Cooking and Governance

This post isn't really about cooking. But cooking as a metaphor seems to be so well suited to describing the situation and hence the strange juxtaposition of cooking and governance - two very different skills. Though, you could always say that it is not so. Why else would an earlier prime minister be said to have had a kitchen cabinet?

Well, the story goes like this. A bad cook once thought, "If I can't give them good food, let them have more." So instead of improving his cooking skills he started forcing huge helpings down everyone's throat. Of course you can't fault his intentions. Let them miss the taste but not go low on nutrition! That is what he thought. Perhaps the cook wasn't aware of the consequences of overfeeding or, may be, he didn't care.

You could also think of a doctor who knew that the patient had a bad nurse and that the nurse was sure to miss out some of the prescribed doses. So the doctor doubles or triples the dose in the hope that it will average out to the prescription.

Our governments seem to be functioning like this cook or the doctor. The policing and the judicial system, all directly or indirectly controlled by the politicians, do not seem to be delivering the desired results. Crimes and indiscipline are on the rise. Yet, hardly do you find a politician who would talk of reforming the police or the judiciary. Instead they will all agree on increasing the penalty. It is exactly like the cook forcing more down hapless eaters' throats or the doctor tripling the dosage in the hope that every once in a while the nurse will remember to give the medicine to the patient.

The recently proposed revision of fines for traffic offences to astronomical sums is a step like this and will only worsen the situation. What is required is efficient implementation of existing rules and penalties, and better documentation on the roads and a better design. If something needs to be increased it is not the penalties but the quality of design and documentation and enforcement of rules. We all know that, more often than not, you will either find no signage telling you that a road is one way or find it at the exit! Our roads seldom have a signage telling one whether an U turn is permitted or not; the rule exists only in the head of the policeman if one is there. A four-way stop or rules determining the right of way are nowhere to be found. And since there are so many ambiguities, whenever a VIP is on the road all traffic is stopped and rules given the go-by. Doing away with this practice could be one single big reform so the VIPs could understand the problems created by their inefficient implementation machinery.

The proposed revision also gives rise to an unholy suspicion. Is the government trying to emulate some of our industrialists who pay for all the resources, including the human ones, at very Indian rates, but want to price their products at par with those made in US and priced in USD? Of course, they don't bother to bring the quality at par too. You will notice that most of the proposed fines are closer to the fines levied in USA or Europe than the capacity to pay of an average Indian. And there is no effort to improve the quality of enforcement and the roads.

Click here to read an earlier blog post to get an idea of the state of affairs today.

Executive Summary - We want GOOD governance and not more of the governance that we already have!

Veils Over Electorate's Eyes.

The ideal kind of politics that will build a better world will be real hard work.  Hard workers are conscientious people and unfortunately it is mostly the unconscientious who are drawn to politics.  So these politicians put up a veil to keep the real hard work that are not doing or are incapable of doing, carefully hidden from the public.  They fully subscribe to the wise saying "out of sight out of mind."  Sometimes this makes me wonder how did the saying "politics is the art of the possible" come about unless it means veiling up the real issues to the fullest possible extent.  While the real issues are objective ones and have the potential to unite the electorate behind them, the veils are emotive and mostly serve the purpose of dividing the electorate and keeping them divided. This division makes the life of the corrupt politician easy.

At times the public does get a glimpse of the real issues as it did during Anna's agitations.  Everybody united to demand a corruption free government.  Anna highlighted that politics and corruption have become synonymous.  The political establishment presented the non-incumbent party as non or less corrupt and the electorate put the power in their hand.  Now whenever the public wakes up from its slumber to ask whatever happened to promises on corruption and black money, it is dragged into a debate on Rashtravaad versus secularism.  This is the veil that is dropped down each time and will eventually drag the real issue into oblivion while deeply dividing the electorate.

The current charged up debate on reservations in education and jobs is a similar attempt to keep some underlying real issues veiled up.  The real issues in this case are several.  The foremost is persistent failure of governments to provide universal schooling for all.  Billions of rupees are drained off in the name of salaries paid to government teachers and maintenance of schools.  And yet we all know that the result is close to naught (You may like to read this earlier post.)  ITIs and Polytechnics that had the noble objectives of skilling persons who have received basic education are simply limping along with hardly any qualified and certificated electricians, plumbers or carpenters available in the market.  Even the private sector is opening up Engineering Colleges and Medical Colleges and not the equivalents of ITIs or Polytechnics.  Ease of doing business remains a distant objective and so there are not many jobs for the burgeoning population which cannot be absorbed in their hereditary profession of agriculture or other low skill professions.  Because of these abject failures of the political establishment, the only hope for the vast armies of unskilled and jobless persons remains a meaningless and learning-less degree followed by a government job.  (As an aside, the politicians have started calling these unemployable and unemployed people our demographic dividend!!)

