15 Mar

Centralization – The bane of governance in India

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

Any newly born nation nurses a sense of insecurity, more so since the nation state is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. There are also enough doomsayers hovering around with their dire prophecies. The Indian nation-state has had more than its fair share of such pessimistic prophets in the early decades after independence. It also had to contend with the aftermath of the Partition and the amalgamation into the Indian Union of over five hundred princely states, not all of them exactly ecstatic about the prospect. There was, therefore, an overwhelming opinion in the then leaders of the Indian government that, given the daunting challenges faced by the nascent Indian state on the economic, social and political fronts, a strong centre was a prerequisite for not just the development of, but even the survival of India as an independent nation. Not surprisingly, the Indian republic came to be categorised as “a unitary state with federal features.”

Interesting though it is as a subject, this article is not focusing on the political aspects of centralisation but rather on the impact on governance of such centralisation of powers. It needs to be made clear that concentration of powers is a vice that affects every political formation, indeed every organisation that operates in the public and private spheres in India. It is also an accepted axiom that each level of government is in favour of devolution of administrative and financial authority only upto its own level. Thus, while state governments, especially of different political persuasions from the government at the central level, have harped, right from Tamil Nadu in the late 1960s, on greater devolution of powers to them, they have been conspicuously silent when it comes to devolving powers to local governments. The three experiments in democratic decentralization in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka have been aborted over time to protect the economic and political interests of state-level politicians. The implications for governance, especially at the level of the aam aurat/aadmi, have not been exactly salubrious.

There are both charitable and uncharitable explanations for the propensity to centralize economic and political powers. The “charitable” ones include:

  • the colonial mindset, prevalent to this day, that the natives are not fit to govern themselves. Politicians and bureaucrats, at central and state levels, never tire of relating horror stories about the misdemeanours of local governments;
  • the mistaken assumption that centralisation of financial powers and procurement decisions lead to savings;
  • the continuing faith in the efficacy of a Soviet-era centralized planning system, where the know-it-all bureaucrat sitting in a cubby hole in Mumbai/Delhi hands out schemes and money to the public.

There are also some “uncharitable” reasons for this love for centralisation:

  • the realisation of the state-level politician that his continued existence depends on justifying his utility to the system. This politician is aware that the emergence of powerful grass root leaders is a threat to his future in politics. This phenomenon, observed in the Indian National Congress since the 1970s, has since percolated to every political party. Devolution of powers to local governments would also obviate the need for top-heavy governments at the central and state levels, thus rendering many politicians jobless;
  • the bureaucracy being seen as a vehicle for guaranteed, lifelong employment, without any accountability for performance. There is the rather patronising belief that bureaucratic interventions can solve all problems, hence the operation of Parkinson’s Law with a vengeance in the Indian government system: staff expands to create more work, with, in fact, a diminution in efficiency. Increasingly, public service has also become a self-service system and a foolproof mechanism for rent-seeking, the stress being on kimbalam (illegal gratification) rather than sambalam (salary), to use Tamil terminology.

Centralisation can take the form of intervention in procurement contracts, discretionary distribution of scarce resources (land, public funds, primary schools, colleges, universities, etc.) and formulation of policies from above imposed on those whom schemes are intended to benefit, as well as the imposition of rigid guidelines which the “street-level bureaucracy” is expected to follow in letter and spirit. The damage resulting from such a system can be long-term, often resulting in serious misallocation of resources, with concomitant effects on economic development. Drawing on my three decades of experience in the civil services in India, I have identified six major consequences of centralized decision-making:

