Rising rage in Haryana as Gujarati firms sweep Swachh Bharat contracts

The current poll campaign to elect a 90-member strong Haryana Assembly has inadvertently come to grapple with the increased presence of Gujarati businesses and contractors in the agro-centric northern state.

Firms from as far as Surat in Gujarat are landing up in places like Haryana’s Hisar to collect, sift through, recycle, harness and thereby eke out profit from city’s garbage before disposing it of. This has the Hisar Municipal Corporation’s full authorisation in both residential and commercial wards even as the campaign for the October 5 polls is picking up in the city.

Why not locals, asks Congress

“It amounts to turning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan — with Gandhiji’s spectacles as its logo and trademark — into sheer commerce to favour contractors from his home state," rued Prabal Pratap Shahi, an activist from the Congress farmers cell.

"Can’t it be done by the locals? Does Haryana or its municipal set-up lack expertise for something as mundane as handling garbage?” asked Shahi, who is now on the Congress's campaign trail in and around Hisar.

Shahi went on to tell The Federal that Gujarati companies are putting out “features” in local Hindi newspapers, which may well be “paid”, to announce timings for garbage collection with dustbin specifications. Residents and shopkeepers are virtually ordered to line up at the company’s collection vans, he said.

Other ways of garbage disposal or littering could invite a fine and lead to other punitive action by municipal authorities, warn the companies’ newspaper features.

Merit and expertise

The activist’s viewpoint is — if garbage collection is outsourced to businessmen in the PM's home state, skipping entrepreneurs of not only Haryana but also other states, what, if anything, can be fairly distributed in accordance with expertise, merit and cost-effectiveness?

He cited the recent water-logging due to rains in many cities of Gujarat, including Ahmadabad, to wonder if "the civic upkeep of Gujarat’s cities is any better than Haryana, to warrant the imposition of a Surat firm on Hisar except for the purpose of milking Haryana”.

Farmers fiercely critical 

Farmers in Haryana have generally been fiercely critical of Gujarati businessmen entering the state.

During the 2020-21 farmers’ agitation against three farm laws, which sought to privatise the grain market, the peasantry greatly resented the huge grain storage facility built at Naultha, near Panipat, Haryana, by Adani Agri Logistics at a whopping cost of Rs 700 crore.

The Union government had to withdraw the farm laws. The farm stir was called off after certain promises made by the government which farmers now say are yet to be met and, thus, are an issue in the upcoming polls.

Power purchase row

Besides this, a few years back, there was a tussle over a power purchase agreement between Haryana discoms (power distribution companies) and Adani Power. It is thought to have affected the tariffs for Haryana’s power consumers.

So, with the announcement of polls in Haryana, not only this but also other deals that Gujarati businessmen inked with the state have bounced back to agitate the minds of the electorate. In fact, it has been so since the midsummer Lok Sabha polls, when the BJP’s 2019 tally was halved, giving big gains to the Congress.

And, the indications are that the BJP may not recover its plummeting support base among the electorate of Haryana this time, too, to retain majority in the Assembly and power in the state.

This will particularly hurt the BJP, for Haryana is crucial — it shares, and holds, jurisdiction over some of Delhi’s business hubs.