Kerala's foremost decentralisation evangelist is now an unhappy soul

He would be the first person to object if it is said he was part of the team that conceptualised Kerala's unique People's Planning Process. But, by common consensus, there is no one who has played a role equivalent to that of a teacher in shaping grassroots democracy in Kerala – guiding, reprimanding, disciplining, clarifying, intellectually stimulating - as faithfully and rigorously as Prof M A Oommen.

He was part of the Satyabrata Sen Committee set up by the E K Nayanar Ministry in 1996 to suggest ways to achieve operational, fiscal and administrative autonomy for local governments. When the People's Planning completed 10 years in 2007, it was Prof Oommen who was asked to do a thorough evaluation of its performance.

In 2009, he was the chairman of the fourth State Finance Commission that drew up a breakthrough formula for the allocation of plan funds for each corporation, municipality and grama panchayat.

And now, if local governments have begun their planning process right at the start of the fiscal, it is thanks to Prof Oommen's repeated censure of the “bunching” of projects in the last quarter of the fiscal.

Dashed hopes

Nonetheless, nearly a quarter-century after the inauguration of the People's Plan, Prof Oommen is not a happy man.

He hoped it would create a set of young new leaders with “autonomous will and dedicated public reasoning”. It didn't.

He hoped it would throw up women leaders who would bring in a female perspective to governance and with a mind of their own. It didn't.

He hoped the process would break the unholy technocrat-bureaucrat-politician-contractor nexus and root out institutional corruption. It didn't.

He hoped people would collectively decide what they want at the local level. They didn't.

“A decentralisation that was legitimate and fully empowering was not carried forward,” said Prof Oommen, now an honorary fellow at Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

K Karunakaran's indifference

But the beginning had the promise of a revolution. “The People's Planning was certainly innovative, it was a radical approach to the state-society linkage,” Prof Oommen said. According to him, it was Kerala that gave content, flesh and blood to the abstract idea of decentralised planning and development.

Prof Oommen said even after the 73rd and 74th amendments (giving Constitutional status to panchayats and urban local bodies) were passed in 1992, the then Chief Minister K Karunakaran was not enthusiastic about decentralisation. “He paid lip service to it because the amendments were passed by the Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre, but in spirit, he was indifferent, rather unsympathetic, to the concept,” Prof Oommen said.

“The Kerala Panchayat and Municipality acts were amended with marginal changes. Financial and functional decentralisation was never the focus of these legislations. The allocations for local governments were even cut down,” he said.

EMS saves the day

At this point, a pro-decentralisation wave was gathering force under the leadership of E M S Namboodirippad. In 1996, when the LDF came to power, Prof Oommen said this yearning for grassroots democracy got “blown up” into the People's Plan process.

He attributes the phrase 'people's plan' to T M Thomas Isaac, the present finance minister who was then a young academician enjoying the unstinted backing of the CPM's then most venerated leader, EMS. “Till then planning was never a people's idea. It was a centralised aspect. Isaac made 'People's Planning' the new governance catchphrase and used it for a kind of social mobilisation never before seen in Kerala,” Prof Oommen said, and added: “The party was not entirely enthusiastic but, fortunately, EMS had blessed the idea.”

Truth about corruption

It was as if they had discovered a formula, the ultimate one, that could solve all the complex social and political problems. If at that point anyone had told Prof Oommen that Utopia was round the corner, he would have thought it highly possible.

This perhaps was why he was slightly provoked when a senior journalist, during a press conference he had attended along with I S Gulati (then Planning Board vice-chairman) and Isaac in 1996, expressed the concern that the programme could decentralise corruption. “I passionately argued that it would not be the case,” Prof Oommen said.

“But now, nearly a quarter-century later, I have realised that corruption could not be easily eradicated. The practice of contractors making huge sums of money from projects and sharing the spoils with politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats and even the clerks who pass the bills continue,” he said.

Tyranny of babu-dom

Prof Oommen is especially miffed with the stranglehold of the bureaucracy on the functioning of local governments. “Bureaucracy has never entertained the idea of decentralisation. The officials use their perceived upper hand in knowledge and experience to brush aside or dump projects proposed by local representatives with relatively fewer qualifications. They are the high priests of the status quo,” Prof Oommen said.

In his 2009 evaluation report on the performance of local governments, he had observed that the planning process was “routinised and vulgarised” by the bureaucracy. “For instance, there was a junior clerk who had created 120 local body projects within a month. No development seminar was conducted, no grama sabha was convened and not a soul was consulted before he drew up these 120 projects,” Prof Oommen said.

Where have the people gone?

It is ironic but true: There has not been much of people's participation in the People's Plan process for a long time. The People's Plan process had envisaged a multi-stage planning process, the earlier stages demanding high people's involvement.

“First, gram sabhas will have to be convened to identify the felt needs of the community. All concerned voters in a panchayat or ward will have to take part. Then development seminars have to be held to take stock of and list out all the common resources within the area (farmlands, ponds, wells, watersheds, PHCs, roads and schools) and, based on this local-level database, an area-specific development perspective will have to be evolved. Then come the project preparation stage and the appraisal and approval of plans. Unfortunately, these grama sabhas, where people can collectively demand public action, are not being convened regularly. People are not enthusiastic about attending them either. As for development seminars, these are not held any more,” Prof Oommen said.

This is unfair, ladies!

The presence of women over 50 per cent in the leadership positions of local governments have also not altered the development paradigm. Prof Oommen said that quantity had not led to a qualitative transformation.

“The idea of participatory democracy was to make women autonomous in their decision making and agents of social change. This appears not to have happened,” he said. “All local bodies have to compulsorily set apart 10 per cent of their annual plans for women-specific projects. Not only have most panchayats and municipalities failed to do this but they have not even taken up even the most pressing women-centric projects,” Prof Oommen said.

It is not just enough to give women seats and positions, he said. “They should feel sufficiently empowered to speak and act against injustice.”

Let independents rise

When asked whether he was happy to see young and fresh faces on campaign posters that have now come up all over, he paused for a moment before he answered. “I would be if they demonstrate that they have an autonomous will and dedicated public reasoning. There is no hope in candidates, however young and fresh, who work only to please their political masters,” he said.