“Sahab, yahaan ka kya kucch hoga?”(Will anything ever become of this place?)

In Saranda, this is a frequently asked question. It is no query and no curiosity prompts it. It is purely rhetorical and often, as intended, conveys the questioner’s thinly-veiled cynicism in this Maoist-affected pocket of Jharkhand’s West Singhbum district.

The question above is usually posed by a local. What is singularly disturbing about it is that this question is usually the reply locals give to other questions about life and governance in this small forest of ‘seven hundred hills’ that hide iron in their gut. The question would have been appropriate, even expected, a year ago when the Maoist rule of the place spanning nearly a decade was beginning to slip. But a year after the Saranda Development Plan (SDP), a union government-sponsored concentration of welfare schemes and infrastructure schemes for the region, was launched it still lingers.

Saranda Development Plan: goal and ground reality
When SDP was launched last year, the goal was clear: the state needed to establish its writ fast. Launched close on the heels of the July-August security offensive, Operation Anaconda, the plan dovetailed welfare schemes for the rural poor (with special relaxations in some of the guidelines) with infrastructure development like a 130-km road network under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The hitherto absent state had to assure people of Saranda that it had their interests in mind and was here to make up for decades of neglect.

At the same time, it needed to make sure that the rebels did not inch their way back into the villages, and into the minds of the villagers. It began with Rs 250 crore and six panchayats: Digha, Makranda, Lailor, Gangda, Chiria and Chottanagra. By all intent, it was to be a development blitzkrieg.

However, a year later the plan still seems taxiing to take off. There are significant evidence of work, especially with the distribution of solar lamps, bicycles and transistors among nearly all 7,000 households in the 56 villages identified for implementation of the development plan. But the truth is beyond these gifts: little else envisaged under the plan has materialised at the speed or scale it should have by now.

Complications on ground
While the district administration claims that nearly 4,500 families have received the first installment of the more impactful Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) grants for housing for the rural poor, ground realities are widely different. In Lailor, of the 913 households eligible for the grant of a total of 1,018 (BPL households that received the grant in 2007 have been excluded from the current list), 630 have got the first installment (Rs 23,000 of a total Rs 48,500). Only 188 households have got the second instalment, while 45 are waiting for it to be credited to their accounts.

Ask the administration, and it quickly blames the three nationalised banks that function in Saranda. “Banks have been unwilling to open accounts as they consider this a low-value transaction. They operate with the assumption that the beneficiary will never use the account again, barring the IAY grant,” says West Singbhum deputy commissioner K Srinivasan. “We have requested the union government to allow for a transaction charge that would help fortify the banks’ stakeholdership.

“Moreover, we get complaints from both beneficiaries and the banks that there are other procedural stumbling blocks, like language of the forms to open account and withdrawal slips (both are either in Hindi or English, while most people in Saranda speak only Ho, a tribal language).”

This is despite at least two camps held by nationalised banks at the Manoharpur block office to help locals open accounts.

When told that beneficiaries who have already received the first installments would not face such problems, Srinivasan says IAY norms sometimes get in the way of the second installment in some cases. “They have to submit photographic proof of construction with the first installment to be eligible to receive the second. Most families that received the first installment have not submitted these,” he reasons.

However, this is only half the truth. While some households, especially those who received their grant in September-October and are yet to submit them, have reached the stage of construction required of the photographic evidence clause, there are those that have been waiting for months.

With the villages scattered deep in the forest along nearly unmotorable dirt roads, it becomes difficult to arrange for a photographer from the block area at Manoharpur. So, all rozgar sevaks, panchayat-level functionaries associated with the Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme (MGNREGS), have been instructed to snap pictures with cameras they have been given of the direct payment of MGNREGS wages.

However, cases like Bicha Dhanwar’s (from Kolbanga village in Lailor panchayat) reveal how even this arrangement of the state is being tipped over by functionaries of the state itself.

When I arrived in Kolbanga through a forest road from Gindung Mod, Bicha’s wife was sitting outside their hut, drying greens that she would cook for the family’s dinner. The thirty-year-old told me that the rozgar sevak asked for Rs 50 for clicking her hut’s picture. The other villagers who were listening corroborated, saying that the sum varied sometimes. But Rs 50 was de rigueur.

Asked if the sum wasn’t being charged for developing the prints, the villagers insisted that the rozgar sevak would tell them that he needed the money for fuel. “In fact, we were asked to shell out Rs 200 each for getting included in the atirikt (state government) BPL list,” Manglu Bandhiya said.

The problem is compounded with only 10-12 cameras to go around in the entire block. The district administration doesn’t deny these hassles but has been able to precious little except for sacking one atirikt (additional) rozgar sevak in Lailor.

The state of affairs doesn’t seem to be very different in other panchayats. At Ushariya village in Digha panchayat, the number of households which have received IAY grants remains unchanged from the time Governance Now last recorded the figure in June 2012. “Only 11 households of the 73 here have got the grant. Forty-five more are waiting for it. In fact, I have collected stones for building my hut but will have to wait till my first instalment comes to start construction,” said Pradhan Honhaga, the atirikt rozgar sevak from the village.

Asked if he had informed the officials about it, Honhaga said he was assured that payments would begin but nothing has come of it yet. “It is harvest season now and most people are busy in their fields. It would anyway have been difficult to get labour. So I think waiting is not a very bad thing,” he added, almost as if consoling himself.

