Development Practice Q&A: Jaivardhan Singh MPA-DP ’13

With the power of the people behind him and a whole lineup of projects ahead, Jaivardhan Singh MPA-DP ’13 is a busy man in his Indian hometown of Raghogarh, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. Elected in December to public office, he recently spoke with current student Sarayu Adeni MPA-DP ’15 on setting plans in motion, and how he’s using his SIPA connections to serve his constituents.

Congratulations on your recent election! Tell us about your new post and the community you work for.

I am a member of the Indian National Congress, India's oldest political party. I got elected as an MLA [member of the legislative assembly] of the Madhya Pradesh parliament from the Raghogarh constituency. This post is similar to being elected in the House of Representatives in the United States. Madhya Pradesh has a population of about 75 million. There are in all 230 MLA constituencies in the state, and I am now the elected member from one of them for a term of five years.

My constituency comprises two towns, Raghogarh — population 50,000 — and Aron — population 20,000. There are also 450 villages in my constituency, a total population of about 200,000. In a month I travel to 40 or 50 villages and to Bhopal, the state capital, to attend Parliament and meet with people from different ministries to get work sanctioned in the constituency. I also go to Delhi for a few days every month to meet with the national leadership.

You come from a family of politicians. Did this influence your decision to join the MPA-DP program?

My grandfather was a member of the first state parliament in 1952. My father, Digvijaya Singh, has been in politics for the last 40 years. He has also served as the chief minister, which is like a governor in the U.S., for 10 years — the longest in the state's history. He is currently a general secretary in the All India Congress Committee headed by Sonia Gandhi, and has been elected this year as a member of parliament in the upper house.

Before SIPA, I interned for a year with the Planning Commission of India in the rural development department. Prior to that I worked with a management consulting firm in Mumbai for four years with clients in India and the U.S. I always knew I would enter politics one day. Before elections, I wanted to get international exposure and also know more about success stories in rural development across the globe. I chose MPA-DP because the curriculum looks at a cross-sectoral approach to development with an emphasis on working at the grassroots level.

Are there any particular classes you’re glad you took at SIPA?

Campaign Management, but I don’t think they have that class any more. I definitely used a lot from that class in my campaign, which helped me get a record victory margin. Food Systems and Global Health Practice gave practical, on-the-ground knowledge that is needed to work in rural areas.

Going forward, what do you consider Madhya Pradesh’s priorities?

Education, health, agriculture… Madhya Pradesh is one of India's most sparsely populated states. It also has the highest forest cover in the entire country. My constituency is also predominantly rural, with 90 percent of the population employed in agriculture and its allied activities.

In the last four years we have opened three schools through our education trust. Through our NGO, Pragati, we are providing daily nutritional meals and early childhood education to children from the age of 1 to 5 in over 150 villages. We are working with Dr. Ranu Dhillon of SIPA and Harvard Medical School to develop a Smart Health Card for each child and mother. We have been operating a sugar cooperative factory for the last 13 years, with over 6,000 shareholders. We are also looking at providing farmers additional incomes through livestock, like dairy and chicken farming.

As an elected member in the state parliament, my aim is to leverage my experience at SIPA and invite people from Columbia, World Bank, and the UN to my constituency for projects in health, education, and other sectors.

What can you tell us about working in governance that you learned in India or in your professional summer placement?

I was [placed] in the Amazon where I was working with EMBRAPA, the Brazilian government's primary agriculture research organization. Our project was concerned with promoting non-timber forest products, or NTFP, in the Amazon to arrest deforestation. It was a great experience to get the opportunity to work with a government organization from a different country.

In any developing country, it is the government's primary responsibility to provide equitable and sustainable development in the under-developed regions. In India, the government today has allocated billions of dollars in health care, education and infrastructure in the rural areas. However, because of corruption in the politician-bureaucrat nexus, less than 10 percent of the allocated money reaches the final beneficiary. As the youngest elected politician in the state parliament, it is my biggest challenge to make the government administration more efficient and corruption free.

Describe some of your constituency’s current projects.

We started one school with 300 students in 2010. The school was based on a low-cost, high-volume model where we charged children $10 per month. The school was funded through donations. Today we have over 1,800 children across three schools in the constituency. Eighty percent of the children studying in the school are from so-called “backward classes” of educationally or socially disadvantaged groups. This year we are starting a Teacher Training College to provide better teachers for our three schools. We have tied up with Teachers College and Radhika Iyengar at Columbia, who are working with us on this project.

One area where I feel we haven't achieved considerable success is in creating new employment opportunities in the area. There are a high number of educated, unemployed youth in the area. We are looking at projects in dairy, chicken farming, textiles, and in business process outsourcing to create new employment opportunities in the area. In fact, we are looking for people who would be willing to work with us on any of these projects, so if anyone is interested, please send me an email!

—    Sarayu Adeni MPA-DP ’15

Learn more about Columbia SIPA’s MPA in Development Practice.