Archive for the ‘public policy’ Category

1 Jan

Reshaping India’s bureaucracy – a blueprint for action

Posted by vramani in government, public policy. Tagged: , .

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

(Omar Khayyam)

 

The eagerly awaited report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (7CPC) has been received by the Government of India, which will, in all likelihood, give effect to its recommendations early in 2016. Omar Khayyam’s prescient words apply with particular force to an issue as sensitive as the pay packets of India’s mammoth bureaucracy: once the genie has been let out from the bottle, there is no containing its impact. The abiding regret of this writer will be that his fervent hopes that the 7CPC would address the issue of flab and sloth in government have been dashed by the report, apart from the usual pious homilies delivered by it. It is now left entirely to the government of the day to tackle this vexing issue which has important consequences for the future of effective policy-making and responsive service delivery in India. What is truly unfortunate that the IAS and the various central services have spent most of their time and energies squabbling over the spoils of office (pay parity, promotion avenues, etc.) rather than agonizing and introspecting over the growing trust deficit between them and the aam aurat on account of their collective failure in meeting her aspirations. Not a word was uttered by the doyens of the civil services about the need to make the civil services more efficient and accountable; instead, the unedifying spectacle of tawdry trade unionism only served to confirm the worst fears of the public about their “public servants”. Which goes to substantiate the point made in earlier instalments of this column that only major surgery will improve the condition of homo indicus administraticus, that exotic species of public servant that abounds in Indian climes.

The Tenth Report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (SARC) constituted by the previous UPA government has outlined the reforms in the bureaucracy in countries with widely differing socio-economic milieus ranging from Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand to Japan and Singapore. Each of the countries discussed in the SARC Report has followed its own path of reform, with the first three pursuing radical, systemic transformation in civil service structures while the latter two have been more incremental in their approach. The SARC Report has played it safe, sticking to the conventional, incremental approach of piecemeal reform, which has largely been ignored by the Government of India although seven years have elapsed since the publication of the report. To stimulate debate on this critical issue, I am going to stick my neck out and propose a course of action that will probably infuriate my erstwhile colleagues in government. I am, however, convinced that the time has come for bold action on this front; further delay will mean indefinite postponement of “India’s tryst with destiny”.

1) Reconstitution of the public services

At the stroke of the midnight hour on 31 December 2017, all Group A to Group C services of the Government of India should be merged into a single unified service, to be called the Indian Public Service (IPS) (I suggest a specific date so that there is a commitment to this reform process). All existing personnel in these services will move to a five year contract system with the government. Recruitments to all services (including Group D services) will be stopped from mid-2017 onwards; this means that 2016 will be the last year when competitive examinations for any level of the existing civil services are conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) or any other body.

2) Public Service Commissions

The UPSC will be replaced by the Indian Public Service Commission (IPSC) at the central level. The Chairperson and Members of the IPSC will be appointed by the President of India on the recommendations of a committee comprising the Vice President of India, the Prime Minister of India, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Leader of the principal Opposition Party in the Lok Sabha. The IPSC will have independent powers relating to the recruitment process of IPS personnel, as well as all matters relating to the development of professional public services, maintenance of the highest standards of ethics and integrity, monitoring, reviewing and reporting on the performance of the IPS across departments and agencies and conducting disciplinary enquiries in respect of IPS personnel.

At the state level, State Public Service Commissions (SPSCs) will be set up, which will work under the overall control and supervision of the IPSC. The Chairperson and Members of the SPSCs will be appointed by the Governor of the State on the recommendations of a Committee comprising the Chief Minister of the State, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and the leader of the principal Opposition Party in the Legislative Assembly. The SPSCs will have the same independent powers in respect of the personnel in the State Public Services (SPSs) as listed above in the case of the IPSC.

3) Structure of the IPS and recruitment process

The IPS, a Government of India service, will comprise three levels — the Senior Management Services (SMS), the Middle Management Services (MMS) and the Junior Management Services (JMS). The IPS will man three types of service structures:

  • Departments, which will serve to formulate policy and get budgets approved by Parliament;
  • Agencies, which will exercise project execution, advisory and research functions;
  • Statutory bodies/agencies, created under different statutes.

Each of the Departments and Agencies will work under the supervision of a Minister of the relevant government.

Recruitment to the IPS will be through a competitive examination, organised by the IPSC, open to all graduates who are over 21 years of age. The pattern of examination would broadly follow the current scheme for the Civil Services examination, with multiple-choice questions designed to test the general knowledge and analytical abilities of candidates. There would be two levels of examinations: candidates for JMS posts would need to obtain a specified minimum qualifying mark in the Level 1 examination to be eligible to apply for posts. Level 1 examinations (to be held every year) would comprise one paper each in general knowledge and analytical ability. Additionally, there would be two multiple-choice papers (both of a qualifying nature) to test the language skills of candidates in English and Hindi. Based on the number of expected vacancies at JMS level in a three-year period, a list of twice that number of successful candidates (based on their latest performance in the Level 1 examination held in the three years prior to that period) would be drawn up every three years. Departments/agencies would advertise their vacancies as and when they arise; any person in the list will be eligible to apply. A selection committee comprising the department/agency head (or her representative) and a representative of the Indian Public Service Commission (IPSC) would interview a select list of candidates and pick the most suitable person(s). The selected person would be offered a five-year contract and would be eligible to reapply for the post at the end of that period, when she would get an opportunity to compete for the post with other eligible candidates. Her chances of reselection would obviously depend on the assessment of her contribution to the department during her five-year tenure.

Level 2 examinations would be held every year to determine the pool of candidates eligible for appointment to the SMS and the MMS. Candidates (graduates over 21 years of age) would be assessed on their performance in multiple-choice general knowledge and analytical ability examinations; they would also be graded on their performance in an essay-type examination that tests their understanding of the Constitution of India and of contemporary national and international trends in the economic, political and social spheres. While these three papers would determine their performance in the Level 2 examination, candidates would also be required to meet qualifying standards in the two multiple-choice papers in English and Hindi. Candidates scoring above a mark set  by the IPSC in their latest attempt in the Level 2 examination held in the previous five years would be eligible to offer themselves for appointment for SMS and MMS posts, which would be offered for a fixed five-year term. At the end of the five-year period, the post would be freshly advertised for which all eligible candidates, including the current incumbent of the post, would be eligible to apply.

For all the three levels, there would be no upper age limit for selection, though, obviously, the competence of the applicant and her health condition would be major factors in determining her selection.

4) Structure of the State Public Services (SPSs) and recruitment process

The SPSCs will be responsible for the recruitment of personnel in the state government and urban and rural local governments. As in the case of the IPS, the same three service levels — SMS, MMS and JMS — will work in the same administrative structures of departments, agencies and statutory bodies at both the state and local government levels. The SPSCs can use the same Level 1 and Level 2 examinations (for appointments to state governments and local bodies) as conducted by the IPSC (with Hindi being substituted, where appropriate, by the local language) or they can conduct their own examinations on the IPSC pattern, under the supervision of the IPSC (given the rather dismal recruitment record of most State Public Service Commissions today). Appointments will be for fixed five-year terms with the provision for the incumbent to apply for the position afresh, along with other applicants, when the post is freshly advertised. As in the case of the IPS, there would be no upper age limit for appointment.

This new system of bureaucracy is intended to be more managerial and result-oriented in its approach. It would be worthwhile to highlight the important departures from the current systems of management of the bureaucracy at different levels of the central, state and local governments:

1) No movement between different levels of government

The All-India Services would cease to exist in the new formulation and there would be no movement of officials between Central and State governments or between State and local governments. The fears of lack of cohesiveness in its newly constituted states, which haunted the newly independent Indian Republic, do not apply more than six decades later. More and more, state politicians resent the “imposition” of officers from outside the state and feel (sometimes justifiably) that these officers do not understand the local ethos. In any case, a person from one state who seeks public employment in another state can do so provided she meets the local language qualifying standards in the examination.

2) Government positions open to all

One major advantage would be the availability of talent and skills from all strata of society to fill posts in government. All positions at all levels would be open to any citizen of India (though even this requirement could be reviewed in due course). The induction of people from diverse backgrounds, including the private sector and academia, to policy-making and executive posts, would enable the introduction of fresh ideas and innovations into governance, apart from ensuring domain expertise. There would also be provision for movement from the public services to elected political posts: the only requirement would be that the incumbent of the public service post would have to resign in order to contest elections. In case she is unsuccessful in the elections, there is no bar on her applying for any position in government that may be available. This would put an end to the continuous (often meaningless) debates on the primacy of members of one service and the lack of opportunities to others who were not fortunate enough to win the “lottery” in the examinations to the civil services. The only criterion for selection to a fixed-term post would be the competence, skills and knowledge of the candidate and the value she is expected to add to her assignment.

3) Administrative and financial autonomy

All JMS personnel at the central, state and local levels will be selected by a Committee comprising the Head of the department/agency (or another officer designated by her) and a representative of the IPSC/SPSC. The logic behind this approach is that the performance of the department/agency head will depend on the calibre of the personnel selected by her Committee; hence she will exercise due diligence in selection. Similarly, SMS and MMS level personnel would be selected by a Committee comprising the Minister (or equivalent at the local body level) and Head of the department/agency and a representative of the IPSC/SPSC. This would squarely place on the Minister responsibility for the efficient functioning of the department/agency and also end once and for all the complaint often heard from Ministers that their bureaucrats do not listen to them. Substantial financial powers will also be delegated to heads of departments/agencies, with well laid-down procedures for purchases and contracts, to speed up decision making processes. There would be little scope then for the bureaucracy to blame inefficient staff and cumbersome financial rules for their lack of efficiency.

