19 May

100 percent VVPAT count: a Sisyphean exercise

Posted by vramani in elections. Tagged: , .

There is this probably apocryphal parable of the seven visually challenged men who ran their hands over the body of an elephant, trying to identify it. Each man grasped a part of its body and the elephant was identified respectively by each of them as ‘leg’, ‘tusk’, ‘trunk’, ‘tail’, etc. The developments in the EVM-VVPAT case in the Supreme Court remind me of this parable. The various participants in this litigation, from the Supreme Court to the lawyers representing the Election Commission of India and the various petitioners, had (and have) their own respective takes on the percentage (or numbers) of VVPATs that must be manually counted to ascertain the accuracy of the EVM count: these range from less than one percent to 2, 10, 50 and 100 percent. In this welter of conflicting numbers, the basic principles of sound statistical sampling have been given a firm burial.

Why is statistical sampling important in this day and age? My friend and former colleague Ashok Vardhan Shetty has stated, in his recent article in the Hindu[i], “to ensure (votes are) “counted as recorded”, we should tally the EVM count with the manual count of VVPAT slips for a statistically significant sample size of EVMs drawn at random from a suitably defined ‘population’ of EVMs.” He further goes on to say “The VVPAT-based audit of EVMs is a typical case of “ lot acceptance sampling ”, a statistical quality control technique widely used in industry and trade. If the number of defectives found in a randomly drawn statistical sample is less than or equal to a specified “ acceptance number ”, the entire lot (or ‘population’) is accepted; otherwise, the entire lot is rejected.” Shetty defines a defective EVM as one where there is a mismatch between the EVM count and the VVPAT count due to EVM malfunction or manipulation. The acceptance number here is a “zero defective EVM”, which means there should not be even a single variation in the two counts for the entire EVM sample. Wherever a variation in the EVM and VVPAT count arises in the chosen sample, the VVPAT count for that population of EVMs should be taken up, with the winner being declared on the basis of the VVPAT count.

The questions that have haunted the EVM-VVPAT issue since the introduction of VVPATs have been twofold: (a) what should be the population of EVMs from which the VVPAT sample should be drawn; (b) what steps should be taken in the event the sample shows a “defective” EVM count. Obviously, going by logic, the entire EVM population from which the sample was drawn should be deemed defective and the VVPAT count for this population should determine the victor of the electoral contest. These two issues were neither raised clearly before the Supreme Court nor did the Supreme Court see fit to decide on these two issues.

VVPAT count of a specific sample of the EVM population makes sense, as the VVPAT acts as a check on EVM accuracy. To ask for 100% VVPAT count is meaningless. The question could then be raised: why have the EVM at all? There is also the issue of the reliability of the VVPAT count. Kannan Gopinathan, a former IAS officer, has, in his article in The India Forum[ii], highlighted the vulnerabilities in the present EVM-VVPAT process. In his view, the jugaad-like manner in which the VVPAT machine has been inserted into India’s electronic voting process has endangered security, rendering the process safeguards that were earlier designed to protect EVMs of little value. In which case, even a manual 100% VVPAT count is no guarantee that the key principle of the election process has been adhered to — namely that votes have been “cast as intended, recorded as cast and counted as recorded.” I am not, in this blog, going into his brilliant analysis but would urge my readers to go through his article (as well as the article of Shetty referred to earlier) to get a complete understanding of why the present arrangement of verification of 5 VVPATs per assembly constituency is flawed and unlikely to meet the requirement of transparency of the voting process. The Election Commission contends that there has been no mismatch between the EVM and VVPAT count in the samples selected in elections from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to date. In the absence of published figures of the verified votes, we are required to blindly go by the assertion of the Election Commission.

In the context of the above arguments, the alternative proposed by the petitioners before the Supreme Court that 100% VVPAT slips should be counted makes little sense. So where do we go from here? The present arrangement clearly lacks transparency. There is no method to satisfy the voter that her vote has been recorded as cast in the EVM. The seven second window for passive verification of the VVPAT slip is a halfway house: we have to presume that each and every voter has satisfied herself about the correctness of her vote. The penalty for claiming that the VVPAT slip has wrongly recorded her vote, if not vindicated by the test vote, will deter most voters from seeking any further verification.

The solution, as suggested by Shetty in the last paragraph of his 2018 paper[iii], seems to lie in the adoption of machine-readable paper ballots that can be counted rapidly using Optimal Mark Recognition (OMR) technology. Since 1979, when I appeared for the Civil Services Examination, the Union Public Services Commission has gone in for OMR technology to assess the answer sheets of candidates, initially only at the stage of the Prelims Examination and subsequently for the Mains examination as well, to handle the large numbers of candidates who apply. My former service colleagues, the present Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners, have come through the same marking system, so they should have no objection to a simplified and quicker method of counting votes. The paper ballots on which voters mark their choice will confirm to them that their votes have been recorded as cast and will be counted as recorded. This may be the win-win solution that puts to rest the EVM-VVPAT controversy once and for all. Else, like Sisyphus, we will be plowing our furrow up the hill again and again till eternity.

 

 

 

[i] K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty: The Hindu, Chennai edition (30 April 2024)

[ii] Kannan Gopinathan: The India Forum (13 April 2021)

[iii] K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty: The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Policy Watch No. 6 (2018)

14 Jan

India – still very much a man’s world

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

2024 ushered in a new head of the civil services in Maharashtra. Part of the usual routine, except that this change in guard saw the claim of a lady officer to the top post being given the go by yet again. When most states in India have had lady officers helming the state bureaucracy, it is rather odd that Maharashtra, a state that prides itself on its progressiveness and gender parity, is yet to appoint a woman to the coveted post of Chief Secretary. The question is – why was Sujata Saunik, with a good track record, overlooked for the post a second time? She is the fourth woman after Chitkala Zutshi, Chandra Iyengar and Medha Gadgil to be overlooked for promotion to Chief Secretary.

The conclusion is inescapable – seventy six years after independence, the Indian establishment is still slow and grudging in allowing women to shatter the glass ceiling. It took the prodding of the Supreme Court for women to be given permanent commission in the armed forces; inducting them in combat formations has taken even more time, never mind the legacies of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Rani Chennama of Kittur. The private sector is little better, with independent women directors being appointed to corporate boards in recent years. It is heartening to observe that the appointment of women as District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police is now fairly common, a far cry from when I joined government service over four decades ago.

