PEOPLE’S CM
Pawan Kumar Chamling recently achieved the distinction of being the longest-serving chief minister in the country. While there’s no serious threat to his position, Chamling knows that he needs to be more cautious of both opponents and allies than ever bef
Pawan Kumar Chamling becomes India’s longest serving chief minister. A look at his political journey
On the rainy evening of April 23, Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling was anxiously waiting in the living room of his official residence in Gangtok for a letter from the PWD department. Two days ago, during his 32-day-long statewide visit, he had met a 32-year-old mother of three at Bermiok, West Sikkim. She had recently lost her husband, had no source of regular income, and sought the CM’s help to find her a livelihood. Chamling, who travels with his entourage of ministers and secretaries during such mass connect programmes, immediately asked the PWD secretary to give her a job in his department at a monthly salary of Rs 9,000. It was not just a politician’s promise to be forgotten later. He wanted to see the appointment letter.
It’s this micro management of governance and direct connect with the people of the state that explains Chamling’s incredible achievement of becoming the longest-serving chief minister of the country. On April 28, he eclipsed the record of Jyoti Basu, who helmed the neighbouring West Bengal for 23 years and 137 days.
Chamling first became the chief minister on December 12, 1994, and since then has returned to power for a fifth consecutive term. According to social and political observers, the leader of the Sikkim Democratic Front doesn’t face any serious threat to his chair. “He is the best option as the Opposition is too weak,” says Komol Singha, head of the department of economics, Sikkim University. A weak opposition alone, however, cannot define Chamling’s uninterrupted reign. Despite allegations of corruption and nepotism levelled against his government by the main opposition party, the Skkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), formed mostly by rebels of the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), Chamling has managed to keep his vote base intact, at least among the rural population, which constitutes 75 per cent of the total population.
Perhaps the 67-year-old CM, who came to power after rebelling against his former mentor and chief minister, Nar Bahadur Bhandari, knows how to keep rebels at bay himself. In 1992, Chamling, then a member of Bhandari’s Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP), dramatically announced his rebellion against the CM by lighting a candle in the assembly to search for democracy. Calling Bhandari an autocrat, he formed his own party, the SDF, mobilised public support and seized power in the 1994 polls. He has
been careful not to allow anyone to sully his image as a champion of democracy—the day he formed his party he announced that no member of his family would ever join politics, and he has kept his word.
From 1994 to his death in 2009, Bhandari remained Chamling’s main political opponent. The SDF’s electoral gains were unprecedented. In 2004, it won 31 of the state’s 32 seats and all in 2009. In 2014, the challenge came from former colleague and head of SKM, Prem Singh Tamang, better known as P.S. Golay, who tried to replicate what Chamling had done to Bhandari. A threetime MLA and a minister in Chamling’s cabinet since 1994, Golay was considered the second most powerful man after Chamling in the party.
The SKM won 10 urban seats, but the SDF’s thrust on “development, peace and security” prevailed over SKM’s rising call for parivartan or change. Later, Chamling wooed seven of the 10 SKM MLAs to join the SDF, taking his party’s tally to 29. What made the road ahead smoother for Chamling was that Golay was convicted in a corruption case during his tenure as a minister and has since been imprisoned. “The 2014 results worked as a wake-up call. A lot of changes had to be factored
Chamling’s biggest critic in recent times has been the BJP. Its general secretary Ram Madhav calls the SDF ‘Sikkim Dictatorial Front’
in and we are working on those now,” says SDF Lok Sabha MP P.D. Rai.
Whether he gets a sixth term or not, there is unanimity even among his critics that Chamling has been rewarded by his voters for bringing about unprecedented development in the state. As per data released by the Union ministry for statistics and programme implementation, Sikkim’s GDP growth has consistently been above the national average and its per capita income is the third highest among states— at Rs 2,10,394, it’s double the national average of Rs 1,03,219. The population below the poverty line has come down to 8 per cent from over 40 per cent when Chamling took charge. “By 2020, we will have one-storeyed pucca house for all, we have almost completed 90 per cent of the work,” says Chamling.
