The controversy over the death of a young bureaucrat has stirred up a hornet’s nest: its rumblings have been felt, of course, in Bengaluru, the city where it occurred, but also as far afield as the Indian Parliament in Delhi. There is no need to analyse the causes of the suicide; this is a task far better left to the investigating agencies. What has been disquieting and disturbing is the manner in which no party has conducted itself with dignity and honour in this unfortunate episode. The media needed no urging to jump into the fray: like piranhas waiting to lacerate their prey, they conducted their own onscreen trials to fix guilt, alleging deep political conspiracies to silence an honest officer. Politicians are never ones to be left behind: they are copiously shedding crocodile tears and organising padayatras and dharnas. Government has behaved no better: the Police Commissioner of Bengaluru voiced his opinion on the reasons for the suicide when investigations were still on; the Chief Minister and Home Minister added their interpretations of the incident. Most unfortunately, the relatives, especially the parents of the young man, also descended into the fray with the demand for an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The result has been a sickening voyeuristic drama, with all sorts of theories being floated around and with no concern for the truth. Fiction, rather than fact, appears to be the order of the day.
What is a real pity is that the officer concerned apparently never once raised any concerns about the reasons for his move from his earlier position or about any pressures he was facing in his current job. The publicity he never sought while alive seems to be chasing him after his unfortunate death. Now that the CBI has been entrusted with the investigation, we will hopefully be spared further divine revelations. But there is still the disquieting issue, in this day and age of mass (or is it crass?) media, namely, about the undesirable visibility that the modern-day bureaucrat attracts and its adverse impact on efficient but understated governance.
One of the reasons for this unfortunate exposure of the bureaucrat to the public gaze has been the changing ethos of the bureaucrat himself. Thirty five years ago, when I joined the bureaucracy, bureaucrats were known more for their ability to quietly but forcefully put forth their views, in writing and orally, to the political class. In the better ruled states, mature politicians listened, even if they did not always follow this advice. In other states, a transfer was the result of a fallout between the politician and the bureaucrat. But, in all cases, the bureaucrat handled the consequences quietly; there was only the print media and almost no bureaucrat would have aired his grievances in public. The onset of public interest litigation (PILs) in the 1980s saw the beginnings of the bureaucrat going public with alleged misdeeds by politicians (and bureaucrats) in connivance with powerful vested interests. Nothing wrong, you might say, to expose corruption. Except that, once bitten by this bug of public airing of views, a narcissistic streak emerged in bureaucrats, who emerged from the shadowy maze of their offices into the public limelight, especially after the electronic media revolution. This has had at least three unfortunate aspects.
The first has been the undermining of team effort. At the best of times, it is an arduous task to get all sections of the bureaucracy rowing in the same direction, except at election time. From personal experience, I can say that the process of reform of policies and institutions in government has always been a case of “two small steps forward, one huge step backward”. When a media-happy bureaucrat takes to the printed pages or the air waves, there is a huge setback to institutional morale. In recent years, media dissection has been accompanied by anti-corruption enquiries as well as a spate of PILs. Even statutory authorities like the Comptroller and Auditor General have not been immune to this epidemic: their reports are sought to be treated like judicial pronouncements rather than points of view which can be rebutted by reasoned argument. It is little wonder then that the honest but risk-taking bureaucrat fears taking decisions which could tie him up in enquiries and court appearances well into his retirement years.
It is also generally the case that maverick bureaucrats have terrible inter=personal relations with their peers, seniors and subordinates, a fact testified to by a number of my ex-colleagues who have had to work with or under them. Their self-righteous attitude to life leads them to suspect the bona fides of any one holding a contrary view. Over time, their bitterness over what they perceive as not being appreciated or understood by the system translates into attempts to undermine the system. Individuals, rather than systems and institutional arrangements, are sought to be held responsible for lapses. The “self-righteous” bureaucrat never tries to attempt institutional improvements, which need patient behind-the-scenes work and an attention to detail. In any case, meeting the media need for sensational information and training all his administrative energies on building up airtight cases against his “corrupt” colleagues and their “partners in crime” gives him little time to focus even on routine office management.
A major casualty of the bureaucrat’s hunger for publicity is the quality of the written advice given on government files, the drafting of legislation and contracts and the ability to suggest well-thought out, rational government policy that meets the twin objectives of reconciling conflicting stakeholder interests and meeting all legal and constitutional requirements. A former Finance Minister of India has recently commented on the shoddy drafting of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which was struck down as unconstitutional by the Indian Supreme Court. In this regard, the crusader bureaucrat has the company of the ambitious bureaucrat, who shuns dreary file work for the excitement and the privileges of prestigious field-level and public sector postings, not to mention assignments with international organisations. Forgotten is the bureaucrat’s maxim “The pen is mightier than the word” (or, in modern day parlance, the computer keyboard is mightier than the sound bite). Bureaucrats, including those from the prestigious Indian Administrative Service, no longer treasure the art of pleasing prose, a quality valued in their forbears of past generations. Even simple letters, in English and regional languages, require redrafting three or four times.
Ultimately, the greatest adverse impact is on the individual bureaucrat himself. In this era of “twenty-twenty” cricket matches, the bureaucrat ceases to think about his long-term performance and contribution to the growth of public institutions. He becomes a modern-day Don Quixote tilting at windmills. In the process, given the media attention focused on him, every single action of that individual becomes invested with the aura of a battle against vested interests. Even tactically unwise steps or breaches of institutional discipline are hailed as examples of dynamism. The bureaucrat starts to think of himself as larger than the system; when his confreres do not back him, he bemoans the lack of support from the civil service — a rather unrealistic expectation given that his actions place him on a limb where others are loath to join him. In any case, members of the civil service have their own career interests to pursue, which they will not jeopardise even for an honest colleague, who gets a raw deal when working quietly and without publicity. The tragic denouement arrives when the media loses interest in the bureaucrat’s battle: he is then left all alone, with no support. In the final analysis, the anonymous (but contented) bureaucrat is probably better off following the words of the great poet, Rabindranath Tagore “Jodi Tor Dak Shune Keu Na Ase Tobe Ekla Cholo Re” (If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone). Or else reciting the Tamil dialogue of the iconic cine star Rajnikanth “En vazhi thanee vazhi” (My path is a lonely one).
Archive for the ‘public affairs’ Category
15 Apr
The case for an anonymous bureaucracy
1 Apr
Playing Eye-spy with the Petroleum Ministry: Implications for India
“The ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top”: these words of Sir Humphrey Appleby in the Yes Minister series came to mind when the news broke that five people had been arrested for espionage in New Delhi’s Shastri Bhavan, home to many of the key ministries of the Government of India. That the ship has sprung a number of leaks is becoming apparent as the Power, Coal and Environment Ministries join the list of ministries from where secret information has allegedly been passed on to private companies. In the age of Edward Snowden and high-tech mechanisms for leaking secrets, it seems almost anachronistic that old-fashioned methods like photocopying are being employed to steal information. Be that as it may, the net widens daily to snare company executives and journalists, apart from the ministry moles. The action by the Delhi police followed a period of intense surveillance; there are also indications that this ‘corporate espionage’ had been going on for over a decade. At least three aspects emerge from this entire episode: (a) the implications for the Indian growth story; (b) the outdated, unchanged government processes and procedures that created the environment for what happened; and (c) the failure of the rule of law to enforce norms of ethical behaviour.
