Government (noun):
The group of people and/ or organisations with the authority to govern a
country or a state.
Governance (noun):
The action or manner of governing a state.
The
advent of Narendra Modi on the national stage has popularised the term “more
governance, less government”. On the face of it there seems to be a
contradiction. Government is what delivers governance, so how can diminishing
the doer; improve what is to be done.
The
resolution to this contradiction can be found in a witty exchange between Sir
Humphrey Applebee (cabinet secretary) and Bernard Wooly (private secretary to
the PM) in the British tele-series Yes Prime Minister:
“Sir Humphrey
Applebee: Bernard, what happens at the moment if there is some vacant land in
say, Nottingham and there are rival proposals
for its use?
Bernard Wooly: Well,
we set up an inter-departmental committee: Department of Health, Department of
Education, Department of Transport…Treasury…Environment etc. Ask for papers,
hold meetings propose, discuss, revise, report, redraft, report back…
Sir Humphrey
Applebee: Precisely, months of fruitful work, leading to a mature and
responsible conclusion. But if we have regional government, they would decide
it all in Nottingham, perhaps in a couple of
meetings…the complete amateurs.
Bernard Wooly: It is
their city.
Sir Humphrey
Applebee: …and what happens to us?! Much less work!...so we have much less
power…and if the right people don’t have power…you know what happens…the wrong
people get it….ordinary voters!”
Clearly
the problem arises when the government (noun) becomes an organism of self
preservation rather than a mechanism of delivering governance as it should have
been. It is at this point that governance declines and the size of the
government increases. And like with any other organism interested only in self
preservation as the body of government grows it requires more resources, gets
an ego to match and sets up mechanisms and processes that further only its
existence at the cost of its true function.
For
example, in 1985 India
had 55 secretaries and 42 government ministers. Today after no less than 30
commissions have studied downsizing (1947-2007), the government has swollen to
79 ministers and 145 secretary and secretary equivalent positions.
Source: White
elephants article by SHANKKAR AIYAR, NEERAJ MISHRA JUNE 18, 2007
Virtually
every third member of the current ruling alliance is a minister, indicating
that the government has not expanded to meet any governance needs but perhaps
to create jagirs that can be
conferred in exchange of political support. Off the bat, several ministries
seem to have lost relevance or appear redundant. Steel, Coal, Mines, Telecom
and IT, Minority Affairs, North East, Railways, Statistics, Textiles, Labour,
Parliamentary Affairs, Overseas Indian Affairs, HRD, Health & Family
Welfare, Social justice, Women and Child Development, Youth affairs etc is an
illustrative list of a few that that could be scrapped, relegated to department
status or merged. Perhaps a detailed blog on this specifically might follow.
Bimal
Jalan (former RBI governor) stated sometime in 2007, “If one wants to improve
sports facilities for women in rural areas it is not one but seven ministries
(Rural Development, Social Justice, Sports, Youth Affairs, Finance, Women and
Child Welfare and Panchayati Raj besides the Planning Commission) who will be
involved”. As such, multiple ministries create complexities and there is always
someone else to pass the buck to, thus diminishing accountability.
As the
government now exists to grow itself, it creates structures and regulatory
frameworks to justify its size. I believe that this has resulted in an “Us and Them” problem in India.
“Us” being the ordinary citizens and; “Them”
being the government machinery. The
way India’s
government operates makes it difficult for citizens to identify with it as a
partner, and many feel more like pawns rather than participants in the
government. Therefore ordinary citizens try to steer clear of dealing with the
police, municipality, courts etc. (how many times have we heard “police ki na
dosti acchi, na dushmani” in popular media without a single eyebrow being
raised?). The kindest view of the government I’ve heard is that the government
is our “mai-baap” (parent), which is in itself sad. Government should be an
enabler, not a crutch and certainly not a nanny.
The
‘break’ between the ruler and the ruled has manifested itself in curious ways
in India.
Anecdotally, we have all witnessed fellow Indians breaking rules. It is usually
as simple as stopping ahead of the line at traffic signals (or not stopping at
all), breaking lines for admission forms in colleges, offering bribes at police
stations or traffic cops or customs etc. In fact the biggest democracy in the
world has the dubious reputation that parents teach their children how to offer
bribes or how to bargain down a bribe. A person who unabashedly breaks the law
is considered ‘street smart’. Is it not bad enough to have a moral failing
without having it glorified as well? Jugaad
does not represent innovation in, but a breakdown of the system.