4) Compensation structures

Departments and agencies will have the authority and jurisdiction to fix the levels and nature of remuneration for the personnel working in them. This will have to designed to attract the best talent to public service and will, of course, have to be mindful of government’s revenue-raising capabilities. At the same time, this would also promote innovations in government practices to augment revenues and control expenditures.

5) Building competencies — digital governments

Since there will be a regular churning of personnel at all levels, developing the skills and capabilities of persons who will be manning positions in government at some stage is crucial to effective governance. This can be done through the following measures:

  • Offer employment in government only to those possessing requisite computer skills, including the ability to prepare documents and presentations and to handle data processing tasks;
  • develop extensive electronic databases so that employees have access to online information to assist in the efficient performance of their tasks;
  • encourage in-service employees to go in for training courses (both online and offline) to upgrade their skills and capabilities for their current and future assignments;
  • set up a continuing education fund, contributed to by government, financial institutions and the corporate sector, to enable individuals to avail of soft loans for pursuing higher studies in reputed institutions in India.

6) Reducing government departments and devolving responsibilities

The use of the phrase “no gain without pain” since time immemorial has its echoes in any efforts at administrative restructuring. With the clear delineation of department and agency functions, there will be need for far fewer departments. This implies a drastic reduction in the administrative personnel required in staff positions and a move to more of line personnel whose jobs will depend on the specific projects they execute or the functions that they perform. Redundancies could well arise because of closure of certain functions/projects and on account of even technological obsolescence. To give just a couple of examples — stenographers would become history, peons would vanish as a class and drivers would hardly be visible, except maybe for the political and administrative executive at the very top. Officials would have to type their own notes and fetch their tea/coffee from vending machines (with, hopefully, visible improvements in their health profiles!). The pain would percolate to the political class as well: fewer Ministerial posts and fewer sinecures in obscure government corporations.

Along with leaner (though not necessarily meaner) departments and agencies, a full rethink would also be required to determine what should be the role of the department as compared to the agency. Departments will confine themselves to broad policy issues and leave the formulation and execution of projects to agencies. This would reduce the need for both many departments as well as for excessive staffing of departments. It would also ensure that agencies take full responsibility for the timely execution of projects and do not pass the buck for tardy implementation to departmental delays.

The most important reform needed is to clearly demarcate the areas of responsibilities as between the three tiers of government — central, state and local. The rule of thumb should be that no function should be controlled by two levels of government, either in terms of budgeting or execution. Subjects should squarely come within the jurisdiction of one of the tiers of government — the next higher tier should be involved only in an advisory role or where coordination issues rise between the lower tier governments. This will require a relook at the existing subject distributions in the Seventh, Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules of the Constitution of India.

Conclusion

This has turned out to be a far longer blog than earlier ones and I must crave the indulgence of my readers. But it was not possible, in the interests of continuity and cogency, to split this article. Also, the subject matter required going into in some depth to propose possible solutions that can be debated and acted upon. Given the limitations of length, it has not been possible to touch on a number of other details like the roles and functions of the IPSC and SPSCs, the mechanisms for checking corruption and misuse of power at the political and administrative levels and the devolution of powers to lower levels of government. These and other issues can be debated in depth once there is a modicum of consensus on the broad parameters for administrative reform. I sincerely hope that this article stirs up introspection and debate on future directions for bureaucracy in India. The people of India are not interested in the musical chairs game that different sections of the bureaucracy seek to play nor in the promotion of the virtues of one service as against another. It is high time the elite bureaucracy of India (whether from the IAS, IA&AS, IRTS or IRS) is exposed to competition from all others, whether the latter did or did not participate in the same race initially. Let the serving  bureaucrat of today show that she has the skills and competence to outperform the smartest in the land. I can assure her that she will find far more personal fulfilment and acceptance from the public than is the case today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15 Dec

India’s quest for oil and gas – more questions than answers

Posted by vramani in government, petroleum, public policy. Tagged: , .

The Petroleum Ministry of the Government of India has gone into overdrive with two recent policy announcements. It decided to offer 69 small oilfields for development through an international bidding process and has floated a consultation paper on the future contours of oil and gas exploration policy.  The controversies with Reliance over the KG-D6 field development led the UPA government to constitute the Rangarajan Committee to suggest an appropriate contractual framework for petroleum exploration and production in India. Probably, at least in part as a response to dissatisfaction of oil companies with this report, another Committee under Dr. Vijay Kelkar, which included members with experience in the upstream petroleum industry, was constituted over two years ago to suggest measures to meet India’s hydrocarbon requirements over the next two decades. The recommendations of this Committee, which landed on the table of the present government over a year ago, seem to have been partially acted upon, as will be shown later in this article. What defies logic is the present move to again launch a consultation process with stakeholders on hydrocarbon exploration policy. Oil companies, national and private, have forcefully put forth their views over the past three years; there is little or nothing left for them to say further. But an examination of the major issues raised in the consultation paper show that the same path as in the past is being traversed by the government, with the same old wine being served in the same old bottles. It may, hence, be instructive to see what the consultation paper highlights and what it implies for government action in the coming months.

There can be no quibble with the proposal to adopt a uniform licensing policy for all forms of hydrocarbon resources, ranging from conventional oil and natural gas to unconventional sources like shale oil/gas, coal bed methane, gas hydrates, etc. The decision to go in for an open acreage licensing policy (OALP), which was one of the recommendations of the Kelkar Committee, is also welcome. However, this requires a much firmer stand of the Petroleum Ministry and the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) vis a vis the national oil companies (NOCs), ONGC and OIL, in matters relating to acreage on offer and availability of data. Private companies have always had the grouse that the NOCs are loath to relinquish acreage allotted to them in the past on nomination basis by the government. The same rules that apply to companies under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) ought to be applied here: areas that have not seen any NOC exploration or development activity in a reasonable time frame should be relinquished by them and offered under OALP to remove any discriminatory treatment in favour of the NOCs. The DGH should also develop a strong data repository (another recommendation of the Kelkar Committee) and ensure that all geological data, including from those areas currently or formerly held by the NOCs and other companies, is freely available for inspection and analysis.

It is the other two points in the consultation paper which give cause for concern. Despite the Kelkar Committee marshalling very good arguments for continuing with a petroleum profit-sharing arrangement, the Petroleum Ministry has stuck to its guns in going in for a revenue-sharing system. The revenue sharing model militates against private risk-taking in that it transfers the entire risk burden to the investor. With royalty and a share of gross revenue (net of royalty) having to be paid upfront to the government, private companies will find the risk-weighted returns skewed against them, especially in an era of low oil prices. The proposed fiscal model could also go against government revenue interests,  with windfall gains being reaped by a private company, in the event of the discovery and development of a giant oil/gas field by a private operator in a contract area where, because of its relatively unattractive geological prospectivity, modest fiscal terms were offered to the government,. We do not have to look very far for such instances: no one, at the outset, gave much of a chance for hydrocarbon discoveries in Bombay High and Rajasthan, two of India’s most prolific oil producing areas today.

The carrot of freedom to companies in pricing and marketing of gas is being dangled again before companies. Unfortunately, the same utopia was held out to companies as far back as the year 2000, when the first NELP contracts were signed. The Reliance imbroglio and the flip-flops on permitting companies to sell gas to whomever they wish at market price have left private companies sadder but none the wiser about government’s intentions. There will need to be clear policy moves, on the lines suggested by the Kelkar Committee, removing government control over pricing and marketing decisions on gas, so that private producers face no unpleasant surprises from subsequent governments.

The government offer notice for small fields also requires successful companies to compensate ONGC/OIL for past costs incurred on book value basis, adding another upfront payment by companies which will eat into their profit margins. At the present moment, it is not clear if the provisions of the Draft Revenue Sharing Contract (DRSC), which were circulated last year for comments, are going to apply to the present offer in toto. If they do, the entire bidding process, whether for small fields or exploration blocks, may well prove to be a non-starter. Penalising companies for failure to reach committed production levels goes against the very grain of best petroleum industry practice, given the uncertain behaviour of petroleum reservoirs. Requiring companies to channel all revenues, in the first instance, into an escrow account will delay revenue accruals to them; it will also affect their ability to raise funds from financial institutions, which will be uncertain about government payments in time to companies to enable them to meet their debt payment commitments. The provision for treating revenues earned from assignment of participating interest as liable for sharing with the government flies in the face of international oil industry principles: this will inhibit participation of small companies which hope to develop the reservoir and then sell their participating interest to larger companies which are better placed to exploit the reserves.

The absence of a contractual stability provision in the DRSC will raise apprehensions in private companies, given the government’s track record in compelling Vedanta to meet royalty payments at the time of approval of its acquisition of Cairn India’s interests. Nor is the bureaucratic footprint in approving decisions on field appraisal and development reduced in any significant manner. In fact, there is no bold departure at all from the past, with Petroleum Ministry bureaucrats and DGH officials continuing to have a major say in all aspects of operations of the contractor. Given the less than pleasant experience of companies with this system in the past, it would be highly optimistic to expect dynamic decision making aimed at cutting delays in giving approvals.

India, as a major petroleum importer, has very few major successes to show in the exploitation of its petroleum reserves over the past twenty five years. Such successes as have been there have been due to the efforts of private investors; the national oil companies have had virtually no significant petroleum discoveries to show for their exploration investments.  The Petroleum Ministry is now trying to paint the offer of small oilfields as an attractive bait to private investors when, by its own admission, these fields were not monetized by ONGC and OIL “due to their isolated location, limited reserves, high development cost, technological constraints and fiscal regime”. At a time when oil prices are on a downward path, marginal discoveries are unlikely to attract any significant private investment, all the more so if the contractual terms offered are less than appetising.