The government is patting itself on the back for detecting and taking action on what it perceives as a violation of the law. What it needs to worry about is the impact on government-industry relations, never cordial at the best of times. For the first forty years after independence, it was assumed that the public sector would drive the engine of growth. After a brief honeymoon post-1991, the government and the private sector have had what can, at best, be termed an uneasy coexistence. If commentators on the left are fond of describing the last twenty years as the era of crony capitalism, we need to remember that the forty years prior to that represent the age of crony socialism. The private sector thrived in a limited sphere, based on its proximity to the political elite. An inefficient public sector acted as the cash cow for the political elite, which disbursed contracts and jobs at will. The post-1991 years represent a lost opportunity to free the economy and the country from the stranglehold of government. Governments, both at the central and state levels, still interfere too much in business and neglect their basic tasks of building up physical and human infrastructure. The last nine months have seen a lot of promises of action, but little on the actual ground. The present “Shastrigate” episode will only worsen investor sentiment; there is already talk that bureaucrats will not directly meet industrialists. In any case, it will be a very bold bureaucrat who interacts with businessmen to understand their point of view.
A second issue relates to government procedures and processes. Things don’t seem to have changed much since my days at Shastri Bhavan twenty years ago. Despite all the hype about computerisation, the Indian government system is still very far from the digital era. With every second file being marked “secret”, Shastri Bhavan would have run out of almirahs to store these files, more so if they are to be in the safe custody of a Deputy Secretary. Getting information from the government is extremely difficult, even with the Right To Information (RTI) Act. Section 4 of the RTI Act mandates online access to a vast body of departmental information. Not one department at the central or state level has complied with this legal requirement. When getting even routine information is such a laborious task, it is hardly surprising that individuals (and companies) resort to James Bond-like tactics to procure information. If 90% of material in government archives were readily accessible, bureaucrats could attempt to keep the remaining 10% in safe custody.
Finally, there is the question of application of the rule of law. Indian legal systems are notoriously slow: “Justice delayed is justice denied”. Anti-corruption cases move even more slowly: the access to lawyers well-versed in exploiting every legal loophole ensures that the corrupt are rarely punished in a timeframe that serves as a deterrent to would-be offenders. We should count ourselves lucky if the present case reaches closure by 2035. The Lokpal Bill went through its own tortuous legislative process; as of today, more than a year after the Act came into force, there is no Lokpal in place. India still has no law in place similar to the 1977 US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which penalises companies for underhand dealings in obtaining or retaining business. Even a stronger anti-corruption law in India remains mired in interminable discussions amongst Amartya Sen’s “argumentative Indians”.
The cocktail of an unhealthy government-business relationship, antediluvian government processes and a sluggish rule of law does not augur well for either democracy or for sustained economic growth. Government needs to act fast in all these three areas if India is to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex global economy. Otherwise, it faces the danger of a Luddite backlash from vested interests wishing to preserve the status quo.
(The writer, a retired IAS officer and Shastri Bhavan veteran, comments on public affairs and policy and matters of human interest. Contact him at ramaniv@gmail.com and www. vramani.com)
15 Mar
Cry, the Beloved Country
As an Indian, I hang my head in shame today. Just over two years after the horrific New Delhi rape, opinion makers in the national capital, New Delhi, and elsewhere have suddenly woken up to the need to protect the country’s honour. The controversy has conveniently been focused on the interview given by a convict on death row to a documentary maker. The uproar over the proposed screening of the documentary “India’ Daughter” on India’s NDTV channel led to its being shelved. A Delhi court has since stayed the exhibition in India of the interview with the convict. To forestall the viewing of the video through social media, the Government of India “requested” Google to remove the video clip from Facebook; anxious to maintain cordial business relations, Google complied, with neither party emerging with credit from the episode, given that thousands of people had already viewed the “offending” video.
Possibly the only issue in question in this entire drama is the legality of the convict’s interview and whether it prejudices his rights, when his appeal is still pending in the Supreme Court. This is a matter that the Supreme Court will decide at the appropriate time. There is, therefore, no reason for the public to get steamed up on legal issues. If any violation of legal rights of the convict is substantiated, action can be taken against those in government who authorised the interview. What is surprising (and, indeed, disturbing) is the jingoistic response of supposedly liberal-minded individuals and the feeling of victimisation that India is being unfairly singled out for what is a worldwide occurrence.
Before analysing the nature of the response to the screening of this documentary, let us look at the position of women in the India of the twenty first century. Girls’ education levels, in spite of social hurdles and less than average service delivery in the public education system, have registered significant improvements in the last two decades, especially in urban areas. The internet and mobile revolution and the phenomenal growth in outsourcing opportunities have created major avenues for employment of women. With the explosion in connectivity, a new vista is unfolding before the Indian woman: she is aware of the freedoms her sisters across the globe enjoy and is keen to be a part of the globalisation process. This has bred considerable insecurity in the Indian male, who finds his age-old dominance over the other sex under serious threat. This insecurity can be viewed from two perspectives.
The first level of insecurity relates to the challenge posed to the traditional patriarchal system by the growing financial and social independence of an increasingly assertive Indian woman, confident of her individuality. The male hierarchy has traditionally viewed women as property, to be protected; the tendency is to elevate her (rather hypocritically) to the status of a goddess, who should confine herself to the temple of the house, serving her husband and bearing children to ensure continuity of the clan. (Spokesmen of the present ruling dispensation have sanctified this view, at least for the majority community, by their exhortation to women to bear at least five to ten children each). This arrangement has been very convenient for the male: he takes very limited responsibility for running the house, with the woman being expected to sacrifice her career, social life and health in attending to the family chores. This situation obtains even where, for economic or other reasons, the woman also works — the man often appropriates her income and she has to juggle home and work duties. Lest there be any misapprehension that this mind-set prevails only in the poorer sections of society, let me unequivocally state that this attitude cuts across caste, religion and income levels. The architects of the Indian Republic were far more progressive than their successors: they adopted universal franchise right at the time of independence, a right that women in the United Kingdom and United States of America had to struggle for generations to get. Contrast this with the attitude of the defence force top brass and their political masters today — women still cannot hope to get permanent commissions in combat formations in the armed forces. Even in 2050, India will not have a full General or Admiral, though she may have had a number of female Presidents and Prime Ministers by then.
The second, rather dangerous level of insecurity ties in with the first — the feeling that the Indian woman has secured education and job openings at the expense of her male counterpart, coupled with difficulties the Indian male has in accepting different cultural norms of dress and behaviour. Added to the limited employment opportunities available, it breeds resentment among young men who find it difficult to stomach the spectacle of women out on their own at the late hours of the night and visiting bars and pubs, long considered an all-male preserve. The statements of the convict and his defence lawyers betray this mind-set, with even violence against women being justified in such scenarios.