  • Corruption: Lord Acton rightly observed “…absolute power corrupts absolutely”. In the Indian context, we can safely say that absolute centralization corrupts absolutely. Primary education has been one major casualty; ministers deciding where and when schools are to be run, and by whom, have spawned a multi-million rupee black market in school education. The same pattern has been emulated in the case of higher education, with even more profitable results. Influential politicians and their backers run huge education empires today, often of extremely dubious quality. Maternal and child nutrition is another area where the Supreme Court Commissioners have documented a number of instances of state governments sidestepping the Supreme Court guidelines to award food supply contracts to monopoly contractors, ignoring local self-help groups. Recent actions of the central and most state governments indicate a tendency to favour individual contractors over local groups in food supply, ostensibly on the grounds of improved nutrition, although the evidence of years of centralized monopoly supply strongly indicate otherwise (as verified personally by yours truly at anganwadis (day care centres) in rural Maharashtra). It can always be argued that no corruption has been specifically established but then Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion: the antecedents of these contractors and their political connections leave ample room for suspicion.
  • Faulty policy design: Decisions in Delhi often do not work in the gallis (streets). The examples of three major policy initiatives of the previous government which continue under the present government show how top down policy making can stymie the best of intentions. Take the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme (MGNREGA). Designed to provide 100 days of employment to each member of the rural population who seeks work, the scheme drew on earlier examples such as the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) of Maharashtra, which was intended to provide on-demand work at times when there were no work opportunities in agriculture. The problem with the MGNREGA lies in its design. Unlike the EGS, the MGNREGA is implemented across all districts in a state regardless of whether the prevailing economic conditions warrant such a wage programme. Common sense would dictate that there would be few takers for such a programme in a district like Kolhapur in Maharashtra with its extensive irrigation facilities and well developed agriculture and ancillary activities. It takes me back to 1989 when a precursor central programme, the National Rural Employment Programme (NREP), was implemented across all districts of Maharashtra. We found it almost impossible to get labour for this programme in a district like Parbhani in Maharashtra, where rural employment was abundantly available in the irrigated agricultural areas. In such a scenario, the local bureaucracy ends up subcontracting the entire programme to local contractors, who then use machinery to carry out the work, defeating the very purpose of the programme. Food security and education are again two areas where the ambitious universal thrust of the programmes does not take into account the glaring deficiencies in the public distribution and education systems in most states. Nor does it appear that the budgetary provisions the Government of India is making and that state governments are likely to make will enable universalisation of these two programmes.
  • Inefficiency: In my days as an IAS probationer, it was drilled into us that, as District Magistrates, we should assume a proactive role in firmly tackling violence between or directed against communities. The recent judicial commission report on the Muzaffarnagar violence of 2013 has faulted the district administration and the local police for inaction in preventing and subsequently containing violence during the riots. My surmise would be that the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police were looking over their shoulders for directions from their higher-ups on how to deal with elements that obviously had powerful political backing, instead of moving swiftly to nip the trouble in the bud through preventive arrests and a show of force. Centralisation in times of crises deters prompt, effective action. Yet another example comes to mind from a sector I am familiar with. The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) was set up to regulate petroleum exploration and production activities in India. Over the years, a paranoid mindset in government agencies and the “intelligentsia” has led the DGH to refer every investment decision involving private operators to the Petroleum Ministry for approval. Contractual timelines for approval of proposals were blithely ignored while the mandarins in government wrestled with the decision process. That golden mantra of centralisation, referral to a committee, ensured that natural gas prices took years to be finalised. The final solution has satisfied neither the companies nor the command economy socialists in the intelligentsia, while the chimera of market-determined gas pricing recedes further into the future.
  • Demotivated street bureaucracy: Centralized programmes lay down rigid guidelines with almost no scope for exercise of innovation by those actually responsible for ground-level implementation of these programmes. Accompanying this is the tendency to distrust the lower bureaucracy, doubt their commitment and make scapegoats of them for faulty policy design. Complex and arduous reporting requirements tie up field staff in paperwork, not giving them time to attend to their clientele. It is no wonder then that there appears to be little enthusiasm for meaningful programme implementation with a specific focus on outcomes. The sense of a larger purpose in their professional life and of engaging in a noble mission is never inculcated in grass root workers. We observe this in the large majority of teachers and health and nutrition workers. No encouragement is given to primary level workers to use their initiative to resolve local problems, nor are small amounts of money made available to them to meet their basic infrastructure requirements or to experiment with ideas that can contribute to the success of the programme.
  • Disempowered communities and individuals: Programmes handed down from above almost never draw on the problem solving abilities of local communities. It is evident in the very designation of the recipient of the scheme as a “beneficiary”, effectively ruling out her participation in the design and implementation of the scheme meant for her. An overburdened, often disinterested bureaucracy is largely concerned with delivering the inputs and completing its targets, with no emphasis on either the processes of implementation or the desired outcomes.
  • Damage to democracy: The process of centralized decision making is, in the final instance, detrimental to the development of an aware, active citizenry that can contribute to the democratic process. As passive recipients, people are deprived of the capacity to participate in decisions that significantly impact their lives. When programmes fail to deliver the desired results, the consequent disenchantment often drives the disempowered into the clutches of demagogues who promise them the earth and capitalise on their fears to undermine the democratic framework of society.

Recent trends in the pattern of budgetary transfers from the central government to the states give more cause for concern. Devolving more untied funds to states will place more unbridled discretion for patronage in the hands of unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats. State governments have, in any case, never been enthusiastic promoters of democratic decentralization. With little accountability for the manner in which public money is spent (or rather, misspent) and with little fear of being brought to book for their misdeeds, it looks as though, in the words of the Harvard University economist Lant Pritchett, India’s “flailing” governments will continue to flail away.

 

1 Mar

Intolerance…for the rule of law

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

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (S.G. Tallentyre)

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines tolerance as “willingness to accept feelings, habits or beliefs that are different from your own.” A related definition is “the ability to accept, experience or survive something harmful or unpleasant.” Acceptance is the word common to both definitions: this implies accommodation by the individual of the acts or thoughts of another, even though they may conflict with his deepest convictions, indeed with his very way of life. The limits of such tolerance are set by the legal framework; the Constitution of India, while enunciating the inalienable freedoms available to every resident of India, has also circumscribed these to the extent necessary to protect the rights of other individuals and to preserve the essential social fabric of the country. All other laws are subordinate to the Constitution; over the past almost seven decades the superior courts have struck down a number of legislative enactments which were deemed to violate the basic structure of the Constitution. Implicit in this process is the recognition that a democracy is run by the rule of law and the final arbiter of any act, whether by word or deed, is the judiciary.

It is, therefore, with a sinking feeling that one observes the steadily growing tendency of different groups to ignore and often show their contempt for the rule of law. Indian society has, like any other society, displayed strains of intolerance towards socially disadvantaged sections, based on caste, religion and gender, to name just three categories. In recent times, the shabby treatment of the noted artist, M. F. Hussain, and the politically motivated attacks in Maharashtra on newspaper editors and academic institutions that were deemed to have insulted the memory of the warrior king Shivaji were instances of intolerance that made headlines. What is disturbing in India’s history over the past many decades is the resort to violence against helpless individuals and the perceived failure of the law and order machinery to protect them or bring the perpetrators of violence to book. Most recently, the mob violence in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 and the lynching of a man in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, in 2015 for allegedly consuming beef have been followed by the execrable act of lawyers indulging in violence against a student leader accused of the crime of sedition. What these three incidents starkly bring out is the brazen disregard for the operation of the rule of law. In all three cases, apologists belonging to the currently ruling dispensation have sought to ex post facto justify the perpetration of violence. More dangerous even than the display of intolerance towards fellow human beings is the utter contempt for the rule of law that these actions reveal.

Democracy is traditionally believed to rest on four pillars: the executive, legislature, judiciary and the press. With the spread of representative democracy and the growth of the internet, many commentators add a fifth pillar in the form of civil society. The 2011 Arab Spring is a vivid reminder of the power of public opinion and social media in shaping the course of events in a country. How has India fared in terms of the performance of these pillars and what are the lessons to be learnt if the tender plant of democracy is to take firm root in Indian soil?