It all finally boils down to the comfort levels between investing companies and the government in doing business with one another. Viewing company motives with suspicion is not the best advertisement for encouraging private investment in a high-risk sector. Mexico’s recent experience in failing to enthuse private investors to bid for its shallow-water exploration blocks is a timely reminder of the consequences of low government credibility in the eyes of investors. Venezuela and Brazil are also paying the price for their past reluctance to engage with private oil companies. That such major producers face lukewarm investor response is a wake-up call to a far smaller player in the oil production market like India. Unless geologically attractive areas are offered, contractual terms meet investor expectations and the operating environment is efficient and hassle-free, petrodollars will not pour into India. As of now, the prognosis for private investment in the upstream oil and gas sector is, I am afraid, rather bleak.

 

 

 

1 Dec

Reducing Child Malnutrition – Four D(o)s for governments

Posted by vramani in government, health & nutrition, public policy. Tagged: , .

Child malnutrition constitutes one of India’s biggest public health challenges. A look at international child nutrition rankings can be very sobering: India (with 44% of under-6 children underweight and 48% of under-6 children stunted) is in the same league as countries with far more pressing social, economic and political problems. The recently released Rapid Survey of Children carried out by the Ministry of Women & Child Development (MWCD), Government of India and UNICEF highlights the gap between better-performing and laggard states within India. The bulk of the poor performance on under-6 child nutrition (underweight and stunting) indicators is accounted for by just seven states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh. This is in spite of India having one of the oldest programmes (since 1975) – the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) – dedicated to improving maternal and child health and nutrition. The problem clearly does not lie in the intent: it lies in the inability of governments at the national and state levels to adopt a systems approach to tackling this issue. This blog argues that there are four must-dos for governments in India (all coincidentally starting with the letter D) which will hopefully contribute to significant reductions in child malnutrition. These are based on my personal experience with Maharashtra’s Rajmata Jijau Mother-Child Health & Nutrition Mission (“the Maharashtra Mission”) which I headed from 2005 to 2010 and from the heartening statistics which show that stunting and underweight in under-2 children in Maharashtra fell by 41% and 24% respectively between 2006 and 2012, attributable, at least in part, to a more focused approach of the Government of Maharashtra towards tackling child malnutrition.

Data & Disaggregation

Government systems are noticeably reluctant to use data, especially disaggregated data, to inform public policy direction and the ICDS is no exception. The MWCD receives monthly progress reports online from all state governments detailing inter alia the under-6 child underweight status (as per the WHO classification) on an ICDS project wise basis at the sub-district level. Unfortunately, this data often arrives after a considerable time-lag (when it does arrive at all) and there is no insistence on timely, accurate reporting. In any case, no use has been, or is, made of this rich source of data by governments at the national and state levels to focus attention on specific geographical areas where the incidence of child malnutrition is severe. In all development indicators, some regions in the country will lag well behind others. In child nutrition outcome indicators, too, it is observed that some regions in specific districts of the country, particularly those inhabited by tribal populations, minority communities and other socially disadvantaged groups show markedly poorer performance. There is also the issue of child coverage under the ICDS: despite the orders of the Supreme Court over ten years ago, a significant proportion of under-6 children still do not receive the full range of health and nutrition services. The decennial Census of India gives figures of children in the 0-6 age group right down to the village and urban ward level. Using these figures as the denominator for action, as the Maharashtra Mission did from 2005 onwards, enables inclusive coverage of all 0-6 children. Ensuring that each and every one of these children are regularly weighed gives comprehensive monthly data on the nutrition status of children in each habitation and enables taking of corrective nutrition and health measures in a timely manner. The availability of disaggregated data, including nutrition outcome indicators, draws the attention of policymakers to the worst affected areas and enables concentration of financial and human resources in those areas. More recently, Geographic Information System (GIS) tools like Jatak (see www.issnip.jatak.org ) have been developed to track individual child nutrition status and take steps to improve the health and nutrition status of children. Using Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS), data on key child nutrition indicators are received from frontline nutrition workers as voice files and converted into data at a central facility. This data has a two-way flow: it goes downwards for initiation of timely action by field workers and also enables supervision of their activities by middle-level managers. Aggregated at sub-district and district levels, it also aids timely policy interventions.

Design & Delivery

As mentioned in the preceding section, the use of the latest census data on 0-6 child population allows firming up of the numbers of children to be covered by each anganwadi or a cluster of anganwadis in a revenue village or urban ward. The starting point has to be the provision of public health and nutrition services to the child based on an assessment of her nutrition status. Growth monitoring is one area where significant systemic weaknesses can be seen in nearly all states. Maintaining monthly weight records of under-6 children and monitoring their growth progress enables the anganwadi worker to refer children at risk to medical facilities for early treatment of childhood illnesses or congenital diseases. The focus in the ICDS system thus far has been only on under-6 child underweight status. However, extensive research has shown that stunting (height-related) and wasting (weight to height related) indicators are also crucial to the healthy development of the child. Till such time as government policy sanctions length/height measurement as an indicator, the appropriate strategy, as adopted by the Maharashtra Mission, would be to record the lengths/heights of all under-6 children listed as being severely (more than three standard deviations below normal) underweight as also of under-6 children with faltering growth patterns and determine children, especially in the under-2 age category, requiring urgent health and nutrition interventions to check severe acute malnutrition (SAM), which significantly increases infant and child mortality. This requires close coordination between the ICDS and health systems at village and health centre levels. The use of a system like Jatak would give an upto date list of severely underweight children and those displaying faltering growth patterns. The anganwadi worker would provide this list to the nearest health worker/ medical facility to record the lengths/heights of these children and determine those children failing in the SAM category. Such children would be admitted to medical facilities, with continued post-treatment monitoring by field workers at home subsequently. Children in the moderate acute malnutrition category can be attended to at the anganwadis or at home by anganwadi workers.

The focus on reducing moderate and severe underweight and wasting rates in under-6 children requires revamping of delivery systems in the ICDS sector through building up motivation, skills and knowledge in anganwadi workers, supervisors and Child Development Project Officers. The negative mentality of blaming field workers for high rates of child malnutrition has to give way to an appreciation of the severe constraints they operate under, moving, as the Maharashtra Mission termed it, from “a fault-finding to a fact-finding approach”. Anganwadi workers are paid a pittance (often after a delay of many months) for the devoted services they render to the community and are handicapped by a severe shortage of infrastructure and equipment essential to the effective performance of their duties, as well as voluminous reporting requirements and absence of on-the-job training. The awareness that they are contributing to the raising of the next generation needs to be imprinted in the minds of all ICDS functionaries. It is not that monetary incentives alone motivate people: non-monetary recognition, through an appreciation of work by those higher in the hierarchy and giving publicity to achievers, can be a major inspiration to workers. At the same time, senior officer levels in the ICDS need to take on team leadership – they should be available 24*7 for solving implementation problems and making available resources to frontline workers to enable them to give of their best. A large part of the Maharashtra Mission’s efforts went into establishing an easy rapport with ICDS staff, encouraging innovative approaches at their level, appreciating their efforts and resolving their operational and organizational problems with higher levels in the ICDS Commissioner’s office.

It’s not rocket science!

The above approach combines responsive governance with the intelligent use of data in a systematic, disciplined manner, adopting a standard operating protocol, which can yield rich dividends where improving child nutrition outcomes are concerned. Of course, there are very relevant issues like the nutrition and health status of adolescent girls, effective antenatal care for expecting mothers, behavioural changes in communities and families on issues of health, nutrition, education, sanitation and gender equality, not to mention the all-important aspect of tackling poverty and low incomes. Trying to tackle all these issues is beyond the capacity of any one agency or department, let alone the government; governments, corporates, nonprofits and civil society have to come together to evolve solutions to these problems. These will take time; till then, our emphasis has to be on the child, as poignantly penned by the poet Gabriela Mistral:

“Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer “Tomorrow”, his name is today.”

 

 

 

 

15 Nov

IAS at the crossroads

Posted by vramani in public policy. Tagged: , .

The Indian Administrative Service (IAS), that inheritor of the mantle of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), has reached a decisive point in its almost seven decade existence. There has been a growing groundswell in the police and central services (referred to hereafter, for the sake of brevity, as the “other services”) for parity in pay and promotion prospects vis a vis the IAS. While reliable data is not available, recent trends seem to indicate a growing tendency to appoint more non-IAS officers as Joint Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, etc. The clamour for pay parity grows as the date for the report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission draws near. With the central government acting on the “one rank one pension” (OROP) demand of the military forces with unusual alacrity, it should cause no surprise if the demand of the other services for equality in pay with the IAS does not strike a sympathetic chord with the government of the day. Once this becomes a reality, the hitherto enjoyed predominance of the IAS in postings in the central government would come to an end.

A lot of water has, indeed, flowed under the bridge since Sardar Patel’s decision to constitute the All India Services (the IAS and the IPS) as successor services to the ICS and the Imperial Police. These two services were to serve as the administrative link between the Union and the States in a fledgling democracy. The Central Services (Income Tax, Customs & Central Excise, Railway Traffic & Railway Accounts, Audits & Accounts, etc.) were intended to perform specialized functions like direct and indirect tax collections, audit of government accounts and a host of other activities linked to government monopoly over the economic and infrastructure sectors. However, over time, the need to provide promotion opportunities to members of the central services saw a proportion of posts in the Central Secretariat being filled in by officers of these services; this was in addition to the posts in their respective service organisations which were reserved only for officers of these services.