But the reality of womens’ place in Indian society is still far removed from the paeans sung to their exalted status as mothers, sisters and daughters. A patriarchal society still assigns the woman a place subordinate to her male cohorts. Girls are to be married off once they come of age (and, in many communities, even before that). Even in more educated environments, the female is expected to subsume her ambitions to fit into the role of wife and mother. Recent studies reveal the disturbing fact that the participation of women from higher income families in the labour force actually diminishes.

It is in the efforts to free herself from the straitjacket of patriarchalism that the woman faces her greatest hurdles. The female students of the Government Medical College, Kozhikode had to move the Kerala High Court in 2022 against the restrictions imposed on their movement outside their hostel after 9.30 PM, when no such restrictions applied to male students. Authorities justify such restrictions on grounds of safety of women students, a damning confirmation of the insecurity that pervades the lives of women even today. In an earlier blog (see here), I had mentioned a book “Why Loiter?” by three women researchers that highlighted how public spaces were out of bounds for women to enjoy, untroubled by the prurient attention of men.

It is not just in the public space; women face ordeals even in their homes. Sections 63 to 92 of the recently enacted Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita detail crimes against the female sex, ranging from sexual offences to dowry demands, domestic abuse to unwanted male attention and rape. Despite the Supreme Court guidelines in the Vishakha case as far back as 1997, and the enactment of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act in 2013, it took till the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century for the MeToo movement to find its feet in India. With the fear of loss of employment and of ostracism, both from their own gender and from society, women were hesitant to publicly name those harassing them. The ongoing episode of India’s women wrestlers fighting sexual harassment by those running their federation reflects the sobering reality of the continued dominance, socially and politically, of the rich and powerful male. The MP accused of sexual harassment continues in Parliament while the wrestling federation continued to be his fiefdom through his trusted lieutenants, till, thankfully, the government stepped in to try and put an end to this unsavoury chapter.

The enquiry by the Ethics Committee of Parliament against the now former MP, Mahua Moitra, is another example of how a hierarchical male-dominated society firmly tries to stifle the independence of women, especially if they are single, “modern” and with strong opinions of their own, which do not gel with the prevailing orthodoxy of their social milieu. The questions put to her by the Chairman ranged from wanting to know the nature of her relationship with the male who had access to her parliament questions login, the number of her visits to Dubai, the hotel she stayed in in Dubai and whether she met that person there. When the issue under examination was only the access of a private individual to an MP’s parliament questions login, these questions would clearly cast aspersions on her character (as perceived by a patriarchal society). Had the MP in question been a male who had given access to his parliament questions login to a female, these questions would never have been asked. Obviously, the Indian male escapes the scanner for behaviour that is not tolerated in a female.

The Indian male is nurtured in a milieu that, while paying lip service to the female, expects her to subordinate her aspirations to her family expectations while tolerating behaviour that would raise eyebrows in gender-progressive societies. Domestic violence at the hands of her husband and in-laws is a feature in many families. The birth of a girl child is often not welcomed, leading to instances of foetus abortion and female infanticide. The girl child has the last priority in access to health, nutrition and education, causing intergenerational deficits in the healthy development of the girl child. Boys are given a lot of latitude in the parental home. This leads to a sense of entitlement: there is no sharing of household chores and responsibilities, an attitude that is evident even after marriage: witness the rampant alcoholism in males and the abandonment of women post-marriage. The Government of India has rightly given primacy to the slogan “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” : checking sex-selective abortions/female infanticide and educating the girl child will improve the female:male sex ratio as also enable women to be active in social, political and economic life. I suggest the addition of “Beti Badhao” to the slogan, to enable the girl child to function as an independent agency, free of patriarchal restrictions.

 

31 Dec

Our neocolonial complex

Posted by vramani in government, human interest, public affairs. Tagged: , , , .

When the new criminal laws were recently passed by the Indian Parliament, a frequent refrain was that these laws were framed to do away with the colonial criminal jurisprudence of the nineteenth century. But, in fact, the new laws reinforce the colonial view of a huge population as fundamentally untrustworthy, hence the need for a wide range of offences that are punishable with stiff terms of imprisonment or death. This set me thinking: have Indians really, as a people, shed the colonial complex that was inherited from the British?

Actually, it would be more appropriate to categorise the mindset that dominates Indian thought as neocolonial. This is because, after World War II, the axis of power and influence shifted across the Atlantic from the UK to the USA. The UK has attempted some military forays since 1945, in the Suez (1956, with disastrous results) and in the Falkland Islands (1982, with a somewhat better result). Otherwise, the UK has been very much an understudy to the USA, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It is the USA that has colonised the global (including Indian) weltanschauung over the last 70 years, apart from meddling in the politics of innumerable countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia, at great cost to and human suffering in these countries.

As one born in the 1950s, my generation was exposed to propaganda from the USA & the UK (and countries allied to them), in the impressionable early years of our lives. Our young minds were filled with a surfeit of Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Mallory Towers) and Frank Richards (Billy Bunter). Apart from exposing us to life in good old Blighty, there was also a subtle racial stereotyping of the “natives” from India and other Asian-African countries. Fiction by the likes of Leon Uris painted Israel as a country with a divine right to get its Promised Land. The USA had, by the 1960s, stepped into the quagmire of Vietnam. Magazines like Reader’s Digest, Time and Newsweek printed rubbish week after week, detailing the atrocities of the Vietcong and artfully evading the horrors of the My Lai massacre and the carpet bombing of civilian populations in Cambodia and Laos. Other magazines like Playboy, Life and Vogue catered to the prurient tastes of the younger generation, awakening in them desires to partake of the bounty that Uncle Sam could offer.

Unsurprisingly, many of us, especially those educated in elite missionary/public schools, were ashamed to claim what was truly our heritage. As a participant in the Bournvita Quiz Contest, I informed our Quiz Master, Hamid Sayani, of my interest in Hindi film music, to find my response drawing derisive titters from our opponents, the girls from a prominent Delhi convent school. At university festivals, western music competitions drew crowds that the Hindi music competitions never did. Come 2023, I am most happy and gratified that my friend and college mate, Ajay Mankotia, has come out with Bollywood Odyssey, an ode to the Hindi film music industry. Hindi popular music has, in recent times, acquired a massive fan following, as mobile phone technology has penetrated large sections of the population. Bollywood has spread its wings internationally, thanks to the Indian diaspora.

