Few Objections to Gov 3.0

These are few of questions raised by those who read about Gov 3.0 architecture that envisages eliminating States and redistributing the subjects from the “States List” and “Concurrent List” to the “Union (Central) List” and “Local Government List”.

Q 1. If proximity is not important why have local governments? Why not run the whole country from a central command? [Subverse: State government people know better than “Delhiwallas”.]

A 1. Local Government comprising of elected “corporators” and “panchs” will have jurisdiction over a defined geographical region – a city, town or a set of villages. Since the corporators and panchs will be executing programs and schemes, it is important for them to be in proximity of the affected citizens and sites. For e.g. Surat was not long ago considered to be the dirtiest city in India. Municipal Commissioner Rao ordered all corporators to spend 50% of their working hours on the streets supervising and taking feedback of residents. Soon, Surat came to be recognized as the cleanest city of the country. Today it is also the fastest growing city in the country.

Resource allocation and resource usage policies require information, research, consultation with subject area experts besides assessment of (and even shaping) people’s wishes. For this purpose, there is no reason to believe that the MP of each constituency supported with proper ICT systems will make decisions inferior to that of a MLA just because the MPs are required to spend a certain proportion of their time in the national capital. MP will have more powers, resources and facilities to tour his/her constituency and take people’s feedback as compared to any MLA. When you represent a very large number of people that runs into six to seven figures, you do not take feedback by talking to everyone (which is infeasible – nonetheless you must interact with as many people as is practical) but by putting in place, online feedback systems – today we can do this because almost all people anywhere can use mobile phones – with UID (unique ID is currently being given to every resident in India) coming up, electronic referendum will be easy, it will probably cost .01% of the cost of elections to conduct a national poll. In Gov 3.0, as a Corporator or an MP you would have to publish your programs, ideas and ongoing schemes on a web site and then invite people to debate, contribute and vote. Each representative (and any opposition party’s representative too) would be allowed TV time for talking about the issues that affect the people in his/her constituency, for e.g. what kind of schools, gardens, roads, hospitals you want? [Local Govt.s will deal with local subjects and not issues like height of a dam on a river which flows through multiple “states” or nuclear power plants which generate 00s or 000s of megawatts of power as these are actually subject matters of national policy and not state subjects at all – witness the history of disputes over such matters in which states are always embroiled – so many states have been fighting for decades in the courts and also fighting on the streets by fanning parochial sentiments and delaying national progress, burning up public money and consuming precious judiciary time].   

Q 2. India is about diversity. We need a cauldron of opinions and competing ideas rather than a bunch of Delhiwalla’s ideas imposed on the whole country. The accountability of elected representatives will reduce in Gov 3.0; the MPs will become too powerful.

A 2. In Gov 3.0 there is no Delhiwalla – there will be about 1300 MPs from constituencies throughout the length and breadth of the country. They will represent the whole country; each MP representing a constituency of one million people. Amongst so many MPs will be enough variety of ideas and the government could appoint think tanks where called for and take help of research organisations. There will be competing ideas but not perennial log jams that are being created by States and Regional parties  because of their power to refuse to fall in line even if 90% other states ascent, for e.g. Goods and Services Tax introduction has been delayed due to intransigence of couple of states, causing loss of lacs of crores of rupees p.a. which actually represents the smaller hit taken by the people of India – the bigger hit is the invidious influence of the existing myriad tax laws that challenge compliance because of their complexity, ambiguity and the discretionary powers they bestow on the “tax collectors” in the states’ taxes departments, excise & service tax departments, customs departments and income tax departments who are past masters at tying the tax payers into knots and thereby milking the victims.

MPs will be expected to speak for their constituencies and they will sit on various committees and recommend resource allocations and schemes which will have to pass muster of the entire parliament. MPs in Gov 3.0 will have to be very active and they will need strong administrative support infrastructure – for meeting a very different role from the one the MPs have today. Because of the process of competition for fewer seats of power (since the head count of politicians in the whole country will drop drastically with the disappearance of the middle tier of States), the caliber of MPs in Gov 3.0 can be expected to be much higher than those of today’s average politician. For national policy formulation you need high caliber thinking type and virtuous people. For execution of programs at the local government level you need people who work in the field and those who will actually be in a position to entertain common people and go out and talk to opinion leaders in their communities. In Gov 3.0 the MPs cannot easily cook up their private agendas – they will have to get elected on the strength of a) their parent political party’s agenda or their personal beliefs backed with merit and track record and b) their action plan specifically for their own constituency – all of these (agenda, beliefs, track record and action plans) will be published and debated in the elections. Post elections, the public will be able to contrast the achievements of each MP with the promises made by them. The public and the media will engage with MPs with wayward key performance indicators, visible to all at all times.

