It is not often that top politicians get to see life in the raw deep inside tribal hamlets that can be reached only if one treks for long hours or takes a bumpy ride by vehicles that are little better than ramshackle contraptions. The Aruvikkara Assembly by-election is turning out to be an occasion for such a rare reality check for many politicians. Prominent among them is Chief Minister Oommen Chandy who has been pushing himself to the limits doing the rounds of the many Scheduled Tribe hamlets and Scheduled Caste colonies in Aruvikkara.
On the first day of his visit to the constituency, the Chief Minister spent as many as 16 hours moving from one tribal hamlet to another, the first Chief Minister to do so if one were to believe the local people. From the way Mr. Chandy was received with song and dance by the Adivasis, anybody could guess that considerable preparation had gone into the series of events. There were Adivasis waiting to receive the Chief Minister with their drums and dance and ready to feed him tapioca and their special chutneys.
Aruvikkara virtually borders the capital city and many who travelled with the Chief Minister could not help wondering whether the harsh life that Adivasis lived just a whiff away from the seat of power had registered where it should.
Hardly a month after the Supreme Court ruled that Aadhaar cards should not be made mandatory for benefits under various government schemes, the Palakkad district authorities have decided that the possession of the Aadhaar card is mandatory if a person is to get any benefit from the proposed mass contact programme of Chief Minister Ooomen Chandy in the district this week.
Apparently, the import of the Supreme Court directive and the subsequent instructions from the Union government are yet to sink into the district administration. At a news conference recently, District Collector P. Marykutty insisted that benefits granted at the mass contact programme would be credited to the bank accounts of only those who possessed the Aadhaar card.
When scribes brought the Supreme Court order and the subsequent Union government directives to her attention, the District Collector was heard wondering aloud why people were not obtaining Aadhaar cards when various official agencies were collecting more information from them.
Although she finally said that people without the Aadhaar would be welcome at the function, officials accompanying her were in no doubt that those who possessed Aadhaar cards should turn up at the event with the cards.
A few candid observations made by the Fifth State Finance Commission about the functioning of local bodies in Kozhikode district seem to have earned the wrath of the Mayor and the Kozhikode district panchayat president.
Commission chairman B.A. Prakash had observed that the civic bodies had failed to mobilise their own resources, and that the three-tier local bodies in the district were only interested in securing funds from the State government. The commission has been mandated to review the financial position of panchayats and municipalities and make recommendations.
Mayor A.K. Premajam’s complaint was that the commission had overlooked the constraints that limited the manoeuvrability of the local bodies.
District panchayat president Kanathil Jameela’s grievance was that the district panchayat could not possibly implement schemes without getting approval from the Chief Engineer attached to the Local Self-government Department. Both, sources close to them say, were upset because the commission’s observation would create the impression that the two local bodies had not delivered on their promises at a time when preparations were afoot for the three-tier local body polls slated for September-October this year.
(With inputs from
C. Gouridasan Nair
(Thiruvananthapuram),
K.A. Shaji (Palakkad), and Biju Govind (Kozhikode)
