As heirs to one of history’s greatest social movements, we understandably bristle at the reminder that India was once a colony. But although the colonial power withdrew, the rhinoceros remained in the room --- the machinery of government.
Jawaharlal Nehru alone among India’s politicians dared to question the rationale of the so-called steel frame. During the national movement he had quipped that the Indian Civil Service was neither Indian nor pre-disposed to serve the interests of the country.
He refused to believe that his project of taking forward a moribund economy was dependent upon the civil service. He set up the Planning Commission and built up a large body of public sector enterprises. Most of them were relatively free of the machinery of government, though they were formally answerable to their parent ministries. This plan had spectacular initial success.
By the early 1960s HMT had generated enough surplus to build a second factory. Air India was in surplus for long after nationalisation of the original Tata airline, and public-sector enterprises increased their savings faster than the private corporate sector.
After Nehru no politician had the gall to remind the public sector that its raison d’etre is the public interest and that it must continuously prove itself by delivering on its mandate.
Indira Gandhi altered the equation by striking a compact between public sector employees and the bureaucracy. This stalled the progress of democracy and development for 50 years. The bureaucracy ceased to be accountable.
Smart change But now a quiet revolution appears to be in evidence with respect to governance. The green shoots may be few, but they are there, nevertheless. Two experiences of this writer are worth highlighting.
The first concerns the process of applying for a passport, something that has undergone a sea change in the direction of simplification, speed and efficiency. The brief ‘interview’ after the application is accepted is actually a pleasure as you deal with a young and techno-savvy staff.
This stage of the process has been outsourced to Tata Consultancy Services in a PPP arrangement. Then comes the police verification which can be a tricky affair. The citizen will find, in true colonial form, that in any interaction with the police all rights reside firmly with the latter.
As I was temporarily absent from the address given in the application the police submitted an “adverse report”, and a show cause notice was issued with a summons to the local passport office. The meeting, however, turned out to be an eye-opener.
A superintendent recommended to his superior that the applicant’s case was genuine. Subsequently, there was SMS after SMS informing the applicant that the response to the show cause notice had been received, reviewed and accepted, and the passport was being despatched that very day. It is difficult to imagine a more citizen-friendly response.
Better access Another example of improved delivery of public services is the Election Commission. The whole process of enrolling yourself as a voter has been simplified so much that it can deter only the least citizen-minded person. On the EC’s website you can first check whether your registration is active and then, in principle at least, track your name down to the voter’s list for the concerned polling booth.
In my experience the latter was not possible, but a mere phone call to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer elicited a phone number to which one’s voter card number could be sent by SMS. Within seconds a response was received giving details of the polling booth and serial number on the voter’s list.
Of course, a fundamental change in the environment is the emergence of information technology as an enabler. However, it must be acknowledged that to have leveraged it effectively to provide a service reflects a rare shift in the attitude to governance.
In the very limited spheres that we have looked at here, the government agencies have adopted as their mandate the expeditious delivery of service.
Enabled to vote Nothing would seem more important in a democracy than enabling an individual to vote. Similarly, in a country with so much poverty we cannot be faulted for expecting a public sector to be devoted to the improvement of our material conditions, for which read ‘the economy’.
Often in our concern for the poor we assume that we must target poverty directly in order to eliminate it, as though its existence is independent of the economy. Our aim, rather, should be to multiply the livelihood opportunities of the poor.
In a market economy the demand for labour is a derived demand. To raise the demand for labour we must render the potential activity profitable and the worker more productive. These require the provision of physical infrastructure to firms and social infrastructure for workers.
Much of the opportunity and the responsibility for providing these services resides with public agencies.
How much better India’s economy would perform if these were more efficient! .
(The writer is a professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram)