Two months ago, at the peak of the ’Tatra gate’/ COAS versus MOD imbroglio, I had attempted an analytical understanding  of corruption in defence procurements- ‘why’ does it occur and what is special about it, ‘where’ does it occur and ‘how’ does it occur. Some of those arguments need reiteration and some  further peculiarities of the Indian Defence establishment  need to be highlighted because corruption  is so deeply embedded in the  very architecture of the establishment that only a radical redesign of that architecture can offer a way out.

On the question of ‘why’ I had  in the earlier article referred to the ‘monopsonistic’ ( a monopoly on the demand side) nature of the  defence market, combined with, paradoxically a limited number of suppliers because of the whimsies and uncertainties of the market. A perverse kind of monopoly therefore prevails both on the demand as well as the supply side leading to an extremely unhealthy buyer seller relationship.

While buyer seller relationships in the defence market are universally complex they are not necessarily as unhealthy as in our case. The Indian defence establishment, modelled somewhat on the Soviet system, is a closed universe which does not permit  access to any  healthy external  market forces or influences. The Defence Empire consists of three distinct Kingdoms each having its own duchies, provinces, satrapies and fiefdoms. These are the Department of Defence, the Department of Defence Production and the Department of Defence Research. Each of these kingdoms have their own, exclusive, ’rent seeking’ preserves which they jealously guard. The kingdoms of Defence Production and Defence Research, in particular, control gigantic  subordinate establishments,-PSUs, Ordnance Factories and Defence Laboratories- all hugely lumpy, capital guzzling investments, set up over thousands and thousands of acres of land on a scale lavish enough to shame Donald Trump and Mukesh Ambani. The ostensible justification for these monstrously inefficient investments is to achieve some kind of strategic self reliance which is tightly controlled by the State. Private industry has to be kept away except by way of reluctant ancillarisation and supply of some components- a process which opens up yet another area of rent seeking opportunities.

In theory, the relationship between the three kingdoms and the Armed Forces these kingdoms are meant to serve is supposed to function like this. The Armed Forces work out their present and futuristic requirements, qualitatively ( the GSQRs) and quantitatively (elsewhere I have shown how highly convoluted and corruption prone this exercise can be) and communicate these to the Defence Research establishment. The DRDO develops the products to match these requirements. The Armed Forces try out and approve the prototypes or the pilots and then Defence Production comes in to ’designate’ one of their units to ( a typical Indian usage) ‘productionise’ the product. The product is inducted into service and everyone lives happily thereafter, until the next product development cycle begins. Because  everything is within the confines of the MOD it is supposedly insulated from corrupting influences from outside.

Practice shows a perfect perversion of theory. First, each kingdom and each fiefdom within each kingdom has its own bewilderingly complex procedures, and crossing each stage of these designed hurdles within each of those fiefdoms, requires intermediation, facilitation and payment of ‘rent’. Rent seeking opportunities increase geometrically. By way of illustration, those framing GSQRs do so primarily by drooling over Janes’s catalogues and cherry picking specifications from different  competing products in the hope that they will achieve the best combination. The smarter international players try to enter at this stage itself to influence the framing of requirements in a way that is favourable to their existing product range or the ones they are developing for the international market. Considerable sums exchange hands at this stage itself. Once framed and passed on to the Defence Labs ( or sometimes directly to the production agencies as the gestation period for indigenous R&D may be unacceptably long) the Labs decide which are the parts of technology  (knowhow and knowwhy)they themselves will develop, which aspects they will seek technology cooperation with international partners and which parts or components they will fully import and then integrate with the full system (e.g the engine in an aircraft or a tank). The processes by which these decisions are taken are completely opaque and  the jealously guarded turf of the R&D establishment, providing room for heavy duty influence peddling and mediation. Inevitably, the tendency to reinvent the wheel ( being the softer option because adaptation  on the other hand involves considerable drudgery and a soiling of hands which our technology developers are not ready for) delays the product development cycle and on the one hand leads to extraordinary pressure from the Armed Forces ( their preparedness cannot be sacrificed for indigenous capacity development) for imports and on the other ensures that by the time the product is even halfway developed it is already completely out of synch with contemporary technology and rapidly changing requirements. Making the product acceptable at this stage again requires heavy intermediation and facilitation, the burden for which is borne by the foreign ’ component’ supplier. Component import is more often than not a euphemism for full scale technology/ know how import and termed ‘component import’ when done by the R&D establishment and ‘technology import’ when done by others.

