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CIVIL SERVICE
STATESMAN, JAN 22, 2016
Greater accountability for the steel frame
Tuktuk Ghosh
Since the run up to the General Elections in 2014 there has been a huge buzz about minimum government and maximum governance. This claim has surfaced every now and then, often to reinforce the point about how differently the NDA government goes about the business of governance.
Among the stand-out differences can be put down the Prime Minister’s direct and regular interactions with the steel frame, especially the top echelons. They began with informal get-togethers of all Secretaries to Government of India in November 2014 and April 2015 which went down well primarily because of the strong message of confidence communicated in their abilities-quotient and also the novelty factor.
These were interspersed with a series of one-on-one presentations by Secretaries to the PM on the highlights of policies and achievements of their ministries.
Almost as a logical accompanying step, PRAGATI was structured to deepen the interface between the Prime Minister, Secretaries and Chief Secretaries of States. PRAGATI is the ICT-based multimodal platform for pro-active governance and timely implementation. It facilitates close and intense concurrent evaluation of flagship programmes, mega-infrastructure projects and addresses important developmental issues. To date, some seven of these exercises have been held.
Obviously they have had a positive impact, both in terms of gearing up and preparing for scrutiny by the highest political executive and also on the consequential sanctity of the decisions taken as well as commitments made, thereby ensuring they did not slip off the radar screen into familiar oblivion. Most interestingly, the concerned Ministers or ChiefMinisters did not participate either in the initial presentations to the PM or the PRAGATI reviews. Whatever may be the reasons for it, the apparent departure from protocol is eloquent. The onus of enhanced performance appears to rest squarely on the bureaucracy in the PM’s perspective. This is based on the Gujarat- model he followed and is observed in several States across the country. To bring it up front on the Central stage is noteworthy.
The Prime Minister has been holding brain-storming sessions with all (repeat all - and not a select few) Secretaries on governance issues and development policy. Here, too, Ministers and other dignitaries are on a select invitee-list and often the Cabinet Minister handling the subject under discussion does not feature in the list. The undergirding rationale repeats the unmistakable signals of the PM crafting his individualised reach-out mechanisms to those who, in his estimation, are really behind the wheels. Such sessions are a mint new concept and can expect to yield dividends in terms of efficient and impactful delivery, by engaging proactively and on a positive note with the vast in-house talent and knowledge resource available, which is often rather churlishly disregarded. It has the possibility of taking accountability to hitherto unexplored levels.
Eight Groups of Secretaries have been set up for focussed attention in specified sectors.
These have a broad sweep and relate to the following:
Good governance - challenges and opportunities
Employment generation strategies
Farmer-centric initiatives in agriculture and allied sectors
Education and health—universal access and quality
Innovative budgeting and effective implementation
Accelerated growth with inclusion and equity
Energy efficiency and conservation
Swachchh Bharat Ganga Rejuvenation.
Beginning 12 January, the Groups have been making presentations to the PM. The format for the presentations has been drawn up in such a manner that it focuses on actionable points and implementation-related aspects. Each of these Groups has members from different ministries. They have had to meet almoston a daily basis and coalesce their recommendations so that they ring authentic and convincing. By all accounts, they have done a great job.
For there to have been significant harmony and co-ordination amongst the Group members unravels many interesting prospects for collaborative and more coordinated functioning in the silo-encrusted legacy set-up that we are chained to. The details of the presentations are not in the public domain as yet. Hopefully, the Secretaries will be empowered, through formal authorisations of Cabinet, to translate the accepted innovative ideas into ground level realities within a given time frame, especially their more complex cross-sectoral aspects .
So far, so good. But as the sceptics would be quick to point out in jaded despair, there has been an overdose of diagnostics, analytics and road maps but they’ve predictably languished in labyrinthine black holes after the initial hype and hoopla. And, more importantly, can this be among the most sustainable models of new-style governance and accountability, blessed by the PM, for energising the sarkari behemoth?
This is the great challenge for not only the PM but his entire team in the bureaucracy. It is ultimately about redefining the governance-experiencefor the ordinary citizen, which is actually being critiqued in real time now and will not wait for a distant election as in the good old comfortable - or our netas and netris, of course - days!
The writer is a retired IAS officer.
ECONOMIC TIMES, JAN 20, 2016
Supreme Court stays action against Kerala IAS officer for praising Narendra Modi
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed proceedings, initiated by the UDF government in Kerala, against an IAS officer for praising Narendra Modi in 2013 in a newspaper article and has asked the state government to explain why it initiated proceeded against the officer on this count.
The IAS officer, Dr B Ashok, had in his article defended a proposed trip by the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi to the Sivagiri Mutt at Varkala in Thiruvananthapuram district to inaugurate a spiritual cultural conclave.
The state government had opposed the mutt's invitation to Modi on the ground that he had failed to stop the 2002 Gujarat riots as chief minister. Rahul Gandhi had declined the mutt's invitation.
The IAS officer had written: "It is true that the Gujarat government might not have been effective in preventing the killings (in 2002) but such genocidal riots had followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi." He had also flayed the Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi for turning down the invite.
The UDF government had initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. He was then ViceChancellor of the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. Though he had approached the High Court that had refused to restrain the government from holding the inquiry against him.
The state government sacked him as vicechancellor for alleged violation of service rules, but the Kerala High Court reinstated him. In August 2015, the High Court upheld the disciplinary proceedings initiated against him. On Tuesday, however, a bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar, issued notice on his petition challenging the High Court order, and stayed the disciplinary proceedings against him.
In his appeal before the top court, argued by senior advocate KV Vishwanathan and advocate Vivek Chib, the IAS officer argued that he had not violated any service rules as the vicechancellor of the university or any other civil service rules. He urged the top court to quash the proceedings against him.
