Voltaire said, “We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.” In India, we scarcely see governance, yet we live in the expectation of good governance. The headline impact of the CAG reports is focused on the corruption in transfer of natural resources. What is more pertinent is the complete collapse of governance across sectors in the Centre and states. Consider the following observations, a selection from the audit reports of the CAG—from across several states.
During the Portuguese rule in Goa, a 190-bed hospital was established in Mapusa, in north Goa. The hospital was in a dilapidated state. So the government of Goa in February 2002 decided to construct a 230-bed modern hospital. Construction though only began in November 2004 and the hospital was completed in November 2008. In the next six months, the government installed expensive equipment, and sanctioned the recruitment of 200 personnel in addition to existing 312 on the rolls. Total cost of the project: Rs 49.91 crore. However, for no explicable reason, the hospital was not occupied. In September 2010, a few outpatient wings began functioning. However, as the auditor has observed, till August 2011 the hospital remained non-functional. This is a state where people have to fly relatives to Mumbai and Bangalore for treatment.
We all know that most times rehabilitation schemes in government are about rehabilitation of votes. But even the incentive of garnering votes cannot get the political parties to deliver. In 1995, the BJP-Shiv Sena government conjured a scheme to rid Mumbai of slums, 40 lakh slumdwellers were to be re-housed in pucca homes. The CAG informs us that the Slum Rehabilitation Authority did not have any database of slums. There was no evaluation of developers. Beneficiary lists were found to be fudged during re-verification. In 2012, only 1.27 lakh out of 8.05 lakh slum dwellings have been rehabilitated.
Mark Twain said “invest in land as they don’t make it anymore”. He must have a huge following in Maharashtra. Irregularity in allotment of land is epidemic in the state. Land worth Rs 9 crore is allotted at Rs 9 lakh to a private education institution. A trust set up by a doctor gets land and transfers it to a private company. Now the trust owes the state Rs 174 crore but nobody is collecting. The most horrific finding of the CAG is that in the land of Adarsh scams, there is no database of land maintained at the government level—particularly in the collectorates of Mumbai, Pune, Thane and even Nagpur. Nearly 1,000 hectares of land acquired by state corporations is lying idle for between five and 36 years. There is no policy to review acquisition and utilisation. Suffice to say, the land will be transferred to a private party at a price dating to the Eighties, delivering windfall gains.
You could argue that the presence of profit motive is what perverts governance in Maharashtra. Perhaps! What about areas with little or no profit motive? The need to promote education hardly needs emphasis, particularly in Uttar Pradesh. The national education policy demands states ensure sanitation, kitchens for mid-day meals and at least boundary walls to assure parents who send children to school. The CAG studied schools in Ghazipur and Gautam Buddh Nagar. It found that of the 3,139 schools in the two districts, 1,038 didn’t have toilets, 1,799 didn’t have even a boundary wall; the schools are supposed to serve mid-day meals but 424 didn’t have kitchens, 939 didn’t have even a basic library and 1,141 didn’t have even wiring to bring electricity.
In April 2001, the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department initiated a computer-based management information system. It was to be implemented in 54 months. In 2011, the CAG reports that the system is far from completion. Equipment warranty ran out as the project was delayed, training was paid for but not utilised. Of the 2,566 persons to be trained for 10 days, 1,867 were trained for one day and 374 for two days. In 10 of 23 offices, not a single person was trained. Not surprisingly, in 2011, not even one module of the 26 modules planned has been put to use.
Bihar is an agrarian state and has the potential of being the food bowl of India. Ergo, creation of storage capacity should be a no-brainer. The CAG has found that the Bihar State Food and Civil Supplies Corporation has 387 godowns with a storage capacity of 1.35 lakh metric tonnes. In September 2008, the state decided to add 47,000 MT of storage capacity. The corporation submitted an estimate of Rs 33.48 crore. In November 2011, the CAG finds no follow-up from the corporation or the government to augment storage capacity. Indeed, between 2006 and 2011 the corporation added only one godown of 1,000 MT.
For some years now, the government of India has been trying to streamline motor vehicle ownership and registration details streamlined across states both as an internal security initiative as also to improve revenues. In Jammu and Kashmir, the CAG surveyed the implementation of VAHAN. It found that only eight of the 22 districts had implemented it, the module was not standardised as stipulated, it was being used only partially, legacy data was not digitised. In a survey of RTOs, the auditors found 3,032 cases of duplicate engine numbers, 17 cases of duplicate chassis numbers and 53 cases of blank engine numbers—an ideal state of affairs for car thieves and terror outfits.
These random samples from the CAG’s audit reports reflect the complete breakdown of the so-called steel frame. The seven-digit corruption estimates have got the attention of the political class and the people. It is a good time to institutionalise a session every year—both in Parliament and in state Assemblies—to discuss CAG’s reports. It would be a good place to begin the catharsis on the rotten state of governance.
Shankkar Aiyar is a senior journalist who specialises in the politics of economics
shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com