Two factors have contributed (and continue to contribute) to what can only be termed a diseased mentality: education systems and the overall social milieu. Knowledge (especially bookish knowledge) and wisdom (the ability to discriminate) are by no means synonymous. The Indian education system operates by rote learning: there is no attempt to develop analytical abilities. An additional factor is the weak base of liberal humanities education in any discipline, whether law, medicine or engineering courses, or even in the humanities disciplines themselves. The individual does not emerge from this system with a broader world-view, nor does he question assumptions handed down to him by flawed education and social systems. The social environment skews the situation still further. The Indian woman runs a steeplechase all her life. Before she is born, parents are going in for sex determination tests to determine whether to allow the new life to exist at all. If they are unsuccessful in this, the newborn is sought to be added to the rising numbers of India’s “missing women”. Poorer health care, nutrition and education (relative to her male siblings) mean that the Indian woman starts off with a significant handicap in life. If she crosses these hurdles, her family (and society) seek to tie her up in matrimony and family responsibilities, which again restrict her expression of her fullest potential: all this, of course, in addition to domestic neglect and violence that is the lot of a large number of women in India. The greatest tragedy is what the educator Paulo Freire termed the “duality of the oppressed”. Having internalised the system of patriarchal domination, many women seek to perpetuate this system: they fear the freedom that a change in the situation will necessarily bring about. The harassment of young brides for dowry (generally with the active involvement of mothers-in-law) is only a case in point.
It is this social environment which inhibits the fullest development of a woman’s individuality that needs to be introspected on. India is not in a ranking competition with other nations in what is a matter of shame for the entire human race. That it exists in other nations is no matter of great satisfaction for us — it is as meaningless as the assertion many years before that corruption is a worldwide phenomenon. To talk about national prestige and not do some agonised soul-searching on why we as a society are what we are is to refuse to face the stark reality that women in India are confronted with on a daily basis. To all those politicians, members of the legal profession and media persons who vehemently pressed for a ban on “India’s Daughter”, my only response would be “That country has no honour which does not honour its women”.
(The writer, a retired civil servant, comments on public affairs and policy and matters of human interest. Contact him at ramaniv@gmail.com and www. vramani.com)
15 Feb
AAP Ki Kasam
January 2015 has been a watershed month for the Indian political system. A David has single-handedly slain not one, but two Goliaths. Delhi witnessed scenes of exultation probably last seen after the defeat of the Congress party in the 1977 general elections. As the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers seek to come to grips with governing a highly complex metropolis, a number of question marks will inevitably raise their heads. These arise after going through the party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections (“the Manifesto”) as well as its 70 point Action Plan for Delhi (“the Action Plan”). Though the former gives pointers to the overarching strategy of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in its search for a national presence, it is the latter that assumes more immediate relevance, since the day has dawned when promises will have to be translated into performance. Without wanting to sound like a modern-day Cassandra, I see three areas where AAP will need to clarify its approach, if it is to meet the aspirations of the people of Delhi and emerge as a viable national alternative by 2019.
The first relates to what may be termed an “anti-institutional” worldview. The AAP was born out of the ferment of the Jan Lokpal agitation of 2011. At that time itself, the effort of the agitators was to virtually stampede the government of the day and Parliament into passing the Jan Lokpal Bill as formulated by them, without debate and without taking other points of view into consideration. It is true that the speed of functioning of all public institutions in independent India is enough to drive any Indian to tears. Still, that does not justify an attempt to push through legislation which, if enacted in its proposed form, could have impinged on the right to liberty of the citizen. The Manifesto and the Action Plan repose their confidence in the very same, unadulterated version of the Jan Lokpal bill, which vests enormous powers in an individual, virtually ushering in a fresh era of the Jacobin Terror with the Lokpal as Robespierre. Not only that, the Manifesto also talks of seizure of assets of corrupt judges. The very foundation of a democracy based on separation of powers would be shaken if the judiciary is sought to be regulated by an outside agency. In fact, the thrust of AAP seems to be on punishment of errant individuals rather than the reform of outdated laws and systems that, coupled with a judicious use of information technology, could vastly circumscribe the scope for corruption.
A second area of concern is the apparent disregard for the principles of sound public finance. The Action Plan promises many concessions and substantial public expenditure on items ranging from concessional power and water to toilets, education, healthcare, housing and social security. The emphasis appears to be on the government as the sole provider, without any involvement of the private or non-profit sectors. Services are sought to be ramped up by increased public employment, without analysing why existing staff (which is considerable) has not been able to deliver, especially in the crucial health and education sectors. There is no mention in the Manifesto of the large, often dysfunctional public sector that bleeds the financial resources of the country and what steps will be taken to make it more efficient. Also, while the poor implementation of social sector schemes has been mentioned in the Manifesto, there is no elaboration on whether these schemes will be redesigned to plug leakages and reach those really in need. The Action Plan also talks of introducing the lowest VAT rates in Delhi. Put all these together and what you are headed for is a huge budget deficit. Delhi may still survive on hand-outs from the central government, but the picture will change for the worse if AAP seeks to run any other state government or, indeed, the central government, on the same financial principles.
The third area of unease relates to the likely impact of AAP’s economic policies on growth. In its Manifesto, AAP talks of placing India on “a sustainable, equitable, globally competitive and high-growth trajectory”. The Action Plan wants a “Delhi that is prosperous, modern and progressive”. But a number of points in the Action Plan are calculated to make private investors wary. It opposes contractualisation of labour and supports permanency of employment in jobs that require round the year employment. While this has been stated in the context of public sector employment, it is quite likely that the same dispensation will extend to employment in the private sector as well. This is going to dampen private investor sentiment; companies need to have the flexibility of ‘hiring and firing’ in a globalised economy (of course, with social security mechanisms and job/skill retraining opportunities). The Action Plan opposes FDI in retail; this is in line with what the party calls “trader-friendly policies”. The problem is that policies which meet trader interests often act against the interests of farmers and organised industry. The repeated references to “crony capitalism” and “encouraging honest businessmen and traders” seem to indicate a mistrust of large-size businesses. Again, one needs to stress that strong institutional mechanisms, including competent regulatory systems and simplified procedures, are crucial to checking corruption. India has an abysmal record in the speed of starting and ease of doing business: one certainly looks forward to the end of the Inspector Raj, enunciated in the Action Plan. Finally, the budget deficits inherent in a populist economic approach and the consequent increased government borrowing will have its adverse impact on private sector access to low-cost capital.
This is not intended to be a critique of AAP’s policies, just a flagging of some concerns that are too often given short shrift by intellectuals and the media in the first heady flush of victory. The AAP has been given a historical mandate. “Aap ki Kasam” can be translated as “on my honour”. To honour its commitment to good governance, AAP needs to adopt a pragmatic and non-confrontational approach to issues, guided by economic realism and political and social realities. It’s progress in national politics will be determined by its success in managing its government in Delhi. To the extent that it is able to do this, it can have voters on a larger platform crooning (in 2019) that popular song from the film Qurbani:
आप जैसा कोई मेरी ज़िन्दगी में आए, तो बात बन जाए…
(If someone like you comes into my life, then my life is made)
31 Jan
Mind your language
For those uninitiated in the intricacies of getting into the higher echelons of the Indian bureaucracy, CSAT stands for the “Civil Service Aptitude Test” — a test at the preliminary stage for assessing the suitability of aspirants for “India’s steel frame”. Much energy was expended earlier this year by civil service candidates in protesting against the inclusion of a mandatory English proficiency portion in the CSAT. While the opposition was ostensibly to the unfair advantage conferred on urban-type English speakers, the doubt was raised in certain quarters as to whether the protest was against the test of aptitude, which militates against the time-honoured rote method of ingesting and expurgating information, without using reasoning abilities. However, the present blog is limiting itself to the issue of language, a vexed issue in a polyglot society, ever since Pandit Nehru and C. Rajagopalachari first grappled with the issue of formation of states based on linguistic considerations.
