Jairam bats for civil society in CAPART reform row

Reforms in the Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) have got an impetus with Jairam Ramesh taking charge of the rural development ministry. It was stuck because of differences between bureaucrats and civil society experts.

Ramesh has given a green signal to the appointment of non-bureaucrats to top posts at CAPART that disburses Rs 100 crore annually to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but has been criticised as a decadent and corrupt organisation. He has also accepted some key recommendations of a committee, set up two years ago under the chairmanship of Planning Commission member Mihir Shah, that were hanging fire due to opposition from bureaucrats.

The committee, set up by former rural development minister C P Joshi in 2009, had suggested CAPART be made autonomous, given a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore, and to induct professionals from banks, NGOs, institutions in rural development and other government departments, among other things.

“This was our radical suggestion to get professional hands into CAPART,’’ said Ashwini Kumar, a social scientist with Tata Institute of Social Sciences and one of the experts in the committee.

Rural development secretary B K Sinha had supported the stand, but hawks among the bureaucrats in the ministry, which included the then director general of CAPART, Haleem Khan, opposed. Even, Arvind Mayaram, financial advisor in the ministry, was also seen to be on the other side.

Denying this, Mayaram said, “While Khan as the director general may have had justification in protecting his turf, he himself was all for non-bureaucrats. I only demanded that qualifications be defined properly to get the right kind of people.”

According to Kumar, a canard was spread in the prime minsiter’s office and before the parliamentary standing committee that these activists and Sinha were eyeing for the top job in CAPART and the latter as a post-retirement option.

Khan had opposed the formation of sub committees, with CAPART members like me saying there could be conflict of interests, said Kumar. After a clash between Sinha and Khan, the former backed out, while the then minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, decided against antagonising either bureaucrats or activists .

He roped in the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) at the behest of Khan (now disinvestment secretary) to do a third-party scrutiny of the recommendations. IRMA did not accept the report, thus putting an end to the two-year efforts.

Now, with Ramesh at the helm of affairs, Shah is back in the driving seat. Ramesh not only invited Shah and National Advisory Council member N C Saxena on his very first day at the Krishi Bhawan, he also wrote to Shah, saying the CAPART reform process was on course.

Sinha told Business Standard that the reforms were on. However, he declined to comment on whether non-bureaucrats would be appointed to top positions. The minister was taking a view on the matter, he said. Khan did not respond to emailed queries.

Pooran Pandey, former head of VANI, an association of NGOs, said: “It would be the greatest thing if people inclined towards the subject are given the job rather than to confine development policy making and implementation to bureaucrats.”

But Kumar sounded cautious: “Ramesh may have opened doors for the civil society much like Anna Hazare, but we must wait and see who he brings in.”