Q 3. Regional parties are an essential part of democracy. They should have a role.

A 3. Sure, the regional parties may field candidates for MPs seats and these parties will also have their representatives contest elections in Municipalities and Panchayats. Independents will also contest elections for seats in Union Govt and Local Govt. The idea of bicameral parliament, with members in Rajya Sabha will be continued – at present a small number is nominated by the president and balance is elected by State Govts. This will change – selected municipal corporations will elect members to the Rajya Sabha. Here again, regional party candidates and eminent people could find representation in the parliament. However, the national parties in Gov 3.0 dispensation will accomplish better results.

Q 4. States in India are seen to have achieved very different levels of progress. For e.g. few states are achieving double digit annual growths whereas the laggards are stagnating. Gov 3.0 will pull down the performance of the “best” regions represented by erstwhile states and the people in those regions stand to lose out.

A 4. Smart politicians or bureaucrats will not disappear or become powerless in Gov 3.0. The smartest amongst those working in the State level government will shift to the Union Govt or the Local Govt. Of course many politicians and bureaucrats will not find a place in the Gov 3.0. This is a good thing and not something to lament. The national resources will stand to be better utilised with fewer but smarter politicians and bureaucrats. This is commonsensical reasoning. With overall honesty level of government going up and smarter people having a greater say the overall growth rate will go up and not down. The honesty level at the top has a lot to do with achievements. Therefore, rather than apprehending that the growth rate of the “best performing” states getting pulled down in Gov 3.0 it is to be reasonably hoped that the performance of ALL states will rise. Exceptions could occur where a particular existing state has extracted an unfair share of resources from the Union Govt. or if it has registered a high growth by bartering away its future well-being (for e.g. at the expense of environment or land use or some other largesse) – in such cases there could be a dip in growth rate in Gov 3.0 but it must be realized that Gov 3.0 is not about achieving growth in the short-term or growth rate that is realized in an inequitable fashion or if it is achieved by illegitimate distribution of largesse; it is about building a just, equitable, sustainable and smart society.

Q 5. Will Gov 3.0 not be afflicted with corruption; after all it is going to be made up of the same set of people?

A 5. To those who consider the political class as a fountain head of corruption, by reducing the head count of politicians, we will reduce the incidence of corruption in Gov 3.0. However, this is not the raison detre for doing away with the middle tier. The Gov 3.0 will perform better simply because it will be a machine with fewer wheels and it will have a superior traction on the ground. The constitution of India gave us the power to make amendments and we have made hundreds of amendments so far. But nothing is more important than making the amendment to create Gov 3.0, for 1.2 billion people whose progress and well-being is presently held hostage to archaic monster machine. Computers have evolved, communications technology has evolved, medicine and engineering have advanced why does the government not evolve? In Government, today we don’t need so much wiring between the brain and the muscle and detours to other mini brains in between. We urgently need the simpler more effective Gov 3.0.

Gov 3.0 Architecture for Lean Contemporary Government

Gov 3.0 : idea of a lean government

(an improvement over Gov 2.0 that is open & smart)

Democracy does not mean more politicians or more elected representatives. Nor does it mean elimination of decision making by elected representatives and substituting it by a system of referendum, 100% direct democracy.

What I consider to be a contemporary (“belonging to the present time”) government architecture is a two tier one, comprising Central Government [GoI] and Local Governments (i.e. Municipalities and Panchayats), all having elected representatives with 4-5 year tenures. The Gov 2.0 ICT enabled systems will be there in Gov 3.0 too – all budgets, contracts, program outcomes expected and achieved will be on the web. Referendum will be supported for selected issues.

We don’t need representatives of parochial interests if we want to make the nation stronger and more capable of achieving faster progress – there is no role for regional parties and no purpose of defining states based on linguistic or “cultural” characteristics. Constituencies, for MP’s elections, and wards, for corporator’s elections should be redefined as geometrical shapes only to emphasise that religion, caste or language are not important for governance. Languages, Arts and Culture are important subjects for a different reason. We have the “Ministry of Arts & Culture”. MPs from each state can ensure that resource allocations are not skewed. Promotion or development of Religion, Caste and sub-castes are not subjects that should concern the government at all.