It is evident that each stage of procurement in each kingdom adds to the cost. The costs get hugely magnified once the prototype or the pilot gets scaled up for production. At the production stage in the kingdom of Defence Production another vast avenue of rent seeking emerges. Because the production units are set up at such a heavy cost and because they are designed for ‘cost plus’ operations there is little incentive for cost efficiency. The Armed Forces rightly resent having to pay high costs for technologically outdated products ( the Tatra is a classic example) and therefore have a bias towards direct imports ( which keeps their own ant the Department of Defence’s rent seeking opportunities intact) and the production units need to sustain their  high cost operations. So the production units desperately seek to maintain demand and take the route  of outsourcing some part of the production through the private sector who is required to pay for maintaining the demand at sustainable levels. Hence, the offer of bribes simply to maintain demand.

The story goes on and on and one can elaborate a hundred different ways in which corruption is guaranteed by the system. To bring about any change I can only repeat my suggestions in an earlier article.What can be done to change ? First,  devolve and delegate  clear and full decision making authority for procurements massively down the chain of command- from the Ministry to the Service Headquarters, from the Service Headquarters to the Commands, Commands to the Corps and Corps to the Divisions. Restrict the role of the Ministry to procurement of major weapon systems and platforms. Have a clear hierarchy of Budget Holders who are fully responsible, within their budgets to take all decisions for achieving budgeted outcomes. Second, simplify procedures dramatically, moving from administrative controls and restrictions to budget based methods of control. Third, enhance the level of discretion available to the decision makers rather than reduce or constrict it. There is no substitute for trust. Trust a group of wise and professionally competent men to weigh the pros and cons of each option and take a decision they feel is in the best interests of all stakeholders. Guarantee them complete protection from any allegations of misuse of trust. Four, distinguish between middlemen/agents who perform a genuine service for the supplier and the deal fixers,  and give the former legal recognition and allow them free and easy access to the buyers/ decision makers making interactions with them transparent and aboveboard. Five, make a transition from engineering solution based specifications to critical performance parameters, share these parameters with potential suppliers and test product performance against these parameters. Six, integrate the Departments of Defence Production and Defence Research with the Department of Defence and privatise the Defence PSUs, the Ordnance Factories and the Defence Labs by converting them into widely held public limited companies answerable to their shareholders for performance and  thereby encourage  a shift from  pure ‘buy’ decisions to  ‘ buy and make’ decisions from a customer friendly industry.

While this may appear too radical an agenda, the point is that the kind of changes in procurement policies and systems that have been attempted so far have managed to achieve the impossible- deterred the honest from taking any decision and paralysed the system and paradoxically, substantially increased the opportunities for the dishonest to eke out his ‘rent’ from a vast new range of hurdles which a supplier has to go through to secure business. Only radical reform can break this deadlock.

Defence Procurements- A Class apart

In the media frenzy generated by General V.K Singh’s not so startling revelations our genius for muddling very different issues and focussing on the more salacious aspects of them has once again become very evident. Knee jerk reactions like the reference to the CBI of the Tatra procurements will ensure that the flaws in the decision making process remain unaddressed and the opportunity for serious and radical systemic reforms is again passed over.

There are at least four distinct sets of issues the current episode throws up - the issue of defence procurements (policies, systems, processes), the issue of the relationship between the Service Headquarters and the Ministry, the issue of the conduct of the Army Chief and that of the Minister and the issue of the state of our defence preparedness. Each of these deserves a separate analysis.

This essay confines itself to the issue of corruption in defence procurements. ‘Why’ does it occur and what is special about corruption in defence? ‘ Where’ does it occur and relatedly, ‘how’ does it occur ?

The issue of ‘why’ is complex. Many reasons make it different from corruption elsewhere. The market is what is called ‘monopsonistic’ i.e a monopoly on the demand side rather than the supply side and monopolies of both kinds can be pernicious. Paradoxically, however, given the uncertainties and the whimsies of the market the number of suppliers is also limited. This necessarily leads to an unhealthy relationship between the buyer and the supplier which veers between being cosy and crony like to being tense and adversarial. The risks involved are considerable and therefore the need for intermediation often very necessary.

Security concerns necessitate a veil of secrecy on defence acquisitions making it very difficult to apply the rules of transparency applicable elsewhere. Perversely, the need for confidentiality also becomes an excuse for conducting business in devious and furtive ways.

