Is India evolving inter-state ‘diplomacy’: learning best practices despite competition!
Mumbai: it is commonly known how Bihar adopted the bicycle scheme for girl students from Chhattisgarh where the experiment first began and turned into a huge success, even impacting the status of the girls in remote villages. After Bihar’s success even Jharkhand and West Bengal took up the same thread but with varying success levels. According to recent reports emerging from the India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum in Mumbai, State governments are now increasingly keen to go beyond political affiliations and learn best practices from each other to improve their performance. The examples of such cooperation even in times of great inter-state competition are many – Madhya Pradesh has sent teams of officers to Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat to study various schemes and projects, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said. Notably, while Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bihar is ruled by an alliance of the BJP and the Janata Dal (United), and Andhra Pradesh by the Congress party.
“I am writing and sharing our successful schemes, including public service guarantee schemes,” Chouhan said. Oommen Chandy, the Congress chief minister of Kerala also revealed that his state was looking at other states to adopt their best practices. Giving an example he said ‘immediately after I took over, we sent health officers to Andhra Pradesh to study health insurance schemes of that state in order to implement a larger project in Kerala.’
Chandy, a Congress CM told the press that his team is also in talks with the government of Tamil Nadu to build an industrial corridor between the cities of Kochi (Kerala) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), on the lines of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. An alliance led by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam defeated the incumbent Congress-Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam coalition in elections this year in Tamil Nadu.
Another Congress chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan of Maharashtra, said his state was willing to adopt successful development models from elsewhere. ‘We are sharing success stories, as well as where we failed. Maharashtra has inspired the (rural) employment guarantee scheme and the right to information Act’ adopted by the Centre, Chavan said. Even though the chief minister admitted his state has lost some industrial projects to neighbouring Gujarat he added ‘We have sent our officers to Gujarat to study water conservation measures.’