The second reason why we don’t need the middle tier in the Government which was conceived in the age of telegraphs and when the fastest method of getting from point A to point B was on a horseback, is that today the idea of physical proximity between electorate and their representatives has lost meaning completely. Today we have planes, computers, Internet, 24x7 TV and mobile phones. We can work more efficiently by reducing the number of wheels in the government – we can escalate issues from the lowest level to the highest level in almost real time. We can work collaboratively as a team or an organisation with people across the world – the idea of the need for a “state government” in physical proximity to the “local populace” is completely archaic, meaningless and even counter-productive. The hundreds of state level politicians, tens of thousands offices, hundreds of thousands of babus and administrators are an avoidable “overhead” – they serve to increase the friction in execution of government programs, muffle people’s voices, create inconsistent laws and slow down the nation building process by blocking policies & legislations of national interest and quibbling over resource sharing – all in the name of “federal structure” and “false divisive pride”. Today people are mobile. Most families have members from different states. Many live in multiple states, many have parents that belong to different states and even nationalities; the idea of allegiance to a “native” state is quaint, except for the state level politicians and bureaucrats for whom this idea is a holy cow.

Machinery that runs with fewer wheels requires less lubricants and it runs more efficiently.      

How do we transition from the current - three tier structure to the two tier one? To get votes for amending the constitution, we need assent of 2/3rds of MPs (possible because they will increase their powers in Gov 3.0) and 2/3rds MLAs (impossible because they will disappear in Gov 3.0) – so there is this seemingly insurmountable political barrier and getting the government machinery to adapt to the new lean model without a breakdown is the second challenge. However, there is a way forward.

The transition strategy is straight-forward. We may try to do one or all of these things as events unfold and debate over Gov 3.0 picks up steam: We need 1) to slowly expand schemes to be executed by Municipalities & Panchayats and simultaneously cut state funding (e.g. JNNURM scheme), 2) go on increasing nos. of MPs (until we have one MP per 1.2 million people from the current ratio of one MP per 2.2 million population), 3) go on reducing the nos. of MLAs (until they disappear); by encouraging the best ones to become MPs, if needed, by nominating them to the Rajya Sabha and having them to get elected within one year of nomination; shifting good MLAs to Municipal Corporations / Municipalities, 4) redistribute subjects from the "State List" and "Concurrent List" to "Local Govt. List" (this doesn’t exist at present) and "Central Government List". Doing these things will also require constitutional amendments; however, these may be easier to pass. The idea is to take incremental steps which can win political support and let the Govt. machinery slim down and adapt to the structure with fewer wheels and the redistributed powers.

The principal advantages of Gov 3.0 are 1) leaner smarter accountable government 2) greater voice (oversight) of the people in governance, 3) government machinery that requires less “lubricants”, 4) stronger integrated nation. Cost saving is NOT the motivation of eliminating the middle tier, it is only incidental and RELATIVELY SMALL. Cost saving of few lacs of crores rupees p.a. may be possible (28 States’ & 7 UTs’ politicians and babus eliminated – their salaries, perquisites saved and palatial offices and bungalows sold off at handsome prices). This money saved and resources released could be utilised for providing safe drinking water (many village kids trek few kilometers to fetch a pail of water; 128 million are without access to safe drinking water) to all, sanitation (50% of population does not have toilets) hiring more teachers, health workers, judicial staff and infrastructure for education, health care and judiciary and the other way of utilising the money saved is to increase the salaries of MPs and Corporators and members of the Panchayat - as this will attract more talent (most of the current MPs are millionaires and few are billionaires but we also need MPs who may just be competent and not necessarily very rich) :)) 

FACTOIDS: 

1) British ruled India with 300K Britons - as the population then was 300 million, the ratio is 1:1000. If the Brits then had TV, Planes (as we know them today), Computers, Internet and Mobiles they would have managed to rule India with 30K Britons, i.e. a ratio of 1:10000. Today we have 18 to 20 million government employees [estimated as 3.9 million in GOI, 5 million in PSUs and balance in State governments - it should be noted that some State governments employ teachers in large numbers, for e.g. Gujarat Govt. has about 5 lac employees and out of these, over 4 lac are teachers - that they remain absent 25% of the time is another matter] and our population is 1.22 billion, so we have really evolved. Assuming the government staff strength to be only 12.2 million (it would be certainly higher than that) we have achieved a ratio worse than 1:100 !! However, we can take heart that almost ALL governments bloat (as per the second law of entropy, disorder increases with time - Boltzman's view) so we are really not 100 times worse off than UK but surely we are more than 10 times worse off than UK when it comes to designing administrative structures and systems. 

