New Delhi, Dec 22
It is heartening to note that the Centre is actively engaged -- primarily through the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister -- in examining the matters that came in the way of an efficient public-oriented ‘delivery’ by the government machinery.
A general definition of ‘efficiency’ applicable to all situations is that it is ‘a measure of productivity per unit of resource -- money, manpower or time’. Consequently, any step that makes a process cost-effective without adversely impacting the output, will also add to its efficiency. ‘Ease of doing business’ has rightly been made a testing ground for scrutinising the performance of those who manned the Ministries at decision-making levels. Bureaucratisation is being addressed by eliminating obscure and obsolete laws and rules, revising timelines for implementation and redefining accountability at different steps of the hierarchy.
There is so much to do in this regard and the government has to be complimented for launching the move. Finding ways and means of reforming governance is a ‘task’ that had to be assigned to competent people with the needed experience and interest -- like those who hold responsible positions in highly empowered bodies like Niti Ayog and Economic Advisory Council and had an inside view of the governance. The traditional practice was to constitute an Administrative Reforms Commission which -- judging from the past -- used its autonomy only to take its own time in producing volumes of reports that were full of generalities. ARCs made few points of identified deficiencies and seldom spelt out practical ways of resolving them. The importance of both ‘structure’ and ‘process’ reforms has attracted greater notice ever since Donald Trump, President-elect in the US, announced that Elon Musk would oversee a Government Efficiency Commission to bring about improvement in the governance of the democratic state.
Three things have to happen in India for the governance to get an upgrade in terms of the service it provides to the people -- ensuring quick implementation of decisions made, putting in place built-in systemic checks against delays in ‘delivery’ caused by inefficiency or neglect and taking effective measures to eradicate corruption. To set the right environ, it was necessary to discard laws and rules that had lost their relevance because they essentially catered to the colonial set-up or became totally redundant on account of the world shifting to a new age of communications and refinement of legal obligations. There was a need for a thorough review of the institutional entities within the government and ‘autonomous’ bodies existing under the umbrella of the Centre, to judge their contemporary utility and purpose and make the required changes by way of closure, organisational restructuring and merger. Also, it is the acceleration of ‘digitisation’ that has become the universal call for reform in governance -- especially needed by an advancing economic power like India. Fortunately, the present regime is making brisk progress in this direction. Online work -- with due regard to security -- has proved to be a great instrument of efficiency, cost-effectiveness brought about through saving time and manpower as a ‘resource’ and operational learning for knowledge enhancement.
Participating in a media event recently, Sanjeev Sanyal member of the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister, highlighted the ‘nuts & bolts’ reforms being carried out to make for efficient governance. He drew a line between ‘structural’ and ‘process’ reforms and explained how the latter were being prioritised -- ranging from discarding of many colonial-era laws like Labelling laws and the Weights and Measures Act to the winding up of defunct organisations that were allowed to keep going as ‘autonomous’ bodies even when they served no purpose in particular. He stated that online processing of matters requiring clearance from multiple Ministries in a time-bound fashion was already adding to the ease of doing business.
The massive bureaucratisation in India has always been a challenge to the speedy delivery of project work and the attention being given by the Modi government to the much-needed reforms in governance would be deeply appreciated by informed citizens. The call for ‘Digital India’ was timely indeed and it has already helped the forward march of the Indian economy in a highly competitive world and also ensured that India was able to function as a welfare state as well because of ‘direct transfer’ of monetary assistance to the needy. Digitisation will help to actualise the concept of ‘minimum government maximum governance’ which implies that we must move towards a slim bureaucracy where the empowerment and accountability of each member of the administrative hierarchy would be clearly defined.
At the macro level the idea of ‘process reforms’ looks great and hopefully the results will start showing up, soon enough. The objective of reforms is to make bureaucracy people-oriented, less corruptible and performance-driven -- this will require a strong system of supervision in which any serious failure or dereliction of duty at any level is to an extent blamed on the immediate supervisor too. This should apply right up to the top of the hierarchy. There was earlier a noticeable trend of senior officers of All India Civil Services -- who largely head the administrative machinery in the Centre’s Ministries and in the States -- shirking from making crucial decisions and developing an unhealthy dependence on their political masters in this regard. The tendency to wait for ‘a nod from the above’ passes down the line with the result that the wisdom accruing from an objective examination of the pros and cons of a project is denied to the decision-makers. Political executive changes now and then but the bureaucracy is there all the time and it is expected to do what was in the best interests of the democratic nation.
In the Indian context, the political executive at the Centre does not bring its own administrative heads to assume power -- unlike what happens in the US -- and this allows for a distinction to be made between those who run the regime and those who take care of the machinery of the government for implementing policies framed by the former. Process reforms therefore need not be impeded by the political complexion of the ruling dispensation -- in reality though, politics did influence bureaucracy in setting the direction of ‘reforms’ and fixing priorities. In the Modi regime, the initiative for reforms that made the governance service-oriented has come from the Prime Minister himself.
There is no gainsaying the fact that in a democracy the non-elected bureaucracy can often decide the fate of the elected leadership as people might evaluate the latter on the basis of what the administration brought to their table. Policies may have been framed with the best of intentions but it is the manner of their execution that would attract or disappoint the people affected by them. Good governance, therefore, entails a role for the political executive in ensuring that its decisions are promptly and correctly implemented.
It has to be mentioned that while ‘ease of doing business’ was guaranteed by the government of the day, the success of a corporate body in the highly competitive world of our times, depended a great deal also on its capacity to see the ‘opportunities and risks’ lying ahead in the concerned areas. These would be indicated by business intelligence and that is the reason why leading businesses invest in processing all information of intelligence value available within and outside of the organisation. Also, citizens of a democratic state must have an idea of what threats -- external or internal -- faced the nation and they should be willing to contribute their mite to the handling of the same. This will happen provided the style of governance of the existing regime convinced them that the latter was totally committed to the safeguarding of national interests in all spheres. In this backdrop, a well-informed society would add to the ease of doing business.
The machinery of the government would do credit to the regime if it was efficient, sensitive to the people’s needs and known for an image of uprightness, impartiality and firmness. All reforms should aim at achieving this. A regime that upholds nationalism, promotes unity without distinction of caste and creed and follows the principle of equality before the law, gets due recognition from the people and adds to the incentives and morale of the businesses, too.
(The writer is former Director of Intelligence Bureau.)