And thus the hotly debated issue of reservations in colleges and government jobs is merely a veil to disguise the successive governments' utter failure in the area of basic education, skilling people and making it easy to do business.  We probably need another mass movement to enlighten the public to the fact that reservation is NOT the issue and that it is merely a veil for the real issues which are going unnoticed.  Though, I have a premonition that this movement too may be trumped by the politicians.

Narendra Modi owes his landslide victory to the fact that he drew public's attention to the unifying real issues.  Will he stick to these issues or will the veilsters ultimely prevail?

Are we doomed to admit that "छद्ममेव जयते (Veilster alone triumphs?)"  

Politics and CMM

There is a lot of vigorous debate going on about the current choices that emergence of leaders like Arvind Kejariwal and Narendra Modi have thrown up.  Like everyone else, I also have my views in the matter and would like to share them with everyone else with a few explanations.

But let the disclaimers come first.  I have lived in Gujarat for over a decade and I simply love the state and its people.  I must add that my familiarity with the state was limited to the cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara (Baroda), and Gandhinagar.  The people seem to be so mild,  peace loving and business minded that the recurrent riots used to come as a surprise to me.  And though the riots peaked in 2002, mercifully it has put paid to the annual ritual.  Coming from UP, I found the government departments, in a quite small number of encounters with them, far more responsive and much less corrupt.  When in Gandhinagar, I was very impressed when Mr. Modi had a Sai temple razed to the ground.  It was said to be an unauthorized construction and it was reported that a couple of hundred more temples scattered over Gujarat that were unauthorized met the same fate.

I saw Gujarat as a state that had all the right ingredients built into its DNA and a good leader could take it to great heights.  I believe that Modi did so.  And yet I had doubts whether he would be able to deliver on the same scale if he were to be transplanted to UP.  The northern states seem to have a DNA that is quite different from their southern and western brethren even though many common strands do exist.  If one could use, somewhat loosely, the terminology from Capability Maturity Model (CMM), the northern states persist at the lowest CMM level while those in South and West have climbed a step or two up the ladder.

So in Gujarat we had a good leader leading a great state and the results could not be otherwise than what we have seen.  But then the country as a whole is different and much too complex.  It is at a CMM level that cannot guarantee consistent great outcome.  It may give an acceptable outcome in combination with the personal heroics of a good leader, or it may not.

The burning need is NOT so much to get a great hero who can bulldoze the system but to move the system up on the CMM scale.  And how can that be done?  By creating institutions and structures that can prevent all the devilish acts that have been going on for decades.  We need to create Lokpal, we need to carry out police reforms, we need to make bureaucracy accountable and responsible and we need to amend Representation of People Act to ensure better parliamentarians and legislators.  In short, what we need most is not personal heroics but a more mature institutional framework with Acts and rules that enhance the capability maturity of the country as a whole.

It is indeed surprising that few politicians are talking in terms of enhancing the framework itself.  Most are busy praising the virtues of this leader or criticizing the weaknesses of that leader.  There is little debate on the issues that we have highlighted in the last paragraph.  And though Modi is talking of governance all the time, he is not talking about how that will be brought about: perhaps he is too sure of his personal heroics.

Under these circumstances, AAP comes in as a gust of fresh breeze.  It is not talking about personal heroics but about the extremely urgent need to repair and enhance the framework of governance in the country.

I also dare say that unless the higher level CMM framework is created, a strong-headed leader may even pose a risk to the system.  For he / she, in his / her impatience to deliver, might further damage the existing rickety framework.  And that will be like a medicine that alleviates your symptoms temporarily but paves the way to a much greater problem.  Many of the readers must have had an experience of emergency in 70s.  Things improved dramatically in government offices and elsewhere.  And we also know what followed.

The people are impatient now and they want all the symptoms to be overcome at the earliest.  Few have the patience for the kind of changes that are the crying need of the hour.  And this is the essence of the BJP-AAP debate.

They say great organizations are those that can consistently get extraordinary performance even from average people.  And that happens when you have a great framework of processes and governance.