The original rationale for having a two-way flow of IAS officers (for specific time periods) from the states to the centre, and vice versa, was to draw on the expertise and knowledge acquired by them in the state so that policy formulation at the central level would benefit from an understanding of the situation at the ground level. With the exception of areas which are the exclusive preserve of the central government, this reasoning still holds good today. It still makes sense to post an officer in the Ministry of Women & Child Development who understands how an anganwadi works or a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of School Education who has observed the functioning (or otherwise) of a village school.

The problem with the IAS has arisen with the increasing need for domain expertise and the failure of the IAS as a service to meet this need of the times. Shifting between different departments, often with short tenures, and not having the opportunity (or the compulsion) to specialize in a particular field, the IAS officer is in a situation where her sister-officer from the other services can claim, with some justification, that the IAS officer brings no specific domain expertise to the job; ergo, anyone can be appointed to do that job. The issue gets compounded further because of the failure of many IAS officers to act as change agents in the positions they occupy. Procedures, rather than outcomes, rule their thinking: aligning government systems with the latest technology and promoting more responsive and efficient governance are neither their priority nor the touchstone on which their worth to the organisation is assessed. A fair share of the blame for this state of affairs goes to the highest echelons of the bureaucracy, which have neither pushed for the acquisition of specialized knowledge by officers nor put in place mechanisms to ensure an officer spends adequate time in a particular post to assess her contribution fairly and honestly. In fact, the “transfer” disease has now spread from the states to the centre. Secretaries, Additional Secretaries and Joint Secretaries at the centre, who used to enjoy uninterrupted tenures in one post, are now shuffled around at frequent intervals, hardly a recipe for acquiring knowledge about a particular job.

Another phenomenon which has pushed the IAS on the back foot is the tendency to allow almost every officer to rise to the very top of the service (at least in terms of pay scales), especially in the states. What this implies is that even officers not found suitable for occupying positions of Joint Secretary and above in the central government invariably move up the hierarchy and occupy posts in state governments carrying salaries equal to those paid to Secretaries of the Government of India (most officers in the Indian Police Service also benefit from this largesse when they remain in the states). Not surprisingly, this leads to howls of protests from members of other services, who are not similarly favoured. A lot of the recent fireworks over OROP arose from the grievance of the military that those among them who did not make the cut had to retire much earlier, depriving them not only of their pre-retirement benefits but also entitling them to lower pensions, since they retired at lower levels of the military cadre.

As the service which has generally been considered primus inter pares and is expected to set the standard for all other services, the IAS has certainly been found wanting. But let me place the matter in perspective by stating that the other services (All-India and Central) suffer from the same deficiencies as the IAS, namely, lack of professionalism and absence of domain expertise. The problem lies not in a particular service, but in the structure of governance we have given ourselves over the past seven decades. My colleagues in all the services would be well advised to introspect on whether they have taken to heart John F. Kennedy’s words in his inaugural presidential address in 1961: “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” From my side, I offer some suggestions, which have also been outlined in two earlier blogs ( Why blame the IAS alone? ) and ( Reconstructing the bureaucracy ).

Trimming the bureaucracy should be the first priority of government. This will not only enable expenditure control but will improve efficiency. Governments everywhere, but especially in India, suffer from the operation of Peter’s Principle (“Everyone in an organization keeps on getting promoted until they reach their level of incompetence”) and Parkinson’s Law (“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”). To this, I would add one more principle/law: “Staff expands to create work for its expansion” (dare I immodestly claim the name Ramani’s law for it?). More staff leads to more paperwork and more levels of processing of decisions. Staff creation proposals tend to exhibit the “middle age spread” syndrome — heavy towards the lower parts of the body. If you don’t believe me, see any request for new staff; there is always a preponderance of clerks and peons rather than of knowledge workers.

Moving completely to a system of contractual appointments at all levels of government will enforce accountability. The process should be started immediately using the carrot of the Seventh Central Pay Commission recommendations, which are rumoured to be fairly generous. It will also enable the appointment of persons with knowledge in specific fields to run departments and organisations. If Justin Trudeau can stock his Canadian Cabinet of Ministers with experts, India should try to do the same at least in its bureaucracy, for a start. Not only can deadwood in government be effortlessly weeded away, we can hopefully call an end to the current battles between “generalists” and “specialists” and between the IAS and other services.

Moving policy and decision making down the governance ladder to local governments will promote more enthusiastic citizen participation, improve administrative responsiveness and enable shedding of administrative flab in central and state governments. Implementation diktats from Delhi and state capitals have destroyed local initiative and have often starved local governments of sorely needed funds. It is time, more than twenty years after the passage of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India, to pay more than token obeisance to these legislations and to move further down the road of empowering local elected representatives of the people.

The IAS can reinvent itself and lend a new dimension to efforts to restructure the civil services if the top levels of the bureaucracy, still largely manned by the service, move to implement the suggestions given above. That all senior government services, including the IAS, require thorough overhauling is no longer in doubt. Individuals in the IAS and other services rendered, and continue to render, invaluable public service: the examples of those who headed organisations like the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchanges Board of India and the Konkan Railway Corporation/Delhi Metro Rail Corporation as well as many police officers and administrators come to mind. But twenty first century India needs a different administrative paradigm; the challenges before the country brook no further delay. Rather than squabble over short-term service benefits, my colleagues in the decision-making apparatus today need to go in for a radical remake of the civil services, on the lines of their colonial cousins in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. They would do well to heed Brutus’ admonition:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. 

(William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar)

 

 

 

 

 

15 Oct

What goes around comes around

Posted by vramani in political economy, public affairs, public policy.

There was a young lady of Niger

Who went for a ride on a tiger

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside

And a smile on the face of the tiger.

This limerick came to mind almost immediately when Sudheendra Kulkarni, the organiser of the function to launch the book of former Pakistan foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, had his face blackened by miscreants, following the veto by Maharashtra’s “Tiger” party, the Shiv Sena, of any function in Mumbai involving a personality from India’s western neighbour. That he was a prominent figure, till some years ago, of a political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the governments in Delhi and Mumbai, with the Shiv Sena as a junior partner, apparently cut no ice with the Sena, which more or less said “serves him right” after the unfortunate incident. But then, after having consorted with a party like the BJP, many of whose members have made a virtue of divisions in society, Kulkarni ought to have been aware of the consequences of associating with a perceived “enemy” whose country is anathema to the professed worldview of his ex-party and its like-minded partners. It would, therefore be apposite to remember the Biblical injunction “they have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind”. History is replete with instances of the consequences of one’s karmas (both of individuals and nations) visiting one in this rather than in a future life. The eternal wonder is that this unpleasant truth does not cause man to ponder over his actions. Events from the not so distant past down to the present day illustrate man’s continued myopic vision.

We can start with the two major totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, the Third Reich of Germany and the Communist Soviet Union. Touted to last a thousand years, the German Reich crawled to its miserable, ignominious end in just over twelve years. Riding to power on the wave of disenchantment of the German people with inflation and unemployment, the Nazi Party, with its openly anti-Semitic approach, capitalised on the weak-kneed approach of European powers to unleash aggression on many of Germany’s smaller neighbours climaxing in the conquest of France in 1940 and the assault on Great Britain. Along with the millions killed in actual combat, there was the horrific genocide involving over six million Jews. The Second World War ended with the devastation of Germany and its division into two countries for the next forty five years. The Soviet Union, founded on the promise of equality for all, witnessed some of the greatest purges of its citizens and the despatch of countless others to concentration camps. The contradictions of an inefficient economic system and an oppressive political system saw the uprooting of the entire Communist edifice in the Soviet Union and its satellite states before the dawn of the twenty first century.

The USA has been no exception to this karmic cycle. Its post-World War II attempts to keep communism at bay and secure the world for Western (read American) capital led to the standoff in Korea and the disastrous misadventures in Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos. Unchastened by this experience, the USA leapt into the fray through its proxies, the Mujahedin and Pakistan, to counter the takeover of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. These Mujahedin were to form the nucleus of the Al Qaeda which took the war into US territory sixty years after Pearl Harbor. Further American adventurism in Iraq destroyed the one regime (of Saddam Hussein) that might have checked the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. With the Arab spring, the path was open for fundamentalism to spread through a number of countries with tottering regimes in the Middle East. In effect, US policy since the Second World War has led it to shoot itself in the foot; the terrible consequences are unfortunately being borne today by the masses of refugees fleeing Syria and other war-torn countries.

Coming to India, we have the Grand Old Party, the Indian National Congress, suffering (and, collaterally, making the nation suffer for) the consequences of one historic blunder after another. The declaration of the Emergency in 1975 saw the suspension of civil liberties and the unchecked use of brute state power against the people, whether in the relocation of people in the name of city beautification or the forced sterilisation campaigns. Given a resounding slap by voters in the 1977 general elections, the Congress showed it had learnt no lessons when it came back to power in 1980. The tolerance of (and tacit support to) ethnic divisions for narrow electoral gains saw the horrific Nellie massacre of 1983 in Assam and Operation Blue Star in 1984. Dabbling in ethnic quarrels exposed India to domestic terrorism with the assassinations,within seven years, of a Prime Minister and a former Prime Minister. The encouragement by the Congress of the Shiv Sena in the 1960s to check the influence of the leftist trade union movement in Mumbai nourished the growing “Tiger”. So much so that the Shiv Sena and its allies have controlled the cash-rich Mumbai Municipal Corporation for most of the past forty years. The Congress gave yet another chance of grabbing power to the Shiv Sena and its allies when it mishandled the 1993 Mumbai riots; coupled with internecine warfare within the Congress, the Shiv Sena and its allies were able to capture power in Maharashtra in 1995. Just four years of this government and the voter was ready to give another chance to a squabbling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance. Fifteen years further down the road, this alliance, with its inept governance, blew its chances yet again and handed a major state to its opponents on a platter.

