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.
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) :))
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/
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 :)
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 :)
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