To some extent, the shedding of the Indian inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West began with the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991. Freed somewhat from the shackles of a pseudo-socialist economy, the Indian economy accelerated away from its hitherto sluggish growth rate. Positive state policies in a number of sectors, ranging from infrastructure to energy, finance and telecommunications, have propelled the country to a different growth trajectory. At the same time, the need to step up job creation, improve social development indicators, make governance efficient and facilitate the explosion of entrepreneurial talent by removing bureaucratic hurdles faced by the citizen are still works in progress.

It is here that the Indian government (and domestic public opinion) still remain overly sensitive to studies and surveys emanating largely from the western world. Like Rome, India cannot be built in a day. It will take time for indicators, especially in the social sectors, to register dramatic improvements. Nor is it necessarily the case that figures for other countries (especially those under authoritarian leadership) are accurate. So, there is no need for government spokespersons and proudly nationalist commentators to launch into a denunciation of such reports. What is important, however, in the interest of meaningful policy making is that data gathered for different sectors be accurate and open to the public (and experts) for critical examination. If there are serious reservations about the applicability of international standards to Indian conditions, appropriate indicators can be developed for application in the Indian context. Take the example of the child nutrition measurement indicators used in India till 2008. Since the child nutrition indicators used in the USA would probably have overstated the percentage of underweight and stunted under-6 children in India, an underweight measure devised by the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) was used in the ICDS to assess the numbers of children who were very severely/severely/moderately underweight and normal as compared to the weight of the reference child population. Post-2008, India has moved to the universally used WHO growth standards. There is now a debate on whether India should adopt its own child growth standard indicators. Even if this is developed and officially adopted, there still needs to be a sound theoretical basis for the standards and ongoing progress in reducing child undernutrition should be measured by the same yardstick over time, without shifting goalposts to show achievement. Nor should data be withheld from public view. Unfortunately, there is a growing tendency in respect of various economic and social indicators to either modify baselines to show better results or to just stop publication of crucial data. Third party evaluations that differ from officially published figures are debunked. Not only do these reveal a deep sense of insecurity in official circles, they also impact effective policy making based on reasonably accurate data. There will always be some gap between the desired and actual outcomes: the shortcomings in implementation and the ground-level realities need to be analysed to effect mid-course policy corrections.

The neocolonial complex also has its reflection in the “neoliberal” economic policies followed in most nations (India included). These are based on a preoccupation with gross domestic product, with a corresponding sidelining of concerns relating to the environment and unequal income and wealth distribution. Manmade natural disasters and frustration and a growing sense of grievance in marginalised, deprived populations are the consequences that society has to face. Unless economic policies are fashioned to keep harmony among the four elements — the market, state, households and nature —  that constitute the modern economy, imbalances are sure to develop over time. Glitzy malls, superhighways, high-speed transport and luxury products are no indicators of a healthy society, especially when the state has to repeatedly step in to alleviate large-scale misery.

Governments in India need to focus on economic and social policies that lay stress on job and income creation for the mass of people. Reducing income and wealth disparities without destroying the entrepreneurial spirit or the environment should be the guiding principle in this context. Unless a new direction is forged with a people-centric focus, we can only rehash the prescient words of George Santayana “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

 

 

 

24 Dec

The fault, dear Brutus…

Posted by vramani in Innovation. Tagged: .

Cassius, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, held that it was not the stars, but men themselves who were responsible for the situation they found themselves in. We in India are in a similar position almost two thousand years later. We tirelessly legislate around the clock — why, even the Constitution of India has been amended no less than 106 times in the 73 years after its adoption, as compared to the 27 amendments in the Constitution of the United States of America in the 247 years after 1776. I know it is not fair to compare the rates of amended legislation in countries with such widely differing histories and societies. The point I am trying to make is that the plethora of laws and regulations we have surrounded ourselves with in India have not yielded citizen satisfaction in terms of effective enforcement of laws in India. Take the Indian criminal justice system alone: a May 2022 report of The Hindu shows a pendency of 3.06 crore criminal cases in India. National Crime Records Bureau data as of end-2021 reveal that of 5.5 lakh persons in prison in India, over 4.25 lakhs are undertrials, the result of a combination of interminably lengthy criminal proceedings, denial of pretrial release (i.e., bail) to those awaiting trial and the inability of undertrials to pay the bail bonds.

It is in this context that I examine the passage, by a Parliament truncated by the suspension of over 140 MPs, of three new bills, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), replacing respectively the existing Indian Penal Code (IPC), Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and Indian Evidence Act (IEA). Given that the major objectives of the new legislation were to enact citizen-centric laws that would bring about a huge change in the criminal justice system with the purpose of giving justice and not punishment, one must confess to a feeling of déjà vu that this exercise has, on the whole, fallen short on a number of fronts.

Norms of Victorian morality still seem to influence twenty first century Indian legislation. Recent Supreme Court judgments had removed the crimes of homosexuality (Section 377) and adultery (Section 497) from the IPC. However, the BNS is, in a sense, not gender-neutral where punishment of non-consensual sex is concerned. While stringent punishments have been provided for rape, there is no corresponding provision for non-consensual acts of homosexuality. Moreover, while the crime of adultery is not there in the BNS, Section 84 of the BNS, by use of the word “enticement”, appears to reintroduce the crime of adultery by the backdoor, thereby denying a woman agency over her body, which, in effect, implies that a woman is the property of her husband.

Two provisions in the IPC which one had hoped would get a quiet burial have again reared their heads in the BNS. Section 354 of the BNS relating to defamation reproduces, in toto, Sections 499 to 502 of the IPC. The British law of criminal libel was abolished in 2010 and, considering that this provision in the IPC is a creation of colonial origin, it would have made sense for the Government of India to make defamation liable for only civil action. Criminal defamation provisions in the IPC have been repeatedly employed in India to harass political opponents and muzzle the right to free expression, both by governments and individuals, often by instituting the criminal case in a jurisdiction far removed from the place of actual commission of the alleged offence. Even more worrisome is the reappearance of the “sedition” provision of Section 124 of the IPC in a more stringent manner in Section 152 of the BNS. The Supreme Court was constrained to stay the provisions of this Section because of its widespread (mis)use by law enforcement agencies across the country — a glaring instance of misuse was the application of sedition charges against 49 well-known public figures like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Ratnam, Shyam Benegal, Aparna Sen and Ramachandra Guha in October 2019 when they had written an open letter to the Prime Minister over the growing incidents of mob lynching. None of the five activities termed criminal — “subversive activities”, “secession”, “separatist activities”, “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”, and “ armed rebellion” have been statutorily defined. The broad nature of the criminalised activities and the imprecise and vague description of the methods by which people might be “excited” to support these activities gives ample scope for the political executive, with the assistance of the police, to curb freedom of expression and stifle dissenting views as also to target political opponents.