Organs of the government, especially the police, have often displayed distressing levels of partisanship in handling conflicts between different communities and in protecting life and property. Indira Gandhi’s “committed bureaucracy” has been a spectator to, if not a participant in, India’s worst communal conflagrations — Delhi (1984), Mumbai (1993) and Gujarat (2002). The executive arm of the state is generally intolerant of criticism and the Indian executive is certainly no exception to this rule. But what marked out the latest incident in the public eye, the JNU case, is the extraordinary interest shown by the highest levels of the government in what were statements by youth in its usual phase of excited fervour. What could have been handled as a local incident and dealt with (if at all necessary) as a disciplinary matter by the University has been allowed to blow up into a controversy which has attracted national and international attention. Having committed one error of judgment, the executive compounded its problems by failing to act firmly against those who attempted to browbeat judicial institutions and interfered with the course of justice.

The second arm, the legislature, exemplified by Parliament at the national level, has, in recent years, often generated more heat than light. It has also dragged its feet on crucial legislation over the past decade, with parliamentarians more interested in winning battles of lung power than contributing to legislation that will promote economic growth and development. Over the years, legislations on a unified indirect tax system for the entire country, rationalization of archaic land laws and establishment of anti-corruption watchdogs have languished. A colonial era sedition provision, introduced in India after the 1857 mutiny, is still extant, although the mother country, the United Kingdom, dispensed with this statute over five years ago. Although no less a person than Jawaharlal Nehru espoused the sentiment (as far back as 1950) that this obnoxious provision should vanish from the statute books, independent India still retains this pernicious law that is freely available for abuse by insecure governments. To my knowledge, no honourable Member of Parliament has made any attempt to get this section in the Indian Penal Code repealed.

The one bright spot in the firmament of democratic institutions has been the legal system, though there is, obviously, the issue of the interminable judicial delays which frustrate the delivery of justice and tend to make the ordinary citizen cynical about the rule of law. This has to be qualified by the caveat that, while the judiciary, especially the higher judiciary, has been the one beacon of hope for the common man, the fraternity of lawyers has sometimes conducted itself with an appalling lack of dignity. Jokes about lawyers’ habits are commonplace in all democracies but the legal fraternity in India has, in recent years, besmirched its reputation with behaviour that is more suited to a beer hall than to a bar association, as witnessed in recent incidents on court precincts in Chennai and Delhi. In the recent case involving the production of the student leader arrested for sedition in the magistrate’s court, the nation and the world were witness to ugly scenes of alleged assault by “lawyers” on the student leader (a matter which is still under investigation), with the police apparently standing by as mute witnesses. Surely, lawyers, if the assailants were indeed lawyers, ought to be aware that the law must take its course.

The fourth pillar, the press, has been an increasing cause of concern in recent times. The print media, under threat from the electronic media and now social media, has generally tended to focus on avenues like advertising revenue, with lesser concern for factual reporting and issues of social concern. The electronic media, with almost no exceptions, is engrossed with sensationalism and “breaking news.” Even more disturbing is the tendency for news channels to act as adjudicators of legal issues, especially cases currently under investigation by the law enforcement authorities. Judgments have virtually been passed on most news channels in the high profile case involving Indrani Mukerjea. In the JNU student leader case, unverified audiovisual evidence has been casually bandied about by certain news channels. Value judgments on the patriotism of individuals and their actions have been passed without leaving the matter to be decided by the appropriate judicial forum. If the press was felt to be compliant during the Emergency years of 1975-77, there is now reason to worry whether it is complicit today with certain segments of society that seek to impose their narrow sectarian, nationalistic view on the country.

The biggest hope for a healthy, flourishing democracy lies in a questioning, independent civil society that accommodates a diversity of views and encourages discussion and dissent. No less a person than Raghuram Rajan, the present Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) observed in a lecture in October 2015 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai that societal self-interest lies in the protection of the right to question and challenge, for only through encouraging the challenge of innovative rebels does society develop.  The growing partisan shrillness of discourse and the recourse to vituperative, often libellous language in the social media is a sad reflection on the deteriorating standards of public debate in a country that has produced outstanding thinkers like Ambedkar, Nehru and Rajaji. It should occasion no surprise when we have commentators in recent days opining that students should go to universities to study, forgetting the important role of universities and other institutions of higher learning in fostering the spirit of questioning in individuals and equipping them to contribute to political and social development in their future lives. While it has been heartening to see the large number of those who have taken a stand against the attempts to straitjacket thinking and debate, there is no denying the growing numbers who refuse to use hard facts to bolster their viewpoint, relying instead on emotion and unverified information to push their worldview as the only acceptable one. When they lose out in the battle of words, as is bound to happen when reason does not inform argument, they descend to the use of swords.

Democracy in India, like the nation state, is a concept that has been put together since 1947 and has (despite various gloomy prognostications) lasted over nearly seventy years, in contrast to most other countries that achieved independence around the middle of the twentieth century. The people of India have chosen their governments at the national level sixteen times since independence and have ushered out the incumbents on eight of these occasions. But the right to bloodlessly change governments (Karl Popper’s fundamental classification of a democracy) is hardly the only characteristic of a democracy. It is the rule of law which guides the functioning of a democracy in the interregnum between elections. Seen from this viewpoint, the “five pillars” of Indian democracy can be said to have secured barely passing grades. Nor, regretfully, do most Indians show tolerance for the words and actions of their fellow humans, whether from India or outside. The rule of law apparently applies only when one is wronged, not when one wrongs one’s fellow human. Two examples will suffice: progressive writers in Bengaluru choosing to boycott the Literature Festival because one of the organisers had differing views on the Award Wapsi controversy and the intolerance shown by Left parties to political dissent in Bengal over their 34-year rule. Respect for the individual’s right to freedom of expression, consumption and decision (three freedoms which are being questioned at various levels today) is still to be ingrained in the Indian democratic psyche. Till this tolerance becomes a matter of habit, we cannot claim that our country functions on the principle of the rule of law.