The bureaucrat had written an article titled 'What if Modi comes to Sivagiri', on April 24, 2013, in the Kerala Kaumudi daily. This article had prompted the UDF government to censure him and also issue a chargesheet against him on the ground that it amounted to conduct unbecoming of an IAS officer. Stay on top of business news with The Economic Times App. Download it Now!
ECONOMIC TIMES, JAN 19, 2016
12 junior staff removed from PMO
NEW DELHI: 12 junior level personnel have been removed from the Prime Minister's Office and posted to various central government ministries.
Of them, three have been sent to Defence Ministry, two each to Agriculture and Cooperation, and Information and Broadcasting departments, and one each to Commerce, Food and Public Distribution, Higher Education, Petroleum and Natural Gas, and Road Transport and Highways, an order issued today by Department of Personnel and Training ( DoPT) said.
The order did not cite any reason behind relieving the employees of Assistant Section Officers grade from the PMO.
Meanwhile, 16 new employees have been appointed to the PMO.
The services of these employees, who were working as Senior Secretariat Assistants in various ministries, have been transferred to Home Ministry. They all will further be posted to the PMO, it said.
ECONOMOC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
HINDU, JAN 19, 2016
A tale of two economists
Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian publicly differed with RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and took a bet on accelerating growth. He is clearly losing
Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian started 2015 on an over-optimistic note. He is likely to have ended it in disappointment. The economy is slowing down: in the first six months of the financial year, real GDP grew 7.2 per cent, slower than the 7.5 per cent in the corresponding earlier-year period. In 2016-17 too, GDP growth will not be significantly greater unless some specific steps are taken, the CEA has said. Thankfully, there are few takers in the government for the main measure he is suggesting: a further pause on fiscal deficit reduction.
About a year ago, barely months into his job in the Finance Ministry, Dr. Subramanian projected a sharp recovery with growth of up to 8.1-8.5 per cent. He forecast the acceleration even though he did not expect any big-bang reforms (on this count, his forecast was correct). In his scheme of things, the spurt in growth would come from incremental policy pushes, such as to subsidy reforms, direct benefit transfers, and financial inclusion of the poor.
The brave outlook underestimated the weakness in the exports sector. It relied on the Rs. 70,000 crore of public investment that was earmarked in the year’s budget — as suggested by him — for building infrastructure to stimulate private investments. The stimulus he had designed was implemented. It proved insufficient to generate the growth impulses needed to kick-start the over $2 trillion economy and rekindle animal spirits gone numb in the dying years of the United Progressive Alliance’s 10-year stint due to policy paralysis and corruption scandals.
As things stand, it seems unlikely that industrial growth will cross 5 per cent. Growth in lending by banks to industry, a proxy for investment sentiment, hasn’t budged from a 20-year low. Corporate balance sheets are burdened with mountains of debt. The worst exports performance since 1952-53 is inevitable.
A government not shy of its business-friendly credentials should have picked up these stress signals early on and administered the remedies, but its mandarins were too excited: international agencies had declared that 2015 was going to be the year in which India would race past China (the Chinese economy is about five times as large as India’s) to be the fastest growing economy in the world.
It was. But that this had probably more to do with China slowing down rather than India picking up, and the stark difference in size made the comparison between the two economies irrelevant. But the cheerleaders among bureaucrats and ministers couldn’t be bothered with technical minutiae — all that mattered was that India is a bright spot in a gloomy global economy.
Why is growth slowing?
In the boom years during the UPA government’s tenure, four engines had powered the economy. Of those, just two are still running: government investments and private consumption. Exports and private investments, the other two, are out of steam. The UPA years saw an investment boom, which was bound to turn sooner or later, and has.
Lower borrowing costs could restart the investments cycle but the hands of the Reserve Bank of India Governor, Raghuram Rajan, are tied. An agreement that the government and the RBI signed a year ago has made controlling inflation the main objective of monetary policy. The agreement formalised a policy goal that the central bank has always pursued anyway, except that it set the targets in terms of consumer price inflation. Moreover, government-owned public sector banks have been slow to pass on to borrowers the rate reductions that Dr. Rajan has announced. Banks are a cartel and keep interest rates high because higher interest rates mean bigger profits.
Dr. Rajan is well on course to bring inflation within the 6 per cent target that the government set around the same time the CEA made his cheery growth forecast. In fact, the ‘rock star’ Governor, with whom the CEA has worked closely earlier in the International Monetary Fund, has had an excellent year. India was still one of the ‘fragile five economies’ when the year began. Yet, it is the only one to have come out of the phase of heightened currency volatility and current account deficit instability that characterised the group. Besides, the purse-string managers of the government’s budget in North Block, who haven’t yet let its fiscal deficit slip, Dr. Rajan too deserves credit for restoring India’s macroeconomic stability, which the government hasn’t quite leveraged to push growth, just as it has been caught sitting on its hands despite the favourable global trends in oil and commodity prices.
On growth, Dr. Rajan has been spot on. By the end of the summer, he had cut the Reserve Bank’s GDP growth projection for the year not once but twice. In July, even as Dr. Subramanian was sticking to 8.1-8.5 per cent, Dr. Rajan’s call was 7.4 per cent.
The overconfidence in Delhi lasted till the last day of November, when new official data released, revealed a slowdown instead of the promised smart recovery. Within hours, the government cut its growth projection to 7.5 per cent.
In the following weeks, the CEA did a few mea culpas on earlier positions, raised fresh concerns about the state of the economy and declared the official data puzzling and unusually difficult to interpret. And he called for reassessing the government’s commitment to fiscal deficit reduction.