When there is already in existence a powerful anti-terror law in the shape of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), there is no necessity for the BNS to incorporate “terrorist acts” in its ambit. Giving a police officer of the rank of Superintendent of Police the discretion to apply either law in any particular case is an open opportunity for rent-seeking through misuse of powers. It is an unfortunate feature of the Indian criminal justice system that the general criminal law criminalises many activities that are also covered by special laws. As with terrorist activities, the provisions for prosecution for petty organised crime and organised crime under the BNS again expose the citizen to multiple avenues of prosecution for the same offence. The Indian Police Foundation (IPF), comprising former police officers, in its submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, has rightly recommended the deletion of the provisions relating to these two crimes from the BNS, since many states like Maharashtra and Karnataka  already have special laws to tackle organised crime. If at all the need is felt, a law for dealing with organised crime could be enacted for the entire country. As pointed out by the IPF, there is no need to keep in the BNS provisions already covered by the Juvenile Justice Act, Prevention of Corruption Act, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and the Food Standards and Safety Act. Provisions for prosecution for the same offence under multiple Acts are hardly conducive to a citizen-friendly criminal administration.

A disquieting feature of the BNSS is the wide scope of discretion given to police officers in criminal investigation. Handcuffing of undertrials and convicts, justified only when there is an apprehension of the person escaping from custody (and, therefore, rightly frowned upon by the Supreme Court), is now permissible in a wide variety of offences, as deemed appropriate by the police officer. Police officers are given latitude in registering First Information Reports (FIRs), when the common experience of citizens is the reluctance of the police to register FIRs, especially where the wealthy and politically connected are concerned. Possible extension of police custody up to ninety days after arrest is another worrying provision in the new legislation, given the growing tendency to refuse bail. The right to personal privacy of individuals is also susceptible to violation with the legislation providing for any person to be required to give specimen signatures, finger impressions, handwriting or voice samples, regardless of whether or not that person is an accused or has been arrested in any case.

The conclusion is inescapable that, despite all pious claims to the contrary, the new laws are not progressive or liberal or citizen-friendly. Gender inequality is inbuilt in the provisions with women being seen as property. There is reluctance to adopt an open mind on issues like homosexuality and marital rape and, in the true spirit of the Constitution of India, giving primacy to the individual, especially the female, in her struggles against conservative traditions. The draconian provisions on terrorism and acts endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India lend themselves to executive abuse, especially in the currently prevailing vitiated environment in the political sphere, and the noticeable intolerance of governments of all political hues of dissent from civil society.

Ultimately, however, the new laws will face their acid test in the manner in which they are enforced. The Supreme Court, in the 2006 Prakash Singh case, had issued directions for police reform, intended to insulate police functioning from rampant political interference. Seventeen years later, the transfer industry in the police department is still widespread, no efforts have been made to separate investigation from law and order duties and a short-staffed police force, inadequately trained in scientific investigation methods, struggles to bring criminal cases to a close. The vacancies in the judiciary, repeated adjournments in criminal cases and the poor quality of police investigations lead to interminable delays in justice for undertrials. Making provisions in the legislation for speedy justice will work only when all stakeholders in the criminal justice system — the state, police, the judiciary and the legal fraternity — work in tandem. Civil society organisations and the media are duty bound to exercise vigilance to ensure that the organs of state follow due process of law and that citizens are not subjected to needless harassment.

 

20 Nov

The 70 hour week

Posted by vramani in government, human interest, public affairs. Tagged: , , .

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy set the cat among the pigeons with his recent advice to the young to put in a 70 hour work week. Apparently, this is essential if the country is to become a global economic powerhouse. He was silent on whether the rise in the country’s economic status would translate into rising living standards of its citizens. As a long-time sceptic of the theory that GDP growth solves all problems, especially unemployment and low incomes, I wonder, given the way wealth has distributed itself unequally (in India and elsewhere), whether India’s youth would not be justified in taking his advice with a generous pinch of salt.

Narayana Murthy’s assertion begs the question of whether low working hours were the reason for the low rates of growth in the pre-1991 period and whether the subsequent rising growth rates in India reflect greater time spent in the workplace. I am not getting entangled in this controversy but would merely like to highlight some issues, based on my work experience as a cog in India’s mammoth bureaucratic machine.

A 70 hour week (about 12 hours a day in a six day week) does not mean 70 hours continuously at the desk. Whether functionaries of private or public organisations, individuals need to have their nourishment from time to time, their visits to the loo/coffee machine and some time spent in relaxed banter with their fellow workers. It does imply, however, the time spent away from home and from one’s loved ones (Work From Home is a recent COVID/post-COVID phenomenon and the jury is still out on that one). My Personal Assistant in the Secretariat in Mumbai left her home in suburban Vasai before 8 AM and returned home after 8 PM by the Churchgate-Virar local train. My five year stint in Delhi involved, after a ten to eleven hour stint in a stuffy Shastri Bhavan room, road travel of over an hour both ways from Central Delhi to the outskirts of South Delhi (and this when I had the benefit of my own transport).

More to the point is the mistaken presumption that government servants, especially those at the middle and senior levels, have nothing to do with government work once they leave their offices. Having worked in a number of quasi-judicial capacities in the revenue, cooperation and general administration departments, I fully sympathise with the views of the Chief Justice of India, Justice Chandrachud, that a Supreme Court judge probably spends most of her time outside courtroom hours on judicial work, whether it be reading up on cases listed in the coming days, finalising judgments or keeping abreast of the latest developments in jurisprudence. IAS officers with quasi-judicial responsibilities also spend a considerable part of their evenings and weekends dictating judgments. Apart from this task, senior officers of the All India and Central Services have to clear files, to a large extent at home (don’t believe us, ask our long-suffering spouses). This is because the hours in office are often spent in meeting hordes of visitors and in countless, often unproductive meetings. The officer in the field has also to accompany Ministers and those senior to her in the bureaucratic hierarchy on their visits to districts, etc.

