Long before the UPA government at the Centre drafted the food security bill, the idea occurred to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati. In 2008, she launched what is referred to as the Mukhyamantri Mahamaya Aarthik Madad Yojana (MMAMY) scheme, to the benefit of millions of the state?s below-poverty line (BPL) population. Under the programme, the Centre?s Rs 300 per person subsidy on food for BPL families is being directly credited to NREGA bank accounts of these BPL families, as defined in the central and state government lists.
Apart from central list of BPL families, 30 lakh more such families in UP now enjoy this subsidy from the state?s coffers, which according to secretary-information Vijay Shankar Pandey, will cost the state government Rs 4,000 crore.
This is not the only change in India?s most politically significant state, where a whirlwind of public-private partnerships (PPP) is changing the way things are done.
Contracts for over 25,000 mw of power generation projects have been given out this year and the country?s largest expressway is being planned. At the helm of affairs, are not ministers of the BSP government, but a core group of hand-picked bureaucrats who seem to have perfected the chief minister?s plan to separate governance from party politics.
At the top of the league is Shashank Shekhar Singh. The only cabinet secretary in any state government in India, Singh was an Army pilot with a long and successful career in civil bureaucracy. He was commissioned in the Army in 1972 and can count current army chief VK Singh as a batchmate from the National Defence Academy.
In 1979, Singh arrived in Uttar Pradesh on deputation to fly VIPs in the state-owned chopper. Soon, he became director (civil aviation), a rather grandiose title to what is essentially maintaining a few small airplanes and a couple of helicopters. His lucky break came during Romesh Bhandari?s stint as state governor during President?s rule in the early 1990s, when he was appointed secretary to the governor.
Singh is known to be a taskmaster and has always assessed the situation correctly. Under the Mulayam Singh Yadav regime, Singh consistently refused to turn approver in the Taj corridor case. When Mayawati came to power in 2007, his stand paid off.
Singh occupies a plush set of offices at the state secretariat, variously known as Shastri Bhawan and Annexe. The Army style is part of governance, as evidenced in the decisive response in the Tappal land acquisition row. He also routinely pulls up officers who do not conform to his way of doing things. His clout can be gauged from the fact that despite a running battle with BSP MP and Mayawati?s key political aid Satish Mishra, Singh calls the shots in the secretariat.
One of the first things he did was to centralise all transfers and postings. No MLA, minister or party worker in the state can swing this for you; only Singh?s writ runs.
?In a state like Uttar Pradesh, that is a huge amount of patronage at your disposal,? said a disgruntled bureaucrat who was recently denied a central posting. His team of bureaucrats with impeccable service records imposes this rule rather strictly. One of Singh?s chief confidants and right hand man is additional cabinet secretary Net Ram. An officer belonging to the scheduled castes (SC) category, Ram grew close to Singh in the last three years, when Ram was principal secretary and witness to the feud between Singh and Mishra. He threw in his lot with Singh and was made additional Cabinet secretary when Pandey was removed. He implements most of the decisions taken at the top levels of government.
The state?s most visible officer is Navneet Sehgal, a 1989 batch IAS officer who is secretary to chief minister and heads the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation and Jal Nigam. A chartered accountant by training, Sehgal was DM Lucknow during Mayawati?s last stint as chief minister and was one of her first appointees in 2007.
Sehgal handles the state?s massive power reforms and is credited with many of the out-of-the-box ideas like the franchisee distribution system in the sector. ?Well, we advertise but don?t like to blow our own trumpet,? he says.
When it comes to law and order, Mayawati banks on old faithful Kunwar Fateh Bahadur, principal secretary (home & appointments) from the 1981 batch. Again an SC officer, he has the distinction of heading 53 departments in the state government. So pervasive is his influence that before the 2009 general elections, former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami ordered him transferred out in the ?interest of free and fair elections.? Mayawati complied, but Bahadur was back the day the elections were over.
The one officer, however, who stands out from the pack is secretary (information) Vijay Shankar Pandey. He shot to fame in the 1990s for waging a crusade against corrupt officers in the state, leading to the indictment of Akhand Pratap Singh, who was reportedly close to former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. This was enough to endear Pandey to Mayawati. He was rehabilitated as additional cabinet secretary in 2007. In the feud between Shashank Shekhar Singh and Satish Mishra, Pandey reportedly tilted towards Mishra, and found himself shunted off as secretary )information). However, he has been made in charge of the MMAMY, and is important to Mayawati?s ideal of running an administration free of petty corruption.
Bureaucrats close to the chief minister are nothing new in India, but the power they wield in Uttar Pradesh is quite something else. Over the next three stories, we will see how Mayawati?s game-changing reforms are being run by this group of people, their influence quite out of proportion with their stakes in popular politics.