Dismal implementation of other schemes

The problem of tardy implementation seems to spill over to other projects as well. While MGNREGS has had a reasonable implementation record, there are persisting issues with payment. Atirikt rozgar sevaks Arun Das (Chottanagra village, Chottanagra panchayat) and Brundaban Soy (Gindung, Lailor panchayat) claim that payments have been pending in their villages for over four months now. “The 14 villagers who worked on the well project at Kanchgada Tola are yet to be paid for eight days of work. Now, the sum is not too much for the block to clear but the engineers find excuses for the delay. I have to try and find new ways of avoiding the workers because of the delay. Imagine, how hard it must be for me to stay in the same village,” Das says, only half-mocking.

Then, there are issues of completion as well. A rock signpost in yellow and black paint says that a kilometre-long mitti-murum (soil-local soft rock) road should exist from the forest road to Najamda in Gindung. A forest path with a divider of drying shrubs stands instead. The project was for the 2011-12 fiscal but was abandoned for the monsoons in June this year. However, the total sanctioned funds for the project have already been drawn, inform villagers.

Atowa Gudiya, the mukhiya of Makranda panchayat, says such shoddy execution is allowing for massive leakages. Recently, Gudiya and others submitted a written complaint at the block office against alleged irregularities in MGNREGS in the villages. “The junior engineer, in collusion with other field functionaries, has siphoned MGNREGS funds,” Gudiya says. “For some of the pond and well projects in our panchayat, the allocation has been withdrawn without much of the work being executed. The worst part is many pages have been torn out of the MB (measurement book; an official record to document expenditure incurred in such projects).

Calling such corruption by government officials “unacceptable”, he says, “We have complained but don’t know what is going to come of it.”

The administration woke up to the matter only after the complaint was submitted, he rues.

Manoharpur block development officer (the fourth in the last seven months) Sanjay Pandey says that the sub-divisional office is processing an inquiry order and assured that action will be taken against the guilty.

However, this is not an isolated incident of graft that erodes the trust of people. In November, Governance Now was alerted to irregularities in the payment of Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) funds to women SHGs of Kolpotka panchayat (non-SDP panchayat). Members of the Savitri Mahila Swayamsahayata Sangh accused the woman extension officer (in-charge) of colluding with the bank to fleece them of a part of their SGSY grant (the ‘grant’ is a two-part fund: Rs 1.25 lakh from the Centre and an equal amount as loan from the local branch of a nationalised bank).

While the district administration claims that an official order to file cases of cheating against the bank manager and the block official has been released after inquiry by officials of the rural livelihoods mission, women of the affected SHGs claim they had to stage a sit-in at Manoharpur police station for the police to file an FIR.

Consequences loom large
It is these incidences of graft that have spurred the district administration to set up a vigilance committee under the sub-divisional office involving panchayat members (district, block and panchayat level) and government functionaries.

The pussyfooting on part of those charged with implementation of the plan has also catalysed a far more chilling consequence. Right from the start, the Maoists who had been assumed to have been pushed out of Saranda, issued threats against the 130-km PMGSY road network connecting villages deep inside the forest. The inadequate security and the slack implementation of the project, besidews alleged violation of security orders by the contractor, precipitated a Maoist attack on November 26 in which five construction machineries were torched at Ushariya (report: http://governancenow.com/news/regular-story/maoists-blaze-back-saranda). This took place while work on the 16-km proposed road from Chottanagra to Thalkobad village (in Digha panchayat) was on.

Work on most of the 11 PMGSY roads commission is still in the fledgling stage.

The only visible success is a 1-km stretch of freshly laid concrete on the 2.85-km road from Dodhari village to Selai (both in Gangda panchayat).

Mangal Kumhar, the site in-charge appointed by the private contractor, says: “The road is on a kuccha stretch, built with MGNREGS funds a couple of years ago. But the panchayat sevak, who was in charge of releasing funds, siphoned off money and is absconding since. But we will ensure that the road is delivered on time.”

But not everyone is taking too kindly to his optimism. Dushashan Cherwa, the mukhiya of Gangda panchayat, and Sudhir Hembrom, a resident of Selai, allege that the road construction has not been all smooth-sailing. “With no check, Kumhar and his patrons are flouting all guidelines for construction. Local strongmen are backing him,” Cherwa says.

Hembrom claims the road was built on weak foundations in parts. “Government money is being filched by vested interests while the state seems to be looking the other way,” he says.

A silver lining
While the bad news from Saranda keeps mounting, there have been developments that fuel hope that the development plan may yet give people of Saranda deliverance. The first of the proposed 10 hubs of government delivery, the integrated development centre at Digha, seems all set for a March inauguration. After missing two deadlines, work began on the site in October and there have been no hold-ups so far.

Gurpreet Singh, an overseer for the firm executing the project, says barring a lull he anticipates around the end of last week of December (owing to Christmas and New Year; there is a significant Christians population among the tribals in Saranda), work is expected to continue unhindered. Many other development projects (besides those envisaged under SDP) will soon be rolled out early next year, Srinivasan says.

As Saranda turns one, the government needs to take stock of what it has achieved with the amount it has spent so far. There are reasons galore for both concern and hope. In Saranda, for the sake of its tribals caught between landmines and iron ore mines, as well as for the sake of the stated inclusion goals of the government in its fight against the Maoists, it is only prudent that reasons for hope soon outweigh those for concern.