A 2007
Harvard study for the Quarterly Journal of Economics titled “Obtaining a
drivers license in India:
An experimental approach to studying corruption” made several interesting
points. One of which relates to social attitude to paying bribes (which
supports my point above) as follows:
Two
alternative scenarios are put up for the sample universe in which the
individual has been caught driving without a license.
Scenario A: The
havaldar (officer) offers the candidate the choice of paying either an Rs3,000
fine or an Rs300 bribe. (Bribe is just 10% of the official fine)
Scenario B: The
havaldar offers the candidate the choice of paying either a Rs500 fine or a
Rs300 bribe (difference between doing the right thing and paying a bribe is
just Rs200)
81% of the participants chose to pay the bribe under
scenario A. It is however worth noting that even under scenario B a staggering
61% of the population chose to pay the bribe instead being a law abiding a
citizen. The study also noted that there were no significant differences in the
propensity to bribe across various groups in the sample population. As a
country it is indeed worrying if 61% of its population chose to break the law
even when the pay off was not commensurate with the benefit.
Harvard study for the Quarterly Journal of Economics
called “Obtaining a drivers license in India: An experimental approach to studying corruption”
It almost
seems like Indians, who are usually an exemplary expatriate group in foreign
lands, seem to love sticking it to the government for the sake of it, given
half a chance. It is interesting to analyse the genesis of how this “Us” and
“Them” issue that has turned India
into a nation of crooked Robin Hoods.
I am no
expert, but assuming that only half or even a third of these permissions are
required for any given store, it would still amount to a small entrepreneur
wrestling with 17-25 different formalities (with perhaps a different government
servant for each).
Interestingly,
in his book ‘India Uninc.’ Professor R Vaidyanathan, studies bribes extorted
from small businessmen (shops, roadside vendors). These bribes range from
Rs10-Rs50/ day per victim and are estimated to add to a staggering Rs250 crore
annually per non-metro city. Clearly, these bribes are likely in lieu of
looking the other way when these establishments violate some rule or do not
take one or more of any of these licenses and permissions. This is unfair to
those shops who incur cost and face reduced profits to complete all these onerous
formalities. Eventually, all shops are encouraged to break the law in lieu of
greasing palms.
Similarly,
in a study on truck transport industry carried out by The Centre for Media
Studies it was estimated that bribes totalling to Rs22,000 crore was paid
annually on the road. This is +35% more than India’s entire higher education
budget for 2013-14. Truckers admitted that they paid bribes for failing to meet
norms or to avoid delays. In fact now the situation is such that 60% of the
times (as per the same survey) the officials don’t even give a reason before
extorting money from truckers. There was a case in 2011 when a trucker who had
not violated any overloading norms was mercilessly beaten to death by police/
RTO for refusing to pay a bribe nonetheless! If a truck driver is harassed and
made to pay a fine anyway, why would he be bothered to satisfy the requirements
of any road rules and licensing norms?
In the
mind of this hapless small businessman/ trucker who is forced to pay, what
relationship does he or she share with the government: a partnership? Or that
of an extortion victim? What would be the reaction of such a person when
presented with an opportunity to cheat on his taxes, for instance.
This
seems like a cruel joke on Frederich Hayek who described the government as an
entity that formulated and enforced policies that promote individual liberty.
The state of affairs, such as it is, it doesn’t surprise me that a few small
businessmen I’ve met describe the government as an obstacle course rather than
a smooth highway. I believe the government has (successfully) tried to enhance
its own presence and influence by installing a license/ inspector Raj of sorts
(though arguably better today versus 20 years back). This license Raj red tape
allows those in government to twist arms and becomes an easy conduit for
bribe-seeking. This is because economies where regulatory control is too
complex, time consuming, dependent on whims of government officials and
generally opaque allows those in power (politicians and/ or civil servants) to
extract their pound of flesh in return for withholding/imposing cost or
benefit.
One way
to further demonstrate the red tape – bribe link is by juxtaposing the ‘Doing
business’ rank released by IFC-World bank as a proxy for regulatory quality
with the ‘Corruption perceptions index’ released by Transparency International
as the proxy for corruption. The scatter chart (below) clearly shows that
countries with lean and efficient regulatory regimes display markedly lower
corruption levels and vice versa. Admittedly, the data used is from 2010 but I
believe that does not invalidate the point that is being made.