I know that Modi Sarkar is well on its way.  I welcome it too, for we desperately need Congress out.  But let us keep AAP - the voice of sanity - alive.  I must also add that BJP's victory may even be seen by the great System as its own victory against forces trying to change it for the better.

Ideas for a truly secular government.

Religions, sans a small obligatory core of spirituality, are essentially a code of conduct and framework for governance for a society.  This framework extends to all aspects of mundane life - gender rights, property rights, definition of and penalties for crimes, duties towards family and society etc.  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that religions arrogate to themselves the authority that should belong to the government.  I feel that initially, in homogeneous societies, governments must have necessarily been theocratic with a Rajguru or consultant priest in place.  Problems would have started arising when explorers / traders / invaders started moving into alien territories and overpowering them or mixing with them.  The differing frameworks and codes of conducts could perhaps only be reconciled by suppressing all but one or coming out with a new one to be followed by all the different groups.  Most modern governments go for the second option.  But there are compromises too.  Governments like ours have common laws for other spheres of life but the civil laws governing property, marriage, and gender rights are offered only as one more option with each group free to choose between this and those prescribed by its religion.  However this leads to conflicts and the best option remains to have a common code for all subjects.

In my opinion it may be a better option for the state to assert itself as an alternative to religion rather than feeling obliged to find a way to comply with conflicting demands from differing religions and appeasing the more militant ones.

Thus the State should actively promote conversion of people to its ways.  Those who abjure all personal laws in favor of the common one promoted by the State should be given a privileged status.  By the same token absolutely no concessions, or incentives, or encouragement should be provided for practicing any (other) religion.

However for this to happen it must be realized that regular religions provide not only a code of conduct and framework for governance but also provide formats for solemnization of important landmarks in one's life, for example, birth, start of education, marriage, death etc.  Each of the regular religions also provide a core imagery and content that foster art forms like music, dance, painting, drama and others that add zest to life.  The state must necessarily provide all of this to posit itself as a credible competition to religions.  All registrars for various life events have to be cheerful masters of ceremony and not just drab and officious officials.  There also has to be a vibrant wing for arts and culture inspired entirely by the values promoted by the governments.  Their services should be offered free to all the citizens who have gained privileged status by abjuring their religions.

A truly secular state ought to try this out even if it all sounds impractical and difficult to achieve.  You may argue that substituting a single religion for the numerous that exist today will take away all the variety from life.  But then it has to be realized that it will also take away all the unnecessary strife.

GFGS

The current rage on the streets of Delhi over the recent gang rape case is essentially similar to that that was on display when the issue of corruption was taken up by luminaries like Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejariwal et al.  It has its genesis in the same thirst for GFGS (Governance, For God's Sake) that led to what Hindi newspapers termed नमो, नमो, नमो (Three times NaMo) phenomenon in Gujarat.  The thirst is so deep that it remains unquenched even after two NaMos.  Elsewhere the public is simply sick and tired to the core of a defunct system that doesn't care much for its citizens, their life, livelihood and prosperity.

We must not mistake it as merely an outburst against wretched humanoids who perpetrated the beastly crime against the victim girl.  I am sure that all societies, howsoever evolved, do have a certain percentage of such beastly creatures.  Similarly all societies and their constituents have within them the primal urges that need to be controlled and sublimated through moral persuasions.  It is our leaders in the government who have been given formal powers by the society for governing it.  It is their job to ensure that the beasts in the society are either reformed or subjected to strict controls or, if all fails, eliminated.  They are also supposed to epitomize all the values that the society collectively cherishes and aspires to embrace.  They cannot be otherwise and provide the kind of governance and leadership that the society desires and deserves.  Do we see this happening?

It is strange that no leaders from the government have come out to address the restless crowds.  This job has been left to the opposition and the informal leaders.  The government has instead deployed the police:  The police whose job it is to protect the public at large:  The police which repeatedly fails to check and control the beasts amongst us:  The police which sometimes itself is found perpetrating similar beastly acts.  A foreigner may be forgiven for thinking that the police forces in the country exist merely to protect our elected leaders and they hardly have men or resources left to protect the public.  And when they do mobilize the men and resources it is always for repressing the public rather than protecting them.  Has any of our leaders shown the courage to let go of their A-Z kind of security and ask them to perform their first and foremost task of protecting the public? Why are we perpetually deferring the police reforms?