The nature of the market therefore, is one which provides fertile breeding ground for corrupt practices. What increases the complexity is the incredibly tortuous system of procurement designed by the Indian bureaucracy on the famous CYA principle, which ensures that multiple opportunities for charging rent arise and this rent has to be paid and is paid, irrespective of who one chooses to buy from and irrespective of their being honest jokers in the pack at different levels. Procedures, intended to prevent foul play,paradoxically and ironically achieve the opposite of illicit payments being made simply for play to happen- foul or fair.

Which brings us to the question of ‘how’, but before that let us briefly look at the interesting issue of ‘where’ ? There are three separate tracks that all procurements in MOD go through and each of these tracks has a bewildering multiplicity of hurdles and passes through so many stages that it would make a Steeplechase track look silken and smooth.

The first is the track of demand estimation, demand vetting, demand projection and inter se priority determination. This is an exercise firmly in the domain of the Service Headquarters and it is here that decisions are taken on the numbers/ volume required and the inter se priority to be accorded to the items to be procured within available budgets . It is astonishing how incredibly unpredictable this can be. Capital intensive production capacities set up at huge costs on the basis of long term, sustained demand, go abegging for orders simply because a new COAS changes priorities, or a transaction does not go in favour of the desired party, or because the one projecting the demand does not like the face of the supplier or the supplier does not appoint the right intermediary. As no one can be penalised for not wanting to buy, huge sums are paid simply to sustain demand, especially when it comes to repeat orders.

The second track is the technical one - from framing the GSQRs, to preparing the engineering specifications, technical trials, user trials, and techno commercial evaluations before the procurement process commences and the entire spectrum of post contract activities related to quality inspections, controls and quality assurance. This is the jealously guarded turf of the Service Headquarters and brooks no interference from anyone outside. The procedural labyrinth which any supplier has to go through to have his product declared as technically acceptable is Kafkaesque beyond anything Kafka could have imagined and offers limitless opportunities for seeking rent. Most suppliers provide for huge margins in their costs to go through this ordeal successfully, and those who do not or cannot afford to inevitably suffer. Being a purely technical matter, neither the processes nor the practices are ever audited or subjected to independent professional scrutiny.

The third track is the actual procurement one, where the onus shifts to the Ministry and the dreaded Babu.Here, there is a well established hierarchy of rent collectors along the approval chain. The approval cycle itself is so complicated and so lengthy that the opportunity for each functionary or facilitator to collect his share of the booty along the nuisance value chain is maximised . At no stage does anyone really need to circumvent or short circuit the procedure because following the procedure itself provides the opportunity. For the rent collectors/ facilitators along the approval chain, it is not necessary to either deviate from procedure or to influence the purchase decision in favour of any bidder. All he needs to do is to keep the process moving forward because all the bidders open a kind of Letter of Credit with the established chain of rent collectors before the procurement process begins and as each stage of the transaction is crossed , the rent gets automatically paid at the appropriate level. At the apex of the decision making chain is the Chief Collector, which could be the Minister/ Prime Minister , or his/her confidante who gets the highest share of the rent. It matters little who wins an order, because payment is made for the final approval being granted and not for deciding in any one’s favour.The drill is so well established that the flow of rent rarely gets disrupted except when there is a falling out among the middlemen or one of them decides to violate the Thieves’ Code of Honour.

What can be done to change ? First, devolve and delegate clear and full decision making authority for procurements massively down the chain of command- from the Ministry to the Service Headquarters, from the Service Headquarters to the Commands, Commands to the Corps and Corps to the Divisions. Restrict the role of the Ministry to procurement of major weapon systems and platforms. Have a clear hierarchy of Budget Holders who are fully responsible, within their budgets to take all decisions for achieving budgeted outcomes. Second, simplify procedures dramatically, moving from administrative controls and restrictions to budget based methods of control. Third, enhance the level of discretion available to the decision makers rather than reduce or constrict it. There is no substitute for trust. Trust a group of wise and professionally competent men to weigh the pros and cons of each option and take a decision they feel is in the best interests of all stakeholders. Guarantee them complete protection from any allegations of misuse of trust. Four, distinguish between middlemen/agents who perform a genuine service for the supplier and the deal fixers, and give the former legal recognition and allow them free and easy access to the buyers/ decision makers making interactions with them transparent and aboveboard. Five, make a transition from engineering solution based specifications to critical performance parameters, share these parameters with potential suppliers and test product performance against these parameters. Six, integrate the Departments of Defence Production and Defence Research with the Department of Defence and privatise the Defence PSUs, the Ordnance Factories and the Defence Labs by converting them into widely held public limited companies answerable to their shareholders for performance and thereby encourage a shift from pure ‘buy’ decisions to ‘ buy and make’ decisions from a customer friendly industry.