 

 

 

 

15 Feb

The perks…and quirks…of public office

Posted by vramani in government, irony. Tagged: , .

I do not offhand remember the name of the 1960s Hindi movie starring two great actors, Padmini and Pran, which I saw on Doordarshan in my student days. The girl, Padmini, is obviously not overjoyed at the prospect of being married to the villain rather than to her hero. Pran attempts to convince her by pointing out to her that her hero has no wealth while he (Pran) can provide her with “नौकर, चाकर, बंगला और गाड़ी” (servants, a palatial house and vehicles). Padmini may not have been convinced, but this argument holds a strong appeal for many who aspire to public office, whether in the political or administrative spheres. I am not for a moment suggesting that the perks of office are the sole, or even major, reason for aspiring to public office. But they are a definite added attraction, apart from the aspect of job security (not guaranteed, of course, for politicians) and the social prestige that comes attached, though often with a tinge of neighbours’ envy (sometimes masquerading as self-righteous attempts to knock these worthies off their high pedestals).

Let me (from my lengthy association with the bureaucracy) take the quintessential budding Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and his entry into the hallowed portals of the civil service. I deliberately use the gender-incorrect “his”, since the male of the species exhibits, in my opinion, many more quirks; also, there is a far greater sample size to draw on for examples. It begins with his rapid elevation in the marriage market sweepstakes. Even apart from the sordid issue of dowry payment levels, there is a lengthy line of parents of marriageable daughters for tying up alliances with the eligible bachelor. Feted in his social circles at home, the young man proceeds to the district for his initial training and subsequent posting. The perks start here, with a comfortable house (generally far from the madding crowd), domestic help at the residence, a Group D employee (literally preceding the young officer on his travels) and a jeep with a driver. The perks multiply very soon with his elevation to the district officer level, as the officer graduates to a much larger bungalow, a chauffeur-driven car and a whole retinue of domestic staff at his beck and call. While the perks are alluring, it is the quirks that command one’s attention more as an interesting object of socio-economic analysis: let us turn to them.

Among the visible prestige symbols that are the accoutrements of office, the flashing beacon on the vehicle (jeep or car) is one that catches the public’s attention. Though popularly known as the “लाल बत्ती” (red light), the district/sub-district officer’s vehicle actually sports an orange beacon. Acquisition of this symbol gains one access to areas not easily accessible to the public, a wave-through without payment at toll booths and an occasional salute from the roadside policeman. In more recent years, there is also the armed security person in the front seat of the car and the pennant fluttering on the car bonnet to testify to the status of the occupant. Equally fascinating to observe is the seating plan in the vehicle. When the officer has just a jeep, he occupies the left side front seat, next to the driver. The problem of two officers of equal rank travelling by the same vehicle is resolved by one of them taking the steering wheel. In the case of a car, the senior officer must occupy the rear left hand seat, so that his door opens directly in front of the porch of his office, residence or the guest house. After observing these phenomena, I have termed them “jeepocracy” and “carocracy”, signifying bureaucratic vehicular hierarchy in a people’s democracy. The hierarchy extends to the arrival and departure of vehicles at offices, guest houses and public functions; the last in (who is the top honcho in the hierarchy) is the first out (LIFO), quite unlike the normal (FIFO) inventory procedure.

Once in office, the impressive chair behind the large table testifies to the importance of its occupier. The first law of babudom states: the size of the table is directly proportional to the position of the officer in the bureaucratic hierarchy. There was great discomfort among the Petroleum Ministry babus when I opted for a table measuring three feet by two feet, discarded from the Secretary’s office after the transfer of the previous incumbent. I would not even have ruled out my subordinates feeling that their boss had reduced their standing in the eyes of their subordinates. The second law of babudom is: the occupier of the chair shall surrender it to his superior in the bureaucratic hierarchy, when the latter visits his office. This can have unpredictable fallouts, like the time we in the General Administration Department were called upon to adjudicate in a dispute between the District Collector and a Divisional Forest Officer. Matters had come to a head when the Forest Officer refused to vacate his chair when the Collector (who considered himself primus inter pares) came visiting his office. The contrast was provided by one of my bosses who, when visiting my office, would take a chair on the side of the desk, refusing the proffered (and preferred) chair with the remark “That chair is yours; I have not been appointed to your post.” The conflict can arise even when two district officers occupy rooms in the guest house — matters can be precipitated especially when they are from the IAS and the Indian Police Service (IPS), two services that share a strange love-hate relationship.

Official residential accommodation is another undisputed perk of a public job, especially in the higher echelons of the political and administrative hierarchy and top-level district officers. The old British habit of isolating the rulers from the natives is alive and kicking seven decades after independence. Allied with the provision of official vehicles, this effectively insulates the public official from his ostensible masters, the aam aurat/aadmi. Not surprisingly, two of independent India’s biggest problems — public housing and public transport — remain unresolved, since those entrusted with the task of solving them do not themselves use or need them. The realisation probably dawns on the politician/bureaucrat only when they are out of office, at which time their successors in office have no time or sympathy to listen to their problems.

Little wonder then that politicians and bureaucrats stick to public posts like limpets, well past their “sell by” dates. India’s gargantuan public sector and plethora of public institutions enable the accommodation of defeated (and unelectable) politicians, keeping intraparty dissent muted and enabling the politician in power to get on with her job. The bureaucrat relies on a whole host of post-retirement sinecures, ranging from administrative tribunals to governorships of states and diplomatic postings; the really enterprising few become politicians themselves, extending their perks well into the sunset years.

