How could things come to such a pass that the opportunity for the government to ease into the confidence of Saranda’s disaffected seems to be almost entirely lost? The pathetic state of state administration could offer an explanation.

Way back on June 14, the high court at Ranchi ordered the suspension of 166 officers selected in 12 exams of the Jharkhand public service commission for alleged irregularities. Baidyanath Oraon, the block development officer, certification officer and child development programme officer at Manoharpur with the additional charge of block development officer at Anandpur, a neighbouring block, was one of those placed under suspension.

When union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh wrote in October last year to Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda urging him to push for speed in the implementation of the Saranda Action Plan (since renamed Saranda Development Plan or SDP), it was barely two months after state and central police forces had “sanitised” the sal and iron ore rich region in the state’s West Singhbhum district of the Maoists who had held it for nearly a decade.

Nine months later, it is clear that Ramesh’s urgency has failed to translate on the field. Even as the local administration rushed to meet the short-term goals of the plan, after delays of over six months, news of the Maoists planning to take back Saranda made front-page headlines (Prabhat Khabar, June 25). On June 24, the banned ultra-left outfit stuck posters and banners at the Lotapahad railway station, one of the forgotten little stops in Saranda. Meanwhile, the people in the villages of the six panchayats that are to benefit from SDP are still waiting for some veneer of the Rs 264 crore package to appear. Some have received cycles and solar lamps, as promised under the plan. While the government insists that more than 2,000 of the 7,000 families identified in the villages have received funds under the Indira Awaas Yojana (rural housing grant), there is little to show for it in the villages.

“Some of the beneficiaries have got only the first instalment and have built mud houses. There is no money for the roof, however. In the absence of roofs, these half-constructed mud huts have already begun crumbling in the rains. It will not be long before the monsoon washes away all the labour,” says Mangal Singh Mundari, a resident of Hatanaburu village in Digha panchayat. Of the other welfare schemes of the central government dovetailed into the plan, the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) remains as shoddy as before, insists Mundari who is also a field-level functionary of the scheme. “The word in the villages is: narega karega toh marega (“If you do NREGA work, you’ll end up trapped”). I have not been paid myself since January,” he says.

“Payment is an issue with MGNREGS as funds have run low,” says a block-level official at Manoharpur, the governing block for most of Saranda. But he is unable to explain why. “There is rampant corruption in MGNREGS work. No one cares to monitor what is happening at the work site, how many workers are coming,” says Bilarman Kandulna, the panchayat samiti (panchayat body liaising with the block office) representative from Digha. “Bills of contractors have been paid without checking if any work has been done or if the work is of the desired quality,” Kandulna alleges. It hardly comes as a shock when he says that no one has heard of national rural livelihoods mission (NRLM), another central government scheme that was to be bolstered by SDP.

How could things come to such a pass that the opportunity for the government to ease into the confidence of Saranda’s disaffected seems to be almost entirely lost? The pathetic state of state administration could offer an explanation. On June 14, the high court at Ranchi ordered the suspension of 166 officers selected in 12 exams of the Jharkhand public service commission for alleged irregularities. Baidyanath Oraon, the block development officer, certification officer and child development programme officer at Manoharpur with the additional charge of block development officer at Anandpur, a neighbouring block, was one of those placed under suspension.

“The implementation of government schemes will suffer if the local administration does not have enough personnel. It is another matter that efficiency and honesty of the said officers is also a factor. But even efficient and honest officers, if not in enough numbers, will not be able to handle the load of administrative work. Manoharpur was short of staff any way, before the order came,” says Sushil Barla, a tribal rights activist and Congress worker.

It also doesn’t help if the various branches of administration work at cross-purposes. There have been reports in the local media of a growing distance between the forest department and the civil administration. The forest department has registered a case against an official of the Manoharpur block for unauthorised entry into the reserve forest area. The official had gone to Dumangdiri village in the interiors of Saranda on the order of the deputy commissioner of West Singhbhum for a survey that would have helped the implementation of the forest rights act. “The deadline was tight and there was no time to obtain the permission required after the order came,” informs the official.

“Even if the DC’s order exonerates the official, the case against the villagers who accompanied him remains. There is no reprieve for them. Now, does this not increase the trust deficit between the state and the people of Saranda?” asks Barla.

“It is discouraging for any official to do any kind of work in a situation where there is a threat of the Maoists. But then if a government department adds to the burden, is it so much of a shock that no one really wants to go and implement the SDP in villages?” asks the official.