While this may appear too radical an agenda, the point is that the kind of changes in procurement policies and systems that have been attempted so far have managed to achieve the impossible- deterred the honest from taking any decision and paralysed the system and paradoxically, substantially increased the opportunities for the dishonest to eke out his ‘rent’ from a vast new range of hurdles which a supplier has to go through to secure business. Only radical reform can break this deadlock.

The States will not get bullied anymore

It feels good when the States of the Indian Union muster up sufficient strength to show the Government of the Union the raised middle finger. For so long having been the victims of the arrogance of the Union and its gross insensitivity to federal ways of working, the States have realised that power equations have changed and they now deserve to be treated with greater respect. First the FDI in retail, then the LokPal/ Lok Ayukta Bill, and now the NCTC- the States have shown that they will not wag their tails each time they are asked to do so. The ways in which policies are framed and grand plans laid out, the protocol now will have to be very, very different.

But first, entrenched attitudes have to change. Much discussion on our federalism still revolves around whether our Constitution is quasi federal, or federal with a unitary bias or unitary with federal features. Couched in legal, juridical terms this pointless debate assumes that political reality will follow the original intent of the Constitution makers in giving the Union a dominating role. The reality, however, is in conflict with this design. The Indian polity is by now irreversibly federal and coalitionary and the imposition of a unitary culture in governance can now never succeed. The existence of superior and exceptional powers with the Union to subdue or supersede the States does not mean that these powers have to be used. What is important is to accept the federal nature of the polity and align administrative structures and processes to this reality. And this is what a Congress led Government refuses to do. So used is it to a High Command style of functioning of unquestioned supremacy in decision making that each time it gets a rebuff it simply goes into a sulk and shelves important policy reform hoping to reimpose its will when it can regain the kind of brute majority it was accustomed to in the past.

Many people in the Union Government continue to see federalism as a problem. The States are at best seen as ‘implementers’ of superior decisions taken by the Union rather than as valued partners. The very fact that both in popular and official discourse people refer to the Union as the ‘Centre’ and ‘Central Government’ - terms which do not exist in the Constitution is a reflection of this attitude. A Union is a union of partners, whereas as a Centre is the inner core of a unitary whole. Appreciating this difference is crucial.

Many also continue to conflate the ‘national’ with ‘central’ and ’regional’ with the States, quite forgetting that without the states coming together there is no Union. Take the proposed NCTC for example. In its favour it is argued that terrorism is a ‘national’ problem which does not respect State boundaries and therefore has to be dealt with by the ‘Central’ Government. This is a deeply flawed argument. Most problems or issues are universal and impact simultaneously at international, national, regional and local levels-be it Climate Change, or terrorism, or poverty, or infrastructure, or security. The problems themselves are never completely ‘international’ or ‘national’ or ‘local’, they simply impact differently at different levels. So countering terrorism has to be not just at the global or national levels but at all levels and each level requires a custom made strategy. Otherwise, it could well be argued that as terrorism does not respect national boundaries, decisions on countering it should be taken by the US Government -being the leader of the global fight against terror!

The second argument is that of the need for better national level co ordination. But coordination does not require a centralised command and control architecture, it requires a networking one. . Information and intelligence is best gathered in a decentralised manner with the active participation of local level agencies, made to conform to agreed standards, pooled into a commonly owned resource and made accessible and useful to all stakeholders. This is possible only in an organisational framework which is confederal and which is jointly owned by the Union and the States, not one in which the Union alone exercises centralised bureaucratic control .

People forget that the more federal the processes, the more democratic and the more collegial, more the possibilities of strategies and actions being better coordinated. This also enables a better pooling of skills, ideas and human resources in the task of policy making. It was this consideration which made the Constitution makers provide for a unique mechanism in the shape of the Inter State Council under Article 263 of the Constitution for the Union and the States partnering each other in identifying issues of common concern, investigating them and arriving at policy recommendations. The Council is chaired by the Prime Minister and has all the Chief Ministers and selected Ministers of the Union as members. While the Constitutional provision had existed from the very beginning the Council was constituted only in 1990 when the Sarkaria Commission highlighted its potential usefulness and a non Congress Government seized the opportunity to set it up.