But the day of reckoning must come sooner or later. That day will dawn for the majority of politicians/bureaucrats when the trappings of office recede and they must rub shoulders with the common man. I still remember my office boy recounting how the Chairman of a large public sector company was a few places ahead of him in the morning queue at the milk booth, days after his retirement. Without being cynical, their position reminds me of Timon of Athens (refer to one William Shakespeare for more information on this Grecian tragic hero). It is probably appropriate to conclude with a stanza from the Bhaja Govindam, attributed to a disciple of Adi Sankaracharya:

अंगं गलितं पलितं मुण्डं दशनविहीनं जातं तुण्डम्

वृद्धो याति गृहीत्वा दण्डं तदपि न मुंच्यत्याशापिण्डम्

(Strength has left the old man’s body, his head has become bald, his gums toothless and he is leaning on crutches. Even then the attachment is strong and he clings firmly to fruitless desires)

 

 

 

 

 

1 Feb

JAM for the Indian

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

“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today”

(Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There)

 

Alice was faced with a peculiar dilemma when offered jam by the White Queen; she could never have it today, but only tomorrow or yesterday. You guessed her problem: when tomorrow came, it would be today, so, as per the White Queen’s edict, she could never have her jam “today” or any other day, for that matter. The aam aurat/aadmi in India are in danger of being caught in a similar trap involving JAM, unless a lot of thought is given to how to operationalise JAM, popularise it, enable it to gain wide acceptance and surmount the innumerable obstacles posed by those who are better off (and don’t need JAM) but nevertheless are haunted by imaginary fears. I refer, of course, to the path breaking initiative of the Government of India to marry technology and finance to improve the living standards of millions of Indians. JAM has three components — the Jan Dhan Yojana (J), aimed at financial inclusion for the population as a whole, Aadhar (A), the issue of biometric identification cards to all Indians and the Mobile (M), the instrument that can be found in the hands of about 700 million Indians today. J, the first corner of this trinity, will reach banking and other financial services to millions who are currently unserved or underserved by existing banking systems. This will obviate the need for often understaffed/unstaffed “brick and mortar” bank branches. The recently licensed payment banks, with their focus on technology, are better placed to service remote populations with the skilful use of mobile technology, M, the second part of the trinity. The triangle is completed by Aadhar, A, the individual unique identification number that ensures that financial services and benefits flow to the person for whom they are earmarked.

The three essential conditions to be fulfilled if JAM is to operate smoothly are: (a) access of every Indian to banking channels where her money can be parked; (b) ease and efficiency of transactions; and (c) secure, accurate identification of the account holder to check diversion of benefits. An inadequate understanding of these requirements in transferring government benefits to intended beneficiaries has bedeviled implementation of schemes involving newly created bank accounts and has provided fodder to those Luddites who see red at the very mention of the word “cash transfers”. For example, the Government of Puducherry rushed through a scheme to overcome supply side constraints in the form of a dysfunctional public distribution system by transferring money directly to individual bank accounts. This ill-conceived measure ran into three issues which hastened its early demise: (a) inconvenient access to banks meant that people had to incur the double cost of visiting banks to draw cash and then going to the ration shop to purchase rice; (b) arbitrary deductions by the bank of apparently outstanding dues denied the beneficiaries access to the full amount of the cash transfer; (c) the money could be used to purchase anything, which meant women, children and the old might not get rice were the amount to be spent by the men of the family on items like alcohol. Hasty moves to pay MNREGA wages through existing inefficient banking channels have also come a cropper.

“Cash transfers” is a term that has been widely misunderstood and, I suspect, often deliberately misinterpreted to serve partisan ideological ends. For a start, we need to be clear about unconditional versus conditional cash transfers. In the former, no specific behaviour is sought from the recipient in exchange for availing of the cash transfer benefit, such as, for example, availing of the services of a public health facility or educational institution or fulfilling specific conditions like registering for antenatal care. This is in contrast to conditional cash transfers where availing of a specific, generally public, service provision entitles the beneficiary to the cash transfer. One problem with conditional cash transfers is the failure to provide satisfactory public services: for instance, if there is no doctor or nurse at a primary health facility, the failure to register for antenatal care would deprive the beneficiary of the cash transfer conditional on antenatal care registration. Going in blindly for unconditional cash transfers in such cases is fraught with its own dangers, like the apprehension in Puducherry that the male household head would spend the cash on liquor, thereby denying his vulnerable family members access to sorely needed nutrition, health or education benefits.

It is here that the government needs to use its imagination in devising a workable, effective solution covering schemes in different sectors. Unconditional and conditional cash transfers should be linked to a mobile wallet created for each beneficiary/consumer. This mobile wallet will be linked to the bank account and Aadhar number of the individual consumer. Cash transfers (whether unconditional or conditional) under different heads — health, food, education — will flow into the individual’s mobile wallet. Choice should be given to the consumer to access the service from a public or private provider, to reduce the inefficiencies of state/private monopolies/oligopolies. Goods/service providers will be paid through the mobile wallet for goods/services delivered, using point of sale machines that identify the customer through Aadhar identification procedures.

There is also the important issue of identifying the eligibility of the beneficiary for specific types of assistance. The government has scrapped the Below Poverty Line (BPL) lists. These suffered from two infirmities: first, the lists often left out the poorest and most marginalised sections of society and secondly, they were not dynamic, in that there was no provision for updation as families exited or newly entered the ranks of the poor. The 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) has attempted to use household data (based on an intensive nationwide survey conducted in rural and urban areas) to identify households which could be defined as suffering from deprivations of different degrees, using income and assets as criteria. While this is better than the old BPL classification, the SECC also has some grey areas which could affect the identification of those households genuinely in need of various social protection programmes. The authenticity of the data gathered during the survey can be open to question. There is also the issue of, over time, including households that, because of various factors, move afresh into the deprived category. Most importantly, there is no basis to ascertain income earnings, especially in case of households that are not covered by the Income Tax Department records and which, as in the case of agricultural households, are not liable to pay income tax. The possibility of families subdividing themselves to avail of benefits cannot be ruled out: one is reminded of the efforts made by sections of the agricultural elite, in the two decades after land reforms were introduced in the 1950s, to show land ownership in the name of servants and even animals to avoid parting with agricultural land.

