Vasundhara Raje working 16 hours to do what Modi did in Gujarat

Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje during a visit to Udaipur.

There is a real buzz about Vasundhara Raje Scindia's office- a plush, modern three-storey building sitting amid the older colonial-era architecture of the state civil secretariat complex in what used to be the barracks for the Sawai Man Singh Guards-in Jaipur. Stirred out of years of lethargy, civil servants struggle to cope with a boss who is more of a CEO than the chief minister they had expected. Precedents are frowned upon: "She only wants original ideas," says an officer exhausted and evidently exasperated from unending brainstorming sessions with the CM and her unusual advisory council of corporate leaders, technocrats and sociologists. Raje is relentless. "Solutions that failed us for 60 years need to be discarded," she declares.

Two months short of a year into her second stint as Rajasthan chief minister, 61-year-old Raje-interrupted for five years by the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government after she narrowly lost the Assembly polls in 2008-is clearly driven by a compelling need to make it this time. Working a punishing 16-hour-a-day schedule, she is intent on emulating governance and political strategies that returned Shivraj Singh Chouhan to a third successive stint as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and brought Narendra Modi four successive wins in Gujarat and eventually catapulted him to the prime minister's office in Delhi.

Ambition and a distinct sense of urgency mark every action since she resumed office. Three days before flying out to organise an investors' meet in Singapore on October 11, Raje rolled out a new business policy holding out the promise of tax concessions that followed friendlier labour and land acquisition laws crafted to lure investors. Days earlier, demonstrating her intent to transform Rajasthan, she personally monitored the removal of 1,050 structures, including 12 Hindu temples, in an unprecedented three-week demolition drive to clear land for the interminably delayed Rs 870-crore Jaipur Ring Road project.

The Maharani may be well and truly on the move. Prodded, perhaps even alarmed in a measure, by the unexpected setback of losing three of four seats the ruling BJP held in the September 13 bypolls, Raje and her thinly populated team of close confidantes, including Chief Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, Additional Chief Secretary C.S. Rajan and Secretary Tanmay Kumar quickly shifted gear. The 10 months of 'idling', over what the CM likes to describe as formulating "lasting remedies" to rescue Rajasthan from the brink of a Bihar-like situation, are over. "People are fed up with stagnation," Raje told INDIA TODAY (see interview). However, with Mehrishi being appointed Union finance secretary, she will now have to rejig her team.

All this has been in the works since she returned to Jaipur in December 2013. Within a month, in January this year, Raje's government had readied key changes to the Industrial Disputes Act, Apprentices Act, Factories Act, Contract Labour Act and Boilers Act to make the state a preferred business destination. Tardy land acquisitions, too, earlier involving procedures extending over a minimum of 58 months, are being speeded up and made more cost-effective. The amendments, she hopes, will make Rajasthan "a fertile habitat for job creation".

In February, Raje launched an all new Livelihood Training Programme that aims to equip 15 lakh young women and men with 'employable' skills in sync with the requirements of industry and service sector investments she hopes to attract in the coming months.

There are distinct echoes of Modi's Gujarat as well as Chouhan's Madhya Pradesh in the course Raje's Rajasthan has set for itself. There's a red carpet being rolled out and private investors are already queuing up. An ambitious Rs 100,000 crore plan to construct four- and sixlane motorways to replace nearly 20,000 km of the existing state highways, besides improving rural link roads, drew in over 100 prospective investors against the official invitee list of 70 at a presentation in Delhi on August 30. Unlike many of the UPA's highway projects still stuck in bureaucratic red tape and insurmountable cost overruns, Raje government is promising viability gap funding (VGF) where projected toll collections are insufficient to make good on the investment.

Also, encouraged by the non-conventional energy sector's previously undemonstrated capacity to chip in with an extra 1,200 MW when the demand for power peaked in the face of the delayed monsoon this July, the state decided to 'go the whole hog' on solar and wind power. Power minister Gajendra Singh Khimsar, a key member of Raje's minuscule 12-man Cabinet, is targeting 25,000 MW in solar power alone over the next five years. And this exclusively from private enterprise, including power generated through rooftop solar panels on homes with arrangements in place for the state power utility to purchase via reverse metering.

There is a veritable bundle of other social programmes in the works. The Bhamashah Scheme, launched formally on August 6 in Udaipur, for the first time recognises women as heads of their households and allows for the direct disbursal of all subsidies to their bank accounts with the added benefit of Rs 30,000 as health insurance and Rs 3 lakh in the event of serious illness. To ease the burden on the understaffed and overworked state health infrastructure, plans are underway to rope in the private sector in rolling out mobile dispensaries to rural areas.

The Chief Minister's wish list also includes corporate participation in "one fully staffed and functioning senior secondary school" in each of the 9,000 panchayat areas.

Many believe that Raje may be attempting the impossible in trying to resurrect an oversized state like Rajasthan while she remains reluctant to devolve power or delegate responsibility beyond the few men she trusts. She heads a 12-man Cabinet that still includes Public Health Minister Sanwar Lal Jat, who was elected and sworn in as a member of the Lok Sabha in May.

Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in Rajasthan, says Raje's hesitation in expanding her Cabinet is making things difficult. "There is a feeling that the state government is slow and inaccessible," he says, pointing to the CM's failure to appoint ministers to crucial departments, including industries and urban developments. Raje holds on to as many as 46 portfolios, including the crucial home department since January when the incumbent minister Kailash Meghwal was elected Speaker of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly. This has often led to charges of inaction like her complacency in posting a superintendent of police to a prominent district such as Kota for months until the abduction and murder of a sevenyear-old boy on October 10.

Her overarching faith in employing private enterprise to drive change in the state also finds many critics. State Congress President Sachin Pilot, freshly enthused after winning three of the four bypolls in September, insists Raje's policies tantamount to the "state abdicating its own responsibility". Even corporate leaders such as Biocon MD Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who is a part of the CM's council, seems a trifle wary: "I'm sure no government will have extreme reliance on any one business or economic model. Private-public participation (PPP) has to be both transparent and equitable to work successfully." Varsha Joshi of the Jaipur-based Institute of Development Studies too warns against a blind push for PPP. "Bureaucratic hurdles in implementation are well known," she points out.

However, justifying her 'private push', Raje cites the abysmal finances she inherited for the second time. Her confidence clearly flows from the success her first (2003-2008) government had in turning around Rajasthan's fiscal health-cutting the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) deficit from 6.9 to 1.75 per cent; improving the revenue deficit from 4.44 to a 0.85 per cent surplus. In 2008, the Raje government demitted office leaving in the treasury an impressive Rs 3,500 crore. That, she says, was squandered away to pay for Gehlot's unbridled populism.

Amid her many critics, Raje has no dearth of admirers with undying faith in her ability to turn things around. Manipal Global Education Services chairman Mohandas Pai, who is also on the CM's advisory council, is confident that she will make things work with the private sector through viability gap funding. Manish Sabharwal, head of Teamlease Services Ltd, too, is optimistic: "This CM succeeded one of the most populist regimes in the history of Rajasthan. I think she has internalised an important lesson that voters have changed."

Though her second tryst with power is still to begin bearing fruit, many like Pai believe that Raje has come the closest to doing for Rajasthan what Modi did for Gujarat. Her challenge will be to pull it off.

Follow the writer on Twitter @rohit0

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