Jogis worries are not unfounded. Nearly 28 per cent of the 2-crore population live below the poverty line. And the per capita just around Rs 11,000.

Now Jogi faces the difficult task of building the state virtually from the scratch. This is a crucial phase, and the rulers acts will decide whether the state will move towards prosperity or become an anarchist society like Bihar, says a state government official. And Jogi realises the seriousness of the issue, though the burden is pretty heavy.

Not many Indian states are fortunate enough to have a qualified person like Jogi to have as chief minister. Chhattisgarh is lucky Jogi is a mechanical engineer and a law graduate. After teaching for a year in an engineering college he entered the Indian Police Service and later Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadres. After 16 years of service in the Madhya Pradesh government, Jogi entered politics and was better known as a no-nonsense Congress spokesman.

It is said that an educated ruler, however selfish he may be, will surely do some good to the society he belongs to. Look at Bihar, and one understands there is some iota of truth in this idiom.

But this is India, and Jogi too was not spared. He received flak when he opposed the disinvestment process of Bharat Aluminium Company (Balco). I opposed the central governments sale of Balco because the deal was dishonest and non-transparent. Assets worth Rs 7,000 crore were sold for a mere Rs 500 crore. I am not per se opposed to disinvestments, he says.

Last week his government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Balco whereby the latter will expand its capacity by four times at an investment of Rs 7,000 crore. (See ).

Selling the concept
Jogi now travels selling his state to industrialists across India. Recently he was in Chennai, addressing around 250 industrialists in an open-house meeting, and had a couple of one-to-one meetings with the Tamil Nadu industrial community. I will soon make my first overseas trip as the chief minister to attract foreign investments, he says.

We have the largest diamond reserves and 85 per cent of Indias coal is in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. More than 20 per cent of Indias steel and 10 per cent of cement is produced with our resources, 12 per cent of Indian forest is in our state and 44 per cent of the state is blessed with forest cover, boasts Jogi.

The ninth largest state in the country is rich in minerals and other resources like diamonds, coal, dolomite bauxite, limestone, iron ore and corundum. The total value of minerals produced during 2000-01 was around Rs 4,150 crore with fuels and coal accounting to 82 per cent (See table for mineral reserves).

For diamond mining the government has demarcated eight potential blocks, covering an area of about 5,000 sq km each, for detailed exploration by private investors. Our forest and agriculture produce goes to other states; not much of value addition activity is being done in Chhattisgarh, rues Jogi, citing another investment avenue.

According to him 70 per cent of the countrys tendu leaves used for making bidis are grown in Chhattisgarh. If we can make bidis within the state it will make a lot of difference to my people. Earlier, as part of Madhya Pradesh, the regions focus and investment needs were different and that is why the resources were not fully exploited.

Chhattisgarh, the rice bowl of central India, will soon have a food park. The state government has identified land for the project and has invited private sector partnership in the project. Herbal and agro-industry parks, too, are planned. The state is also trying hard to get a special economic zone sanctioned by the central government.

Officials estimates suggest that investments to the tune of Rs 8,000 crore are under various stages of implementation and investment proposals to the tune of Rs 28,000 crore has been filed with the government.

Says S K Gupta, additional director, directorate of industries: Bhushan Steel has signed an MoU to set up an integrated steel plant at an outlay of Rs 2,600 crore. The Hyderabad-based ARM group is setting up a transmission tower project and there are several other steel and power projects in the pipeline.

Sops not too slippery
Chhattisgarh is not adopting populist methods to attract investments like the Tamil Nadu government, which extended 100-per cent sales tax exemptions to lure Ford and Hyundai to set up plants near Chennai.

Such incentives or subsidies are self-defeating, Jogi believes. That doesnt mean the Chhattisgarh government does not extend any incentives they are directed and tuned as per the requirement of individual industries, based on the category they fall. The state has three industrial categories: thrust industries (agro, forest, mineral based), mega projects (investment in fixed assets to the tune of Rs 100 crore) and small-scale units.

Chhattisgarh is nursing back 17 ferroalloy units by charging a concessional power tariff Rs 2.80 per unit. There are special packages for cement units for those who use more than the average consumption.

The state is also planning to use its resources to develop infrastructure facilities like power and roads. The state has spent around Rs 300 crore in improving its road network out of the budgeted Rs 400 crore, says Chhattisgarh Infrastructure Development Corporation managing director Shailesh Pathak. Curiously, the state has declared 2002 as the Road Year. Private investment is actively solicited in this segment.