All these events are warning signs for practitioners of political power today but they continue to blithely ignore the lessons of history. The BJP came to power in 2014 on the electoral plank of “Sabka saath, sabka vikas” (with the cooperation of all, for the development of all). Unfortunately, its 16-month tenure has been marked by growing tensions between religious communities and a deep sense of insecurity in minorities. The utterances and actions of members of the ruling dispensation have emboldened fringe groups to take the law into their own hands, whether it be the murder of rationalists, the lynching at Dadri or the recent shenanigans over Ghulam Ali and Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri in Mumbai. It will be argued that states ruled by different parties are responsible for the protection of their citizens. But when a government at the national level lends support to Orwellian thought-control processes for controlling at least three of the five senses (sight, hearing and taste) of its citizens, it is not surprising that impressionable sections of the majority community work out their perceived grievances and frustrations on those who are not seen as part of their fraternity. Irresponsible and incendiary statements at election time and at emotionally surcharged moments only add fuel to the fire.

This column is tired of reiterating that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. Yet, the aspirations of the aam aurat/aadmi – jobs, houses, food – are lost sight of in the preoccupation with rewriting history and dictating moral codes to the population at large. India’s youth is far more concerned with a resplendent future than with a glorious past. Agitating emotive issues to win electoral support can take a political party only so far. As matters stand, the Dadri incident may well cost the BJP dear in the ongoing Bihar elections. If it does not recast its image as a right of centre party with a plural approach to diversity, it may find the going tough in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections. And come 2019, we may see the Indian voter, with her dreams of achche din (good days) not realised, trudging to the polling booth echoing the immortal words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

This stain-covered daybreak, this night-bitten dawn,

This is not that dawn of which there was expectation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Oct

Land Acquisition – Much Ado About Nothing

Posted by vramani in political economy, public policy. Tagged: , , .

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

(T. S. Eliot: The Hollow Men)

This famous poem, which ends with the above quoted lines, is linked to a number of overlapping themes. The entire drama covering the period from the introduction of the amendments in end 2014 to the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act 2013) through an ordinance, to the “sound and fury” over its introduction in Parliament as a Bill in 2015 (LARR Bill 2015), down to its final quiet burial in the end of August 2015 reminded me of this piece of 20th century literature. What was touted to be a grand effort at reform in making land available for the nascent “Make in India” industries and the infrastructure to support rapid industrialisation came a cropper in the face of a politically motivated, generally ill-informed campaign to preserve the “pristine” nature of the LARR Act 2013 which the LARR Bill 2015 sought to amend. After the heat and dust of the battle settled, there was only one clear loser — the average Indian citizen who hoped for better amenities, job opportunities and an improved standard of living.

What was the LARR Bill 2015 trying to do that so aroused the ire of the supporters of the LARR Act 2013? The Amendment Bill sought to exempt certain categories of projects from the social impact assessment and public consent provisions, including public private partnership infrastructure projects on lands owned by the government, going beyond the exemption from public consent already available in the LARR Act 2013 to projects of the government, its public sector undertakings and other entities essentially in the public sphere. There was no dilution of any of the provisions relating to compensation or resettlement & rehabilitation. This makes the defensiveness of the government of the day about the LARR Bill 2015 all the more inexplicable; it dissimulated where it should have unequivocally come out with a confident statement about its commitment to improving the lot of India’s citizens. In any case, as has been pointed out by Sanjoy Chakravorty (A Lot of Scepticism and Some Hope: Economic & Political Weekly, 8 October 2011), about 90 percent of land acquisition and displacement of people has been occasioned by government projects, so it is rather strange that an impression has been created that the LARR Bill 2015 is intended to further private corporate interests. A lot of hullaballoo has been created around non-issues to score political points and the likely damage to India’s long-term growth prospects by a seriously flawed Act has not been analysed or debated.

The manner of calculation of compensation has major implications for the economic viability of projects requiring acquisition of land, apart from its implications for the distortion of already imperfect land markets. Land valuation at four times the market (or consented) price, for rural areas, and twice for urban areas has no rationale. This will sharply raise project costs and also create a piquant situation in peri-urban areas, with demands for compensation as in rural areas impacting the economics of urban and industrial development in the peripheral areas of cities. The requirement for the social impact assessment to be carried out before the preliminary notification of the land is incomprehensible; any administrator connected with land acquisition will tell you that this will immediately lead to land speculation in those areas. Bengaluru witnessed this phenomenon when land was to be acquired for the NICE corridor road on its fringes; the Vijayawada-Guntur belt is also experiencing sharp escalations in land prices with the forthcoming development of the capital city for the new state of Andhra Pradesh. Inordinately high land cost will act as a dampener for land acquisition and will also exert upward pressure on prices of land privately acquired.

Multiple layers of bureaucracy will have an adverse impact on prompt acquisition. A potential investor will have to run the gamut of a social impact assessment, getting public consent, fixation of land compensation and approval of the resettlement and rehabilitation package before getting possession of the land for actual construction. This is, of course, presuming that environmental clearances and approval of the District Collector for conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural use are forthcoming in a timely manner and that the proceedings do not get bogged down due to, firstly, lack of public consent and, secondly, demands for enhanced compensation and other contentious issues to be decided by the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority set up under Section 51 of the LARR Act 2013. Recourse to other legal procedures (e.g. writ petitions) by interested parties to secure higher compensation or to contest the need for acquisition can further delay matters. Even with an outmoded Act like the Land Acquisition Act 1894, with its anti-landowner bias, it took anywhere up to several years for land to actually come into the possession of the acquirer. The LARR Act 2013 is likely to further increase this period, leading to project cost escalations.

Historically, industrialisation has proceeded based on the conversion of land from agricultural to nonagricultural use and on the ability of the agricultural sector to feed a population increasingly dependent on off-farm employment. This process has not been without its share of conflict, as brought out by Richard Hofstadter in his seminal book “The Age of Reform (1955)” where he describes the agrarian revolt of the 1890s in the USA and the attempts to harness it for political purposes. Not only did these agrarian movements fail to take off, quite to the contrary, as Hofstadter puts it “…the prosperity of the commercial farmers was achieved not only in spite of but in good part because of the rise of American industry and the American city“. As urban demand for food grew, agricultural prices registered a significant upturn. Improved efficiency in and mechanisation of farming operations, coupled with finance and transportation arrangements, contributed to a rise in farm incomes. At the same time, the excess rural population found employment opportunities in the cities. State support and guidance on farm produce distribution issues and the rapid growth of farmers’ cooperatives (in the areas of credit, mutual insurance, public utilities, marketing and purchasing) reduced the exactions of middlemen and diverted more income into the pockets of farmers.

What is truly unfortunate about the entire land acquisition mess is the ill-conceived effort to create a hostile relationship between the agricultural sector and the industrial/infrastructure sectors. On the one hand, there has never been a holistic approach of government to tackling issues from the farm to the table, nor has there been any concerted effort by organised farm lobbies to get government to invest in measures designed to enhance agricultural productivity and incomes. The result, with a large population still dependent on agriculture for survival, has been increasing pressure on land and temporary or permanent migration to urban settlements. With greater access to education and growing aspirations, the younger generation seeks a shift from an unviable life in agriculture. The distressing occurrence of farmer suicides is testimony to the failure of government to address farm issues, be they irrigation, crop insurance, productivity or remunerative markets. Archaic labour laws and an entrepreneur-unfriendly business environment have limited job creation in industry and related ancillary services. When 3 million people, many of them graduates, apply for a few hundred jobs as peons in government, something is definitely horribly wrong. And yet, the present debate on land acquisition procedures has not sought to focus on what could be done to ease the availability of land for industrial growth while also protecting the interests of the agricultural community. One interesting suggestion from Maitreesh Ghatak and Parikshit Ghosh (The Land Acquisition Bill: A Critique and a Proposal, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 October 2011) is to allow the land transfer price to be determined through an auction process rather than rely on bureaucratic determination through generally flawed sales statistics. Displaced farmers would be given the option to receive compensation either in cash or in the form of land. The government would buy more land than needed for the project to enable offer of land outside the area acquired for the project to those farmers who want land in return for land surrendered. This approach has the advantage of allowing the farmer to quote his consent price, which will probably reduce subsequent litigation for enhanced compensation. I am not advocating this or any other specific measure; what I seek to highlight is that there has been no informed debate on possible solutions that meet the needs of industry for land while also giving farmers a fair deal.

In fact, the entire brouhaha is reminiscent of the lines of another famous poet, W. B. Yeats “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity“. A law which was passed in a spirit of misguided sympathy for the farmer but is likely to severely impede economic development did not come up for a sorely needed review. The government of the day sought cosmetic changes in the law but, faced with an obstructive opposition in Parliament, meekly capitulated, consoling itself with the reflection that, since land acquisition is a concurrent subject under the Constitution of India, state governments can pass their own laws to simplify and speed up the land acquisition process. In that case, no purpose is served by Section 107 in the LARR Act 2013 which only permits such legislation by state governments as provides more favourable terms in respect of compensation and rehabilitation and resettlement provisions; it is anyhow unlikely that any state government will enact legislation that is seen as more onerous than the Central law, since this gives its opponents a ready political handle to beat it with.

We are, therefore, in a situation where a neo-Luddite combination of professional politicians and city-bred intellectuals, both without exposure to the realities of the farming sector, are effectively sealing opportunities for a large agricultural population to benefit from industrialisation. Adding to land market rigidities, while also stumbling on labour market reforms and doing little to improve the ease of doing business (best exemplified by the flip-flops on the Goods and Services Tax legislation), are hardly the best recipes to enthuse private Indian and foreign investors. The brunt of this economic obtuseness and political opportunism will, as always, be borne by the long suffering masses of India.

