Whenever the former Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh stopped his car to chat with journalists as he left the Parliament compound, it would be a time of anxiety for his officials.
No, India’s most influential rural development minister would not reveal any state secrets. But his marathon of meetings with journalists would inevitably cause delays in important meetings in his office. And on at least three occasions he missed his flight to Patna.
Raghuvansh babu, as he was known, loved to talk. But it worked more.
He is the anonymous architect of India’s largest welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee National Act (MGNREGA). The rural employment guarantee scheme that emerged as a result has survived the regime change in the Center, attracted a record funding allocation of Rs 1 lakh crore this year and emerged as a lifeline for millions of migrant workers in an economy hit by Covid. -19.
While the National Advisory Council (NAC) led by Sonia Gandhi had drafted the outline, Singh gave it a critical push. MGNREGS faced an unusual delay because at least three congressional heavyweights weren’t fully convinced of its usefulness and saw the program as a cauldron of leaking public funds.
One afternoon, as the president of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Sonia Gandhi, was passing by the Central Hall of Parliament, Singh, desperate, approached her and informed her about the excessive delay in the development of the plan.
Within minutes, Gandhi summoned then-Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who headed the Group of Ministers (GoM) at MGNREGA, and told him to accelerate the project. The files began to move faster and India’s first job guarantee scheme was implemented in 200 districts in February 2006, two years after the UPA came to power.
A man of undisputed integrity, Singh was entrusted with the key ministry of the social sector amid a flurry of welfare activities that would soon transform welfare patterns for poor Indians and was later hailed as the hallmark of the era of the UPA. Rural welfare was also politically critical as the all-powerful NAC focused heavily on the sector.
Singh, a low-key politician, once sent a letter to then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accusing a high-ranking cabinet minister of being “garib-virodhi” (anti-poor).
The then Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, tried to mediate. Ahluwalia met with Singh to tell him that the chief minister was hurt by his letter and would like to accompany him to some of the villages to monitor the progress of the rural programs.
“No,” Singh replied, “you should come with me in midsummer in northern Bihar and stay in a village without electricity for at least three nights. Only then would I understand what it means to live in an Indian village. ”
At a cabinet meeting, Singh verbally made the complex calculations of the funding requirements for the rural work plan, leaving almost all of his colleagues stunned. A minister, unaware that Singh has a doctorate in mathematics and taught the subject before joining politics, asked him, “When did you learn such good mathematics?”
Singh joked, “I learned it before you were born!”
Raghuvansh babu was also instrumental in launching the pension scheme for the disabled and widows and expanded the 1985 National Social Assistance Program (renamed the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Plan) to include all people below the threshold. of poverty for the old-age pension. This also proved to be a key intervention for the rural poor, who can no longer work, and continues to this day.
His original proposal, granting a pension to young widows, could not be approved, as the then secretary of expenses, Sushma Nath, demolished his arguments and convinced the entire cabinet that young widows should receive technical training and not subsidies.
And it was during his tenure that the government began the process of amending India’s archaic land acquisition law to make it more farmer-friendly. The controversial new law, however, took final form during the UPA’s second term.
A five-term MP from Bihar’s Vaishali constituency, he was a prized upper-caste asset of a party surviving on backward caste politics. He was a loyal deputy to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) boss Lalu Prasad from the late 1980s until he resigned from the RJD on September 11 via handwritten letter from his hospital bed at AIIMS, Delhi .
His political life began as secretary of the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) in the Sitamarhi district of Bihar. He entered the Bihar assembly in 1977 and rose through the ranks as minister and vice president before winning Vaishali in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections. Between 1996 and 1998, he was Minister of State for the Union (independent position), Livestock and Dairy, Food and Consumer Affairs in the United Front government.
Intellectual power of the party, rejected the open offers of Congress and other parties for a long time. In 2009, Congress wanted to reappoint him Minister of Rural Development, even though the RJD was no longer an ally of the UPA. But Prasad disagreed.
Singh’s association with Prasad dates back more than three decades. And he’s also perhaps the only leader who could openly criticize Prasad and walk away unscathed. He was once asked in an interview how he would rate Prasad’s achievements. Singh replied that in political management, his boss would get a perfect 10 out of 10, but as a manager, he deserved nothing more than a zero.
Singh’s baits inside the RJD took the opportunity to paint it in low light before Prasad. They took the paper clippings to the head of RJD, demanding action against the former math teacher. However, the head of RJD disappointed them. “Yes, he shouldn’t have said such a thing publicly, but whatever he said is not wrong either,” Prasad said.
The Rajput leader was last able to beat Vaishali in 2009, but the caste equations worked against him in the next two general elections, leaving him confined to the party’s organization as a vice president and an occasional visitor to Delhi for medical check-ups.
For many, he was the face of development at RJD for his stellar jobs as rural development minister from 2004-2009, but he would almost always be overshadowed by the more charismatic Prasad. But they bonded well.
Prasad, after Singh’s resignation, urged him not to join another party. “A letter written by you is circulating in the media. I can not believe it. I, my family and the RJD family want him to recover soon. We will talk after he recovers. You’re not going anywhere. Just be careful “.
A simpleton (his brother saw Delhi for the first time after Raghuvansh babu became Union minister), Singh once gave five pieces of advice, written on a paper napkin, on how to run the government of Bihar on a first-rate flight. Minister Nitish Kumar. He organized his only annual party in Delhi at Makar Sankantri, did not carry a cell phone for a long time, and could surprise his office visitors by reciting the entire Trilokinath-katha, a religious hymn.
This correspondent met him for the first time in 2002. In his office, Raghuvansh babu was eating khichdi for lunch. I gave him my business card. He took it and started using it like a toothpick. Then, for the next hour, the former math teacher taught me intricate details of the cultural and social similarities between Bengal and Bihar.
He knew my condition better than I did.
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