One possible method of checking misuse of benefits would be to insist on bank accounts being linked to the Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards issued by the Income Tax Department and to the Aadhar identity. Over time, as this writer has often advocated, this should be accompanied by a move to a cashless economy. Currency notes of over Rs. 50 denomination should be withdrawn from circulation and mobile wallets should become the norm for cashless transactions. Moreover, transactions of a monetary value of over, say, Rs. 500, should be mandatorily through a cashless system. This would provide, through the income tax network, full details of the receipts and expenditures of every household, automatically thereby excluding from the ambit of government benefits those who are not entitled to them. If there is doubt about the feasibility of a country moving to a largely cashless economy, we need see no further than the example of Sweden. Cash represents just 2% of Sweden’s economy and only 20% of consumer payments are made in cash in Sweden as compared to 75% in the rest of the world (this figure would be well over 90% in India). Nor does the oft-parroted argument about the illiteracy of India’s citizens hold water: one just has to see how Indian men and women have taken to mobile phones to realise that lack of education is no hindrance to the enthusiastic adoption of “liberating technology”.

However, this would be possible only when there is a broad consensus on the applicability of Aadhar for all types of transactions. Sections of the intelligentsia have voiced apprehensions about the misuse of private data of individuals, despite the fact that the Aadhar card has the same information as the identity card issued by the Election Commission of India, except for the additional incorporation of biometric information. These groups have been actively agitating in the country’s highest judicial forum against the widespread adoption of this technology. Forgotten is the harsh fact that for a person deprived of so many economic and social rights, a hypothetical loss of so-called “privacy” is hardly the most important consideration. Forgive the atrocious pun, but without JAM, India’s poor and disadvantaged run the risk of being denied their bread and butter.

 

 

 

15 Jan

Companies and CSR – the Indian experiment

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

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been a favourite topic of discourse in the public domain over the past decade or so. With instances coming to light in recent years where actions of companies have impinged on the environment and the lives of local communities and with a far more discerning and voluble public, companies, and more so, governments, are aiming for responsible policies that, while promoting commercial interests, also take into account the sensitivities of the populations that will be affected, directly or indirectly, by these policies. The Government of India spelt out these obligations as far back as 2011 when it issued National Voluntary Guidelines (NVGs) listing out the social, environmental and economic responsibilities of businesses in India. The NVGs were, however, advisory rather than mandatory. It was only with the new Companies Act, 2013 (“Companies Act”) that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending was formally made a statutory obligation for companies incorporated under the Companies Act.  The objective was that companies deriving commercial benefit from their business operations should, as good corporate citizens, give back something to communities.

Section 135 of the Companies Act has laid down the procedure for companies to develop a CSR policy. However, the only specific issue mentioned in this section (that has a financial implication for the company) is the obligation for companies exceeding a threshold limit of net worth, turnover or net profit to spend, in a financial year, at least two percent of the average net profits of the preceding three financial years on any of the activities listed in Schedule VII of the Companies Act. These range from eradication of extreme hunger and poverty to promotion of education and gender equality, reducing child mortality, ensuring environmental sustainability and social business projects. As mentioned in the Report of the High Level Committee (“HLC Report”) appointed by the Government of India to suggest measures to improve monitoring of implementation of CSR policies, it is for the first time in the world that a provision for CSR spending has been made part of a statute. The HLC Report “…is convinced that the main thrust and spirit of the law is not to monitor but to generate conducive environment for enabling the corporates to conduct themselves in a socially responsible manner, while contributing towards human development goals of the country.” The first few years would necessarily be a learning experience for all stakeholders, including the government. It may, therefore, be instructive to focus on some of the key areas of implementation to see how this unusual piece of legislation could work out in the coming years.

It is quite clear that the intention of the CSR legislation was not to supplement public resources for social and human development; government could as well have taxed the companies to raise additional resources for this purpose, as has recently been done with the 0.5% enhancement in service tax rates to meet the costs of the Swachh Bharat campaign. Too often, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), particularly the larger ones based overseas, tend to wrongly visualise their roles as substituting the efforts of government. They tend to invest significantly in manpower and other resources in projects they take up on a pilot basis in certain parts of the country. The major drawback in such efforts is the failure to integrate the project with the local, especially public, resources already on the ground in a specific social sector. The result is that excellent outcomes reported in a very localised area almost never attain either scalability or sustainability. They are not scalable because of a lack of buy-in from the public service delivery machinery and the failure to enthuse/convince governments to adopt similar approaches in other areas. With NGO resources being finite, the initiative cannot be sustained even in the initial success area, leave alone extend it to other areas. There are lessons in such previous initiatives which need to be drawn by corporates if they are not to squander their CSR resources on small local projects that do not survive the withdrawal of the initial sponsor. It may make more sense for companies, especially larger ones, to link up their CSR spending with activities that complement ongoing programmes of the government. This view finds support from the HLC Report recommendation that companies with annual CSR spends of over Rs. 5 crores should undertake programme based sustainable CSR activities, with some measurable outcomes, while companies below this limit can go in for project-based activities. In fact, companies should, where resources permit, link their CSR activities to ongoing development programmes of the government. This would benefit such government programmes in two ways: (a) pilot initiatives could be started in selected areas, with the lessons learnt from such pilots being used to improve public programme implementation; and (b) governments could benefit from the innovative ideas and new concepts that corporate involvement brings to social ventures. This has been the rationale for at least one such multi-stakeholder partnership in the state of Maharashtra a few years back, the Bhavishya Alliance. This Alliance, comprising leading corporates, the Government of Maharashtra and NGOs/community based organisations, focused on reducing under-6 child malnutrition in Maharashtra state between 2006 and 2011.