But what needs to be improved is air connectivity. Raipur, the state capital, is not adequately connected with many cities, save New Delhi, Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar and Nagpur. Air connection to Kolkata and to either Bangalore or Chennai is being negotiated.

Private investment is also actively solicited in education, so is the case with the tourism potential in the state. The states three national parks and 11 wildlife sanctuaries are major tourist attractions. Investment projects that cater to business-cum-leisure tourism are what the state is seriously looking at.

Other chief ministers may not talk the corporate lingo, but Jogi surely does. Like a corporate chieftain he compares the steel plants and boasts that the Bhilai plant is the one that is profitable. Similarly, while selling Chhattisgarh as the investment destination, he emphasises the states surplus power position. That is our USP, he underscores using a corporate term.

Currently, the total power capacity is 1,988mw (1,360mw own, 498mw from central sector allocation and 130mw from captive plants) as against a demand of 1200mw. The average availability of power is around 1,700mw while the peak load need is around 1,350mw.

Jogi is plotting a power revolution on the lines of the green revolution. Under the green revolution select states were given necessary agricultural assistance to feed the country. The same principle was advocated by Jogi when the prime minister met various chief ministers recently, says Gupta.

With huge coal reserves it makes economical sense to set up power plants at pitheads and transmit the power generated, instead of incurring huge costs in transporting coal to different states. It costs 0.25 paise transporting coal to New Delhi from Chhattisgarh to generate per kw of power for Chhattisgarh. On the other hand it costs just 0.3 paise per kw to transmit power, says Jogi. This way Chhattisgarh can get better realisations than from coal royalties, which hasnt been revised for several years.

Already selling power to states like Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, Chhattisgarh invited other states to set up power plants and wheel back power. Five states have responded positively. While the Gujarat government is in the process of setting up a 500mw thermal project, other states like Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka are in the process of selecting the project site, the chief minister says.

Says Pathak: Around 5,860mw capacity will be soon added with projects like National Thermal Power Corporation (2,640mw), the Gujarat government (500mw), Delhi (1,000mw), the Jindals (1,000 MW), Larsen and Toubro (600mw) and the Tatas (120 MW) getting implemented.

Compared to other states, where the power bill nearly cripples industrial units, the power cost in Chhattisgarh is cheap. The cost per unit at the maximum slab is Rs 3.80, says Gupta. But Chhattisgarh lags behind in rural electrification; there are several hundreds of villages that havent seen an electric pole yet.

In order to facilitate faster clearance of investment proposals the government has set up a single-point contact. The passing of the State Investment Promotion Act legally provides enforceable time limits for clearances.

Lack of central support
The government actively solicits private investments in all spheres. We have taken a conscious decision to restrict the state government undertakings to 30; currently the number is just six. Similarly, our bureaucracy is also lean in size as compared to other states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab or Haryana, says Pathak.

According to him Chhattisgarh, ranked ninth in terms of land size, has just 89 IAS officers as against 329 in Tamil Nadu (ranking 10th), 209 in Haryana (20th), 193 in Punjab (19th) and 264 in Karnataka (seventh). Even if one takes into account the population and the number of IAS officers, Chhattisgarh is still lean.

The total number of state government employees is 39,000 and most of them are teachers, he says. Chhattisgarhs total receipt is Rs 6,600 crore while the expenditure is Rs 6,858 crore. The spend on government salaries is contained at 38 per cent of the total receipts.

We dont have an overdraft facility with the Reserve Bank of India. To augment revenues the serious commercial tax collection drive has started yielding results. The commercial tax collections has gone up to Rs 1,100 crore from Rs 700 crore, he says. The state, this year, rationalised many tax rates and is gearing for value-added tax regime.

Responding to the query about depletion of forest reserves and the resultant impact on the lifestyles of tribals when industries are set up, Jogi, who himself is from the tribal community, says: The ideal forest cover is 33 per cent and we have 44 per cent. Further, with a proper afforestation programme we can take care of our ecological needs and concerns.

Those who talk about tribal welfare want the tribals as a museum piece. The tribal lot needs to be improved, he counters. The state will allow outside labour in case of skilled work. Industries have to source labour within Chhattisgarh for all the unskilled works.

With this kind of vision and commitment Chhattisgarh should become a prosperous state in the near future. Provided the corrupt, inefficient and lethargic culture of some of its neighbouring states does not affect it.

Ground realities

Exploratory studies for diamonds, gold and polymetallic mineralisation are to be conducted.