The subject gained fresh impetus when the Education Minister backed the introduction of Sanskrit at the expense of German in the Kendriya Vidyalayas. This storm unfortunately unfolded when the Prime Minister was meeting his German counterpart in Australia, earning him a free lecture from Frau Merkel. The issue generated even more nationalistic emotions, with various politicians harking back to our glorious traditions. Forgotten was the abysmal quality of Sanskrit taught in schools: I speak from personal experience. In my middle school years, I was exposed to Sanskrit as the third language, after English and Hindi. Our teacher, one of Delhi’s well-known theatre figures, tried hard to get the language into the skulls of forty riotous boys, for whom India’s beautiful ancient language was just one more subject in which pass marks had to be secured. The wonders of declension and grammatical construction passed us by and we ended up with little or no knowledge of the language. I doubt if most of us can read Sanskrit or appreciate the beauty of the language. I have been a little more fortunate; subsequent exposure to devotional songs and religious texts enabled me to acquire at least the ability to understand Sanskrit texts.
Why talk only of Sanskrit: all languages are taught extremely poorly in most schools, with the result that we are unable to put together a coherent paragraph in any language. I thought our problem was only with the English language till I encountered notings in Marathi on government files in Maharashtra which revealed the shoddy quality of even written Marathi. In fact, using language (any language) to express oneself cogently and clearly is a dying art.
Language has always been the medium for transmission of ideas and knowledge. Before Gutenberg initiated the printing revolution, knowledge was conveyed from one generation to another solely through the spoken word: hence the term “smriti“, which refers to the traditions and wisdom passed on from master to disciple – the mind was the manuscript. Ancient scriptures were thus preserved: this has probably contributed to the Indian’s phenomenal memory, reflected in our emphasis in today’s education system on rote learning rather than critical thinking.
So what is a practical approach to language in a country boasting of over five hundred languages, as per a recent survey? From before Indian independence and, again, fifty years back, the attempt to impose a national language by executive fiat came a cropper, with anti-Hindi riots breaking out in Tamil Nadu. The situation on the ground has undergone a sea change since then. Large-scale interstate migration to avail of employment avenues has made most Indians multilingual. It is fascinating to hear a burly Sikh speaking Tamil with no trace of an accent; one has to, of course, hand it to the Marwari businessman, who can pick up the local language after a short stay in any state. For that matter, sheer survival instincts prompted my quick adoption of the Marathi language. The prospect of signing a government file with Marathi notings which I did not understand filled me with dread.
The best (also most pragmatic) approach would be to offer a wide variety of languages, both Indian and foreign, with excellent facilities for both online and offline learning. If you (and your children) are going to be staying and working in Karnataka for the next thirty years, you are hardly likely to opt for Gujarati. If your offspring is planning to look for employment opportunities in Serbia or neighbouring countries, there is no reason why she should not become proficient in Serbian or Serbo-Croat languages. If you travel extensively in India, especially in the north, you will, of necessity, have to acquire adequate proficiency in Hindi. Whether one likes it or not, the vast majority of Indians (all of whom aspire for upward mobility) are going to want to learn the English language. Rather than demonise the teaching of English, it would make far more sense to offer quality English language courses, with well-trained teachers. Today, if you want to learn even an Indian language, there are very few good online courses imparting written and spoken language skills.
What, one may ask, will be the language of communication in government offices? In Government of India offices, it makes far more sense to conduct business in English, since there is going to be a large volume of communication with the world outside India. I could never understand the inanity of notes for the Cabinet of Ministers in Delhi being prepared in both English and Hindi. The Hindi copies, faithfully distributed to all Ministers, were read only by a small proportion of Ministers from the Hindi-speaking states. It would have saved many trees if each Minister had been asked to state her (or his) preference for either English or Hindi, with only those many copies being printed. Ministers from non-Hindi speaking states are generally quite comfortable with English and conduct most of their business in English. In the states, the local language spoken by the majority of residents can be the official language for conducting government business, as is the case even today. The inexorable pull of the market will inevitably decide which language(s) will gain prominence. States are today actively selling themselves as investment destinations; a state whose bureaucrats and politicians are not able to communicate effectively is going to fall behind in the sweepstakes.
Finally, I wish to dispel the myth that making a particular language the medium of instruction is going to turn out students fluent in that language, let alone instil in them a love for the rich literature that is the heritage of all Indian languages. It is more desirable to have a hundred students fascinated by and conducting research on Sanskrit texts than to have ten thousand students who painfully scrape through the language with no intention of ever returning to it. If knowledge of German is going to open avenues of knowledge and employment in one of the world’s great economic performers, why deny Indian students a piece of that very scrumptious cake?
31 Dec
It’s a dog’s life or Why We Are Going To The Dogs
A relative of mine recently wanted to bring her 11 year old pet dog on her annual visit to her family in India. She came up against the latest instance of bureaucratic obduracy that is the hallmark of Bharat Sarkar. The regulations of April 2013 allow the entry into India of only those pets whose owners are shifting residence to India after a continuous stay of at least two years abroad. But the killer clauses came thereafter: no one on a tourist or business visa could bring their pets into India, regardless of the period of absence from India. What was dogging our policy makers became clear to me after searching the net and talking to the representative of an agency that handles import and export of pets into India. Apparently, breeders were using the tourist visa facility to merrily bring dogs into India, adding to an already huge canine population. The solution was the typical sarkari one of using a sledgehammer to kill a fly (sorry, dog!): you may enter the country with up to two pets, but only if you are relocating to India. When I brought to the agent’s notice the fact that the dog in question had been a regular visitor to India from 2003 to 2009 and had a valid certificate of export from India, she relented to the extent of saying that the dog could be imported via Bengaluru or Mumbai airports, but not Chennai, since the animal quarantine authorities in the latter had doggedly refused admission to even one pet ever since the 2013 government circular came into force. It was game, set and match to the animal quarantine authorities once it was established that my female relative could not bring the dog as accompanied baggage, since the name on the last export certificate was of her husband.
I thought thirty years in the Indian bureaucracy would have inured me to all its foibles and idiosyncrasies, but the latest example of masterly bureaucratese left me dumbfounded. Four years after leaving the hallowed portals of government, my own brushes with the bureaucracy have convinced me that it is a zero-sum game, zero for the citizen and all for the government. Take the KYC norms, termed “Know Your Customer” but which I interpret as “Keep You Confused”. Early in 2011, I was told that I had to fulfil KYC norms to be able to operate my bank account, demat account, etc. Then followed the tiresome routine of gathering documents to prove my existence and place of residence. Just when I thought I had finally laid this ghost to rest, my bank manager told me in 2013 once again that the KYC formality had to be gone through. Apparently, there is some lurking suspicion in Bharat Sarkar’s mind that I am operating ghost accounts under a fictitious name and address.
