DEVELOPMENT PROCESS SHOULD BE A MASS MOVEMENT

This is the Golden message that Narendra Modi delivered at the Aniversary celebrations of “Tuglak” Magazine held at Chennai. Whatever may be his political status and character, he has definitely shown the right approach Development especially in large democracies like ours. I would go a step further and state that even the process of Governance should be converted into a mass movement.

As I drove through a cross-section of Chennai city the today, I found atleast half-a-dozen Fly-overs standing incomplete with either work moving very slowly or stopped completely. The common man has no knowledge as to why the work on the Fly-overs are not completed and how much of the taxpayers money has gone into the drain without any benefit. The politicians get away wasting crores of money without being accountable. On probing further we get unconvincing answers of pending land acquisitions and inter-departmental approvals.

But for the same project if the people are involved at grassroot levels from the stage of planning, all these land acquisitions and departmental approvals can be had before initiating the project. This is because the process of land acquisitions and departmental approvals etc. begins with interactions and consent of people at the grassroot level. So put the ball in their court and make them take the hard decisions of loosing a few for gaining a lot and let the government implement implement the project when complete with all inputs. In these situations, the Project once started would get completed within the stipulated time without any implementation delays. In the reverse situation of consensus not being arrived in land acquisitions and approvals, atleast there would be no waste of public money on incomplete projects and common man in that case deserves to suffer when he cannot forgo short term individual micro benefits for long term macro benefits for the society as a whole of which he is also an integral part.

Further the common man would have more knowledge how much of his tax is being used to create amenities for him and could also make him more responsible to preserve and take of the amenities so created.

One argument here would be that going to people for every project would be a time consuming process. But I feel a process being completed is better than a process lying incomplete for decades after crores of money being spent and even practically analyzing the top-down approach does not seem to complete the process any early, notwithstanding the possibility of the same lying incomplete.

The second argument would be why go to the people again when the politicians themselves are the representative of the people. We all know too well that the politicians in our country represent us only till the end of elections beyond that they represent just themselves.
Let me leave the topic of “Converting Governance into Mass movement” for the next post.