 

15 Sep

The Fear of Creative Destruction

Posted by vramani in political economy, public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , .

As an undergraduate student of economics in Delhi University some four decades ago, I was immensely flattered when my classmate and dear friend Ramachandra Guha conferred on me the name “Schumpeter”; he was in the habit of naming after famous economists those of his classmates whom he considered scholastically minded. Many years later, Schumpeter came to my notice again when his famous concept “creative destruction” was referred to in that brilliant book by Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (2012)”. The central thesis of their book is that countries with extractive political and economic institutions falter on the growth path because their elites are preoccupied with their ability to extract rent from economic activities through the exercise of unfettered political authority coupled with keeping out groups that constitute a threat to their economic oligarchy. These countries are, therefore, in a situation where innovations leading to high economic growth are not possible, because of the opposition to change from vested interest groups benefiting from the current system. When Schumpeter referred to the “process of creative destruction” in his 1942 book “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, he was emphasising the fact that capitalism involved the destruction of existing economic structures and their replacement by new structures. This was not price competition between existing producers but a discontinuity following the introduction of new technology, new products and new forms of industrial organisation, many of which could not even have been envisaged prior to their development.
W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, co-authors of “Myths of Rich and Poor (1999)” have given a graphic example of creative destruction in the transportation sector. Water transport was increasingly replaced by railroads, which in turn (along with animal transport), was supplanted by road and air transport. In our own lifetime, we have seen typewriters and fax machines vanish with the advent of personal computers. The impact of these revolutionary changes was felt not just in the eclipse of once powerful industries but also in dramatic changes in the job market and a churning in industrial enterprises, with new companies elbowing their way to the top. Of the top hundred companies in the USA in 1917, only five retain their position in the top hundred. Half of the top hundred companies in the USA in 1970 have been replaced by newer companies today. We don’t need to go as far as the USA; India itself is abundant proof of this phenomenon. Who had heard of Reliance Industries or Sun Pharma in 1970? Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services were nowhere on the horizon till the 1991 reforms and the development of the information technology industry. The nature of jobs also registers dramatic changes over time. Occupations like those of drivers of motorised vehicles were almost non-existent at the start of the twentieth century, while computer programmers and scientists were nowhere in evidence at the end of the Second World War.
I give these instances to buttress my theory that the failure of the Indian economy to grow rapidly (in the sense of benefiting large sections of its population) can be linked to an almost mortal dread of “creative destruction”, at considerable cost to the people of India. The landed aristocracy and the agricultural elite, in the decades after independence, kept land redistribution efforts at bay and successfully resisted the imposition of an agricultural income tax. Coupled with high support prices for agricultural produce grown by the rich farmer and extensive subsidisation of the profligate use of fertiliser, power and water (largely by the rich farmer rather than his humble subsistence farmer cousin), this has implied a reversal of the traditional pattern where a booming agriculture sector finances the growth of a robust industrial sector. By stifling the growth of the industrial sector, which would enable off-farm employment to reduce the growing pressure on agricultural land, it has been ensured that agricultural productivity remains low and farming has become (or remains) a non-viable occupation.
Other policies of the state continue to impede rapid industrialisation. The 2013 Land Acquisition Act is a case in point. In a classic case of the remedy being worse than the disease, the requirements (in case of acquisition for public private partnerships and for private companies for a public purpose) of consent of at least 70 to 80 percent respectively of affected families, the high rates of compensation and the provision of a social impact assessment, as well as the passing of a resettlement and rehabilitation package by the district authority (even for negotiated sales by a private company) taken together will ensure that no project or industry can get off the ground in a reasonable period. The fear of creative destruction operates here too: rural poverty is sought to be addressed through complicated (and infeasible) compensation and resettlement packages rather than giving the rural community a chance to be a partner in rapid industrialisation and to move to more remunerative work in the industrial sector. The same holds true for official urban policy (or what passes for it) — there has always been a bias against promoting opportunities in urban areas, given the misguided view that Gandhi’s “gram swaraj” must be kept intact at all costs, never mind the wretched and inequitable condition of India’s villages and the reality of massive rural migration to urban areas.
Nor do the political class and bureaucracy want their monopoly over patronage to be disturbed. Independent India has seen the politician use the public sector to disburse jobs to his constituents apart from skimming off economic rent through manipulating award of contracts. Controlling licenses also enabled the politician/bureaucrat to extract rent from the private sector. Only the form and manner of rent extraction changed in the post-1991 liberalisation era. With growing urbanisation, land use permissions in urban and semi-urban areas became a major area for abuse of discretionary powers. The lack of clear norms for allocation of natural resources and for infrastructure development project contracts contributed to the suspicion (often genuine) of manipulation of selection processes to favour cronies, the fallout of which is being experienced to this day. Failure to reduce government control over public enterprises and improve their public accountability meant that this cash cow (where it did not fall sick) was available for patronage distribution. Wilful major defaulters of bank loans are able to use their political connections to delay takeover/liquidation of defaulting concerns.
In preventing or delaying the “gale of creative destruction”, the political class at least has the alibi that it is looking after its narrow economic interests. The same defence is not available to India’s “thinking” classes, its intellectuals, media and bureaucracy, who have consistently opposed thoroughgoing reforms in different sectors. Efficient exploitation of natural resources through impartial bidding processes is slowly becoming a reality more than two decades after the start of the liberalisation process. But even now, vociferous sections in India’s middle class oppose moves to open natural resource sectors to private investment to add economic value. Trade unions in the coal and mining industries will, of course, oppose all such steps since it will diminish their powers. But the opposition of the bureaucracy, sections of the media and academia to these measures defies understanding. The same logic holds where freeing public sector enterprises from the stranglehold of government by reducing government holdings in these enterprises is contemplated. There still seems to be a touching faith in the ability of government to micromanage these enterprises. Foreign direct investment in retail would give better profit margins to the farmers by eliminating middlemen in mandis (market places) and agricultural produce marketing committees. It would also provide the badly needed investment in reducing wastage by streamlining the supply chain system from the farmer to the consumer. No such luck — by allying itself with vested interests protecting their traditional fiefdoms, the intelligentsia betrays the interests of the large body of farmers.
Ultimately, India’s middle classes have to decide whether they want to be in the vanguard of rapid economic change or are content to wallow in mindless, outmoded socialist rhetoric with a credulous belief in the capabilities of the state. The next two decades are crucial to India moving on to a path of sustained development. “Creative destruction” is no respecter of size or reputation. Consider the example from India’s favourite sport, cricket. India took over fifty years from its entry into international cricket to win a World Cup. Sri Lanka took about two decades to reach the pinnacle of world cricket by winning the World Cup in 1996. By defeating Pakistan and India in quick succession earlier this year, the Bangladesh team has shown its resolve to shorten the time span it needs to reach the top. Countries like Vietnam, South Africa and Bangladesh can well pose major challenges to India’s markets (both local and global) in the years to come and at a much faster pace than is anticipated. “The gale of creative destruction” can blow in both directions: move it outwards and you control your destiny; if it turns against you, you may well get blown away.

1 Sep

Why blame the IAS alone?

Posted by vramani in public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , .

“The evil that men do lives after them;

the good is oft interred with their bones.”

                   — William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

 

Let me begin with a caveat: I worked for thirty years in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). I clarify this at the outset so that no one accuses me of conflict of interest. The immediate urge to pen this blog arose out of recent Facebook posts by different individuals and a statement by India’s Metro Man, E. Sreedharan, which were critical of the IAS. While the Facebook comments were of the usual ill-informed, middle class genre that seeks an anti-establishment outlet for every perceived grievance, real or imaginary, Mr. Sreedharan took issue with the role of IAS officers in delays in commissioning of the Bengaluru Metro Rail Project (BMRC). In his view “An IAS officer will not have the commitment, dedication and accountability of a technocrat in executing the project on time. BMRC has had five IAS officers as chiefs so far.” His second sentence, in one sense, contradicted his first; unless Mr. Sreedharan sought to imply that IAS officers posted to the BMRC were in a tearing hurry to get themselves posted out (for which he has not offered any evidence). But it is also indicative of a tendency to lay the blame for all (or at least, most) of the ills plaguing the country on the IAS. If it were so simple, the government at the national level has only to wind up the IAS and, hey presto, the era of efficiency and prosperity would be promptly ushered in. Alas, this is a case of “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”. Unfortunately, public governance is a far more complicated business.

Often, I get the feeling that the public associates with the IAS anyone selected by the Union Public Service Commission in its massive annual recruitment exercise to the civil services. A very large part of public services are rendered by members drawn from different branches of the civil and technical services. There is also the mistaken presumption that, since the IAS mans a majority of the top-level posts in the government, it has stifled initiative in all other services and cadres. In fact, as a former middle-level functionary in the Central Government Secretariat, I can testify that most of the inputs for decision-making come from the middle levels, especially the Joint and Deputy Secretaries. A very significant number of these officers are drawn from services other than the IAS. It would also be pertinent to point out that public organisations like the banks, railways, communications and public sector units (which have also displayed sometimes glaring inefficiencies) are staffed almost entirely by technocrats or by people with domain expertise in the relevant subjects.

I am not for a moment suggesting that the IAS does not, like every other profession in the country – politicians, lawyers, doctors and engineers – have its share of “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Unflattering comparisons of the IAS are often made with its colonial predecessor, the Indian Civil Service (ICS). It is generally forgotten that the ICS operated in a completely different milieu, responsible only to their colonial masters in India and the India Office in London and without having to factor in politicians, public opinion and the media into their operating matrix. They too had to bear the brunt of Jawaharlal Nehru’s reference to them as “neither Indian, nor civil nor a service.” Even to this day, some of the best and brightest opt for a career in the IAS. That they are perceived as not having lived up to their promise can, in my opinion, be ascribed to three reasons: (a) the short tenures in most postings; (b) the failure to develop specialisation in a particular area which contributes to economic growth and development; (c) the almost automatic kick up the ladder for all and sundry, especially in the states, which leads to a number of IAS officers assuming leadership roles in departments/organisations for which they are totally unsuited.