Let us take a third example: suppose you run a business with an income-tax permanent account number (PAN) and a service tax registration. These two taxes (one direct and the other indirect) are administered by two departments coming under the same Ministry of Finance. And yet the entire process from registration to payment and filing of returns is handled by two agencies, with two websites, separate processes and separate returns filing systems. Add to this the payment of state-level sales tax and local taxes on shops and establishments and you have a veritable nightmare of departments and offices, not to mention personnel, with which the businessman has to deal. With (hopefully!) the introduction of the goods and service tax (GST), the multiplicity of taxes will be reduced. But don’t bet on life becoming simpler: some taxes at state and local levels will continue and reporting requirements to multiple agencies may still be required.
The final icing on the bureaucratic banana peel is the eternal Aadhaar scheme. When there was already an identity card in the shape of the PAN card in place, was there really need to introduce another identity card? Votaries of Aadhaar will immediately point to the likely misuse of PAN cards and how the biometric identification of Aadhaar cards will eliminate duplication and false registration. But is this really so? We have instances where animals and inanimate objects have been vested with Aadhaar cards. What is to prevent an individual from registering for Aadhaar cards at four different locations? Is there a mechanism which will identify that the biometric identification has been duplicated on more than one Aadhaar card? In any case, could the biometric identification (presuming it is technologically fool proof) not have been built into the PAN card registration process itself to reduce the number of identity proofs that an individual has to carry? What will be the relevance of the Aadhaar card for those sections of the population that do not need to or wish to avail of any benefits from the government? I would be most happy if I received some enlightenment on these issues from a more-Aadhaar educated person.
The problem, I think, lies with our innately suspicious nature as Indians, particularly if we are required to deliver a public service benefit. We are convinced that the other party is, through some jugaad or the other, going to acquire some benefit. In the process of making the process foolproof, the bureaucracy builds in provisions that make it willy nilly impossible for the ordinary citizen to comply with. Two consequences result: either the scope for discretion (and, hence, corruption) increases, creating new markets for the ubiquitous Indian dalaal, or the citizen decides to simply ignore the irritating provision, probably one reason why service tax is evaded by large sections of professionals. Simplifying tax regimes and reporting requirements as well as making access to public services easier would encourage compliance and strengthen the case for more punitive actions against wilful evaders. There has been a lot of storm in recent days on the kissathon in different cities; what government agencies need is also a KISSathon, KISS standing here for the well-known “Keep It Simple, Stupid”.
15 Dec
The Indian Omertà: Corruption and the Code of Silence
It was Mario Puzo’s book “The Godfather” and related readings on the Sicilian Mafia that made familiar to me the term “Omertà“. It referred to the restriction imposed on any member of the Mafia on maintaining silence even in the face of third-degree interrogation by the police. Any infraction of this code was punishable with death. This practice, prevalent in the Sicilian gangs, spread to American shores when waves of Italian migrants landed up in the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and frustrated efforts to get at the real “godfathers” of illicit operations ranging from bootlegging and prostitution to narcotics. As I reflect on the phenomenon of corruption in India, I am struck by the very similar code of silence that prevails in transactions in India which are mediated by corruption in its various forms.
Let us recognise that corruption in India is a “womb to tomb” cycle. It begins while the child is still in her mother’s womb. Just imagine — if the child, like the mythical Ashtavakra, were blessed with the gift of imbibing every conversation even before she was born, she would hear the medical personnel at the public hospital asking the mother and her relatives to part with money to avail of the maternity facilities in the hospital. Thereafter, the karmic cycle of corruption unfolds at every stage of her existence, from the bribe paid for getting the birth certificate to the “donation” extracted at the time of school and, subsequently, college admission. The lifetime investment in the corruption machine takes place when the person has to grease her way into a job in the public services. Thereafter, the public functionary is engaged in recovering her past costs as well as providing for her (and her future generations’) material comforts, through means, legal and illegal. Finally, the cycle is complete when corruption oversees the issue of the death certificate and the process of transfer of assets to the next of kin.
What is noteworthy of the “corruption chakra” is the spectrum of silence that covers its functioning. To paraphrase Portia in the Merchant of Venice —
“The quality of corruption is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…”
Both the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker are aiming to participate in a “win-win” situation. Let us take the example of admissions to the pre-primary class in any private school. Every school thrives on the anxiety of parents to secure admission to a good school for the next thirteen years by charging a hefty entrance fee. Since this is not permitted by the state education authorities, the practice is to pay most of or the entire amount in cash, often through a broker, to the school. Both parties are willing accomplices in this generation of black money. Or take the case of any real estate transaction in India. The quantum of “black money” payment outweighs by far the cheque or “white money” paid. Try to insist on full payment by cheque or bank transfer and you get either a polite shove-off from the other party or a reduced offer. In the case of public functionaries, the procedure can vary from a weekly payoff to the superior (hence the term “hafta“) to case by case transactions, as in bribes for procuring driving licences, either through touts (euphemistically called “driving schools“) or through direct payments, to even part payment with the promise of future revenue deliveries, as in the auctioning of government posts. At the highest level, the cornering of scarce natural resources (land, minerals, etc.) requires a continuous, smooth working relationship between the benefactor and the bidder. Implicit in all these transactions is the “honour among thieves“. Once the trust is violated, either party takes steps to get the other party implicated, either through an anti-corruption trap or through anonymous/third party applications/PILs highlighting misdeeds of the concerned offending party.
A simple formula has been devised by Klitgaard (1998)[1] to describe the extent of corruption in a system:
C = M+D-A, or Corruption equals Monopoly plus Discretion minus Accountability.
A socialist economy will see the existence of monopolies in a wide range of activities, ranging from coal and steel to telephones and motor cars. Given the limited number of producers, there will inevitably be a mismatch between supply and demand. The person allocating the good then has the discretion to favour one person over another, generally for a monetary consideration, or even on the basis of caste and kin relationships. A hybrid “socialist” economy like India’s, with its entry barriers in various sectors, develops its own version of the applicability of this formula. Industrial licensing for the private sector in various areas from the 1950s onwards gave the bureaucrat (and politician) control over who got the licence. The more recent example is the mechanism for allocation of coal blocks to end-users, recently struck down by the Supreme Court. With the state having the exclusive right of disposal of coal blocks, there was considerable discretion in the allocation process. While there may or may not have been mala fide in the process, the arbitrariness of the procedure attracted judicial criticism. Monopolies can be reduced through the introduction of competitive processes. The telecom and automobile sectors in India are examples of how choice has empowered the consumer and removed influence peddling and gathering of economic rent in these sectors. Not that monopolies can be totally wished away. Just think of the police force or the natural resource extraction (coal, metals, petroleum, etc.) sectors. The checks on these monopolies operate through the limiting of discretionary powers through use of technology and transparent bidding processes. Enabling filing of criminal complaints online removes the discretionary power of the police officer to register (or not register) the complaint. Granting extraction rights through an impartial bidding process ensures that the party giving the greatest economic value to society wins the bid. Of course, no system can be immune. Just think of the goodwill money paid to the police constable who comes for the passport verification and the on-money paid to the person who delivers the cooking gas cylinders. But, to a considerable extent, the enforcement of accountability in actions and the increasing use of mobile/online payments (think mobile wallets) can curtail the scope for discretion even further.