Although it is rather early to start analysing the implications of specific provisions relating to CSR spending in the Companies Act and Companies (CSR Policy) Rules, 2014 (“CSR Rules”), certain issues may perplex companies and bedevil smooth implementation of CSR activities, unless greater clarity is forthcoming in the coming days and months on interpretation of some of the provisions:

  • Section 135 requires companies to give preference in CSR spending to the local areas where their operations are based. While this does not necessarily circumscribe company discretion to extend CSR activities to geographical areas not necessarily contiguous to their operational areas, it can give rise to interpretation conflicts. The HLC Report talks of companies with over Rs. 5 crores annual CSR expenditure being allowed to go in for programme-based activities. A number of such activities may not always be feasible in the immediate vicinity of company operational areas. Also, companies (especially family-owned ones) may wish to spend their CSR funds in the areas from where the founder came (Gujarat, Rajasthan, etc.) though there are no company operations in these areas. Most importantly, this may limit CSR spending in areas sorely in need of such human capital investments (in education, health, nutrition, etc.), such as remote tribal areas. In fact, there is need for governments to specifically encourage CSR investments in the most backward regions of the country, which often receive far less than their due share of budgetary resources.
  • There is a specific provision in the CSR Rules that CSR activities should not include those pursued in the normal course of business. Schedule VII of the Companies Act, which lists the eligible CSR activities, has been expanded three times already since the Act was notified in February 2014. It is well-nigh impossible to fully anticipate the nature of activities that qualify for CSR spending. Development priorities and needs can vary across time and geographies; hence, the HLC Report recommends an omnibus clause which covers all activities that serve a public purpose and enhance public welfare. Alternatively, the Companies Act should be amended to provide for specification of such activities in the CSR Rules, so that the Department of Corporate Affairs can amend the Rules as and when necessary.
  • In its present form, the Companies Act does not prescribe any penalty for non-compliance with the provisions of Section 135. It provides for what in regulatory parlance is termed “comply or explain”. The annual report of the Board of Directors of a company simply has to explain why the required amount could not be spent. Of course, in this age of social media, a multi-billion rupee company that trotted out silly reasons for its inability to spend on CSR activities would face public scorn, not to mention the adverse impact on its social image and the loss of goodwill. And yet, there could be valid reasons, like major business downturns, for a company’s failure to meet its CSR expenditure obligations. Rightly, then, the Companies Act has refrained from penalising non-compliance in spite of the mandatory nature of Section 135. However, Sections 450 and 451 of the Companies Act prescribe punishments ranging from fines to imprisonment for contraventions of provisions of the Companies Act for which no penalty or punishment is provided elsewhere in the Companies Act. In the absence of a specific clarification that these punitive sections do not apply to actions under Section 135, it is not impossible to visualise some overzealous bureaucrat bringing the might of the state to bear on infractions by companies under this section.

In the final analysis, the CSR legislation, despite its mandatory tone, is more self-regulatory rather than punitive, requiring a mature approach from both companies and governments. Both parties need to see how they can collaborate in using company resources to achieve the greatest public good. Companies need to shed their earlier approach of deeming that they have met their social obligations if they contribute to a schoolroom or a balwadi. Rather, the emphasis should be on CSR investments that contribute to ongoing improvements in the social and economic status of communities for which the CSR expenditure is intended. Companies should also interact on a regular basis with government departments and agencies to jointly examine how they can contribute to building managerial capabilities of the public service delivery machinery and introducing innovations in ongoing government programmes to ensure better outcomes. On their part, governments (especially state and local governments) should proactively assess and list programmes and activities where government efforts will be positively boosted by private support. The objective should be to develop a menu of activities which can be posed to various private sector partners for participation along with the government in improving standards of life. The Upanishadic exhortation “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the whole world is one family) has special relevance in the context of these efforts to improve the lot of one’s brothers and sisters.

 

 

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)

 

 

 

 

 

1 Nov

Killing Mockingbirds – A Twenty First Century Syndrome

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

It is not often that a writer hits the bestseller list with her first novel. Harper Lee achieved that with her masterpiece “To Kill A Mockingbird”, which describes the racism and social inequality prevalent in the 1930s in the American South. A black man, Tom Robinson, is falsely accused of raping a white woman from one of the most wretched white communities on the fringes of society. The prevailing animosity of whites towards blacks, seventy years after slavery was formally abolished, manifests itself in efforts of some members of the white community to lynch the accused. In the ensuing trial by an all-white jury, Tom is sentenced to death, despite a brilliant defence put up by his white lawyer, Atticus Finch. Atticus is able to discredit the evidence of the rape complainant very comprehensively, although this does not lead to a verdict of acquittal. Despairing of getting justice in a system weighted against his community, Tom is killed while trying to escape from jail. The father of the complainant, a down and out reject of society, seeks to avenge his humiliation at the trial by attempting to kill Atticus’ children, losing his own life in the process. What the novel highlights is the number of innocents who are caught in the web of this bigotry and hatred. The author likens these to mockingbirds, which cause no trouble to humans and give pleasure through their singing. Hence the injunction of Atticus Finch to his children never to hunt mockingbirds. Tom Robinson, like many others in the novel, is the mockingbird caught in a vortex not of his making but of which he has to reap the grim consequences.

