance. Secondly, the opposition, that is, the Congress which ruled for several terms in the past, has lost credibility in contemporary politics. Thirdly, the people, at large, are not used to, and hence, not able to, visualise better-quality social security and delivery of public services.
Characteristics of BJP rule
The class basis of BJP rule or its ideology of governance may also be playing a role in this regard. The Congress governments, immediately after India’s independence, attempted to include all classes of people but were driven by social and educated elites, including landlords from different parts of the country. Caste-wise, most of them belonged to the Brahmin and Kshatriya castes. At that time, the Congress governments did not have trust in traders and industrialists, who belonged mostly to the Vaishya caste. This also served as a social basis for License Raj and other controls in the Indian economy during the first three decades of India’s independent rule.
A substantial section of traders was not comfortable with the dominant (Nehruvian) section of the Indian National Congress. They were sympathisers of the faction which was against Indira Gandhi in organisational matters. This faction joined the Bhartiya Jan Sangh to form the Janta Party which brought Indira Gandhi’s government down in 1977. The beginning of economic reforms in India happened, as noted by commentators when Indira Gandhi dropped her adversarial attitude towards capitalists when she came back to power after the defeat she suffered for imposing Emergency.
The major changes in economic and industrial policies in the 1990s brought in by Manmohan Singh, the Union Finance Minister in the ruling Congress government at the Centre, were more of a technical or inevitable response to the financial crisis faced by India then and were not due to a major change in the political economy coalition. However, the emergence of the BJP regimes enhanced the hold of the Vaishyas in Indian governance (though A B Vajpayee was more of a non-Vaishya-educated elite). The emergence of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah at the Centre has epitomised this phenomenon.
Traders or capitalists may not be interested in a direct role in governance, but they support those leaders who are aligned with their purpose. The Vaishyas may not tolerate the privileges enjoyed by the erstwhile Brahmin/Kshatriya rulers. The fact that the power (and endowments) enjoyed by the latter are transferred to their younger generations through hereditary rights and nepotism, may not be acceptable to them.
There is a greater focus on economic growth and wealth creation under the current Vaishya government. There is a perception that businesspeople should be supported to boost the Indian economy. The provision of adequate infrastructure (and law and order) so that these people can go ahead with their economic activities has become an important role of the state.
When the government is connected closely with businesspeople, there can be elements of cronyism (though this can be a broad-based one rather than a non-transparent relationship of selected businessmen with the government, which is ideologically against capitalists, in general). Businesses, in general, want lesser competition. They do not want strategies which sustain high levels of competition in the economy which include the distancing of governments from specific businesses or groups. (In fact, such a demand for higher competition comes usually from the middle class, which is electorally not very strong in India, currently).
A pro-business government may be strongly wedded to the idea of the trickle-down effect. It may hold the view that all social problems (including poverty) are likely to disappear when there is increasing economic growth. It may see the direct use of public resources to address the issues of the poor and underprivileged as part of fiscal irresponsibility. This is especially so when such governments do not face strong competition in democracy. Partly due to the charitable attitude of the Vaishyas, and partly due to the current discourses and global policies, there is some attention on social policies, whether it is in the form of providing education or LPG cylinders to poor people.
The kind of social change that is envisioned by the Vaishyas as a traditional social group which is invested in businesses, could be different from that which is envisioned by the middle-class or new-generation capitalists (who may be from the educated middle-class). The former has gained from their beliefs, culture and social and community networks. Even when they make more money, they are less likely to get out of their traditions in terms of norms, beliefs, culture and networks. They would hold on to these, as these are enabling factors for their wealth acquisition. Hence, the demand for a broad-based social change may be weaker among them or their imagination of social change may be one in which there is progress in terms of wealth or affluence but not in terms of social norms or values. They may not be very keen on a modernisation agenda.
The issues of Shudras and outcastes may not be a serious concern for rules led by Brahmin/Kshatriya and Vaishyas. However, the approach towards economic growth among Vaishyas is relatively better than the feudal and ideology-driven regimes of Brahmin/Kshatriyas. The limited trickling-down effect may enable sections of Shudras to enhance consumption and enable them to be part of the middle class. Then, they may have an interest in demanding better governance in the long run.
AUTHOR
V Santhakumar is Professor, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
Featured photo by Prateek Srivastava on Unsplash
