By M D Nalapat
Even
in 2017, it is a sign of inertia in practices and procedures that
rotation every three years or less continues to be the norm in the
higher administration.
During
his 13 years as Chief Minister of Gujarat, it was in Year 4 that CM
Narendra Modi hit stride and ensured that his administration fully broke
away from past governance practices. The change created the Modi Model
of Governance (MMG) at the state level. Those looking towards an MMG at
the Central level are optimistic that Year 4 of PM Modi’s first term
will similarly mark the arrival of a governance change designed to
ensure that India’s demography evolves into a boon, rather than a
nightmare. This will involve transformative changes in the functioning
and policies of ministries such as Finance, Home, Defence, Law and HRD,
including the introduction of much greater accountability and horizontal
recruitment. Even in 2017, it is a sign of inertia in practices and
procedures that rotation every three years or less continues to be the
norm in the higher administration. Senior police officers get moved out
of districts just when they have understood the roots of crime there and
are working out correctives. Poor results are hardly surprising from a
civilian bureaucracy, where individuals shift from Animal Husbandry to
Home to Fisheries to Defence at the whim of their seniors. As a
consequence, they rely on drafting skills, rather than performance for
success. Or that officials in their 40s—who are more likely to make a
success of tough jobs than those a decade and more older—would by then
have lost their “inner fire”, as the calendar, and not substantive
results, decides their promotion. This criterion has become the norm
even in the higher command of the armed forces. Precisely when it is the
younger officers who often have a far more realistic grasp of what
needs to get done to win the next war (rather than the last few), than
those more senior.
As Prime Minister Modi reminds the world, India is a
country of 1.26 billion souls. Which is why it is desirable for
government to trawl much more widely for expertise in the core
operations of government, than has been the case since Queen Victoria
took charge in 1858. Take as an example national security. A single
individual, the National Security Advisor, advised by a National
Security Advisory Board comprising a few retired civil and military
personnel, is tasked with formulating and implementing the entire
national security strategy of India. The agencies working under an NSA’s
supervision are, with rare exceptions, headed and manned by individuals
with a police background. The police in India, as also the civil and
military personnel of this country, may be the best in the world. Even
so, they together form only a small segment of the skillsets available
for deployment within our 1.26 billion population. For example, a
Mahindra Group manager in Africa, or a Tata division head in China may
have domain knowledge sufficient to be an outstanding success in
particular jobs in the MEA. However, not only are they not thus
seconded, there are, in practice, no structures which enable such
outside talent to be involved in the making of policies involving
locations in which they have worked with visible success for years. And
in our university system, the UGC has reduced academic “success” to a
series of numeric metrics that are entirely removed from the cultivation
of the originality and 360-degree vision needed for cutting edge
results.
The 8 November 2016 DeMo experience shows the risk
involved in continuing with a narrow base from which is drawn the
designers of policy. RBI officials, apparently, believed that Rs 500,000
crore of cash would be burnt or buried, rather than returned to the
banks, while the rest of the demonetised cash would stay in the banks,
improving their viability. The national security apparatus calculated
that DeMO would stop counterfeiting and terror funding. The Finance
Ministry pushed for DeMo as a way of exponentially increasing tax
collections, while others argued publicly that this single measure would
remove corruption. These objectives do not all seem to have been
fulfilled, despite a high cost in terms of lost jobs, economic
dislocation and loss of confidence in the monetary authorities. Had
India moved by then to the Modi Model in display in Gujarat, a host of
individuals, many from outside, would have been involved in deciding on
such a step, rather than just a handful of bureaucrats who recommended
this measure to the political leadership.
After DeMo, the next transformative policy being
implemented by the Modi government is GST. Although there has been
broad-based consultation, at least on the record, in practice it would
appear from the scheme finally unveiled that ultimately only the
opinions of a few civil servants mattered. The design of the GST is such
as to make it extremely cumbersome for many, especially those too small
to afford high-priced chartered accountants and advocates on tap.
Millions of service providers will need to fill in many more forms than
was the case in the “more complicated” past. Much more time will
therefore go in matters of compliance, leaving less for carrying on
business. And should there be glitches in the GSTN software, there could
be substantial slowdowns in economic processes, apart from the fact
that India is not South Korea, where high-speed internet penetration is
universal. It is difficult to fathom why this very essential measure got
delayed by three years, when it could have come into force in the glow
of Modi’s 2014 victory, latest by early 2015. Or why GST has not been
made “saral” through a single (and lower) rate
and easier paths to compliance. His admirers expect that PM Modi will
ensure through broad-spectrum administrative changes that the Central
government begins to function as smoothly during 2017-19 and beyond as
the Gujarat government did from the fourth year of CM Modi’s first term
in the job. A Modi Model of Governance (Central) is due.
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