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100 days of blundering

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

His predecessors may have made a big thing of it, but Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta won't celebrate his completion of 100 days in office on Tuesday.

The 76-year old chief minister of the country's most populous state had nothing to boast about. The old man, picked out of the blue as the compromise choice in a faction-ridden Bharatiya Janata Party following the ouster of Kalyan Singh three months ago, was neither experienced nor inclined to handle the responsibilities that came along with high office.

Gupta, who has been out of circulation for the past 22 years -- his only and last active stint being as deputy chief minister in 1977 -- was yet to take one step beyond donning the most sought after mantle in Uttar Pradesh. Living in a own make-believe world, Gupta prefers safe inactivity to controversial action.

If his predecessor Kalyan Singh lived in his own ivory tower, denying audience even to his ministers and legislators, Gupta was ready to spend hours gossiping with them. His motto in life appears to be the "appeasement of all" and he is surrounded at all times by representatives of the saffron brigade.

If there is anything he believes in, it is the philosophy of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which he made clear in his utterances about the Ayodhya temple and issue of government servants joining the RSS.

He has already shown how weak he is by declining to contest the Vidhan Sabha by-elections and, later, when he could draw no crowds to his election meetings. He has also failed on the administrative front because of his habit of shirking responsibilities.

Files pile up and, according to a junior level functionary, there are at least a thousand files already pending with the chief minister in the month or so, and the files are still coming in.

Receiving an average of 30-40 files every day, he reportedly rarely attends to more than 10.

"How can you blame him; he gets tired," says one of his aides.

Asked if it was ignorance had anything to do with him being unable to devote sufficient time towards governance, the official shot back, "Well, he is not ignorant. A senior bureaucrat had recently apprised him of the increasing backlog of files but he is a cool person and does not panic."

Though Gupta was busy entertaining those of the Sangh Parivar -- whatever their level and position. This does not amuse his cabinet colleagues though. A minister of state was heard complaining to another colleague, "What to do. The CM has lopsided priorities; when you tell him that such and such file is pending for the past one month, he retorts, 'So what?' ". You get the idea.

Consequently the working in UP's secretariat was getting increasingly chaotic as even the smallest fry in the Sangh Parivar can get whatever he wants, while the real business of governance suffers. Even the common man who goes to Gupta's weekly Monday EM>janta durbar" often has to return disappointed as some of them find no time to give an audience.

Last month, his policy of appeasement led to so many transfers of bureaucrats and police officials that he even went to the extent of sending two district magistrates to the same district.

But even if he described the long transfer and posting exercise as a part of his "streamlining the mess" he had inherited, the way he did it attracted no praise. For Gupta reshuffled the bureaucracy at the behest of his party members.

Even while addressing the annual meet of the state Indian Administrative Service Association, he did not mince words in telling the bureaucrats, "You must listen to our party functionaries; remember, you cannot ignore their interests."

And that was exactly what he himself seems to have been doing over the past three months.

The state's financial condition too has been going from bad to worse, with little or no effort being made to mobilise resources. There was already a monthly deficit of about Rs 4.5 billion in the state's receipts and expenditure, making even salary disbursement a serious problem. The state treasury director recently issued a circular to all banks, directing them "not to honour government cheques", while the finance department had earlier put a hold on state governments withdrawing money from Provident Fund accounts.

Nearly every month the chief secretary and finance secretary run to the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India for enhancement of the overdraft limit so that monthly salaries of the state's 1.6 million employees and teachers can be disbursed.

Huge hoardings displaying Gupta's favourite slogan at present, 'Uttar Pradesh ko Udyog Pradesh banayenge' (We will make Uttar Pradesh an industrial state) means little.

No investment is coming in and red tape hasn't been reduced to make things easier for prospective entrepreneurs. Even the earlier incentive of a five-year tax holiday to new entrepreneurs was recently withdrawn.

The chief minister dire warnings to the corrupt aren't taken seriously any more as they haven't been translated into action. He turns a blind eye to the large-scale financial bungling by many of his cabinet colleagues who are filling their coffers and is bullied and blackmailed by the tiniest of party allies.

Even the appeals made by the Action Group of the UP IAS Association for suitable action against at least those top bureaucrats whom the association had voted as "most corrupt" seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

This is apparently the only issue on which he was ready to echo Kalyan Singh who had said, "How can I hang anyone simply because a few persons have voted him as corrupt. I must follow the rule of law."

The only "achievement" his aides can speak of involves the reforms made in the power sector after defusing the strike by 87,000 electricity board employees. But it is an open secret that he stepped into the scene only after the settlement had been arrived at. All the spadework was done by Housing and Urban Development Minister Lalji Tandon and, of course, Energy Minister Naresh Agarwal.

Though he's made it so far the only question that remains about him is: How much longer?

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