Cashing in on the ‘Chhindwara model’

Kamal Nath, a nine-time MP for the constituency, has passed the baton to his son

Long before Kamal Nath became the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, supporters of the nine-time Lok Sabha member from Chhindwara talked of the Chhindwara model of development.

The Congress is synonymous with Mr. Nath here, and his son Nakul’s Lok Sabha candidature is being viewed as the passing of the baton to the next generation.

The BJP has fielded Natthan Shah, a tribal candidate, to take on the Chief Minister’s son. Though an unreserved seat, Chhindwara has a substantial tribal population, estimated to vary between 30% and 36%, and the BJP is hoping to break into Mr. Nath’s bastion.

Stories of Mr. Nath’s mission to put Chhindwara on the map of economic development are now folklore among the local people now, though many of them cannot be corroborated.

Apart from being Chhindwara being home to corporates such as Hindustan Unilever Ltd. and the Raymond Group, Mr. Nath is supposed to have leveraged every Union Ministry he has handled, whether Commerce and Industry or Road and Surface Transport, to get something for his constituency.

He is credited with having set up a cluster of skill-training institutes to enable employment for rural youth; the establishment of call centres; the building of a grid of four-laned highways connecting important centres such as Nagpur (125 km away); a model railway station; and even an air strip that is occasionally used to facilitate the movement of chartered aircraft.

The recent news of tax raids and alleged recovery of cash from the Chief Minister’s aides hardly made a difference to his supporters.

“Whether it is setting up a factory or building a new flyover, Kamal Nathji is the driving force,” said Santosh Verma, a dhaba owner at Chaurai, about 26 km from Chhindwara town. After 72-year-old Kamal Nath was made the Congress State president, the party won all the seven Assembly seats under the Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency.

While the MLA for Chhindwara, Deepak Saxena, stepped down to make way for the CM to get himself elected to the Assembly, Mr. Nakul Nath has stepped into his father’s shoes.

At the district court complex, where the junior Nath was meeting lawyers, the impact of his father’s legacy could not be missed. A lawyer took him around the complex, advocates jostled for photographs and selfies, or just shook hands.

Yet, the Congress and the Chief Minister’s son had to defend their record on implementing the farm loan waiver promise.

“You must understand that the State government got merely 75 days before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) kicked in. You must also remember that the first file that was signed was that for the farm loan waiver. It takes a day even if you do an RTGS [electronic mode of payment] and here we are talking about 50 lakh farmers,” Mr. Nakul Nath told media. “In those 75 days, we had we waived off loans of 22 lakh farmers in Madhya Pradesh and 61,000 farmers in Chhindwara district alone,” he added.

Asked to comment on the “Chhindwara model of development” that is associated with his father, Mr. Nakul had a readily available statistic. “You must remember, when my father became an MP in 1980, Chhindwara used to get water supply twice a week. Now, they have constant water supply as my father built the Machagora dam,” he said.

“Only 400 of the 2,000 villages had electricity. Today, every single village has power supply. And look at these roads. Is there any difference between Delhi or Mumbai [and Chhindwara],” asked the Congress candidate as he headed to his next public meeting.

The BJP, however, maintains that Chhindwara’s development is as much because of former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as it is about the local MP. Some of the party’s supporters say Mr. Nakul Nath would not have stood a chance if Mr. Chouhan had contested.

Chhindwara’s five-term corporator and BJP vice-president of the district Sanjay Pande, however, maintains the party will surprise the Congress. “Be it the Machagora dam or the Mansarovar complex or connectivity, Shivraj Singh Chouhan worked tirelessly. Even Natthan Shah can now defeat the Congress as people are angry over their false promises,” Mr. Pande says.