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Corrupt officials, scamsters and entrepreneurs see the drought raging through the state as an opportunity to make a quick buck

By  Uday Mahurkar 

When P.K. Roychowdhary, the secretary in charge of drought relief in Kutch district of Gujarat, went to inspect a relief camp site last week, he got a rude shock. Of the 300-odd labourers supposed to be digging a pond, not even one was in sight. Yet the ledger showed that wages for the 300 labourers -- at Rs 35-40 per worker, that is more than Rs 10,000 a day -- were being drawn from the state's coffers. The loot was allegedly shared by a group of village-level leaders and government personnel handling the relief work.

The drought that has brought misery to Gujarat is proving to be a windfall for a motley band of corrupt officials, scamsters and local politicians. Investigations by India Today reveal the extent of murkiness in the functioning of the drought relief machinery in the state. For example, of the roughly Rs 32 lakh the Government is spending daily -- as wages for the 51,000 labourers at 305 relief sites and fodder subsidies for the 1.46 lakh cattle officially listed at 250-odd cattle camps in Kutch district -- almost Rs 16 lakh is pocketed by village-level leaders and junior officials. In one month, the corruption in just one district is robbing the state Government of more than Rs 4.5 crore. As Navin Joshi, a journalist, says, "Drought is an industry here. Many of the relief camps are virtually ghost sites."

Indeed, drought is an industry. And it is thriving in villages like Fazalwand in Bhuj taluka. When officials raided a relief camp near the village, there were only 60 labourers at the site instead of the 347 listed on the ledger. Even the 60 workers ran away, only to return with village leaders who presented the death certificate of a woman who had died two days earlier, saying that all the 347 labourers had gone to offer condolences to her family. If a death was an excuse in Fazalwand, in Alaiyyawad it was a marriage. When the raiding party reached the site, they were told that all the 408 labourers had gone to attend a marriage. When corruption fails, chutzpah comes to the rescue.

Village leaders say that not only the muster clerk and the supervisor but even high-level officials get a cut from the loot. This is structured corruption, mindful of the hierarchy that is the foundation of babudom in India. While a junior engineer pockets Rs 100 per gang (comprising three to four workers) every week, a supervisor makes just Rs 50 and the muster clerk has to rest content with Rs 20. A village leader got three gangs allotted to him under false names at the same site. Even after paying bribes, he made Rs 250 a day.

Says Roychowdhary: "The irregularities in drought relief works are indeed mindboggling. We are taking firm steps to prevent them." On May 6, the district administration raided 30 relief sites and ordered the closure of 13 because they functioned only on paper. And 19 muster clerks were given marching orders.

The cattle camps set up in the district are also fecund grounds for corruption. The state Government provides a fodder subsidy of Rs 10 for every head of cattle. So, a simple inflation of the cattle figures brings in the moolah. Last week, at one such camp run by the Azad Education Charitable Trust at Sumrasar village, officials found only 419 cattle instead of the 730 registered in the ledger. This means that Rs 3,110 was being pilfered from the state every day. At another camp near Bhuj, there were only 250 cattle although 740 were officially registered.

Queries about the missing animals are met with a stock reply: the cattle have gone for grazing or in search of water. Says Abdul Karim, 59, a shepherd who runs a cattle camp near Bhuj: "The drought is a golden chance to make a quick buck. It is for the officials to stop this looting."

Senior officials admit that the exchequer is being looted but plead their inability to stop the scam because of the Government's insistence on "humane treatment while dealing with the drought-affected". In fact, to ensure that relief reaches the grassroots, the state Government has vested district and taluka-level Drought Relief Committees with powers to start relief work or set up cattle camps. This has enhanced the clout of elected representatives over senior officials in sanctioning drought relief works.

Though the Government's intention to help the needy cannot be faulted, this experiment of delegation of powers has not worked, at least not in Kutch. In many cases, unscrupulous elements have lobbied with the elected representatives in the committees to corner large helpings of the relief cake.

If the drought is helping the unscrupulous make money, there are many who are benefitting through honest -- though sometimes questionable -- means. Like Kanabhai Parmar, 41, of Rahpar town in Kutch who makes money by selling the skins and bones of dead cattle. In March, Parmar and four others took the annual contract for disposing the dead animals of a local cattle home by agreeing to pay Rs 5.85 lakh. Last year, the same contract had gone for Rs 4.75 lakh.

Parmar jacked up the contract money on two counts: he expects more cattle to die in a drought year and he expects a second bad monsoon. The skin and bones of an average-sized cow fetch Rs 300. Parmar and his four partners expect at least 4,000 cattle to die over the next year. This would earn each of them an annual profit of about Rs 1 lakh. Says a philosophical Parmar: "It is indeed an irony that this drought is a good source of livelihood for many like us."

But the biggest business of all is water supply. Rajkot, the business hub in Saurashtra, needs 2.4 crore gallons of water every day in normal times. But the Rajkot Municipal Corporation is able to supply only 1.4 crore gallons, sometimes even less. This shortfall of 1 crore gallons a day unfolds tremendous opportunities for enterprising individuals. A new crop of water sellers supply at least 40 lakh gallons of water to the city every day. At Rs 100 for 1,000 gallons, it means a daily business of Rs 4 lakh in the private water market. Out-of-job farm hands, bankrupt farmers, autorickshaw drivers, even the odd coolie are rushing into this market.

Jayantibhai Patel, 38, a farmer from Motavada village near Rajkot owns 100 acres of land. But last year's crop failure had left him virtually broke. As the water scarcity heightened, Patel attached a 5,000-litre tank to his tractor and started hawking water in the parched city. Now he makes almost Rs 300 a day, enough to keep his stove burning. "The scarcity of water might be a curse for many but for me it has proved to be a blessing in disguise," he says.

So lucrative is the business that nearly 1,500 autorickshaw drivers in the city have stopped ferrying people and got their vehicles fitted with 600-litre tanks. They now supply water in different parts of Rajkot. Some borewell owners around Rajkot, who feed the tankers that supply water to the city, make up to Rs 2,000 a day. In Gujarat, everybody loves a good drought.

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