Short tenures because of frequent transfers have been the bane of the civil services in India, but especially the IAS, probably because of their high level of interaction with issues that are the bread and butter of the political class. This is most damaging at higher levels of policy making, where continuity for a reasonable period ensures that the implementation of the policy is overseen by the same person responsible for framing the policy. Unfortunately, things seem to have worsened on this front in recent times; in the past, bureaucrats were more or less assured of a four or five year term in the Central Secretariat. Of late, Secretaries and even Joint and Deputy Secretaries have been shifted around after a year or two in a particular post. From my personal experience, I can testify that the two jobs I feel I did maximum justice to were those where I got full five year terms.  It takes about two years to understand all the nuances of the job and the officer makes a productive contribution in the subsequent three years.

Even when an officer lasts her full term in a post, meaningful contributions are often impeded by the lack of specialised domain knowledge. The intention to promote specialisation in generalist administrators has remained just that; there have been no initiatives from government to bring this to actuality. Where officers acquire in-depth knowledge of a particular field in a posting, their subsequent assignments mostly have no relation to the expertise earlier acquired by them. When my five year term in the Petroleum Ministry in Delhi came to an end, oil industry insiders found it incredible that the government could invest in building up domain knowledge in an officer over five years and then casually dispense with this acquired expertise overnight.

But the biggest roadblock to building up a responsive, efficient bureaucracy (especially in the IAS) has been the tendency to hand out promotions along with the weekly rations. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in state governments, with over 95 percent of officers reaching the Apex Scale of pay. Apart from demoralising creative and hardworking officers, who find no avenues for fast-track advancement in their careers, it also leads to a glut at the top. Many posts (more correctly, sinecures) are created to accommodate average quality officers, swelling the ranks of the higher bureaucracy and promoting inefficient systems. Additionally, officers who can really make a difference to governance systems get barely two to three years at the topmost levels, hardly enough to make any visible impact.

Lest it seem that these ills plague the IAS alone, let me clarify that all the civil services in India suffer from a severe lack of professionalism. This is partly due to a lack of performance accountability while in service and partly due to moribund governance structures which do not encourage creativity and risk-taking. There is also the problem of undue political interference in personnel and purchase decisions which sap bureaucratic morale and encourage participation of the bureaucracy in institutionalised corruption. In an earlier blog (The Gadfly Column: Reconstructing the Bureaucracy: 28 February 2015), I had outlined the directions for restructuring governance systems. The issue assumes greater urgency now for two reasons. The nature of bureaucratic functioning over the last one year of the present government belies its promise of achche din, more so in the states, where “business as usual” continues merrily. Another couple of years and the present national government will move into pre-election mode, with administrative reforms taking a back seat. The second cause for urgency is the report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, due by end-2015. Governments in the past have implemented popular recommendations while ignoring the bitter medicine prescriptions. 2015 presents a historic opportunity to recast the Indian bureaucratic system, when the carrot of improved pay packages can be dangled before the bureaucracy in return for much needed changes in governance systems. Four specific suggestions are made below:

(a) implement a five year roadmap for bureaucratic restructuring: Setting 26 January 2020 as its target date for final implementation, the Indian government should enforce, from 26 January 2018, a voluntary retirement package for its employees at all levels who joined service on or before 31 December 2000. For all those recruited on or after 1 January 2000 but before 26 January 2018, a grace period upto 26 January 2023 will apply, on which date they will leave government with their severance benefits (there will be no recruitments other than contractual appointments after 26 January 2018). All central government jobs after the target date will be on five year contractual basis. The contractual recruitment process can be commenced in January 2019, so that employees who have already quit will benefit from an “early bird incentive” to apply for contractual positions. The structure of government departments and agencies has already been discussed in the earlier blog referred to. State governments should be incentivised to go in for similar reforms; the Terms of Reference of the 15th Finance Commission should include measures to link financial devolution to improvements in governance.

(b) decentralise, decentralise, decentralise: Governance at the level of the Aam Aurat/Aadmi will improve only when decision making is pushed down to the local level. The 73rd and 74th Constitution Amendments should be given real teeth by legislating devolution of powers to urban and rural local bodies. As earlier, linking incentives, including Finance Commission devolutions, to moves in this direction would motivate state governments to support and give effect to such legislation.

(c) develop effective anti-corruption mechanisms: To bring an end to the impunity of governance systems in India, the institutions of Lokpal and Lokayuktas should be set up across India to synchronise with the changes in the bureaucracy and the decentralisation initiatives. Failure to introduce this reform will breed cynicism about the new governance structures, especially at the local government level.

(d) get government out of business: Governments should learn to mind their own business, which includes provision of basic infrastructure, creation of human capital and enforcement of the rule of law. Governments at both the central and state levels should sell off inefficient and sick enterprises and reduce their shareholding in most other enterprises. These will yield revenues for the government and reduce pressure on its financial resources. Even in the few cases where the government wishes to retain ownership of flagship public sector enterprises, management control should be fully vested in the Board of Directors of the company, with full autonomy in investment decisions and in personnel matters. Government should nominate independent directors with managerial and technical skills to serve as its representatives on these Boards. This will not only remove the irritant of bureaucratic interference in commercial decisions, but also the political doling out of favours at the cost of these enterprises. Board appointments will no longer involve the current, cumbersome procedures and investment decisions will no longer have to go through the hoop of ministerial and cabinet committees.

I wish to clarify that I have no bones to pick with the tribe of IAS-bashers — please bash on, regardless. However, I would caution that attention needs to be focused not on the symptoms but on the root causes of the disease, which lie in an anachronistic and dysfunctional governance structure. Commonwealth countries like Australia and Great Britain, from whose examples India has fashioned its civil services, have overhauled their bureaucratic systems to make them more responsive and efficient. There is also little evidence to show that undertaking such major reforms undermines a political party’s electoral prospects; free of the bureaucratic yoke, the grateful citizen may actually reward the party with a further lease of power. The ruling party at the national level can do no better than implement its Vision 2020 to give effect in the administrative sphere to the late President Kalam’s Vision for India 2020. I can only close with the following comment: those who do not wish to create history may become history.

 

 

15 Aug

Swachh Bharat or Swachh Bharatiyas?

Posted by vramani in public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , .

As another Independence Day rolls along, we, as Indians, need to introspect on an issue that we are all fond of speaking and writing about but not so much on taking positive action. The Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, with his eye for detail and his passionate conviction about the need for self-improvement, deplored the insanitary habits of his countrymen. It is, therefore, in the fitness of things that his 145th birth anniversary in 2014 saw the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission by the Indian Prime Minister. And yet, if one sees the habits of fellow Indians, one doubts whether the ambitious goals to be reached by the Mahatma’s 150th birthday will be realised. I do not wish for a moment to spread pessimism about what is undoubtedly a noble venture. It is just that our countrymen (and, to a lesser extent, countrywomen) are still so blissfully ignorant of, or uncaring about, basic hygiene. The four letter words that we are taught to abjure in conversation are very much in existence when we undertake, in public, different functions relating to waste disposal (for the sake of politeness, I will leave it to my readers to infer them).

The first and foremost sight that assails our visual senses whichever way we turn is the one huge garbage dump we have made of our habitations, whether city, town or village. I had personal experience of this till recently at the flat in Bengaluru where I stayed for one year. The open space next to the flat was the dumping ground for the solid and liquid waste of all the households in the area. The owners/tenants of the higher floors of flats abutting the open space did not even take the trouble of coming down to throw the waste; the law of gravity did all their work. Compounding the problem in Bengaluru is the absurd approach of the Municipal Corporation, which apparently does not believe in garbage bins. Not surprisingly, there are piles of garbage at every street corner, adding to the menace of flies and mosquitoes. Bengaluru may be the information technology capital of India, but it is also fast achieving the status of the dengue capital of India. Even when the garbage is collected, no scientific method of segregation of wet and dry waste is employed; the entire muck is thrown into the back of three-wheeler vehicles. I am told that the transport lobby is powerful enough to stall alternative approaches to waste collection. While working in the Mumbai Municipal Corporation in the late 1990s, one of my jobs was to oversee the cleaning of storm water drains in the eastern suburbs from Chembur to Mulund. With every type of dry and wet waste finding its way into these drains, including industrial scrap from the thousands of small manufactories in Kurla, it came as no surprise that the first heavy downpour accompanied by high tide levels would leave large parts of the city totally submerged. The same story repeats itself even today in Mumbai, despite the (pious?) intentions of the city fathers (and mothers) and its bureaucrats. In the late 1990s, Mumbai had created a force of nuisance detectors empowered to detect and penalise (through fines) citizens littering and spitting on the roads. Like all good ideas, this died a natural death in the course of time. But, in the final analysis, it is only when his pocket is hurt that the blasé Indian citizen will heed instructions on waste disposal, as he does in Singapore, San Francisco and Sydney.  Nor is the problem of waste limited to land sites. The cleaning of the holy Ganga River, revered by millions of Indians, was undertaken with much fanfare almost thirty years ago. There is little to show for all the money, time and effort that have gone into this exercise. Contrast this with the successful exercise in fifteen years after 1986, of the Swiss, French and German governments, to improve the quality of water in the Rhine River, which flows through heavily industrialised areas. Water quality monitoring is carried out every six minutes at different points along the river in Germany and offending industries are penalised. One has not heard of any similar measures being implemented along the Ganga, with the tanneries of Kanpur City spewing out carcinogenic poisons into the river, not to mention the many urban settlements along the course of the river discharging their sewage directly into the Ganga.