Note: A high rank in “Doing business” indicates less
friendly business environment, A high score in ‘Corruption perceptions’ indicates higher transparency, Source:
Corruption, Institutions and Regulation (Feb 2010) by Michael Breen and Robert
Gillanders
We find
that the average corruption score for the top 20 easiest countries to do
business in is 71.47, indicating low levels of corruption (least corrupt
countries New Zealand and Denmark scored
91). On the other hand the 20 toughest countries to do business in clocked an
average score of 24.47, indicating high levels of corruption.
Source: IFC-World Bank
Arguing
that complexity is due to ‘checks and balances’ that are necessary to avoid
some or the other pitfall does not hold true atleast in my mind. Does India have better checks and balances than Finland,
for example? A Finnish entrepreneur can start a business in just fourteen days
with just three procedures as per the IFC-World Bank report, what exactly are
the checks and balances that Finland
is compromising but India
is not? How exactly onerous business rules contribute towards promoting
individual liberty is not immediately clear to me. Is it then any surprise that
the unincorporated space in India contributes about 45% to the national income,
dwarfing the 15% by the corporate sector (Source: India Uninc.)? People are
encouraged to stay off the grid than to assimilate.
Government
involvement (or is it interference?) is not limited to the business
commencement stage. Complex rules require the appointment of a large contingent
of ‘inspectors’ to enforce them. A November 2013 article in ‘International
Financing Review’ reviews the case of ‘Sanjiv’, a manager in a Mumbai textile
store whose establishment faced about twenty inspections in a single year. A CII-Deloitte study found that life is more
onerous for manufacturing units that on average need to comply with nearly
seventy laws and regulations. Apart from facing multiple inspections, units
have to file as many as 100 returns a year. The data from the Deloitte study
suggests that varying levels of management spend between 400 to 1,500 man days
on compliance related activity.
Source: CII-Deloitte report on Cost of Compliance in
Manufacturing, January 2013
Sadly,
the labyrinthine mechanism and their extra-legal shortcuts have become a method
of co-opting businessmen and citizens. A September 2012 report in the NY Times
ably demonstrates this. The article mentions a study looking at corporate
contributions to political parties, which reveals that “Companies in technology
and other service businesses — industries that require few government licenses
or permissions — contributed almost nothing. The biggest donors were involved
in mining, power and other sectors dependent on the government to obtain rights
to natural resources”. If this isn’t telling the story of how businesses are
co-opted by the system into bribing, I don’t know what is. I was unable to
trace this study that is being referred to unfortunately. The larger point
remains that it is no use crying “crony capitalism” without addressing its true
genesis in the system itself. Businessmen
not obliged to government discretion and ‘favours’ are less prone to funding
political parties is what this study suggests, the others turn a vice into
business strategy!
This deep
entanglement between the private sector and the government for even routine
operations is likely putting significant pressure on an already stretched
bureaucracy. While this author has only limited data, a January 2012 report in
‘The Hindu’ (online) suggests that on per 100,000 resident basis, India has
only about 20% the number of government servants as in the US (1,623 in India
vs. 7,681 in US). Exacerbating the situation is the fact that almost 90% of
(central) government servants belong to the lowest paid categories. This
perhaps suggests that there is in fact a deep shortage of skilled staff that
can actually handle the vigorous private sector interaction that is being
regulated in by the government.
“Sometimes when
there is talk of a minimum government one of the topics brought up is the size
of the government. I don't want people to be sacked from their jobs. I endorse
having the right size of government”
Narendra Modi
Source:
The Hindu, Praveen Swami Jan 2012, Central Government data
Compounding
the adequacy crisis, is the question of perceived inefficiency. Firstpost.com
in 2012 reported a survey by the Hong Kong
based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy. The survey ranked Indian
bureaucracy as worst in Asia on the efficiency scale, lower even than Vietnam, Malaysia
and China.
The survey pointed out that bureaucrats in India are seldom held accountable
for flawed decisions and it is extremely difficult to challenge them in case of
disagreements. Firstpost.com also reported the survey as indicating that Indian
bureaucrats are “game for under-the-table payments and companies tempted to
play ball to overcome bureaucratic inertia”. Notably, this was not a one-off
with Indian bureaucracy ranking worst in Asia
for ten consecutive years.