The 70 hour week exhortation also does grave injustice to the female half of the population. Whether a homemaker (a term I am not especially fond of) or a working woman, most women put in at least fourteen hours of work a day, seven days a week. National income statistics do not account for labour in the home, covering washing, childcare, cooking, cleaning and a host of other duties. Though men have become a little more responsive (and responsible) in assisting their partners in housework, the bulk of the burden still falls on women — the most evocative image being of women office goers in Mumbai’s locals who chop vegetables, purchased outside stations, on their way home.

Many misspent years in government later, I ruminate over the differences between inputs, outputs and outcomes in the implementation of public policy. You put in manpower and financial resources into a programme, your implementing machinery declares, come April the first (rightly named April Fools’ Day), that so-and-so targets have been achieved, whether it be sterilisations, toilets or drinking water supply to hamlets, and all in government retire to a blissful contemplation of March-end completion figures and rosy visions of glowing annual confidential reports. Till some busy body third party comes along and pricks the sarkari balloon: the outputs are either not there on the ground or the outcomes of the policies do not lead to the achievement of the desired goals, whether it be slowing population growth, reducing child malnutrition or eradicating open defecation.

The input-output-outcome drama applies in equal measure to presence in government offices. The government servant is seen at her desk zealously executing her duties, the files move up and down the bureaucratic ladder, but public satisfaction with the speed of delivery of public services shows no improvement. There is an apocryphal tale of two governments down in South India: “… (  ) government very bad government, apply apply no reply; (  ) government very good government, apply apply immediate reply no vacancy.”  It reminds me of the Citizens’ Charters which were in fashion a quarter century ago. Time limits were prescribed for expeditious disposal of cases. For one clearance, my junior officer had suggested a time limit of thirty days. When I doubted that the approval could be given in thirty days, he breezily remarked that on the twenty-ninth day, the department would seek some further clarification from the applicant, thus buying a further thirty days’ time till the last syllable of recorded time (with apologies to Shakespeare and Macbeth).

So, finally, it is not the number of hours one puts in at work that matters, it is the end result of all the work that is put in. Assess your workforce by their contribution to the end-goals of the organisation and its long-term health. Embrace the maverick who can deliver in two hours what others take eight hours to execute and don’t grudge her the attention she gives to seemingly frivolous activities in the remaining hours. Her seeming inactivity may well be the fountainhead of  immense creativity that will take the organisation to great heights in days to come.

 

 

20 Feb

Underage marriages in Assam – why the danda will not work

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

Almost half a century separates 1976 and 2023, yet the French saying “The more things change, the more they stay the same” seems so relevant. The heyday of the Emergency saw the forced sterilisation programme that was one of the reasons for the ejection of the Congress from power in 1977. Recent events in Assam point to the continued use of coercion in family-related issues. Ostensibly concerned with high rates of underage marriages and its implications for maternal and child health, the Government of Assam has decided to arrest those who participate in the marriage of girls under 18, whether they be husbands, fathers or fathers-in-law. Unfortunately, the government has gone in for a remedy that is worse than the disease.

For the first 50 years after independence, India’s population policy suffered from a myopic fixation with directly controlling reproduction through sterilisation. It is only in recent years that realisation has dawned on our policy makers that human development is the best contraceptive. More specifically, it is now acknowledged that promoting womens’ agency and enabling them to control vital life decisions are the best methods to limit population growth while also bringing maternal and infant/child mortality rates in line with those in developed countries.

Assam has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country of 215 deaths per 1,00,000 live births, almost twice the Indian average.  While institutional deliveries have shown a rise from 71% to 84% between 2016 and 2019, only 51% of pregnant women availed of at least four antenatal care visits in 2019. Only 45.3% of currently married women in the 15-49 age group use any modern family planning method. Poverty and poor educational levels are clearly the driving factors behind early marriage of girls. 32% of women in Assam are married before reaching the age of 18, increasing the chances of infant mortality in children born to mothers in the teenage group as compared to children born to women in the 20-29 age group.  Five districts of western Assam are among the top seven districts registering underage female marriages of over 40% – Barpeta, Dhubri, Goalpara, Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon. These are also the areas where the government appears to have focused its crackdown on underage female marriages.

In a society which is still traditional and patriarchal in its attitude to women, lack of access to education and formal schooling for girls has serious implications for womens’ empowerment. Less than 30% of females in Assam have completed ten or more years of schooling. The 2011 Census shows female literacy rates for Dhubri and Barpeta districts in Western Assam at 50% and 56% respectively. The latest figures for 2023 show that total literacy percentages for many districts in Western Assam are still between 58% and 67%: obviously female literacy percentages are likely to be lower. The lack of womens’ education has serious consequences for the next generation. The NFHS5 Report for Assam bluntly states that children whose mothers have no schooling are twice as likely to die before their first birthday as compared to children whose mothers have completed ten or more years of schooling.

There is every likelihood that the resort to police action could have very adverse repercussions where women are concerned. The rise in institutional deliveries over the years has been heartening. Now, there is a distinct possibility that families will resort to home deliveries or resort to unregistered doctors/quacks to avoid state action, as evidenced by the recent report of a young woman in Bongaigaon district bleeding to death because of unskilled delivery at her home. Equally disturbing is the likelihood that teenage pregnancies will not be reported to the health authorities, denying these pregnant women access to professional antenatal care. Out of pocket expenses on deliveries would put an increasing burden on the straitened finances of poor families. Further strains on family finances would arise from the arrest of male family members, who are in most cases the sole breadwinners for the family. The result could well be increased mortality and morbidity in the mother-child dyad.

In fact, this knee-jerk reaction of the Assam government to the problem of teenage pregnancies could well have been avoided. Pregnancies in women under 20 years of age could hardly be the sole reason for the high maternal mortality rate in Assam. Other factors like poor nutrition and health care access (especially during pregnancy) on account of poverty, and lack of spacing between deliveries are also contributory factors. Social behaviours are slow to change in the absence of rising standards of living, better education and improvements in the socio-economic status of women.

The Assam government should take heart from the statistics in the latest NFHS5 survey, which show significant step up in institutional deliveries, substantial reductions in infant and child mortality and levels of child undernutrition that are comparable with those of more developed states. ASHAs and other frontline health and ICDS workers, as well as community workers, have gradually earned the confidence of local communities. Community education on the dangers of early marriage and pregnancy and promoting the use of effective family planning measures to delay pregnancies till the age of 21 and above are measures that need to be pursued patiently and systematically. The state government should encourage civil society activists and government workers to deal with communities while pursuing policy measures that emphasise girls’ education, state-sponsored nutrition for pregnant women and lactating mothers and employment creation.

