Last week, in the midst of the chaos caused by the change of guard in Lucknow, UP decided to embark upon the tricky mission of measuring itself in terms of human development indices. It plans to come out with its own Human Development Report in a year's time. It was to that end that State Chief Secretary Yogendra Narain and UNDP resident representative Brenda Gael McSweeney, signed a Memorandum of Understanding at Lucknow's Yojana Bhavan last Wednesday.

So far, so good. When a chronically disadvantaged state like UP, home to five of the country's 14 most backward districts, home to a fifth of the country's poor, decides to hold a mirror up to itself, no one should haveserious objections. But the questions remain. What is this project all about? Is it dictated by a need to seem fashionable, an attempt to keep up with the electorally-successful Digvijays and Naidus?

Is it some urgently needed window dressing for a notoriously badly managed state in an era when World Bank loans arrive only when words like `accountability' and `transparency' are scattered around like confetti? Will it end in just defining the problems of the state or will it suggest ways and means to tackle them? Is it a serious attempt to arrive at a warts-and-all portrait of the state's human development or will it just be a substitute for action? Because if plain image-building is the objective, then the numerous ads extolling the Kalyan Singh government's great development record, which appeared in several newspapers in Lucknow last week, would do just as well.

State Chief Secretary Yogendra Narain is quick to reassure the sceptics. He stresses that the report will be prepared by a team of independentexperts with the express purpose of suggesting ``interventionist strategies with a focus on people'' and that it should be out by next year's Gandhi Jayanti.One of the key anchors of the UP Human Development Report, Ravi Srivastava, professor of economics, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU, is understandably more cautious.

The fact is that while there is a great deal of data available, relevant data is elusive. Srivastava points out that while the state has the oldest department of statistics in the country, data collection has mainly been limited to supply indicators. There is precious little on outcomes and even less on process indicators.

What has made data collection here even more intractable is the proliferation of new districts. In 1981, there were 57 districts in UP. Today, there are 83, with the data reporting system in the newer districts still far from effective. But Srivastava believes it is an exercise worth undertaking because it could lead to a better understanding of humandevelopment, which in turn could stimulate public policy and action. ``What poor people everywhere need is a little more elbow room... some dignity. In a state as diverse as UP, there are sharp disparities, even contradictions.

You have economically poor regions like the hill districts doing extremely well in terms of education, while in the prosperous districts of western UP economic performance has not spilled over to health and education,'' he says.The issues of concern are numerous. A.P. Verma, the state's agricultural production commissioner, admits that while UP can boast of high yields in wheat, sugarcane, potato and milk, the net area under irrigation is abysmally low, with the majority of farmers doing subsistence farming.

The one area the state seems to be focusing on is education. In Lucknow, politician and bureaucrat alike take great delight in pointing out that while the last census had pegged UP's female literacy rate at 25 per cent, a recent NSS survey indicates that it is 41 per cent. Theauthenticity of this magical rise is, however, somewhat in doubt given the evidence. A lot of money is certainly being invested in education and literacy of late.

According to Vrinda Swaroop, project director, Education for All (a World Bank-aided government project), apart from the annual Rs 4,000 crore invested in schooling and adult literacy programmes, the state has arranged for private funding of Rs 2,500 crore annually. But the jury is still out on whether the additional funds have made a difference.

Education activist Aarti Srivastav of Nirantar believes that at the moment, the emphasis seems to be on pushing children into schools so that state authorities can claim higher enrolment rates. Srivastav has studied the condition of over a hundred schools in Rae Bareli and adjoining districts.

``You can sometimes find 200 children packed into two rooms with one teacher handling classes from the primary level to the fifth standard. You see children sitting on wet floors in classrooms withoutroofs.''

Avdhash Kaushal, the noted Dehra Dun-based social activist, is convinced that it is only the powerful with their corrupt ways and mafia connections who prosper in the state. ``The poor continue to lose their land to the money-lender and the rich farmer. The bureaucracy is totally insensitive. If something goes wrong at the local level, you just cannot find anyone who cares,'' says Kaushal.

Former MP and CPI(M) activist Subhashini Ali believes that over the last five years, there has been a marked deterioration in the quality of life in UP. Says Ali, ``Caste politics has become the be-all and end-all of politics. Earlier, Dalit and OBC leaders did try to bring some measure of relief to the poor. But now the sole motivation of caste politics is to appoint one of your people in a position of power.''

This factor, dovetailing as it does with the World Bank prescription of rolling back the government and privatising at all costs, has, according to Ali, only spelt disaster. ``Public hospitals incities like Kanpur are now charging Rs 25 per day. Thanks to the nexus between texbook publishers and the educational authorities, textbooks keep changing every year, making schooling prohibitively expensive. As for the public distribution system, only 5 per cent of people here have access to ration shops,'' says Ali.

This is the terrain that a development report on the state would have to cover. Anita Ramphal, a professor at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, struck an important cautionary note in Lucknow last week.``A human development report cannot be a list of the state's achievements. Its very credibility depends on its autonomy. It is based on the supposition that we cannot plan for people without sufficient knowledge about them. Its strength lies in not just defining the problem but suggesting what must be done to tackle it,'' she commented.

It remains to be seen whether this marriage between social analysis and social action does take place, or whether UttarPradesh will only get a glossy volume, replete with graphs and charts and terms like `community mobilisation', and a resounding silence from the regions where the lights have always been switched off.

--Pamela Philipose