Source: Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd,
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/01/13/indias-bureaucracy-a- nightmare/
These
twin issues of inadequacy and inefficiency coupled with virtually unbridled
powers are best illustrated with the following example:
As per a
November 2013 article by Anuj Gupta,
India has
around 70,000 registered boilers and only 250 boiler inspectors. Additionally,
the law gave immense powers to the inspector that included shutting down a unit
for inspection, and appointing agencies for repair and maintenance. This
offered a fertile ground for corruption, right from getting an appointment of
the inspector to not displeasing him lest he exercise his discretionary powers.
In the words of Naveen Jindal (MD of Jindal Steel & Power Ltd), “For a long
time, boiler inspectors have harassed many industries in the name of inspecting
boilers. They are very corrupt and create problems for many industries. We have
estimated that Indian industries will be richer by at least Rs 10,000 crore
every year because of the new law”. I understand that the new law limiting the
power of the inspectors was finally adopted in 2007 after a technical committee
to study such changes was setup way back
in 1972! The current status on implementation, however remains unknown to
me.
In my
view, this case best demonstrates the adequacy and efficiency issues with
excessive government interference described earlier. Like in the case of the
hypothetical retailer I mentioned earlier, isn’t it likely that the boiler
owner used to consider the government a business problem rather than a business
facilitator? Without making a moral judgement for now, is it then difficult to
imagine this businessmen taking undue advantage of the government where
possible?
As said
by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom:
“Economic control is not merely control of a
sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of
the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also
determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and
which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for”
While so
far I have mentioned the business side of government interference, it is no
less in the case of personal lives of citizens. To take a simple example, and
without moral judgement, is the issue of permits to consume alcohol in Maharashtra. If memory serves me correctly, this is an
over 60 year old law that was suddenly enforced about two years back. The cost
of the license ranges from Rs5-Rs1000 but the penalty for consuming alcohol
without a license is a fine of Rs50,000 or five years in jail, or both. This
again exposes a law abiding citizen to the whims of the inspecting
police/excise officer.
What is
the logic of this law? If there exists a sound logic then why is this law only
enacted in one state leaving the rest of India ‘unprotected’. Notably to
obtain this license, an ordinary citizen “shall apply to the Collector of
Mumbai City / Superintendent of State Excise Mumbai or officer authorized by
the State Govt” (http://mumbaicity.gov.in/htmldocs/liquor.htm).
The common thread in government policy making appears to be the forced
interaction of the private sector (individuals in this case) with a public
official with discretionary powers at the pain of severe punishment.
This
theme continues in virtually every sphere of most citizens’ lives. It is
possible for a customs officer at the airport to make an arbitrary assessment
of the value of goods brought in by passenger and put him in a situation where
he has to pay a bribe. In fact I’ve once noticed a helpful ATM positioned right
behind the customs station in the Mumbai airport. Why else would anyone withdraw
cash without exiting the customs area?
An
ordinary citizen’s passport hinges on the local police station giving a
satisfactory visit report. Buying land and constructing a house is such a black
hole for me that less said the better. It is not a surprise then that those
government departments that come most in contact with ordinary citizens exhibit
higher bribe propensity (data from ipaidabribe.com):
This
complexity has led to the ‘dalal’ (broker) and ‘jugaad’ (quick fix) culture in India.
It appears sometimes that the government rules are deliberately made so complex
that a citizen is left with little choice other than engaging the services of a
‘broker/ agent’ to get the work done. This is best demonstrated in the 2007
Harvard driving license study that was mentioned earlier. The study found that
agents are important players in the process with over 70% of the candidates who
got the license hiring one. In fact agents facilitated licences for even those
candidates that did not take the
driving test. Many of such licensees did not pass an independent driving test
carried out by the survey team from Harvard. To quote “Individuals who hire
agents to get their licenses are about 38 percentage points more likely to fail
the surprise driving test”. So not only does the system make it difficult for
deserving candidates to get licenses, it actively encourages bad drivers to get
one.
The table
below lays out the stark differences between candidates who hired agents and
those who did not:
This is
not a rant against bureaucracy or law making, but the very logic underlying the
existence of the government in India.
If the system created is conducive to the exploitation of the ordinary citizen
and businessman, then inevitably someone in power will use it to exploit. Hayek
put it succinctly when he said:
“The power which a
multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over
me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who
wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends
whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work”
Usually
in a functioning system, these negatives would have been named and shamed by
the media. Sadly, the media in India
seems to have dropped the ball if the overwhelming chatter on social media is
to be believed. As lines between politicians, corporates and media have blurred
(see Newslaundry’s graphic at http://www.newslaundry.com/2013/07/who-owns-your-media/),
the role of a journalist of a society’s conscience keeper has become diluted.
