The real problem behind giving 'minister status' to sadhus in Madhya Pradesh

The Madhya Pradesh government’s recent decision to grant minister of state status to five members of a newly constituted special committee mandated to raise awareness about water conservation, cleanliness and afforestation around the Narmada river, has sparked a major controversy. The Opposition is smelling a cover-up and a crude pandering to religious sentiment – and not without reason.

Some of the committee members were threatening large-scale protest against alleged corruption in the government’s Narmada conservation programme not so long ago, and all of them are Hindu religious figures (sants), an influential group the ruling BJP has always sought to cultivate in its search for the consolidated "Hindu" vote.

Beyond the political noise, however, the assumptions underlying the decision and the signal it sends are yet to be discussed in the public domain.

Minister and minister-equivalent positions in government are earned, typically awarded to parliamentarians and legislators or, in lateral entry cases, to recognised domain experts. With the chosen sants lacking both the legitimacy of legislators and the credibility of domain experts, the rationale for their selection begs probing.

Even if we momentarily discount the Opposition’s allegations, the most charitable take on the MP government’s decision - that it was swayed by the sants’ wide circle of influence and purported passion for the Narmada, believing these could achieve more sensitive treatment of the river ecosystem in time – has seriously flawed underlying assumptions.

First, it assumes that influence among sections of the public and passion for a cause confers on individuals such legitimacy and credibility as ministerial office demands. By this logic, any public figure with a level of interest in a domain other than the one in which they have distinguished themselves has a case for ministerial-rank position. There may be value in enrolling public figures to engage with certain causes, but whether such engagement necessitates award of ministerial powers and privileges is the moot question. Diluting established prerequisites of ministership also amounts to a devaluation of ministerial office. (Not that this has not happened before, but that does not mean it should happen again.)

Second, in reserving ministerial rank only for sants, the MP government assumes that religious figures in general and sants in particular have special faculties. This might fit with the BJP’s and the BJP sympathisers’ romantic, Vedic era-referenced conceptions of sants being men of extraordinary sagacity and breadth of knowledge, but does not tally with what we have seen in recent (or even older) times.

Many modern-day religious figures stand accused of avarice and hate speech and have been convicted of heinous crimes, and their preachings often reflect caste bias and misogyny of the worst kind. The five sant-ministers’ record may or may not be exceptionable, but the belief that religious figures - especially sants - stand above over ordinary mortals certainly is.

The mixing of religion and government clashes with the country’s foundational secular identity, especially at a time when forces of religious majoritarianism have been asserting themselves aggressively.

Third, the MP government is wrong in assuming that the persuasive powers of sants is sufficient by itself to respond substantively to a complex ecological situation. In seeing awareness raising as the fundamental issue and tasking the sant-ministers for the same, the government reveals a simplistic, middle class-type reading of the problem where all grave issues of public import arise from ignorance, and "teaching" the ignorant the "right" way to conduct their affairs is the way forward.

The gap in this formulation is that it discounts the drivers of behaviour and the role of policies and institutions in shaping people’s responses. In the case of the Narmada, gyan from sants can help only when a range of issues, from those of the energy-water use nexus to agricultural extension to institutional arrangements, are earnestly engaged with and distilled into a package of meaningful measures.

The signals that the MP government’s move sends are no less worrisome. Whatever its underlying motive, the optics are not good. An unhealthy precedent has been set and other state governments could follow suit in doling out ministerships to crabby public figures.

Further, the decision awakens public figures, especially religious figures, to yet another option for leveraging their popularity/nuisance value for self-aggrandisement. Shorn of everything, it amounts to an invitation to blackmail, something one apex group of sants has already accused the sant-ministers of. Last, but not the least, it places sants on a pedestal in the eyes of a range of stakeholder groups, including the public at large, a dangerous and wholly unnecessary thing to do in a secular state.

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