The unique value of the ISC lies in the fact that it brings the Governments of the Union and the States on a neutral platform as equals and not as superiors and subordinates. In its composition it is perfectly balanced with neither the States nor the Union in a position to dominate. While its recommendations are meant to be advisory, given that they come from the highest levels of Government, they are not capable of being easily shelved or ignored.

Experience shows that the best way of evolving consensus on conflictual issues is by having all the parties define the problem together. If there is consensus on defining a problem comprehensively having everyone to agree to the solution becomes very simple. Had an attempt been made by using the agency of the ISC to collectively define the problem and then investigate it together through the independent Secretariat of the ISC there would never have been the kind of opposition the Union now faces from its constituent units.

Congress led Governments have not yet accepted the inevitability of increased power of the States and the need for a more consensual, inclusive way doing things. They forget that federalism is one of our greatest strengths and deepening it only strengthens the union, not weaken it. Government is surely not the place to sing ‘Ekla chalo re’.

The Black Farce of Jaipur

In terms of duplicity, deviousness and hypocrisy in governance and the display of sheer contempt for democracy and secularism, the conduct of UPA II in the Rushdie/ Jaipur Literary Festival episode marks a new low. The incident is not an isolated one, following as it does the shameful behaviour in the cases of M F Husain, and Taslima Nasreen. Democratic and secular practice has been corrupted, and this corruption is infinitely more treacherous than that of the financial kind .

Is this an over reaction, the ‘pseudo anger’ of the elite, liberal intellectual taken in by ‘western’ notions of freedom of speech and stemming from a lack of understanding of the complex socio cultural environment we live in ? Is one being completely ignorant of the difficulties that any administration confronts in maintaining public harmony? Is the reaction commensurate with the gravity of the alleged misconduct ?

It is mostly other members of the same liberal intellectual elite who dub this reaction as elitist and downplay its insidious impact. This stems from the condescension with which many of us treat the practice of democracy- as a plaything of the elite and not the bread and butter concern of the common man. The fact is that in a country of such gross inequities, democracy is the only means of survival with dignity that the common man has and protecting it, nurturing it and resisting attacks on it is the single most important responsibility we have as citizens.

In the Rushdie matter, as events unfolded themselves a few things became very clear. To a party going out of its way to woo the Muslim vote in U.P and fiercely competing with the SP and the BSP in doing so, the Congress could ill afford to antagonise the Deobandis and the Owaisis, not so much to garner votes as not to lose them. In the stakes for competitive communalism the Congress bets slyly and secretively but it bets big. Rushdie had to be stopped from coming without the Congress and the UPA Government showing their hand. So it followed a classic three pronged strategy of deviousness: First , make the State Government take the lead in dealing with the issue so that the federal excuse is always available to pass the buck and have the national level party and Government spokespersons maintain a politically and legally correct stance ; Second, fabricate a scare which is plausible enough for the JLP organisers to willingly persuade Rushdie that it will be in every one's best interests if he does not come and ensure that the decision is publicly seen as one taken reluctantly and voluntarily by Rushdie himself ; Third, keep the Islamist loony fringe protest boiling so that the threat perception remains and the JLP organisers are not emboldened into any further bit of adventurism. It did not expect that an alert media would uncover the bogus nature of the scare and thereby expose the deviousness of their plan.

It is obvious that the masterminding of this ploy was done by the Congress party leadership within the Central Government with assured access to the I.B. The Rajasthan Government was used merely to distance the Centre from any direct role. In turn, the Rajasthan Government played its assigned role to perfection and managed to scare the organisers to an extent where the choice was between having Rushdie or having the festival. Obviously no organiser is going to waste millions on standing up for a principle especially when he is led to believe that he is acting in the larger interests of the nation. The scare was sufficient to make the organisers a tad defensive about the conduct of the Government and they then took it on themselves to try and contain subsequent voices of protest.