2) The British, historically, have had the best systems architects - even their clerks left an indelible stamp of authority, for e.g. a British clerk Andersen designed Form VII/XII in 1928 and till very recently this formed the basis of ALL land records in India - we just could not come up with a modern system till just a few years ago (Bihar was the first state to revamp the system); a recent McKinsey study reported that 70% of civil suits clogging up the Indian courts related to title disputes - neither our judiciary nor parliamentarians (or MLAs) were sensitive to how important and how easy it was to design a computerised land records system that could not be manipulated by the "patwari" or "talati" in the village panchayat office. There is no study i have seen, but i can bet that of the criminal cases clogging the Indian courts, more than 50% will relate to offences under section 138 of Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 - the reason for this is the blatant misuse of this "facility" by almost ALL public sector and private sector lending institutions of demanding "post dated cheques" from people who come to them for taking loans. There is no study (that i have seen) of number of cases lodged or pending in the courts under different sections - i am sure that a large fraction of these cases was totally avoidable if only we had better drafting of laws - the language of acts and laws is often so pathetically poor and ambiguous that it would seem it is being done on purpose to enable "crooks" to interpret the rules in a way to maximise milking of the victims.

3) Under an open government (Gov 2.0), all statistics would be easily available to public. Judiciary, Parliament and Local Govt.s would need to publish details of all programs, issues and key performance indicators. Under Gov 3.0, the KPIs would be coupled to individual MP and corporator or member of the panchayat. Citizens could ask questions of these people. Q. Is it possible to build such a system? A. Yes, it is very easy to do this with modern ICT.What are we discussing here? There is no risk of power getting concentrated in few hands and "rulers" running amok in Gov 3.0. There will be so much of visibility and accountability and even a system of periodic referendum over selected issues that no government functionary will have the courage or the ability to hijack the people's agenda.

4) No. of government employees in the world: http://www.numberof.net/number-of-government-employees-in-the-world/

USA:           21.2 million (US has States - what you can do in one State, may land you in a cooler in another   State)

France:          2.3 million

India:           18.7 million (the basic three tier structure we have copied in our constitution, was designed by the British - in Acts of 1935 and 1919; what you can do in one state may land you in a cooler in another state; we have copied most of the Acts, for e.g. the police can put you in the cooler for investigation for a day or two without permission of the magistrate - the British made this rule for India specifically and we are of course following it till today)

China:            5.41 million

Indonesia:     3.7 million

Canada:          2.7 million

Germany:        2.0 million

Italy:               3.4 million

Japan:             1.0 + million

Russia:           0.85 million

UK:                 0.5 million (UK does not have States - they have only a two tier architecture)

Greece:           0.5 million

5) What has happened since independence about revisiting the centre - state - local government constructs? Have we attempted to relook, reform or re-engineer? Only during Rajiv Gandhi's stewardship, a bill was prepared (passed in 1991 when the Congress party had adequate numbers) for bolstering Panchayati Raj - his team articulated and empowered the local government considerably. Other than this there has been superficial work done - In 1983 (Justice) Sarkaria Commission and in 2007 (Justice) Punchhi Commissions were appointed to study and recommend actions to improve centre - state relations within the framework of the constitution of India. These are feeble attempts, probably triggered due to feeling of helplessness of ruling party in "getting things done". The recommendations of these commissions CANNOT fix the fundamental (generically inherent) problems that have ALMOST ALWAYS (and inevitably so) cropped up in the centre - state transactions whenever the ruling party in the central government and the ruling parties in the states were not the same AND when the ruling party at the centre was short of numbers in the Lok Sabha. If the central government party had less numbers (coalition situations), the states and regional parties could completely thwart the policies and legislations agenda of the central government party. The considerations in accepting or opposing policies and legislations would be TOTALLY POLITICAL with zero weightage to their relevance for the national good. This situation makes the centre appear ineffective and states relatively effective. 

CONCLUSION: To progress fast in a democracy that promises a just and equitable society, i think we need to refine the base design of the British model of two tier government and consider its adaptation along with a transition strategy. We should choose between having 29 to 35 independent countries (28 states + 7 UTs) or one country (with zero states) having a single government (GoI) and Local Governments. The detailing of this construct should NOT be done by Justices (retired from the Supreme Court) but by a team of people from diverse disciplines and they should include experts in Business Process Management, Organisation and Data Modeling, e-Governance and large public service delivery systems.

EPILOGUE: In a jungle inhabited by varied animals, an old wise Owl got elected as the President. Soon a mouse approached the President Owl with a complaint: the cats were harassing the mice all the time, how could he rest? The Owl after due thought advised the mouse to change itself into a Cat and that he should try hard to accomplish this transformation. After a few days the crestfallen mouse reappeared before the Owl and lamented that he had failed to transform himself into a Cat. The President Owl said that his responsibility was policy formulation and not implementation, therefore, the mouse should go to someone else with his new complaint :)