What indeed frightens the daylights out of me is the utter and sheer disregard for law and order that is displayed by our political figures and then imbibed by their followers and finally percolates down to the beastly elements that we have been talking about.  The political leaders must be allowed not to pay toll tax that have to be paid even by a bus carrying a busload of BPL people.  A political leader considers it okay to publicly threaten another public figure who insists on exercising his right of freely moving through the length and breadth of the country.  It is okay for leaders to remain absent from their job, to defy all codes of decent conduct in the highest bodies of the country, to call each other names, to throw missives on each other, to amass DA (disproportionate assets), to entice and kill young girls, to father children out of wedlock.  Once the leaders have thus established their absolute superiority over ordinary mortals and law of the land, it is the turn of their supplicants.  So they go out brandishing legal and illegal arms, rape women and beat up cops.  The message finally percolates to the humanoids who shed all fear of authority and indulge themselves.  Finally the public is bound to get fed up to its nose and come out openly against the deep shit in which it finds itself.

My dear leaders, please listen to this desperate cry for GFGS.

Wake up, dear fellow countrymen!

It is quite fashionable to blame the government for all the imagined ills plaguing the country. In doing so we tend to completely overlook the altruistic measures taken by the government for boosting the economy. Altruistic because in doing so the government has risked its own credibility and image. Yet it persists in doing the right things, ingratitude of the public notwithstanding. I would like to illustrate this with some very concrete examples.


We cry ourselves hoarse about the unsteady and erratic power supply and long power outages. But we fail to see the abundant availability of all kind of gadgets for overcoming these annoyances. These include voltage stabilizers, inverters, generators etc: Gadgets, unknown to denizens of more developed economies. Have we ever given a thought to the employment that the manufacture and maintenance of these gadgets generate? And we must not forget that this not achieved by understaffing the power corporations. It is quite to the contrary. It is common knowledge that these corporations err on the side of overstaffing. Erring may not be the right expression because it is this overstaffing that leads to the inefficiencies and incompetencies that stimulate industrial growth by creating demand for power conditioners at retail level. I do trust that this shows the power boards and corporations in better light. Can you see that the apparent bad governance in power boards is in fact deliberate and prompted by the noble objective of promoting industrial growth and employment?


Take the case of another essential item - water. We have heard of Coca-cola’s frank admission in USA that the packaged water marketed by them is plain tap water. And it is quite okay as the tap water there is absolutely potable and guaranteed to be so. (Though, this being the case, one fails to understand the need for purchasing packaged water unless it is purchased by the homeless only.) Back home here tap water carries no assurances of potability and many a time it has positive visual evidence of not being so. Having learnt our lessons in the previous example let us refrain from calling names and look at the positive side instead. Yes, this too has spawned an industry, the water purifier industry. And let us not forget the packaged water industry. We do hope that they do not follow the US practice of packaging tap water itself.


Yet another example is apparent lack of law and order. This too is a studied and deliberate act aimed at promoting private security agencies that provide employment to ex-servicemen in large numbers. What could be more patriotic than this?


Look at our primary education. Despite huge outlays and employment of an army of well-paid primary teachers, primary education remains the butt of jokes. We know that even the BPL guys earning INR 32 per day or less hardly display any preference for these public (government) institutions for their progeny. This deliberate mess painstakingly created by governments and its pay-happy teachers has again been done with the sole objective of promoting schools in the private sector. What is difficult to understand is the insistence of these private schools on calling themselves public schools! These schools also provide employment to a large number of educated unemployed.


What has been said for education applies equally to the health sector. This has helped a large number of health care businesses to come up and India now figures as a medical tourism destination for people from developed economies. This would perhaps have never happened if the public health care system left little incentive for private players in this sphere by working all too well.


This penchant for promoting employment has been imbibed by each and every department of all governments - central, state and local, especially those supposed to directly interface with the public. They encourage enterprising people to come forward and facilitate this interfacing by deliberately making themselves a little too difficult to approach directly and making procedures a wee bit too difficult to be correctly understood by the public directly.


The public is not merely deluded about the real motives behind apparent shortcomings and inefficiencies in governance. They are equally deluded about the real reasons behind politicians occasionally dipping their fingers in the Consolidated Fund of India. The do it with a view to provide capital to industries, their own or those of deserving entrepreneurs. This again generates employment and improves general well-being. And after putting in all this hard and thankless work for an ungrateful public, they do need an occasional break. So what is wrong if they set aside some funds at well-known tourist destinations like Switzerland?


Wake up dear fellow countrymen and stop quibbling over bad governance, corruption etc. Thank your leaders for their hard work and vision and give credit where it is due.