His development model revolves around exploiting the natural advantages of the state—agriculture and tourism. “The state’s agriculture became 100 per cent organic in 2015. Sikkim has emerged as a major producer of cardamoms and the second largest producer of spices in the world,” says Professor Ajay Chhibber, former assistant secretary general for the Asia-Pacific, UN. The state has emerged as a major tourist destination, attracted huge investment from the pharmaceutical industry, earned self sufficiency in power generation through hydro power and is considered one of the best-managed small states in the country. And unlike neighbouring northeastern states, Sikkim has remained peaceful.
“There is no doubt that he is relentless in his mission to develop Sikkim. Unlike most politicians, he is flexible, quick to recognise his mistakes and make amends. He reads a lot and keeps himself abreast of global development models,” says activist Tseten Lepcha, who has been at loggerheads with the CM. The willingness to accept mistakes was evident when Chamling admitted that his red carpet to pharma companies did not yield the desired results in terms of generating employment.
Critics argue that most of his schemes have been populist, but the numbers reflect that these schemes have helped in improving social indicators. The government offers free medical treatment to all within the state. When a patient is referred to hospitals outside the state, they get Rs 2 lakh as assistance from the government. If the patient belongs to the
BPL category, the government will bear the entire expense. The state offers free education till college. There is also 30 per cent reservation for women in government jobs and higher education; 50 per cent seats are reserved for women in urban local bodies and gram panchayats. “We can see a growing number of women in government jobs,” says Dr Sandhya Thapa, head of the sociology department at Sikkim University.
Chhibber counts several other achievements—lowest fertility rate in the country, 100 per cent electrification and sanitation and now a target of 100 per cent literacy by the yearend. “The state has also outperformed the national average on a broad range of social parameters as evidenced in our analysis of the social progress index. Apart from performing well on health and education indices, Sikkim does an exceptional job of ensuring personal rights and safety,” says Amit Kapoor, chairman of the Institute for Competitiveness.
Empowerment of the people through decentralisation and institutional governance has been one of the highlights of Chamling’s tenure. As Rai explains, the slogan of the SDF has been to inspire villagers to take control of their governance. “He has established unique forums of direct civic engagement that include undertaking walks through the state to listen to people and address their concerns,” says Rai.
He has also championed decentralised governance to ensure that people in the remotest parts have their demands met,” says A.K. Shiva Kumar, a development economist who has helped the state government prepare a human development index. Since 1994, the SDF government has introduced several legislations and amendments to strengthen grassroots democracy, increase popular participation in the decisionmaking process, conduct regular elections and maintain activity mapping. “Chamling believes that in the ethnically heterogeneous state, local government can create nonviolent platforms for interethnic and intergroup discussion relating to local issues and allocation of resources,” says Durga Prasad Chettri, who teaches political science at Sikkim University.
Maintenance of social harmony among the three major ethnic groups— Nepali, Bhutia and Lepcha—has been one of the biggest achievements of Chamling. “Chamling, who comes from a modest Nepali background, came to power on the slogan of Bhasha Na, Bhat (it’s not the language, but the food we share that matters), and has been able to provide leadership to diverse sections of society,” says Professor Manish, former head of the department of international relations at Sikkim University.
Despite Chamling’s dominance over the social and electoral landscape of Sikkim, opposition parties are not willing to give up without a fight. The SKM has alleged that the government has failed to provide infrastructure and bring in reforms in the education sector, Congress state president Bharat Basnett alleges that Chamling has diluted provisions of Article 371 (F) meant to protect the indigenous people of Sikkim, that farmers are still using chemical fertiliser smuggled from West Bengal, and the CM is using money and muscle power to win elections. There has also been criticism over lack of infrastructure development, especially road connectivity and public transport. Kapoor dismisses such criticism, claiming that Sikkim has managed to build an extensive network of roads with the length of national highways increasing by more than five times since 2008 and the length of state highways increasing by more than four times during the same time period.
Chamling’s biggest critic in recent times has been the BJP, its ally in the northeast and at the Centre. BJP general secretary Ram Madhav has named Chamling’s party ‘Sikkim Dictatorial Front’’. On his part, Chamling has sent out an indirect warning to his people: beware of communally divisive parties. Political observers, however, don’t see any threat to his government, either from the BJP or the Congress.
Meanwhile, the letter from the PWD department reached the chief minister’s home late in the evening. The woman has been appointed with effect from May 1.