Foresight and an ability to read the actual state of affairs on the ground are essential for planners to bring about basic social transformation.
THE Nathpa Jhakri Hydroelectric Project has been publicised as an engineering marvel. It is supposed to generate 1,500 mega watt of power; it is claimed that its head race tunnel, which is 25 kilometres long, is the longest in the country and probably in the whole of Asia. It has four desilting chambers each with a diameter of 21 metres; in fact, the project official refers to the desilting unit with an amount of pride. "It comprises four chambers," a leading journal reported, "each 525 metres long, 16.31 metres wide and 27.5 metres deep, capable of accommodating a nine-storeyed building".
Impressive though this is, the hydroelectric project was nonetheless shut down last year. The reason given was excessive silt in the river Sutlej. The desiltation chambers were obviously not able to cope with the levels of silt in the river in the very first year it was in operation. This shutdown was a major cause for large areas of the northern plains, including the capital of Delhi, going dark.
But the problems of this giant project are not the central issue here. True, it has cost over Rs.8,600 crores, and still remains a rather uncertain source of power, shutting down from time to time, either because of excessive silt in the water or for some other reasons. That is worrying enough, but the real worry is, behind the condition of the Nathpa Jhakri project, is to do with foresight and planning.
It is slowly becoming clear that the silt levels in the Sutlej, particularly the levels in the rainy season, are greater than the capacity of the project's much-vaunted desiltation chambers, and that highlights the real issue that is, frankly, rather frightening; the inability of authorities who succeed in spending over Rs.8,000 crores of public money on this project to foresee the levels of silt that could come down the river.
It is of a piece with a great number of instances of what is clearly an excessive, often obsessive, dependence on statistics and figures over which these `planners' pore and ruminate. It never occurs to them to go to the spot and spend some months there, talk to the local people, watch the river's behaviour during the rains and then use that knowledge to guide them and not only what they churn out from all kinds of documents and papers.
They are not alone in this, and that is the really frightening part. Too many of our planners build worlds around their figures and pie charts, bar charts and tables and all the rest of the paraphernalia that makes their work look impressive; it looks impressive but is frightening, because quite often the worlds they create are figments of their statistical imagination, and bear no relation to the situation on the ground.
Even if the planners do visit areas in the country their visits are what one can only call sanitised visits. They fly in, are driven to some villages, they talk to some pre-selected farmers or other people, hold a meeting with some pre-selected leaders and then return swiftly to their air-conditioned rooms and reams of papers. The visits are little more than cosmetic; undertaken to enable them to say that they have first hand knowledge of actual conditions when they have nothing of the kind.
Even a cursory glance at the many publications of the Planning Commission will reveal the reverence paid to figures, statistics and their interpretation. Those of us who have worked in districts and tramped for days through muddy fields in searing hot weather to find out whether the tubewells installed were working or if a primary health centre had any medicines know what it is actually like, and often are bewildered by the metamorphosis of these conditions into some neat little tables in a publication on what has been done to supply drinking water in rural areas.
It is not that there are not people in the Planning Commission who have first-hand knowledge of conditions in our country; but they are either in a minority or have altered their allegiance and begun to worship at the altar of the statistical deities that are installed in that august organisation.
One makes these statements in sorrow, because in all these years so much could have been done. In the 21st century we who live in the capital of a country that is constantly being hailed as the next economic superpower spend hours in the cruel heat of summer without power, often for hours and hours. Darkness brings even greater torment; it is not only burning hot but one cannot move about except in the feeble light of a candle or a torch.
Yes, there are things called inverters that provide some relief. But they are designed for the odd instances of power failure, usually owing to a fault somewhere, which is set right within a short time. They are not designed, certainly, for power failures that last for several hours.
Could this not have been foreseen? Did it never strike someone in the right positions that, given the rate of growth of the metropolis, provision needed to be made for not just enough but surplus power? Either it was not foreseen, or even if it was, the perceived need was lost in the maze of statistics that swirled about any proposal that may have been made for additional power stations.
This, again, is only an example. But there are many such, and it is the large number of instances where a problem foreseen has been translated into figures and charts and lost somewhere among the numerals and decimal points. One cannot help but recall the wisdom of the late Shunu Sen, acknowledged as one of the greatest marketing chiefs in the country, who once told me that he looked carefully at the charts and graphs given to him and kept them on one side. He had, he said, quietly hired a number of people whose only job was to walk around the streets of a city and find out how certain products were doing, and then tell him. "I got much more valuable information from them," he said, "and based my decisions largely on what they reported."
Foresight and solid realism, an awareness of just what is going on in our villages and towns. In the end, not very much more than that is really what matters. It was knowledge of that kind that visionary statesmen in earlier times used. Statesmen who built up systems of education, or hospitals. It is what lies behind the legends of the Caliph of Baghdad who went around his city at night disguised as a common traveller.
It would be fanciful to suggest that what is being recommended is that the officials in Yojana Bhavan prowl about our cities at night; but what that implies is certainly what would have changed the country in a very basic way. What matters, finally, is the ability to read the actual state of affairs on the ground; to understand, for example, that canals in desert regions can lose water through seepage, that the water lost can surface in shallow pools that evaporate and leave behind salt and chemicals leached from the soil below that destroys crops and makes regions infertile. That problems like this are best resolved by talking to people and working with them.
Until that happens, the irony of being an emerging economic superpower whose capital remains in darkness for hours together will persist.
