|
In the late 1980s, the demographer,
Ashish Bose, coined the term ‘BIMARU’, an acronym bringing together
those states of the Indian Union which had low per capita incomes and
literacy rates on the one side, and high levels of infant mortality and
malnutrition on the other. BI stood for Bihar; MA for Madhya Pradesh; R
for Rajasthan; U for Uttar Pradesh. Bose’s acronym punned on the word ‘bimar’, Hindi for sick or ill, which is what, in an economic and social sense, these states were.
Of these
four states of India, the one I know best is Uttar Pradesh. I was born
and raised in Dehradun, at the time not the capital of a separate hill
state but merely a district town in UP. Although ethnically Tamil, by
culture and upbringing I am in some part a UP bhayya. My maternal
grandfather moved to the state in 1930; my father in 1948. My mother
and her brothers were educated in Hindi-medium schools. Our closest
friends were Kayasths from Allahabad.
As a boy,
and as a young man, I certainly did not think my state was backward or
disadvantaged. Allahabad University was not quite the Oxford of the
East; but it still had a decent reputation. My scientist-father guided
PhD students from the then moderately respectable Agra University.
Kanpur was a thriving industrial town, and incidentally (or thus) home
to the best among the Indian Institutes of Technology. Premchand was
dead, but his stories were still read; and Firaq was still around to
recite his poems. Lucknow and Banaras were active centres of classical
music.
The Uttar
Pradesh I grew up in was culturally rich, as well as politically
dominant. I had reached the age of 19, and my country the age of 30,
before there was a prime minister from outside Uttar Pradesh. This man
(Morarji Desai) lasted all of two years. In the next 14 years, India
witnessed as many as five prime ministers; all were from UP. When the
most powerful man (or woman) in one’s nation is from one’s state, how
can one possibly think of it as ‘sick’?
To be sure,
my confidence in UP’s importance was a product to some degree of my
class position. Had I been the son of a peasant or labourer I might have
thought of my home state differently. By the time I had become a
working adult, however, it was clear to everyone that Uttar Pradesh was
in trouble. The universities had precipitously declined. Communal and
caste violence were rife. Kanpur and Agra were no longer centres of
industry and enterprise. Even prime ministers tended to come from other
states of the Union.
The final
blow to UP’s self-esteem, however, was statistical. For the first few
decades of Indian independence, those who talked numbers tallied them at
the level of the nation: India’s gross national product, India’s annual
rate of growth, the average income of an average Indian, and so on.
From the 1980s, however, analysts of economic development began to look
more closely at variations across states. This was prompted by the fact
that the polity was now itself highly federalized, with the Congress no
longer so dominant at the Centre or in the states. Besides, development
studies were no more the preserve of the economist; political
scientists, demographers, and sociologists had all joined the party.
This expansion of disciplinary horizons brought in such hitherto
under-appreciated factors as the nature of the political regime, the
quality of political leadership, access to schools and hospitals, and
mortality across age and gender.
Once the
study of India’s development became more disaggregated, the reputation
of Uttar Pradesh rapidly collapsed. The intelligentsia of UP had
previously spoken of states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala as culturally
alien and politically peripheral. The numbers revealed that the
condescension should actually run in the other direction. What made
matters worse was the company that India’s largest, politically most
prestigious state, had to keep — that of backward Bihar, and feudal
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Later, a
fifth state was added to the list — that of Odisha, which statisticians
had likewise demonstrated to be poor, with low levels of literacy,
indifferent or non-existent public hospitals, and the like. The acronym
now acquired a new vowel, becoming BIMAROU.
Thirty years
after Ashish Bose’s inspired coinage, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan,
Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh still remain poor — certainly when compared
to Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, or Maharashtra. Yet,
in the past decade or so, four of the five sick states of India have
made a move on. A table in a recent essay by Utsav Kumar and Arvind
Subramanian (published in the Economic and Political Weekly)
demonstrates that in the period 1993-2009, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan and
Odisha all had higher annual growth rates than UP. Likewise, when it
comes to health indices, my former home state is much more ‘Bimar’ than
the states with which it is normally associated. For instance, a mere 23
per cent of children in UP were immunized in 2011 (as against 26.5 per
cent for Rajasthan, 32.8 per cent for Bihar, 40.3 per cent for MP, and
51.8 per cent for Odisha).
One reason
for the poor performance of Uttar Pradesh is its size, which is a
challenge to competent and focused administration. As a (non-resident)
native of Dehradun I am glad it is now part of Uttarakhand. However, the
process should not have stopped with the creation of a hill state; the
plains of UP should also have been broken up into three, perhaps even
four, separate states.
Another, and
arguably more important, reason for the continuing backwardness of UP
is its political culture, which remains extremely reactionary. In
neighbouring Bihar, the language of politics has undergone a significant
shift since 2005. Where patronage and kin networks once determined
government priorities and policies, now the focus is on building roads
and bridges, improving law and order, and bringing more children into
school. In Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, both Congress and Bharatiya
Janata Party chief ministers have likewise emphasized issues of
governance and development.
Nitish
Kumar, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Vasundhara Raje, Ashok Gehlot — none of
these politicians are flawless. Each is driven in lesser or greater
degree by personal ambition. In choosing candidates for seats they do
look carefully at particular caste configurations. Even so, the language
they talk is one of hope — the promise of a better and safer life for
the residents of the state they rule over. To be sure, the gap between
promise and performance remains large. Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and
Rajasthan are still among the poorer states in the Union. But the
narrative of politics in these states has certainly changed.
On the other
hand, UP remains trapped in the politics of fear. The BJP stokes the
insecurities of upper-caste Hindus; the Samajwadi Party of Muslims and
Yadavs; the Bahujan Samaj Party of Dalits. Building temples, saving
mosques, constructing memorials — these remain, more or less, the
professed aims of parties and governments.
Uttar
Pradesh has suffered greatly from the calibre of its political
leadership. Mulayam Singh and Nitish Kumar are both former socialists;
Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Ashok Gehlot are both members of the Congress;
Rajnath Singh and Shivraj Singh Chauhan are both members of the BJP. In
each of these pairings, the leader from UP is distinctly inferior in
terms of administrative ability and social vision.
And so,
while Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan all seek to heal themselves,
my erstwhile home state wallows in a state of sickness.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140208/jsp/opinion/story_17894998.jsp#.UvWOGaxiTIU
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment