Chauhan's 'good governance' shows ugly sores | N.D.Sharma

Published on 11-09-2008 In General

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Chauhan's 'good governance' shows ugly sores

Shivraj Singh Chauhan's "sushaasan" (good governance) in Madhya Pradesh, praised so often by the BJP bigwigs like Lal Krishna Advani, Rajnath Singh, M.Venkaiah Naidu and Sushma Swaraj, has started showing ugly sores. The ceaseless growth in corruption and deterioration in the law and order situation in the State have long stopped agitating the conscience of the BJP leaders. Chauhan's claim of more development during the present BJP regime than in the previous 50 years has been belied by the realities on the ground.

Severe malnutrition among children has taken almost an epidemic form in several parts of the State ---from Khandwa district in the west to Satna-Rewa belt in the east and Shivpuri-Gwalior region in the north. More than three score children suffering from acute malnutrition were taken to the district hospital at Khandwa on the day Shivraj Singh Chauhan's Jan-Ashirvad yatra reached there. (The yatra, traversing different parts of the State was flagged off by Advani at Ujjain late last month and is to continue till the close of this month, the idea being to seek the blessings of the people for re-election in the November Assembly elections for the "all-round development" of the State).

Several of the children admitted to the hospital at Khandwa died even before Chauhan's luxury vehicle had moved out of the district. More than a dozen children were said to have died from malnutrition in Harsud area, another part of Khandwa district, within a week some time back. The number of the children suffering from the complications of malnutrition taken to the Khandwa district hospital alone so far this year has exceeded 200. Nine children died from malnourishment in three villages of Satna district within a few days. Deaths of children from malnutrition have also been reported from Shivpuri. The problem is endemic in the Morena, Shyopur and Bhind districts of the Chambal region. Besides, children are suffering from malaria, dysentery, lung infection and a host of other diseases which, in most cases, have their origin in malnourishment.

What happened to the crores of rupees pumped into various schemes supposed to help the children in distress is anybody's guess. The budgetary provision for providing supplementary nutrition to undernourished women and children was Rs 3000 crore last year and it was doubled for the current year. Add to this the financial help provided by the central government and other agencies.

It is not easy to keep a count of all the schemes. The Bal Sanjivani Yojana is being run with the financial assistance from UNICEF with the specific objective of checking malnutrition among the children. Large amounts are also given by the Central Government under its integrated child development scheme-4 (ICDS-4) for checking malnutrition among children and promoting their pre-school education. This scheme is supposed to be implemented in 30 districts which the Chauhan government had identified as having acute malnutrition problem in its proposal to the central government. The State government claims to be spending Rs 3375 on each child severely affected by malnutrition.

There is the Ladli Lakshmi Yojana which aims at taking care of the girl child.

Another scheme is called Ayushmati which is supposed to take care of the health problems of women and female children of the landless families in the rural areas. The Deendayal Antyodaya Upachar Yojana was launched by the State government four years ago to provide complete check up and treatment facilities to all the members of the families living below the poverty line (BPL). There are some women-specific schemes promising safe delivery of the women from poor families, with the follow-up health care of the mother and child. There are other schemes being implemented specifically for the tribals, the Scheduled Castes and the backward classes; mother and the child are mentioned there as the major concern.

It's not that the problem of malnutrition deaths has suddenly cropped up and the government was taken by surprise. The warnings have been constantly coming up from competent authorities, like UNICEF. The problem of malnutrition among children in particularly alarming in Madhya Pradesh, with an estimate of 60 per cent of children below the age of three years malnourished. This is the finding of the Madhya Pradesh Child Rights Observatory, an independent forum set up with the initiative and support of UNICEF, for monitoring, advocating and promoting the rights of children in the State. More than 50 per cent of the deaths of children in Madhya Pradesh are related to malnourishment and its complications, according to the UNICEF officials. The multiplicity of the schemes, some of them overlapping each other's tasks, to seek funds from the central government and foreign agencies itself shows that those running the government – the politicians and bureaucrats – have been fully aware of the enormity of the problem. It's a different matter if the funds disappeared elsewhere.

What is distressing is the apathy of the political parties to the prevailing calamitous situation. The ruling party, of course, does not try to see except through the eyes of the bureaucrats for whom the poor of the State are the last concern. It is the Congress, the main opposition party aspiring to form the government after the November elections, which has really let down the people. Only the Leader of Opposition Jamuna Devi has occasionally been raising the issue of the deaths of children from malnutrition and demanding an inquiry but hers has been a feeble voice in the absence of a proper backup from the party apparatus. Whatever has come to light is either through the efforts of the few non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in the field or from the scanty reports in the media, particularly the mofussil press.

Even when the malnutrition deaths come to light, the government does not show any urgency in tackling the situation. Occasionally, its different departments start wrangling, instead of initiating remedial measures. When nine deaths in three villages of Satna district within a week were reported, the health department admitted that they had died from malnutrition. However, the department of woman and child development rubbished the health department's report and came out with the claim that the children had died from illnesses. As if that exonerated the government from its responsibility!

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