In the final analysis, it is the enforcement of accountability that acts as the greatest check on corruption. But as long as there is complicit collusion in the act of bribery between the giver and taker, it will be difficult to reduce corruption. This requires action on three fronts:
- Procedures for service delivery have to be clear to the service recipient. She should be aware of the time within which the service is to be given, the exact cost of the service and the redressal mechanism available to her in the event of service delivery failure. Public agencies need to specify these procedures on their websites and use mass media to educate consumers on their rights.
- The consumer has to assert her right to timely service delivery at the officially approved cost. It is here that the code of silence has to be broken. Where there is overcharging for services or there are attempts to delay service provision in the absence of sweeteners, social media should be extensively used to highlight instances. Websites like com seek to provide a forum for publicising corruption in the delivery of different public services.
- Supervisory levels in public agencies need to monitor service delivery systematically. Any deviation from the set norms should be analysed and, where there is evidence of wilful, mischievous intent on the part of the service delivery provider, she should be penalised.
[1] Klitgaard, Robert — International Cooperation Against Corruption (Finance & Development, March 1998)
15 Oct
Maharashtra, the day of reckoning — whither after?
The Ides of October are here and Maharashtra is heading for its tryst with the 2014 election results after one of the most acrimonious state elections in recent times. With two political alliances unraveling within the space of hours (although the bickering was going on in full public view), the stage was set for a no-holds barred free for all. After the Lok Sabha elections in May, the ruling Congress (INC) -Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) coalition already faced an uphill task in retaining power in the state. After their split, the point of no return has been reached and both these parties will have to move to the opposition benches. Ambition got the better of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), leading to it terminating its 25-year coalition with the Shiv Sena (SS). Both these partners, with their eyes set on the Chief Minister’s chair, were unwilling to go the extra mile in forging an alliance that could have almost certainly wrested power. Their split has left the arena somewhat more open for all four parties, with Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) filling in the gaps. While it would be foolhardy to predict the end-result in a multi-cornered contest, with many disgruntled elements from the major and minor parties in the electoral fray as independent candidates queering the pitch for the main contenders, it looks as though INC and NCP candidates will eat into each other’s votes and hand the election on a platter to the BJP. As things stand on Election Day, it appears that the BJP will end up with about 145 seats, the SS with 55 seats and the NCP and the INC with 30 seats each, leaving about 10 seats for the MNS, with independents and smaller parties taking the remaining 18 places in the 288-member Assembly. I am not a psephologist, so readers should take my prediction with a generous pinch of salt and a tolerant, amused smile. What does seem likely, though, is that the BJP, either on its own, or in alliance with the smaller parties, will come to power. One would certainly hope that Maharashtra is not condemned to a fractured mandate and a further five years of a squabbling coalition government. But what is disturbing in the current fire and thunder of election campaigning is the lack of any clear agenda for development and growth in the utterances and manifestos of all the five major contenders. Since they are mouthing the same old tired promises and clichés, with freebies being thrown in for each and every section of society, it is probably appropriate to try and highlight the areas that any government concerned with inclusive growth should zero in on.
The primary focus has to be on the sectors relating to what are traditionally known as the four factors of production — land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. The formulation of a realistic land acquisition policy to replace antiquated acquisition procedures is urgently required, with adequate benefits to the person parting with her land, while also ensuring that the process does not take too much time. Infrastructure projects in Maharashtra have been hamstrung by inability to access land, leading to inordinate delays and cost escalations. Property rights have to be guaranteed; there are far too many disputes on title to land, leading to major uncertainties in land transactions. There was a lot of discussion in Maharashtra a decade ago on the move to a Torrens type land registration system, in vogue in many Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc.) for over a century, which gives an indefeasible title to those included in the register of land holdings maintained by the state. Apart from securing property rights, this system also makes land a fungible asset, with the owner being able to use this asset to raise capital. Of course, Maharashtra also needs to dispense with its Rent Control Act and remove the lingering legacies of the Urban Land Ceiling Act to free up land in its growing cities and towns for productive use.
Labour laws are the second area in urgent need of a complete overhaul. Investment in manufacturing will take place only when companies have a measure of freedom to employ and retrench workers. The latter can occur for a variety of reasons, including poor management and technological change. Rather than trying to keep a moribund concern going, it makes greater sense to retrain and redeploy workers in other productive areas of the economy. This, however, requires a thorough restructuring of labour legislation, aimed at providing for flexibility in the labour market, together with safeguards and safety nets to assist workers in the transition from one job to another. Today’s situation is a “lose-lose” one; the employer either goes in for labour-saving technology or simply shuts shop when a crisis threatens her unit. No wonder the unorganised labour force, with no job security, no skills and no adequate social safety net, constitutes 90% of the entire labour population. Maharashtra needs to take a leaf from the efforts of Rajasthan and some other states in this area (and go even further) if the state is to continue and grow as a manufacturing powerhouse in the decades to come, creating more and more jobs for a growing young population.
Access to capital has to be one of the primary engines of inclusive growth. This includes not only availability of credit to medium and small enterprises but participation in financial processes by the population at large. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana should be aggressively marketed in the state of Maharashtra to ensure that every household has a bank account within the next two years. Consumers can then avail of not only bank finance for their needs, but also related instruments like insurance. The next government in Maharashtra should aggressively use technology and the Aadhaar card system to link all its citizens to payment systems, preferably with bank accounts or else mobile wallets. All government payments to employees, scheme beneficiaries, vendors, etc. should be through the electronic mode.
The fourth leg of reforms has to aim at encouraging a thriving entrepreneurship through both easy capital provision and, equally importantly, through simplifying procedures for setting up business. India remains one of the most difficult countries to do business in and Maharashtra, while somewhat better than the national average, still has a long way to go if it aims to benchmark itself against international rather than intra-national competition. The inspector raj which dogs entrepreneurs through their business lives needs to be eliminated through processes of self-certification. The same will also apply to the host of local government clearances that are needed to get a business off the ground. Setting specific time limits for clearances and holding public officials accountable for delays and/or attempts to secure illegal gratification will need to be pushed by the state government. In fact, the same levels of responsiveness and accountability need to be evident in the delivery of all public services, whether it is for a driving licence, a ration card, registration of a First Information Report with the police or a death certificate. Information technology can help, but up to a point; staff who delay/withhold service delivery with ulterior motives need to be shown the door at the earliest (though that subject will merit a separate blog). This will, of course, require a political leadership that is ready to eschew extraction of economic rent from decision making processes.
There are four other areas where government energies need to be focused. Building human resources to serve as an input for the knowledge economy requires achieving 100% compulsory secondary education, with skill development opportunities for future growth sectors. This involves a complete revamp of the current education system, with greater accountability for teachers, more meaningful curricula and a shift from meaningless university education bereft of any development of knowledge and/or skills. Managing water, especially groundwater, poses another major challenge for Maharashtra, given its fast depletion and the growing demand from industries and burgeoning cities, as well as from the agricultural sector. Significantly improving the power situation to promote industrial growth is yet another crucial area. Finally, as one of the most urbanised states in India, Maharashtra has to pay attention to making its cities the engines of growth. This implies devolution of powers to urban local bodies, developing efficient, responsive city government systems and attracting investment to these cities from India and the world.