It appears that media has also fallen victim to the ‘co-opting’ mentioned
earlier.
The Radia
tapes and their alleged link to super star journalists exposes this link quite
comprehensively. Without going into judging whether the merits of the tapes
(for which I have neither qualification nor expertise), at the very least they
indicate a very comfortable relationship that even senior journalists enjoy
with their subjects. I am not sure how that helps the journalist to remain
objective.
Journalism is printing
what someone else does not want printed.
Everything else is public relations.
-- George Orwell.
A study
carried out by Rahul Mitra (Purdue
University) called: “Organizational
Colonization and Silencing in the Indian Media With the Launch of the World’s
Cheapest Car”, examines the linkages between organisations and media houses to
look at how the media supports an organisations interests whilst smothering
dissent. The report concludes “…the organization–media
nexus constitutes ‘‘a clear and present danger to citizens’ participation in
public affairs, understanding of public issues, and thus to the effective working
of democracy’’ (Herman & McChesney, 1998, p. 1). I have used a case study
in India
to show the specific strategies whereby this nexus may reify dominant interests and marginalize dissidents.”
The larger question remains, when the system
makes everyone an accessory to its crimes, who will expose them?
In
summation, a government that has lost sight of its true function (ie to promote
individual liberty) tends to be a self serving organism. This organism creates
regulatory, tax and other structures that are geared towards its own survival
and growth. These structures eventually become a tool for exploitation of
ordinary citizens to whom the government seems like an obstacle course rather
than a friend. A group which is consistently systemically harassed will come to
view the system as an adversary rather than a facilitator. This will breed a
generation that will thrive on loop holes and jugaad (breaking the law, bribing
officials etc) to get around the system. This is also deeply anti-market as
only the established players will have the ‘connections’ and resources
necessary to ‘get things done’ thus keeping new competition out. This only
prompts regulators to make new, sometimes knee jerk regulations to plug
deficiencies, thus creating a vicious cycle that results in the government
growing in size and governance declining.
A tragic example of the attitude towards knee jerk
regulations is the recent murder in Delhi of a
student from the North Eastern part of India. One of the reactions from
the political bigwigs in Delhi
was:
Source:
Twitter feed (1PM on Jan 2, 2014)
Is the
murder of an innocent student ‘legal’ now, that a new law is needed? Shouldn’t
the idea be to enforce the existing law against killing someone instead of
perhaps focusing on earning political brownie points by enacting another law? If the existing IPC did not
deter this killing, why would another law (not even framed yet) be a deterrent
to these criminals? The only thing that will deter crimes is implementation,
not mere ‘enactment’ (pun intended). If one didn’t know better, the entire
process seems to run on the classic political syllogism:
All cats have four
legs. My dog has four legs. Therefore, my dog is a cat.
Translated
thus for politician’s apparent quick draw view of law making:
This is wrong.
Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.
This loop
can be broken only when the basis for law making is enlightened. Ultimately all
laws are ‘distortionary’ in nature given that they can be differently applied
to different people. Example: Let us say the government enacts a law that all
restaurants should close at 10PM everyday. The enforcement agency (e.g. police)
can approach a restaurant to give them a bribe in return for looking the other
way if the establishment remained open after the stipulated time. This
ultimately puts another restaurant, which wants to follow the law and not
indulge in graft, at a disadvantage as the enforcers have a legal weapon to
clamp down on it until it cracks and pays up. Thus the law, rather than
improving society, actually ends up promoting graft and systemic decay.
It is
this potentially damaging power of laws that needs to be recognised by
politicians and ensure that only those that are absolutely unavoidable are
enacted. Also, instead on concentrating on post-facto resolution of bribery,
politicians must take a proactive and preventive approach to this monster of an
issue. A lot of the anti graft mechanisms in India appear to focus on the
after-math of the bribe (ie. post bribe being given)…even the proposed Jan
Lokpal. Being penal in nature, there is a significant burden of proof required
to actually enforce these anti corruption laws which making them less of a
threat to the crooked.
This
problem can only be truly addressed if politicians concentrated on creating a
system that stymies the origin of a bribe demand/ offer in the first place.
Right now the system appears to be too personality dependent, ie. someone is an
honest officer, someone else is corrupt, but an enlightened leader can install
a system that is less ‘proprietary’. India seems to be getting this
wrong.
