The Hindu Business Line : A Swiss model to make the hills come alive

Describing the integrationist approach used by the Swiss in developing their hill regions, P. V. INDIRESAN points out how a simple six-point programme, infused with a commitment to the best quality, can jump-start services to at least the more accessible part of the hill population in India.

LARGE TRANSFORMATIONAL steps are needed to integrate the hill people with the mainstream economy.

There are two models for development of hill people. The common one is the Isolationist. The United States has adopted that approach to protect American Indians and preserve their culture. American Indians have exclusive spaces for themselves, called Reservations, and special laws to govern them. Indian politicians, administrators, intellectuals and social activists, too, favour this approach.

The second, rarely visualised, option is Integrationist. Switzerland and Iceland are its most successful examples. It is an outgoing approach. It is export-oriented and integrates its economy with the rest of the world. While the Isolationist Model excludes outsiders, the Integrationist Model exploits them.

It requires a flight of imagination to visualise our hill people emulating the Swiss — running billion dollar enterprises, for example. Such a future is not easy to achieve but not impossible. However, it requires large transformational steps; small incremental ones will not do.

Hill people are suspicious of outsiders, even if they come with good intentions. To gain their confidence, let us guarantee them six basic needs: For households, 24-hour protected water supply (remember that Cherrapunji too suffers from water shortage in the dry season), modern sanitation and smokeless fuel. For the community, quality schools, hospitals and the Internet. With those offers, persuade them to accept transport connectivity too, about which they are most suspicious.

The implementers of schemes of this nature face two kinds of difficulties: the one-time problem of securing capital (both financial and human), and the perennial problem of generating enough income to sustain those amenities, once they are installed.

We can minimise the starting problem by invoking the statistical truism, the 80-20 rule: If 20 units of effort are needed to serve the first half of a population, 80 more units will be needed to cover the remaining half. For that reason, it would be wise to make a jump-start to service the better accessible half of the population and let natural growth take care of the remaining half. At the present rate of growth, such expansion will take 20 years or more to complete. That may appear long, but when the entire population is targeted right at the start, the initial capital needed will be five times larger. Then, the scheme may never take off; everyone may suffer forever.

The cluster approach

Further, let us consider not individual families or hamlets, but a cluster of hamlets with a population size large enough to support all five community amenities listed above — about 50,000 people. Assuming a population density of 80 per sq km, the area will be about 600 sq km. Once again, by the 80-20 rule, the most accessible half of the population will be within 150 sq km.

Let us further imagine this 150 sq km as a swathe three kilometres on either side of a 25 km road. On such a road, let us locate all of our communal facilities — schools, hospitals, Internet kiosks. In that case, the jump-start involves the construction of about 25 km of hill road, installation of community facilities along that road, and some means of transport for the people who reside in the 3-km belt on either side to access those community facilities.

Ideally, every hamlet within this belt should have motorable roads and bus services too. However, connecting every hamlet is unviable. Hence, instead of connecting every hamlet, let us distribute two mountain bikes per family, about 10,000 mountain bikes in all.

The three household amenities can be generated within each hamlet by water-harvesting and by sewage treatment in biogas digesters. (Generating biogas is a problem in the cold weather but not an intractable one.) As for community facilities, with the road in place, we need not have one in every hamlet. We can plan for large schools each with minimum 1,000 students and Internet connectivity. Hospitals, too, can be expanded, with minimum 50 beds.

Next, we should generate enough income to sustain these services, and also attract enough qualified persons to man them. We learn from the Swiss experience that prosperity comes from selling services to the world, and not by being self-sufficient. We can sell services to the world only when they are of international quality.

Go for best quality

Our hills have any number of modern schools that attract required financial and human capital. We need a national plan for 1,500 such schools to be located in the hills, good enough to attract high-quality faculty and enough fee-paying students to cross-subsidise bright local children. We should plan for healthcare too, in like fashion.

Then, let us set up not the typical sub-standard hill school but high-quality "public schools". Apply the same principle for hospitals, large enough, good enough to attract paying clients, who pay enough to subsidise the needs of the local population.

In other words, make schools, hospitals and other services not cost-centres but export businesses. Those export activities will have to be supplemented by value addition of local raw materials, forest or mineral. Once these income-generating activities support a thousand or more high-wage employees, there will be a critical mass to support export-quality services, which, in turn, will have little difficulty in attracting skilled talent. The grants the local population normally get may be converted into vouchers, good enough to access such quality services. Our hills will not attract either financial or human capital when their institutions are small, or are of poor quality, but can have the world at their feet if they install high quality ones.

Modest dream

Will this not leave the hill people at the mercy of "foreign" experts? The experience of the IITs shows how that risk can be avoided. When IIT Madras began, it had over a hundred German specialists. They were all under fixed-term contracts. For every foreign specialist, two-three Indians were sent on training. In course of time, all outsiders were replaced by qualified local people. Foreign capital and foreign experts triggered the development of the IITs but it is local capital and local experts that sustain them now.

This model for self-sustaining hill development has the following features:

Comprehensive basic amenities to allay the predictable suspicion that hill people have for developmental programmes;

A start with the easily accessible half of the population to postpone the last-hamlet problem to a more favourable time;

Mountain bikes to minimise cost of transport connectivity;

Export orientation with even schools and hospitals organised as export-earners;

Outside experts on short-term contracts combined with training programmes for local youth to take over in course of time; and

Normal government grants converted as vouchers to enable local people to access newly-installed high-quality services.

The dream is modest: Minimum 80 per cent of the people should run no risk of water pollution. In an emergency, a similar proportion of people should be able to get to a hospital within an hour. At least 80 per cent of the children should be computer-literate. A minimum of 20 per cent of the workforce should have jobs that offer the security of provident fund. These are the sought-after deliverables. They will not make our hills vie with the Swiss, but will have made a jump-start to do so by matching what our cities offer.

(The author is a former Director, IIT- Madras. Response may be sent to: indiresan@gmail.com)

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