I am not for a minute claiming that a government in Maharashtra will be able to address all these issues immediately or that there will not have to be a wider dialogue on policy and constitutional issues with the national and local governments. What I do hope for is a leadership in the state which recognises the centrality of these issues to the development story and is willing and able to devote itself to building a consensus on them. The history of nearly all the present actors in the political Mahabharata in Maharashtra gives one no cause for reassurance. Ultimately, it is for the leaders in Maharashtra to decide whether they wish to leave their imprint on the history of the state in the wake of a long line of distinguished political figures and social reformers, of whom the state is justly proud, or whether they are content to remain footnotes in history.
30 Sep
Hunooz Dilli Door Ast
More than twenty years after its first publication, I laid my hands on a copy of William Dalrymple’s “City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi”. As a Delhiwallah who spent nearly three decades in the city (though not at present), the book paints a fascinating picture of the history of a city in which I spent the formative years of my life. What struck me was his characterisation of British New Delhi as “imperial”. “In New Delhi” as he aptly puts it “…the individual is lost.” From there, my mind went back in time to Delhi’s past and fastened on a phrase I had first heard in the Son et Lumiere showcasing Delhi’s history at the Red Fort “Hunooz Dilli Door Ast”. These words were reportedly uttered twice; the first time by one of medieval Delhi’s great spiritual savants, the Sufi Nizamuddin Auliya, when informed of the intention of the then ruler of Delhi, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, to have him beheaded on his return to Delhi. The unperturbed old man merely observed that Delhi was still far away, since the Sultan’s threat was made while he was on a military campaign in Bengal. (As events transpired, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq never made it back to Delhi, meeting his end in an accident en route). The second utterance did not have such a providential ending: the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah Rangeela’s complacency about Nadir Shah’s distance from Delhi led to the ransacking of Delhi and the massacre of its citizens in the eighteenth century.
My current reflection is on an inversion of this phrase. While Tughlaq’s distance from Delhi was the theme of Nizamuddin Auliya’s utterance, I am more concerned with the distance of Delhi from what goes on in India that is Bharat. The immediate provocation was the mention in the Prime Minister’s Independence Day address that the Planning Commission in its present avatar is going to be wound up, to be replaced by a structure more suited to India’s current requirements. No sooner had this announcement been made than intellectuals (based for the most part in Delhi) wept bucketfuls at the imminent demise of this hoary institution. There were wistful encomiums to the luminaries of the Planning Commission of yesteryears. Some writers attempted to highlight the areas where, in spite of the almost total irrelevance of the central planning process, the Planning Commission had tried to make a difference in recent years. I must confess that I have no regrets on the passing of this grande dame of centralised planning: on the contrary, there is relief that one of the relics of the Soviet-style planning era is soon to become history. I am all for the government playing a major, indeed commanding, role in infrastructure development. However, the twisting of this logic to justify government entry into areas ranging from power plants to scooters and bread is quite bizarre, to say the least. This led to a stifling of individual initiative and the experience of a “Hindu rate of growth” of about 3.5% for almost three decades. The economic crisis in India, post the two wars with China and Pakistan and the recurrent droughts, led to the sidelining of the planning process from the late 1960s. From then on, politics dictated what the Planning Commission could do, which was largely the preparation of elaborate econometric models with little relevance to the realities of India. Apart from this, the Planning Commission determined the annual plan sizes of the various states of India. This created what I would term the development of a “beggar mentality” where Chief Ministers of states exulted when they felt they had been able to get a bigger plan size allocated to their states. It is another matter that, very often, this annual plan bore no resemblance to reality; come November-December, there would be cuts in plan size, when the financial resources of the state government came under strain, generally because of some populist concession to some group that the government of the day was keen to pander to. The bureaucrats of the Planning Commission, and of Ministries like the Finance Ministry, sit in judgment on investment decisions of public sector undertakings, of which they have little knowledge, as members of the Expenditure Finance Committee. I remember how, seeking clarifications on some technical issues of the investments of a huge company like ONGC, decisions were postponed for months and sometimes years, with concomitant adverse effects of deferred oil and gas production and cost escalations.
The bifurcation of expenditures into “plan” and “non-plan” is another inexplicable contribution of the Planning Commission and centralised planning to India’s economic wisdom. As a bureaucrat, I was mystified as to why a “plan” expenditure in one five year plan period became “non-plan” expenditure in subsequent plan periods. The babu twist to this logic was to press for at least a token plan allocation for some pet scheme of some politician; once inside the chakravyuha of the budgetary exercise, the scheme could merrily continue for years with no prospect for its exit. This subterfuge was a major contributory factor to the bloated bureaucracy that is not only a millstone around the neck of public finance but also a hindrance to efficient decision making. It would have made far more business and economic sense to classify expenditures as “capital” and “revenue” to ensure that governments balanced budgets and that capital investments were not hit by inadequate financing caused largely by unrealistic plan allocations.
There are also the “one-size fits all” centrally sponsored schemes that are thrust down the throats of state governments, regardless of how and whether the schemes fit in with their geography and economic and social priorities. The rural employment guarantee scheme, MGNREGA, exemplifies the wooden thinking of the Government of India. All districts are given allocations under this scheme, regardless of whether there is a demand for off-season employment or not. In a state like Maharashtra, high irrigation districts like Kolhapur do not require to provide off-season employment to rural labour. Recognising this economic reality, the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), started in 1972, provided for starting rural works where there was local demand. The scheme was demand rather than supply-driven and expenditures on the scheme varied from year to year depending on the rural economic situation, being high in years of drought conditions and lower in years of good rainfall. The MGNREGA ostensibly has a similar provision for demand for rural works; however, the tendency is for the babus of the central government to issue good-performance certificates based on (you guessed it!) expenditures rather than outcomes in terms of man-days of employment and physical assets created. The scheme has also placed heavy reliance on a rickety (in many states, non-functional) local government structure. Not surprisingly, there are many complaints of misuse of funds and poor performance of the scheme in different states. In an ironic twist, the pioneer of the scheme, Maharashtra, is one of the poorer performers, a telling commentary on what happens when a state is made to fit into a universal straitjacket.
If the Central government wants to direct what goes on in every state and district in the country, can our elected representatives be far behind? The local area development schemes give every Member of Parliament Rs. 50 million annually and a Member of a Legislative Assembly or Council of a state gets anywhere from Rs. 15 million to Rs. 20 million annually. More than Rs. 60000 million or US$ one billion is annually at the disposal of what can best be termed individual discretion. Guidelines issued by the central and state governments have not always been followed; local governments, in whose areas the projects are implemented have no say in what would benefit their areas. Focusing these resources on meaningful schemes that add to the abilities of local communities would have been far more desirable.
India is far too big and too diverse a country to fit into any development mould, as Soviet Russia also learnt to its cost. With increasing private investment and recourse to capital markets, it is going to be well-nigh impossible to chart out a straitjacketed course of growth and development. Indian state governments are also getting increasingly assertive of their rights and competing for domestic and foreign private investment. In the decades to come, the central government should stick to promoting major infrastructure investment and managing macroeconomic stability. There is more than enough entrepreneurial initiative and enthusiasm in many states to propel their growth stories forward. The “laggard” states have started displaying an appetite for development and people in most states have put their governments on notice for non- performance. It is time now to move the decision making process from Dilli to the galli.