This blog has been published in the Free Press Journal of 20 February 2023 (see here)

26 Dec

An Open Letter to the Chief Election Commissioner

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

Dear Chief Election Commissioner,

Congratulations on the successful conduct of elections to the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat Legislative Assemblies. You had expressed concern over the lacklustre turnout of voters in urban constituencies in these elections. As one who has, while in government, conducted and supervised elections, I feel the reasons for this lesser voter turnout in urban areas (which may also be the case in some rural areas) may lie in the process of voter enrolment as also in the inability of certain sections of voters to access the polling booths where they are required to cast their votes.

The eligible voter’s name may not figure in the electoral roll at all. The responsibility for the voter’s name being excluded from the electoral roll has to be laid squarely on the electoral registration machinery. Certain categories of society are highly prone to exclusion from electoral rolls. These include the urban homeless, sex workers, trans people, women (single, widowed, abandoned, divorced), highly stigmatised caste groups like manual scavengers, persons with mental illnesses, Adivasis, particularly vulnerable tribal groups, denotified tribes, differently abled persons, uncared-for elders and those from minority/disadvantaged communities. The electoral registration machinery has been found wanting in reaching out to these vulnerable groups. Excessive reliance on relatively junior staff for undertaking voter registration without adequate checks and balances, superficial verification of house addresses, arbitrary decision making and ingrained stereotyping of groups makes members of these groups susceptible to exclusion.

The absence of names from the electoral roll is often detected only when the person goes to the polling booth on the day of voting. Names of voters in the electoral rolls are not arranged according to house numbers, as required by the relevant Rules, which, apart from making the detection and deletion of ghost and duplicate names easy, would also enable the voter to easily locate her name in the electoral roll. Voters can check their names on the website of the state/UT by querying by electoral photo identity card (EPIC) number or by name on the National Voters’ Service Portal (NVSP). This approach is beset by a number of problems.

Since 2018, electoral rolls have been published as image PDF files with CAPTCHA protection. To look up her name in the electoral rolls, the voter should know her assembly constituency and part number, something she is often not aware of. The part number of voters can change with delimitation of constituencies, with consequent changes in the voter serial number as well. Names can also appear in parts other than where they should be, due to wrong addresses in the electoral rolls. Since the online electoral rolls are image documents, text can only be searched by scrolling the voter records one by one. I do not think such an exercise is feasible for the common citizen, with limited access to the internet, who may have neither the time nor the energy to go through what is a grueling exercise.

When citizens apply for inclusion, deletion or corrections to voter records, they generally receive no intimation of the status of their application. Names of lakhs of voters have been deleted in the past without intimating the concerned voters. Wrongly recorded addresses in the electoral rolls lead to deletion of names at the time of inspection by the block level officer (BLO) responsible for updating the rolls at the field level. Wrong updation of records can result in both deletion of names of valid voters and creation of duplicate entries of the same name. Removing names of dead people from electoral rolls also requires, apart from intimation by relatives of the deceased, use of digitised records of births and deaths by the electoral registration machinery. When people shift residence and register as voters afresh in their new locations, their names at the old addresses do not always get deleted.

Three areas need the urgent attention of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the election machinery. First, revision and updation of electoral rolls needs far more attention from the electoral registration authorities. BLOs need to be trained more professionally. Assistance of local residents, including resident welfare associations and public-spirited citizens, needs to be enlisted proactively to identify and register/delete voter names, rather than relying only on local influential persons, who may have their own axes to grind.

Second, in this era of digitisation, software tools need to be employed more imaginatively to update electoral rolls. Searching by EPIC number on the NVSP is easy, but the software lacks the capability of searching by names, in the absence of a “fuzzy” search feature. Improved data entry software made available to the electoral registration machinery would enhance efficiency in detection of duplicate records. Above all, to ensure complete transparency in maintenance of electoral rolls and public verifiability of all decisions regarding enrolment, updates and deletions, the ECI should maintain two bulletin boards online for each assembly constituency — the first would be the official master electoral roll up to the time of the last update and the second would detail all transactions relating to voter records, these being accessible to and verifiable by members of the public.

Third, since the ECI is seriously considering allowing online voting for non-resident Indians, the same facility should be made available to resident Indians who have migrated to other areas of the country but whose names are still on the electoral rolls of the areas they have migrated from. The elderly and infirm may also need to be allowed to vote online.

Finally, a word of caution on the linking of Aadhaar numbers to voter IDs. The ECI will need to be extremely vigilant to ensure that the linking of Aadhaar numbers to voter IDs does not lead to large scale deletion of voters (as has happened in the past in Telangana) or to attempts by governments in power or political parties to target and manipulate voters on the lines of the Cambridge Analytica pattern.

Wishing you all success in the firm, impartial conduct of all future elections.

Sincerely yours.

(This blog was published in the Free Press Journal, 25 December 2022)

1 Nov

The Rumblings of Global Hunger

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

Every now and then, the release of a Global Index comparing countries in respect of some metric sets off a chain reaction in government circles in India, whether it be press freedom, the state of democracy or human rights. The latest controversy swirls around the release of the Global Hunger Index 2022 (GHI-22), which places India at the 107th position in a list of 121 countries for which data is available.

The GHI-22 score for each country is based on a weighted average of four standardised indicators. While one could always quibble about the excessive reliance on under-five child nutrition and mortality indicators and the sample sizes for estimating the prevalence of undernourishment in arriving at the GHI-22, there is no denying the fact that, in international comparisons, India still has way to go to reach the levels of even some of its South Asian neighbours. The NFHS-5 percentages for child stunting in Indian states like Bihar, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh are uncomfortably close to those in some African countries and higher than most of India’s immediate neighbours. Child wasting percentages in most Indian states are in excess of 15 percent, higher than those in most countries of the world.

Rather than spending time disputing statistics, governmental energies can be more usefully deployed in effectively tackling child undernutrition. Four areas suggest themselves for immediate attention. The first step has to be the use of real-time accurate data, based on anthropomorphic indicators of weight and length/height of every child in every anganwadi, to zero down on the specific locations where stunting and wasting are serious problems. The tablets provided to anganwadi workers under the Poshan Abhiyan campaign will serve their purpose only if online growth monitoring charts of each child, based on current height/weight/length measurements, are available to ICDS field staff (Anganwadi workers and their supervisors) to enable immediate corrective action in respect of children who are stunted and wasted and/or whose growth is faltering.