We move on to another national pastime: spitting. An apocryphal story has it that Mahatma Gandhi once remarked that if all Indians spat together, it would be enough to drown all the three hundred thousand Englishmen ruling India. The habit shows no signs of abating after India’s independence. Move anywhere in public and you are greeted by a hoarse, hawking sound, followed an instant later by the expectoration of an ample quantity of body fluid. The widespread fondness for betel leaf (paan) and tobacco lends a touch of colour to the environment. The walls of public buildings (especially staircases) receive a generous coat of human paint at regular intervals. Woe betide the individual dressed in spotless white clothes: he has a more than even chance of getting his clothes dyed a reddish pink through the oral efforts of his fellow man (yes, this is an activity to which gender equality has not yet percolated). And yet this is one activity where no concerted public action is evident till today, notwithstanding its public health hazard: the prevalence of tuberculosis in India is, at least in part, an unfortunate consequence.

There is yet another waste disposal activity which has remained a jealously guarded male preserve: urinating in public open spaces and on walls of buildings. Build any number of public toilets and Sulabh Shauchalayas: the male Indian still retains his birthright to let fly in public. I still remember being overcome by ammonia fumes when passing one of the colourful gates in Jaipur; architectural marvels are not immune to these depredations either.

And then we come to India’s greatest public health and sanitation problem: open defecation. Not only is this a major cause for the spread of an assortment of communicable diseases, recent studies have also established a direct correlation between this and child stunting, where India registers one of the highest percentages in the world. Women bear the brunt of the lack of toilets: not only does it constitute an affront to their dignity, it also compromises their safety when they have to venture forth in darkness. I still recall the women of the village having to hastily stand up on the roadside in the midst of their ablutions in fading daylight when, as a district officer, I had to enter or leave the village at that hour. Toilets in urban slums were, and still are, badly maintained and child-unfriendly, leading to highly insanitary conditions in areas already burdened by poverty and poor healthcare access. Even after fifteen years of a national sanitation campaign, more than half the country is not served by toilets, whether public or private.

I have not even touched upon noise pollution, an area where India, with its election campaigns and religious functions, not to mention car, bus and truck horns, holds its head proudly aloft in the comity of nations. A touch of black humour has been injected by a recent Indian government report ranking the best performing Indian cities in the Swachh Bharat campaign. Bengaluru, which I have had occasion to refer to earlier, ranks among the ten best cities in the country. Experts feel this high ranking is largely on account of good intentions and the relatively worse position in other cities. It reminds me of the finance manager-philosopher Nicholas Taleb’s description of Mediocristan where the values of a population are clustered around an average in what we term to be a normal distribution. In the Indian Mediocristan, a slightly better performer tends to be eulogised since the benchmarking is by modest national rather than outstanding international standards. Be that as it may, it is now time for all Indians to pay attention to issues that bedevil not only our lives but imperil those of future generations as well. With apologies to Cassius, “The fault, dear Indians, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”. The Mahatma was prescient in making cleanliness one of his planks for social change; it is apt to close with a quote generally attributed to him “हम सुधरेंगे जग सुधरेगा” (be the change you want to see in the world).

 

Happy Independence Day!

 

 

 

15 Jul

The Importance of Data – Why Numbers Matter

Posted by vramani in public policy.

The much delayed release (that too only partially, with data at the state level not being officially published) of the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) carried out by the Government of India (GoI) and UNICEF has caused considerable disquiet in those working in the area of child health and nutrition. As with any report whose publication is delayed by the government, reasons have been ascribed. The Economist, in its editions of 27 June 2014 and 4 July 2014, has carried articles on this apparent reluctance of the Indian government to disclose data. One of the possible reasons adduced is the less than flattering performance of the Prime Minister’s home state of Gujarat, which he ruled for nearly 13 years before his move to New Delhi. In fact, as the Economist points out, data on child immunisation released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), GoI, in October 2014 did not include figures for Gujarat. Even the July 2015 release of data by the Ministry of Women & Child Development (MWCD), GoI, gives figures only at an aggregated national level. The Economist, which has gained access to the RSOC report, has published state-wise data on various indicators of child nutrition, which show encouraging improvements over the numbers in the last published National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS-3) conducted in 2005-06. Unfortunately, this good news has been buried under the controversy over the delay in releasing the Report. Sources in the GoI claim that the delay has been occasioned by the conflicting data from two different surveys launched at the same time by two Ministries, the MWCD and the MOHFW. One finds this reasoning very difficult to digest. The MOHFW had no cause to commission a study on child nutrition indicators, a subject that falls squarely within the ambit of the MWCD. It (the MOHFW) has already lost three precious years in bringing out NFHS-4, which means that there has been no authentic data to guide policy making on child nutrition since 2005-06. In apparently getting in each other’s way, the two Ministries seem to be not only confused about the Rules of Business in government specifying which Ministry should carry out what functions, but also seem to be uncoordinated in the area of child nutrition, where they should be operating in close harmony from Dilli to galli.

This lack of critical data in the public domain in India is a malaise that has long affected the development of meaningful public policy initiatives in the social sector, especially in the health and nutrition sectors. Even where data exists, it is generally aggregated numbers, either at the state level or, at best, at the district level. Only one or two states provide disaggregated online monthly data on child nutrition outcomes. As any public policy practitioner will tell you, data at the sub-district (tehsil or block) and village or urban ward levels is crucial for programme implementation, monitoring sectoral outcomes and enforcing accountability of the “street-level bureaucracy” and their immediate supervisors. I have personally encountered frustration in trying to gain access to Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) data, supposed to be sent online monthly by all states to the MWCD. I suspect that most states do not even bother to send monthly reports or, where they do send it after months of delay, it is no better than garbage. Since there is no analysis of this data at the national or state level, its authenticity is highly suspect. My requests for state-wise data (at the block level) have met with stony silence from successive bureaucrats in the MWCD in New Delhi. Even my reasoning that this is not data vital to the nation’s security or commercial interests and is, therefore, to be disseminated online as per Section 4 of the Right to Information Act has met with no response. An earlier blog (The Gadfly Column: India, The Flailing State: 15 September 2014) has brought out the depressing experience of my colleagues in promoting the use of online tracking systems to monitor mother and child health and nutrition and provide timely public services. While frontline health and nutrition workers enthusiastically adopted the system, the obstructive attitudes of their supervisors and the lack of support at the higher levels of the health and nutrition bureaucracy prevented the widespread use of the tracking system. In any case, the emphasis is always on reporting based on inputs like personnel, financing and supplies rather than on the outcomes generated by the use of these inputs. In my experience in the nutrition sector in Maharashtra, I found that the only time when outcomes were monitored systematically were when the state set up a Nutrition Mission in 2005 to reduce child malnutrition.

If governments (and the personnel manning them) are loath to set up data networks that monitor programme outcomes, they are equally reluctant to use information gathered by reputed private or non-profit organisations. A case in point is the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) brought out annually by PRATHAM, a non-profit working in the area of primary education. The response of the education bureaucracy to the efforts of PRATHAM (through the ASER Reports) to improve learning outcomes in schools has been, to put it frankly, dismissive (this has been clearly brought out in the Note “Looking Back and Looking Ahead” by Madhav Chavan in the 2014 ASER Report). I have personal experience of this in the education sector. Between 1998 and 2004, my colleague Sumit Mullick and I attempted to improve learning outcomes in 13 backward districts in the Vidarbha and Marathwada areas of Maharashtra through a rigorous monthly testing of basic language and arithmetic competencies in class I-VII students in government schools and school-wise monitoring of these monthly results. Its adoption throughout the state in 2005 spelt its death knell: faced with opposition from the education bureaucracy and the teachers’ unions, the programme was swiftly wound up, including in the areas where it was originally started.

The inability (or unwillingness) of governments to use even data that is generated by the decennial Census of India is illustrated by the Total Sanitation Campaign, promoted by the GoI and implemented in all states of India since 1999. This has obviously had its adverse impact on effective programme implementation and realisation of the outcome of reducing open defecation. Comparative data on the percentage of household toilets in tehsils in India as of 2001 and 2011 show that apart from coastal areas, parts of north and most of north-eastern India and some urban pockets, there has been very little progress in provision of toilets under a programme that enjoyed high visibility. I am willing to hazard a guess that the reason probably lies in the lack of use of available data. Disaggregating data on available toilets down to village and urban ward level would have enabled focus on specific areas lacking in amenities and the reasons for non-adoption of toilets — these might be on account of behavioural reasons related to location or use of toilets or due to lack of awareness or of funds. In the absence of a clear understanding of the reasons for continued open defecation (which poses one of India’s greatest public health challenges), the government machinery probably focused just on inputs without any monitoring of the outcome, which should have been the percentage reduction in open defecation.

What all these examples highlight is the failure to measure outcomes right down to the sub-district and village/urban ward levels and to monitor and demand accountability at the implementation level. The present government at the centre has laid stress on outcomes — given the “business as usual” approach of government structures at all levels, it would not be surprising if this strategy is given short shrift in the course of time. The critical requirement is the availability and use of disaggregated data by policy makers and supervisors of programmes at the central, state and local levels. In the last one year of this government, I do not see any such urgency on data use informing the actions of government departments even in New Delhi. The less said about the states and districts, the better (or should I say, worse?). Till India’s administrators learn to be comfortable with numbers and use them as tools for devising solutions to problems, we will continue to muddle through, maintaining our three digit position in the country-wise Human Development Index, way behind all our BRICS partners.

 

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