For the past six months or so, the conversation in the drawing rooms of Delhi has mainly centred on one subject: the complete breakdown of traffic management in the city. Senior lawyers complain bitterly of missing the first hearing in the courts — a huge loss considering the exorbitant fees they charge; company executives fume over the exasperating delays in reaching Gurgaon because of bottlenecks at the toll points; and politicians wonder whether traffic could end up as a major poll issue in the assembly election due before the year-end. The universal gripe is that commuting time has gone up nearly 50 per cent, thanks to the mismanagement of the expensive modernization of Delhi in time for next year’s Commonwealth Games. Far from making life easier, all the so-called upgradation schemes appear to have left a bitter taste in the mouths of the middle classes. At the same time, they haven’t improved the quality of life of those who actually bother to vote.

At the heart of the problem is the construction of the High Capacity Bus Systems, now renamed the Bus Rapid Transport Corridor, along seven key routes. Due for completion in its entirety in December 2009, the BRTC was more than an innovative road and traffic flow system. It was packaged as a revolutionary system that would underline the enlightened, “people-friendly” development priorities of the Congress. The BRTC, in short, was devised as a political statement that would showcase for urban India a variant of what the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme aimed for the rural poor.

There are striking similarities in the conceptualization of the Rs 1,819 crore BRTC and the Rs 12,000 crore NREGP (the budget may increase the outlay to some Rs 20,000 crore). Both were conceived by so-called professionals with track records of activism — a euphemism for espousing radical Left causes; and both schemes were adopted by the Congress as potential election winners. More important, both schemes were conceived and implemented top-down; there was hardly a measure of popular consultation.

Proceeding on the premise that Delhi is generously blessed with road space (some 21 per cent of the total area), the Delhi government was struck by the mismatch between buses carrying 60 per cent of total passengers and yet comprising between two and five per cent of vehicular traffic. The building of the BRTC was aimed at the “re-distribution of available road space in such a manner that the space is allotted for the number of passengers rather than the vehicles to be moved.” The Delhi police, which controls traffic flow, objected. The objections were peremptorily overruled. In the best traditions of command-and-control planning, it was decreed that “commuters are discouraged to (sic) use personalized modes and shift to public transport with a better bus transport system being made available.” For those who hated having to rub shoulders with the great unwashed, the government had two other alternatives: cycle or, better still, walk along a dedicated lane.

On paper, the BRTC scheme sounded promising — clean air; unemployed chauffeurs; bus stops situated in the middle of the road; zebra crossings; and, of course, a dedicated fast lane. If it hadn’t been so real, expensive and infuriating, it could have been applauded as a pipedream from the German classic film Goodbye, Lenin!

If the idea of convincing post- Nano India that public transport is good for the soul, particularly in the summer, sounded gloriously optimistic, the NREGP proceeded from a vision of an army of the unemployed (or under-employed) marching to the local collectorate demanding 100 days of work at statutorily-fixed wages, after depositing their children at the NREGP-run crèche . The NREGP, as it was conceived by activists, was less a proposal to increase rural liquidity than a programme of “empowerment”. It was enacted on the premise that taxpayers’ money was there to be squandered on a programme of disguised unemployment. Therefore, it was deemed that not more than 40 per cent of NREGP work could be used for the purchase of material and the payment of skilled labour. This naturally meant that the utilization of unskilled labour could only be for non-asset building purposes such as laying unmetalled roads that would be washed away in the monsoon, and digging holes that could be filled up the next day.

The NREGP also assumed that the decrepit state machinery could implement this gigantic scheme with utmost sincerity. However, as the draft report of the comptroller and auditor general reveals, only 3.2 per cent of the 2.73 crore registered households could avail of the guaranteed 100 days’ work. The average employment under NREGP was merely 18 days, and there are reports of embezzlement and waste. After touring Bundelkhand, heir-apparent Rahul Gandhi rued that only five paise of every rupee spent is reaching the intended beneficiaries. In the 21 years since Rajiv Gandhi discovered that only 15 paise of every rupee spent reached home, another 10 paise has been creamed off government funds. And yet, transparency is the buzzword of the NREGP.

With the general election just a year away, both the BRTC and the NREGP are in deep crisis. Last Monday, the chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit, who faces anti-incumbency after nearly 10 years at the helm, reacted to the outcry and a sustained media campaign by putting the work on six corridors on hold. The work would continue after an assessment of the pilot Ambedkar Nagar to Delhi Gate corridor. Although there are sceptics who insist that Dixit’s retreat is just an eyewash — politicians and bureaucrats are said to be a bit too obligated to the construction lobby — it is at least a recognition that “people-friendly” schemes are also potentially hare-brained.

As for the NREGP, the government is debating the viability of a flagship project that, far from adding to the UPA government’s electoral tally, is likely to demonstrate its ineptitude. Of course, the activists are unfazed. They want NREGP to be operational all over India, bolstered by a dedicated bureaucracy and monitored by an Employment Guarantee Council dominated by like-minded delusionists .

The question is: why is the UPA government, and the Congress in particular, putting its reputation at stake in quest of radical ideals that, at the very least, would call for the Indian to be re-invented?

At a facile level, there is the suggestion made by Ram Jethmalani during a Supreme Court hearing on a different subject that while power corrupts, the prospect of imminent loss of power corrupts absolutely. A more credible answer, I suspect, isn’t to be found in the subliminal desires of either Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi. It lies in a political dispensation being haunted by the term aam aadmi (common man). It is for the desire to placate and please this nebulous category that good governance is being constantly mortgaged to ridiculous programmes that are unlikely to work but whose costs will burn a hole in the exchequer. So insidious is the ‘aam aadmi’ ideal that even the Opposition NDA’s prime ministerial candidate was compelled to respond with an invocation to the “small Indian”.

The term ‘aam aadmi’ was a clever copywriter’s response to India Shining in 2004. It worked political wonders in exposing the unfulfilled expectations of the earlier government. At the end of the day, however, it was just a clever one-liner that had far less political significance than Indira Gandhi’s garibi hatao. Yet, it is this clever construct of a professional dream merchant that is derailing governance.