UP is going down

Despite having received the largest quantum of Central aid of all the states since Independence, Uttar Pradesh is today a barely dormant social volcano primed to blow. The stats say it all.

By Suvrokamal Dutta

Notwithstanding the fact that a number of India’s prime ministers have hailed from this state, Uttar Pradesh is in a shambles. Its economic and social fabric is disintegrating due to mismanagement, bureaucratic red-tapism and corruption. Politics and the dereliction of the political system are the root causes for this state of affairs.

UP has, since Independence, been receiving the maximum amount of Central assistance of any state in India. The total plan outlay for the state during 2001-02 was Rs 4,972.77 crore. In macro management of agriculture, Central aid was Rs 184.18 crore. For the oilseeds programme in UP, Central aid for 1999-2000 was Rs 14.37 crore. Totalled up, the amount of Central assistance that UP received from 1947 to 1990 could feed 100 crore hungry mouths for 50 years.

The irony is that even after being injected with such a gargantuan amount, the annual growth rate of the state is below 3.5 per cent; its financial deficit per day is around Rs 22.8 crore; the daily deficit of the state government’s financial resource is around Rs 54.25 crore; interest on loans per person is about Rs 6,745; approximately 31 per cent of the people live below the poverty line. Till 1990, only 3.5 per cent of the state government’s annual budget was earmarked for development programmes. This rose marginally to 5.5 per cent starting 1991, but on the ground the hike seems to have made no difference.

Power cuts in UP are in the range of 10-12 hours a day. About 40 per cent of the villages in its remote areas have either no electricity or get their power supply for three to four hours a day. This remains the situation today, despite a World Bank study report in the 1980s that said that water resources in UP were so large that, if tapped properly, no part of the state would suffer from drought, and surplus power would be generated. Rainwater harvesting alone can provide water to 70 per cent of the villages, and the quantum of solar energy, if tapped, would be sufficient for domestic power requirements.

The state’s Waterworks Department Report for 2005-06 states that groundwater sources in 36 districts are unfit for drinking. Nearly 70 per cent of the state’s166 million people lack access to safe drinking water. In fact, health problems in UP have assumed such serious proportions that about 2,300 cancer patients visit the King George’s Medical College Hospital in Lucknow each month. UP scores high in percentile population measurements with regard to murder, looting, rape, child abuse, gang war, robbery, and so on. Human rights are conspicuous by their absence: at the end of 2004-05, says an unofficial report, the state topped the number of fake encounter deaths with 68 cases. (The all-India total was 109.)

UP today is a barely dormant social volcano that has long been primed to blow. If that were to happen, it could well spell social and economic disaster of enough magnitude to take down other regions. The social and economic balkanisation taking place in the state today is dangerous not only to the state itself but to a much larger demography of the country to which it connects.