In the close to seven months he has been at the helm as Jharkhand chief minister, Hemant Soren has emerged as the definitive champion of state rights, quietly working the back channels to organise flights for stranded migrants from Leh or petitioning the Supreme Court to step in on the Centre’s “unilateral” move to auction coal blocks for commercial mining.

Hence, it isn’t surprising that Hemant pulls no punches when it comes to the precarious nature of Jharkhand’s finances at a time when the country is faced with a pandemic. “I am in favour of a full rollback of GST. That way states can go back to generating its own resources,” he told The Telegraph Online in an interview over telephone.

“We had no money to pay salaries,” he said about end-December 2019 when he took over as the chief minister of the young state known for its display of staggering paradoxes: a minefield of natural resources amid malnutrition, hunger deaths and abject poverty, BMW and Mercedes showrooms and a significant tribal population rooted to land eyed by myriad forces of development.

“I have been appealing to the Prime Minister, during our interactions over video, to allow states to become financially stronger. The first thing the new government did was to enforce GST. And when that happened, it left states without the traditional backbone of generating resources. Today, states are left with limited powers of generating resources.”

Hemant is the 11th chief minister of Jharkhand, which has been a case study of political instability since its creation in 2000, taking over from the BJP’s Raghubar Das, who headed the state’s first full-term government. When the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) scion took over, the state’s debt for 2018-19 was Rs 85,000 cr (almost double of what it was in 2014-15), pointed out P. Chidamabaram whose party, the Congress, along with RJD, are coalition partners in the state. Urban unemployment stood at 17.4 per cent (November 2019, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) with 45 per cent (Niti Aayog) farmers, double the national average of 22.5 per cent, living below the poverty line.

His swearing-in ceremony was graced by a star parade of national and state leaders opposed to the BJP. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took centre stage, along with a host of state chieftains and national leaders. From Bhupesh Bagel, Ashok Gehlot, Mamata Banerjee and M.K. Stalin to Left leaders Sitaram Yechury and D. Raja, they had all found common cause: celebrate the defeat of the BJP that had since the December of 2018 lost five states it had governed, namely, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Of course, in between in May 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a spectacular victory for his party in the general elections. Yet, with protests erupting across the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act-2019 and National Register of Citizens, the symbolism of the gathering wasn’t lost.

Covid and China may have altered the political contours of the nation. But Hemant has steered the course, asserting his rights as a chief minister when thousands of migrants were on the march of their lives to return home.

“I was the first chief minister to organise flights for the return of migrants. I had been seeking permission from the Centre for long to be allowed to do this, even though in places like Uttar Pradesh, I am told, there was a process of back-door entry for workers that was continuing without any nod from the Union government. … (but) we weren’t being given permission because for us, the distance was more,” he said.

Chief minister Hemant Soren interacts with a migrant worker at Ranchi airport Telegraph picture

Finally, when a blanket permission was issued by the Centre, Hemant did not lose time. He set up a helpline, employed 100 people to man it. SOS calls came in from across the country, Leh, Ladakh and the Andamans, and also from Mumbai.

“We followed up with them and realised that transport measures were limited. It was then that I decided that I would organise a flight to bring them back.”

Hemant monitored the arrangements personally. And while doing so, he stumbled upon one of Jharkhand’s worst kept secrets: hundreds of labourers from the Santhal Pargana districts have been working on Border Roads Organisation projects and Leh and Ladakh for long and that their going there was via an informal network of agents and officers which did not always work in the best interests of the tribals. “In logo ka bahut bura halaath tha… I also spoke to defence minister Rajnath Singh and he told me that BRO paid around Rs 24,000 to Rs 25,000 to each worker. But when we spoke to some of them who had come back, we realised that they barely made Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 and, that too, with great difficulty,” the chief minister said.

It was then that Hemant put his foot down, insisting that BRO was welcome to use labour from the state, but it had to sign a proper MoU with Jharkhand to ensure workers’ rights were protected as per labour laws. “I am aghast that such an informal arrangement has been allowed to continue, apparently for ages, and that too with the involvement of a Central government organisation,” he said.

Today, in the time of intermittent lockdowns and limited travel, the wheel seems to have turned with employers going all out to woo workers back. As Hemant points out, and The Telegraph Online has reported, owners of small companies in Bangalore are sending air tickets for workers to return. A Mumbai firm is organising buses for labourers to return to project sites. “Movement of people keeps the nation’s economic engine running. People will always go to places where there are better opportunities. …there is no harm in people going to such places,” he said, adding an after-thought. “If the same companies had shown similar concern at the time of the lockdown, given shelter to the workforce…then perhaps we would not have been in such a dire situation today.”

Hemant is deeply sceptical of the Centre’s policies, be it the stimulus packages announced to kickstart a stagnating economy, “selling off” profitable and non-profitable PSUs or its handling of the pandemic. Yet he chooses to be moderate in his criticism, voicing his concerns loudly only on matters that directly impinge on Jharkhand’s future wellbeing. Not shy of pointing to earlier mishandling of industrial initiatives, the chief minister cited Jharkhand’s unique demographics and specific land laws for its scheduled areas to justify his opposition to the Centre’s move to allow auction of coal mines for commercial purposes. He has been pilloried by the state’s Opposition BJP, calling him anti-development for stonewalling what the Centra has championed as a transformational move, especially for a state that needs more employment opportunities.

“Why the hurry,” he asked. “We consider mines and minerals as the primary resource for Jharkhand. If we place this resource in the market in the right way, I think it will benefit the people of the state,” he said, clarifying that he wasn’t against the idea of auction as he was with the way the decision was taken without consulting the state, and the timing.

“How can you decide on things without taking the concerned state into confidence? We have scheduled areas here that are governed by a separate set of land laws. There could be issues of law and order, displacement and pollution. The government of Jharkhand will have to deal with these. All these implications need to be studied,” he said, explaining why his government moved the Supreme Court, which issued a notice (July 14) to the Centre seeking its response (within four weeks).

In some ways, Hemant’s questioning of the auction was proved right when the disinvestment secretary told a Ficci conference that Covid-19 had put a brake on the exercise (of disinvestment) as several processes were involved. Hemant strongly felt that the “the climate of uncertainty” amid a pandemic wasn’t the best for inviting investments. “You are talking about 100 per cent FDI. When the country is under virtual lockdown and flights and train movement is scarce, who will come and invest here?” he said.

At home, Hemant, like other chief ministers, is soldiering on bravely to fight the virus, acknowledging that the state government was being criticised for not conducting enough tests. But he vehemently denied insinuations that Jharkhand was playing down numbers. “I do not believe in hiding numbers. I understand that if I am able to test more and more people, and have that data with me, then we will be in a better position to plan our fight against the virus,” he said, going on to assure the people of the state that 200 positive cases a day weren’t an issue when as many as 8,000 samples were being tested daily.

It is a tough road ahead for Hemant in his second stint as chief minister of Jharkhand. The Opposition BJP is sniping at his heels and no one quite knows how the Covid-19 pandemic will play out in the coming months. Yet, he seems smart enough to know how to watch his back. In an earlier interview with The Telegraph Online just after his swearing in, he spoke of being human and therefore open to failings. “I commit mistakes but there will be least scope for error this time; the moment I come to know about a mistake it will be corrected.”

Jharkhand is watching. So is the BJP.

FULL TEXT OF INTERVIEW: The BJP has left Covid to the hand of God, says chief minister Hemant Soren