Secondly, the health and nutrition status of pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers must be given priority. Nearly 50 percent of pregnant women in most states are anemic; about 20 percent of women have subnormal body mass indices. The state must provide maternal nutrition and health support in areas with the highest incidence of child stunting/wasting and mortality — this will check the incidence of low birth weight and the onset of malnutrition at the stage of infancy. States like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka are providing pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers with a daily hot meal at the anganwadis. Apart from the nutrition aspect, this measure also enables attention to be given to micronutrient supplementation, nutrition education (especially breastfeeding advice) and peer support to women. Both the union government and the states need to provide budgetary support to this programme. The pernicious practice of contractor-driven supply of Take Home Rations to mothers and under-3 children should be discontinued forthwith, with womens’ self-help groups (SHGs), in association with anganwadis, being entrusted with the work of providing hot meals to mothers and children. Nutritional support, along with provision of creches for under-3 children, run by SHGs, would not only promote nutritional and cognitive development in these children, but would also enable their mothers to earn a livelihood to enhance family incomes.

The third policy focus should be on the care of the infant, especially in the first 28 days after birth. The SRS data of the Registrar General of India shows that 80 to 90 percent of under-5 child mortality occurs in the first year of birth. Equally dismaying is the statistic that, in nearly all Indian states, over 70 percent of infant deaths occur in the 28 day neonatal period, indicating that neonatal mortality accounts for over 60 percent of child mortality. The responsibility here falls largely on the Public Health department of states, since neonatal monitoring of the newborn is one of the weakest linkages in the nutrition-health chain in government. The NFHS5 data shows that nearly 80 percent of mothers and children received postnatal care from health personnel within two days of delivery. This contrasts sharply with the UNICEF 2021 State of the World’s Children Report which shows figures of 65 percent and 27 percent for maternal and child postnatal care, though this data may be a couple of years older. In any case, anganwadi workers and ASHAs need to regularly monitor the nutrition and health status of newborns in their first 28 days of life and refer all cases where the nutrition and health position of the child is severely compromised to the nearest medical centre.

Above all, governments need to prioritise maternal and child nutrition and health in a meaningful manner. My experience as Director General of the Rajmata Jijau Mother-Child Health and Nutrition Mission in Maharashtra showed that political and bureaucratic commitment from the very top is crucial in instilling a sense of accountability in implementing departments and in promoting inter-departmental coordination to tackle this issue which spans a number of government departments. Regular reviews at the levels of the Chief Minister, the Ministers for Health and Women & Child Development and the Chief Secretary lead to greater attention being given to solving problems at the district and sub-district levels — budgetary support for programmes in specific areas, resolving personnel issues and ironing out interdepartmental problems in implementation are some of the positives from such high-level interventions.

This is not to minimise the importance of macro interventions on the economic and social fronts. Empowerment of women, through access to higher education, skill development and income-earning opportunities and enhancing community awareness on good health and nutrition practices would impact the problem significantly. Strong economic growth, coupled with job opportunities, would increase family incomes and improve nutrition outcomes. But a determined government focus on the issues mentioned in the earlier paragraphs would lead to significant improvements in the situation in the short and medium term, even as the longer term measures take root in the country. As Nelson Mandela said “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children”.

(Published in the Free Press Journal (30 October 2022)

27 Oct

A Tale of Two Elections

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

India benefited in two ways from her association with Great Britain — the English language and a parliamentary system of government. But there is a third useful lesson India can learn from Britain: how to conduct the election of the leader of a political party. The process that has played out in the British Conservative Party after the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July this year stands out in stark contrast to the confused muddle in conducting the election for the President of the Indian National Congress (INC).

The procedure for election of the leader of the Conservative Party, who would become the Prime Minister, involved a two-stage process. In the first stage, Conservative MPs voted for selecting the two candidates who would confront each other for the top job. This exercise narrowed the choice down to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, with the former emerging the winner in an election where over 80 percent of over 170,000 Conservative Party members exercised their franchise.

Contrast this with the process that has characterised the election of the President of the INC. With the anointed heir apparent to the throne playing the reluctant suitor, the election was fixed for 17th October, rather close to the crucial state assembly elections slated for December/January. Noises from various party functionaries and carefully planted media reports made it obvious that there ought to be a consensus candidate favourable to the party high command, without the need for an election. With Shashi Tharoor throwing his hat into the ring, the election process, however, had to be gone through.

In an age when electronic lists are the norm and the British Conservative Party can conduct online elections involving 170,000 plus members, the INC’s delay in releasing a list of under 10,000 PCC members bordered on the ludicrous. After much urging from some party members, the existing lists of these 9000 plus members were made available to the candidates standing for election. The campaign by the two candidates revealed clearly the culture that prevails in the party. In state after state, party functionaries preferred to go along with Mallikarjun Kharge, seen as the “high command” candidate, despite his contention that he has his independent position on various issues. The party old guard did not look too kindly on the younger interloper, and it is little wonder that the election was a one-sided affair reminiscent in style if not in degree of the INC President election of 2000, which brought Sonia Gandhi to the helm of affairs.

The high command structure in place in the INC since the time of Indira Gandhi has played havoc with the INC’s regional power bases, leading to election fiascos for the party in state after state, and at the national level. Maharashtra is a prime example: no INC CM after 1972 has spent a full five years in office. With dissidence against incumbent CMs having become the norm, it is little surprise that the INC has had 12 CMs in the 36 years it was in power in Maharashtra between 1972 and 2014. As in UP and Bihar, the INC is fast losing its relevance in Maharashtra, occupying fourth place (44 seats) in the number of MLAs in the assembly, a far cry from 1985, when it held 161 seats. The failure of the INC to establish its electoral dominance in national and most state elections since 2014 is, at one level, an outcome of the disgruntlement of state-level leaders — Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have all witnessed revolts against the party leadership.

An ambitious politician finds her/his path to the top obstructed by the “old guard” and/or by a suspicious leadership. Ambition not being seen as a desirable quality, contenders for a more meaningful role in the party are compelled to switch to other political formations.