Twenty first century India is in some ways (and unfortunately increasingly so) reminiscent of the American South of an earlier generation. In recent times, women, children, householders, truckers, scholars, writers and journalists have been at the receiving end of lynch mobs for just trying to live their lives as they deemed best, without in any way interfering in the lives of others. The provocation (as so termed by vigilante groups) can be linked to a certain worldview about “culture”, which gives no space to diversity of individual behaviour, intellectual thought and even dietary practices. Women in Mangaluru (and elsewhere) have been targeted for expressing their individuality in ways which in no sense constituted any violation of the law of the land but “offended” patriarchal mindsets of some groups. Violence against women has been a longstanding feature of Indian society (protestations of its veneration of women notwithstanding) – what is disturbing in recent years has been the concentration of violence against women seen as bucking traditional mores and behaviours expected of women – whether it is association with the opposite sex, visiting places (e.g. pubs) seen as male prerogatives or even establishing their financial independence through gainful employment. Freedom of expression (enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution of India) has been sought to be curbed extra-legally ever since the forcible exile of M. F. Husain two decades ago. Then we had the unedifying spectacle of hooligans from the Nationalist Congress Party (in power in Maharashtra at the time) vandalizing the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune  and destroying priceless manuscripts to protest the research support it is supposed to have given to a “controversial” book on the Maratha ruler, Shivaji. More recently, writers like Perumal Murugan in Tamil Nadu have been pressurized to disown their writings which some social groups objected to, apart from the as yet unsolved murders of three rationalist scholars over the past two years. The last straw on the camel’s back has been the recent incidents of mob violence against members of minority denominations by socially dominant groups enjoying political patronage, ostensibly on the grounds of offending religious sensitivities related to alleged beef consumption.

There are two disturbing aspects to these developments that make all right-thinking, sober Indians reflect on (and despair of) the direction that Indian society seems to have taken. The first refers to what the political theorist Hannah Arendt has termed as “tribal nationalism” in her book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. As she puts it “(Tribal nationalism) can be easily recognized by the tremendous arrogance, inherent in its self-concentration, which dares to measure a people, its past and present, by the yardstick of exalted inner qualities and inevitably rejects its visible existence, tradition, institutions and culture…tribal nationalism always insists its own people is surrounded by “a world of enemies”, “one against all”, that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind…”. The concept of an Indian nation is barely seventy years old. National pride was sought to be rekindled during the two hundred years of British rule by hearkening back to a pre-Muslim conquest glorious past, as though to deny the existence of history after 1192 CE (the Battle of Tarain), which marks the start of Muslim political ascendancy in India. It is unfortunate that, today, history is sought to be rewritten on the same basis, ignoring six centuries of social and political evolution which influenced the mosaic that is present-day India. It is even more unfortunate that this ersatz history has had its impact on certain sections of society, especially those exposed to a limited worldview founded on prejudice and a marked sense of inferiority, leading to a conviction that the majority community must assume its “rightful” place in the country. The “other” then becomes a convenient scapegoat for all one’s shortcomings and no effort is spared to impose a majoritarian worldview on all other communities.

The second aspect, and this is one that can be fatal to the very existence of a democracy, is the lack of respect for and observance of the rule of law. The police and security forces have, on a number of occasions, been swayed by partisan considerations in the maintenance of law and order and in the prosecution of criminal offences. Matters have not been helped by a creaking judicial system that takes decades to punish the guilty, if at all they are brought to trial. It is not surprising, therefore, that two tendencies manifest themselves: (a) using every loophole in criminal investigation and judicial procedures, those with money, influence and power delay, or thwart, the course of justice; (b) in frustration, those denied justice take the law into their own hands. A sense of impunity develops where the absence of the fear of deterrent punishment encourages vigilante groups and mobs to go on killing sprees; India’s experience is testimony to numerous such cases.

All sections of the state and society in India bear some of the blame for this sorry state of affairs. Political parties in India have always operated on the basis of expediency and short-term political gains. Right from Indian independence, the political class has used divisions of religion, caste and language to further its agenda of survival. With the cynicism (or should I say, realism) of thirty years in government, I would say the Indian political class amply justifies Goethe’s description of “estimable in the individual and wretched in the generality.” While there must be many politicians who are unhappy with the state of affairs today, it is rather optimistic to expect a statesmanlike response from them to promoting communal harmony and refraining from using sectarian propaganda to further their political prospects. The media has tried to highlight the various instances of intolerance and hatred; unfortunately, in the babble of voices and utterances in print, electronic and social media, no reasoned debate on issues based on factual evidence is possible, with battle lines already drawn in advance. There are only two silver linings in an otherwise rather dark thundercloud: the judiciary and independent citizens in different spheres of society. The courts have upheld a number of individual freedoms and have, especially at the highest levels, sought to jealously guard their independence from executive encroachment and ensure that the basic structure of the Constitution of India is not tampered with. Even more heartening has been the fearless response from people representing a wide spectrum of opinion, cutting across gender, community, religion and caste barriers.

Ultimately, the India that the framers of the Constitution dreamed of (and that every right-thinking Indian aspires for) will be realised only when two prerequisites are met. Firstly, reason has to guide actions, rather than blind emotions arising from intolerance, hatred and a sense of inadequacy. Every Indian has to put the past behind and focus on the path ahead. Today’s situation has to be taken as a given, to be improved on, rather than ventilating past grievances and manufacturing unrealistic future scenarios. Secondly, every individual and institution in the country has to abide by and promote the rule of law. At the individual level, this requires adherence to laws and regulations. At the institutional level (especially the executive and judicial arms), this requires the fair and impartial administration of these laws and prompt delivery of services to the aam aurat/aadmi to address common needs that are often the source of frustration and anger. Above all, at a time, when the world is wracked by violence and destruction linked to religious and ethnic differences, there is a special responsibility cast on the inhabitants of the world’s largest democracy to set an example of compassion, love and humanity for their brothers and sisters in India and across the globe. In this context, it is apposite to end with portions selected from the masterpiece of the immortal bard, Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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