15 Sep
India – The Flailing State
I am unabashedly borrowing my title for this blog from the characterisation of the Indian state by Lant Pritchett, a former World Bank economist who currently teaches at Harvard University. When he used the term ‘flailing state’ at a lecture to IAS officers at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, I must confess to a feeling of resentment in me and my colleagues about what we felt was a somewhat uncharitable comment. Six years down the line from that occurrence, I am strongly inclined, in the context of my experiences within and outside government, to endorse his view. In fact, I feel he has been rather charitable to public institutions in India, given the frustration and often anger one feels when observing their functioning today. Pritchett used the term “flailing” in the context of a situation where the head, that is, the elite institutions comprising the state, is not in control of the limbs, the field agencies, which operate without any accountability to the hierarchies above them. I would go further to say that elite institutions in India themselves do not function with any significant level of accountability. India is a nation where, as another researcher has put it, there is a yawning gap between laws, as they exist on the books, and laws, as they are actually implemented on the ground. It is here that I find the hypocrisy of the Indian elite especially galling: they take great pride in the theoretical superiority of their institutions, without pausing to introspect on the abysmal failures in implementation in area after area of governance.
Let me expand on this theme in an area I have been working in over the past twelve years or so. Undernutrition in children under five years of age is one of India’s biggest public health problems, contributing to unacceptably high infant and child mortality rates. In fact, India fares worse than nations in sub-Saharan Africa, as far as rates of stunted and underweight children are concerned. One of my colleagues, who has been working for over two decades on IT solutions for social sector issues, has developed a GIS-based software to monitor maternal and child malnutrition and mortality. The software uses mobile telephony to set up a two-way flow of information that updates the health and nutrition status of mothers and children on a real time basis while also providing alerts to frontline health workers on interventions to be made at appropriate times. Efforts are being made to introduce this software in different Indian states to enable tracking of individual mothers and children so that timely healthcare can be provided. What has been clear from the process of implementation over the past three years is that the initiative gets going in a state when there is enthusiasm and encouragement from the top of the civil service. There is also a heart-warming response from field level health workers, who have to actually deal with the problem and who welcome the introduction of information technology to help them perform their tasks far more effectively. The problem arises at two levels: the supervisory levels above the frontline health workers resent the imposition of accountability for their actions. At higher levels at the district and state levels, the availability of up to date data invites scrutiny from a host of actors: NGOs, the media and civil society. Once the initial supporters of the initiative at the highest rungs of the bureaucracy move out from their positions, the project suffers from an ‘apathy attack’. Successor bureaucrats in the concerned departments are either hostile to their predecessor’s efforts (the “successor-predecessor syndrome”) or fail to appreciate the logic and rationale for the launch of the initiative. In either case, the existing system ensures strangulation of the project by either choking off funds or making it clear to middle-level managers in the department that they are at liberty to pay no further attention to the project.
I wish I could say this malaise was restricted to a few departments. Unfortunately, this tendency operates right across the board in government. The UIDAI Aadhaar project to provide unique 12-digit identity numbers to every Indian citizen was beset with similar problems. First, other ministries, like the Ministry of Home Affairs, claimed ownership of this exercise and resented what they saw as the interference of another body in their legitimate function, never mind that the objective of the Aadhaar project was totally different from theirs. Thereafter, getting other Ministries at the national level to link their service functions with the UIDAI was another mammoth task, with not every Ministry too keen to use the Aadhaar number for their operations. Finally, there was (and still is) the issue of enlistment of state government agencies in linking their service functions with the Aadhaar number. At the national level, there was not even consensus on enacting legislation to give a formal legal backbone to the Aadhaar card. This led to the Supreme Court ruling that direct benefit transfers, like the subsidy on LPG through the linkage of the Aadhaar number to consumer bank accounts, could not be made mandatory, defeating one of the possible major benefits of the Aadhaar scheme.
There are three major reasons why reforms in India hit roadblocks ever so often, all linked to what I would term ‘myopic vision’ of the ruling elites. The first relates to the lack of any sort of political consensus on the direction reforms should take. Whether it is the auction of natural resources, the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST) or the issue of foreign direct investment in retail, we go around in circles rather than facing the challenge head on. One political group will stick to tired statements about the public sector having to retain the “commanding heights” of the economy, while another political formation will shed tears for India’s farmers and retail businessmen, without any detailed cost-benefit analysis of what a particular policy will entail. Ministers of Finance from the centre and states will meet year after year without resolving a taxation issue that Europe resolved in the nineteenth century. More and more, it is clear that political parties are held hostage by sectional vested interests, even though such relationships do not even appear to pay political dividends.
A second reason, and a major one, is the inbuilt resistance of the Indian bureaucratic class to change. Large sections of the bureaucracy have thrived on the status quo, with guaranteed lifelong returns from the government (in terms of salaries and pensions) and with no accountability for performance in their jobs. Recommendations of Pay Commissions on downsizing the bureaucracy have been blithely ignored: no prizes for guessing who did not let these suggestions see the light of day. A large part of the bureaucracy, especially (but not only) at the middle and lower levels does not have any commitment to change – the top level, after a few feeble attempts, goes back to ‘business as usual’. A massive report of the Second Commission on Administrative Reforms (the Veerappa Moily Commission) is gathering dust five years after final submission. Has any officers’ association (of any of the elite All-India and Central Services) attempted to advocate reforms based on the Committee’s recommendations or even sought to encourage public debate on the same?
The third reason lies in the inertia and intellectual confusion of the large group of academics, journalists and other eminences who jointly comprise the intelligentsia. Positions are taken on the basis of ideological leanings and a vague nostalgia for the past rather than on the merits of each issue. Concerns are brought up without analysing whether they apply to the Indian context. Two examples will suffice. I have seen a number of media articles some years back which questioned the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in elections in India. Examples were trotted out of some Western democracies where misuse of this technology had apparently been detected. No attempt was made by these ‘experts’ to actually see and describe the freedom that the Indian voter, especially the dispossessed and disadvantaged one, got from the exercise of his franchise through the dual combination of an election identity card and the EVM. Having personally overseen two elections in Bihar (the best test case for assessing the efficacy of this technology), I can testify to the change in atmosphere between the 1998 and 2005 elections and the newfound assertiveness of the voter. The same intelligentsia today raises questions about the Aadhaar card and the intrusion on the individual’s privacy. What price privacy, I would ask, when you are not able to get entitled benefits that the state has promised you, only because enabling technology to remove the pernicious influence of the ubiquitous middleman has not been introduced?
The essential problem lies in the Indian elite’s reluctance to experiment with innovation in different areas of governance. Whether it is policy reform, civil service recasting or technology use in governance, leadership, both in government and civil society, has been found wanting in giving a sense of purpose and direction : the same old debates and the same tired arguments seem to dominate all discussions. Any policy shift leads to some winners and some losers: what is required is reasoned debate on the benefits and costs of the proposed policy to arrive at a via media that is acceptable to most and looks at longer-term benefits to the country than a purely short-sighted approach that panders only to current (and sometimes unfounded) fears and insecurities. Someone desperately needs to cut the Gordian Knot. Can we hope that we have reached that stage at least in 2014?
V. Ramani's web 