Some of
the key steps that can be taken are:
- Scrap those laws/ rules that
aren’t absolutely necessary (e.g. alcohol license in Maharashtra)
- Remove all ambiguity in the
interpretation of existing laws, redraft if necessary. Clarity in laws is
essential to curb discretionary powers of government servants. E.g: 66A of
the IT Act is a classic example of how ambiguous drafting allowed
authorities to clamp down on free speech.
- Restrict the discretionary
powers of government servants.
- Adopt self governance, self
certifications where possible to limit ‘inspector raj’. A classic example
is that of Narendra Modi who scrapped the requirement for government
boiler inspection at the state-level and passed the task on to the boiler
owners themselves.
- Introduce single window
clearance for business purposes and even for individual needs. There is no
reason why applying for a gas connection, polling card, PAN card, Aadhar
card, passport etc cant be through the same office. Enforce a strict time
limit for compeletion of work with specific responsibility assigned.
Impose automatic penalty for any official that misses the deadline without
reason on more than 3 instances a year, for example.
- Rationalise salary structures
to reduce the ‘need’ aspect of bribe seeking. Consider this, against the
United Nations recommended police: population ratio 1:450 (and Bureau of
Police Research and Development’s estimate of 1:568), India has just one 1 policeman
for 761 people. It is interesting to note that this ratio is a sharper 1:3
for protection VIPs. Reminds me of a quote from the book, Animal Farm, “All animals are
equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Under such stressful conditions, a police
constable in Mumbai works for atleast 12 hours a day, and a starting gross
salary of just Rs12,000 is hardly enough to sustain his family. Notably
constables account for 33,000 of the 38,500-strong Mumbai force. If the
backbone of law enforcement is perhaps forced to seek bribes to even make ends
meet, it hints at the systemic weakness I pointed out earlier where people are
encouraged to break the law. Scrapping of superfluous ministries, departments
and extra-constitutional bodies will no doubt generate income to aid in higher
payments to the deserving.
- Adopt eGovernance
aggressively. Even for things like toll collection, use RFID tech for auto
deduction. This will remove blockages at toll booths and reduce incidence
of toll booth violence.
- The solution lies in reducing
the government superstructure, not add to it. Focus on implementing a lean
set of laws instead of drafting a new set of impractical laws that simply cannot
be implemented.
It is my
belief that every new law/ rule/ amendment must be evaluated carefully on the
touchstone of individual liberty. India should have as many laws as
absolutely necessary, and not a single one more. The underlying logic should
be: Make laws reasonable and simple to follow, punish severely those who,
despite such laws, break them.
As people
lose the “Us and Them” complex,
wilful breaking of laws and offering of bribes will decline. I believe that
Indians are, due to their ancient culture, naturally fair minded people. If
someone is convinced that he will get a fair deal, his propensity to bribe, or
to do ‘jugaad’ will naturally diminish. When people feel ownership over the
government, I believe hooliganism and even religious riots will decline.
In
conclusion, I am reminded of a cynical quip, “no politician will ever change
the very system that put him/ her into power”. If this is the case then the
political solution for this problem can only come from someone who is not a
product/ beneficiary of this system. It is perhaps time to retire the ‘old boys club’ (in politics as well as
bureaucracy). However, it is also my belief that the rebuild job cannot be left
upto someone who has had no experience navigating the system. Anarchy is not the solution to imperfection and simply not belonging to the old boys club is not enough of a
qualification to lead this change.
While reforming
the system clearly requires team work it cannot happen without a leader who
will incentivise removal of red tape and not the other way around. India
needs someone who has exhibited vision and delivered clear results whilst
dealing with this same system in a constructive way. India neither has the time nor the
patience for empty sloganeering nor to be a guinea pig for hit-or-miss
experiments. What is needed is a strong,
decisive leader to make the changes needed that will overhaul the ‘logic’ of government,
whilst retaining the essence of our democracy.
Disclaimer: My sincere appeal is to readers to appreciate the intent of this write-up. The intent remains to see India as a free, fair prosperous nation that ensures opportunity for all with no discrimination. I do not claim to be an expert in administration nor do I wish to paint all politicians, bureaucrats etc with a wide brush. These are some stray thoughts that have crossed my mind during various interactions and I decided to put them down here as succinctly as I could. While I have taken care to ensure the correctness of data and charts I am by no means in a position to guarantee it. I do hope this blog post inspires everyone in a positive way rather than taking offense, which is is no way intended.