Coupled with ambition are the two vices of greed and fear. Politics offers easy pickings through patronage networks and the non-transparent nature of decision making in government departments. This tendency has been accentuated in recent years by the allure of inducements for switching sides immediately after elections or sometime between two general elections, the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India having repeatedly failed in checking defections midstream. The disease of treating ministerial posts as avenues for personal aggrandisement also renders most politicians vulnerable to investigations by law enforcement agencies, a tool which comes in handy for the party in power to arm-twist politicians into shifting their loyalties. A former Maharashtra Congress Minister has openly admitted that he breathes easy ever since he switched sides.

The drama that surrounded the INC presidential election is symptomatic of the disease that affects ALL political parties in India. Most parties in India are family-managed enterprises, where the hereditary right of succession seems to be a given, regardless of whether the successor displays any political ability. Even where there is no “dynasty culture”, the party morphs into an outfit run by one or more leaders, with a small coterie to advise them. Both at the state and national levels, the preference is to nominate persons for specific posts based on their loyalty to the party bigwigs or to ram through candidates for party and government leadership on the basis of the choice of the high command.

In such a scenario, loyalty and commitment to the party’s ideology (if it has one, in the first place) and to its success in elections are replaced by individual expediency. Almost overnight, politicians spout rhetoric that was anathema to them just a short while earlier and eulogise their new leaders whom they had no qualms about abusing and criticising while in the earlier party.

The noted author Ramachandra Guha had, fifteen years ago, characterised India as a 50-50 democracy. More recently, he downgraded this rating to 30-70. Given the absence of inner party democracy across the board in Indian politics, one wonders if India is nearer a 10-90 democracy.

16 Sep

The many nuances of ‘Ji Mantriji’

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

India’s Minister for Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari is a person I admire for his huge contributions to improving and augmenting road communications in Maharashtra and India. But his statement in Nagpur in August this year that bureaucrats must always say “Yes, Minister” to every order of the Minister made me do a double take. It revived memories of the BBC Yes Minister series, which I viewed four decades ago, shortly after joining the civil service. Doordarshan followed suit two decades later with the “Ji Mantriji” serial, adapted from the Yes Minister series. In these serials, the Minister is effectively house trained by the civil service.

Now, although I am a former member of the often criticised IAS, I hold no brief for the civil servant who obstructs sensible policy implementation mainly to preserve her/his turf. This has led to an unfortunate perception in the public mind that the civil service is lazy, conservative and opposed to reforms. At the same time, we would do well to keep in mind that Ministers often come to power without knowledge of the processes and procedures of administration. This is even more so in the last two decades: in the first half-century of political administration in independent India, a fairly large number of politicians, in both the centre and the states, had come up from the grassroots and had reasonably detailed understanding of how the government worked.

Ministerial desires fall in two categories. Category 1 cases are those where the Minister wishes to implement pre-poll promises made by her/his party to woo the electorate (Minister here can include the PM/CM and the Council of Ministers). The bureaucrat’s role here is to work out the nuts and bolts of the programme, point out the possible difficulties in implementation and, most crucially, assess the financial implications, given the competing budget priorities of different departments. The bureaucracy can offer its dissenting opinion on the proposed policy, but once this policy has been approved at the highest political level, it is her/his responsibility to give effect to the policy.

It is the Category 2 cases that can land a bureaucrat in the soup. These include allotment of land, award of contracts and providing jobs to those recommended by the Minister’s supporters. Such cases can be particularly dangerous when elections are around the corner, since favours have to be dispensed quickly to gain access to funds. Based on my thirty years as an insider in the system, I have worked out the possible stratagems for the bureaucrat to wriggle out of this ministerial chakravyuha:

  1. The K. Kamaraj/G.K. Moopanar approach: Kamaraj had this magic word ‘parkalam‘ in his repertoire. This Tamil word can be translated in English as ‘Let us see’. By the time I was old enough to follow politics, Kamaraj was a distant memory. However, I have heard Moopanar use the English equivalent on numerous occasions. In Maharashtra, we employed the Marathi equivalent ‘baghto‘. This is a time-honoured tactic to buy time and engage with the Minister in a battle of attrition.
  2. The “locating the file” excuse: The bureaucrat informs the Minister that the file is not immediately traceable but that all efforts are being made to unearth its whereabouts. Not too great an excuse, this can lead to a volley of abuses and a threat of transfer, these definitely preferable to a future suspension from service.
  3. Sending the file into orbit: This mechanism is specially recommended when there is a time-limit for decision making. It can be used to great profit on the last couple of days of the financial year or just before the Model Code of Conduct for elections kicks in. Select the most obstinate of your colleagues in other departments, justify why the file needs to be referred to their department and dispatch the missile (sorry, file) in that direction. Once April the first dawns or the election process starts, the beleaguered bureaucrat can heave a deep sigh of relief.
  4. Making the file and yourself scarce: Lock the file in a steel almirah in some corner of the office and ensure that you and your co-workers leave the office for the day. This trick works best near closing time and I can testify to its utility, particularly if you stay 30 kms. away and keep your mobile shut.

But whether the case falls in Category 1 or 2, the cautious civil servant is well advised to adopt certain precautions to stay out of Tihar or Arthur Road jails in her/his advanced years:

  1. Dodge discretionary cases: Even if the time-honoured practice in government is to go by past precedents, stay away from decisions that lack transparency and a rational basis. Job appointments and selection of institutions for government grants are best done through competitive examinations and laid-down guidelines respectively, where subsequent audits can show a clear pattern of decision-making free of fear or favour.
  2. Record on file and keep copies: If you don’t want some decision you signed off on 15 years earlier coming back to haunt you in your retirement years, ensure you put your views on file and keep copies of crucial pages (never rule out subsequent alterations or missing files).
  3. You are known by the company you keep/kept: Your political bosses in the departments you headed can determine your future unease. Bureaucrats have gone through the wringer even in Category 1 cases (think coal, spectrum, etc.), where they merely executed extant government policy. Totally unconscionable are those instances where the bureaucrat plays along with the decisions of her/his political boss or (what is worse) willingly participates in a division of the spoils, whether in terms of wealth or power. There are enough news headlines today pointing out the many consequences of such collusion.

In the ultimate analysis, a smart bureaucrat ought to combine the characteristics of an experienced sanitary inspector and an uncanny bomb expert to know which file/decision stinks and which is a ticking time bomb. Negotiating one’s way safely through these sewage traps and minefields will ensure a comfortable home and hearth in her/his later years.

This blog was published in the Free Press Journal on 12 September 2022 (here)

 

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