I was witness to Amitava Kumar and Hari Kunzru taking a spontaneous decision to read out from the Satanic Verses during their Friday afternoon session. Many of us were sitting around in the private lounge reserved for writer/speakers ( and their spouses) when Amitava and Hari Kunzru said that they felt that it would be an appropriate way to demonstrate solidarity with Rushdie and register their protest. We could not see anything wrong with it. Yet when they started reading out to the spontaneous applause of the packed Durbar Hall, they were stopped midway by the organisers and the session ended soon thereafter in a tame manner. There was no one in the audience who objected and the directions to stop were most probably instigated by the police authorities ubiquitously present at the venue. Meanwhile in another session Ruchir Joshi and Jeet Thayil did the same thing and chose the more provocative parts of Satanic Verses to make their point, once again to spontaneous applause. They too were cut short midway by the organisers and all four were given a polite dressing down for taking the organisers by surprise and and were painted a grim picture of the horrifying consequences that could follow such a blatantly illegal act. As it turns out there was nothing illegal in what they did, but given the nervousness of the organisers it was easy to believe ( a belief buttressed by legal opinion available from a legal luminary present) that some obscure provision of the IPC had been violated by reading out from a banned text and that grim consequences would follow this impulsive gesture. With the entire festival believed to be under threat of closure and rumours of the imminent arrest of the Fab Four feverishly doing the rounds, all four were presumably advised to quietly leave the city and allow the temperatures to come down. So even a very tame, civilised, literary gesture of solidarity was converted by the Rajasthan Government authorities into a threat to public order to achieve an execrable political purpose.

There are several voices of apology attempting to justify the conduct of the Government. The most favoured argument is to range the freedom available to a reckless writer belonging to the most privileged section of society, living in a foreign country against the sensitivities of a complex multi religious, multi cultural society. It is posed as a case of freedom of creative expression of one against the ‘sentiments’ of the masses. The second is the ‘limits to freedom’ argument. The argument is that no freedoms are absolute and romantic notions of freedom of speech borrowed from the liberal west are not applicable in our context. Restrictions have to be imposed in the interests of public order. The third argument is to make this an isolated case of Rushdie versus the Rest of India, where the focus shifts to Rushdie’s intemperance and his lack of contrition at his continued acts of blasphemy, his dubious merits as a writer and his penchant for attracting publicity to himself. The fourth argument is the one coming from the Indian version of secularism which while ostensibly treating all religions/faiths as equally deserving of deference believes that minority faiths, such as, Islam deserve a more aggressively visible demonstration of deference to protect its followers from a predatory majority.Posed in this manner it seems almost reasonable that in the case of the latest Rushdie episode the ‘larger’ interests of the nation prevailed against the interests of a minority of liberal intellectuals.

These arguments are both perverse and fallacious. Freedom of speech and expression is not just one of the Rights available in a democracy, it is its very foundation. Everything else is dependent on it. It is fundamental to democracy in the most fundamentally defining way. Safeguarding the Right, conserving it and promoting it is the foremost responsibility of the State more important than anything else that it does. It is an enforceable Right and failure to protect it amounts to the complete abdication of its most primary responsibility. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to listen, to receive information, to demand information, to discuss and debate and is therefore universal, not just the right of one individual to express himself. Limits on it can only be imposed by law and not by executive action. The limits/restrictions have to be exceptional and justified in the rarest of circumstances.

The perversity of the argument is manifold. First, it places the limits on a Constitutionally guaranteed freedom at a higher pedestal than the freedom itself and makes these restrictions the basis for policy and action rather than the freedom. By this logic, arbitrary and completely illegitimate restrictions on freedom have to be treated as sacrosanct but the freedom itself can be trampled upon with impunity. So the State instead of ensuring an environment where people can enjoy their freedom without fear or peril, supports and abets the creation of an environment of fear to deny them their freedom. Second, those who threaten to disturb public order with ominous warnings of possible violence find protection and tacit encouragement from the State,their threats justified as natural expressions of outrage against a known provocateur but those organising a peaceful and orderly assembly of citizens simply to provide a platform for creative individual expression are threatened with prosecution for attempting to do so. Third, the feelings and the rights of a moderate majority wanting simply to listen to a famous writer are held in complete contempt and treated as inferior to the sentiments of a loony, Talibanist fringe whose rights to vilify and demonise a great writer are upheld as being legitimate and justified. This is reverse secularism at its worst.

The Rushdie episode is a reminder of the extreme fragility and vulnerability of our traditions of democratic practice and how easily and readily the State is prepared to trample over them. While peaceful, democratic resistance at the grassroots have always been suppressed by the State ruthlessly in the interests of security and public order for a long time, the world of the Arts and Literature had generally been left untouched. With MF Husain, Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen that world too is no longer safe from the authoritarian strains that run through our polity. Supporting the right to dissent, to be a contrarian, to be irreverent, to blaspheme, to mock and to deflate authority and pompousness, to expose hypocrisy is what makes a democracy. As intellectuals it is our bounden duty to stand up for it and fight its erosion continuously. What the Government did in this case is utterly abominable and as intellectuals it is our duty to expose it and shame it.

In defence of Mayawati's monumentality

awati's monumentalityThe Indian middle classes never seem to be able to come to terms with Mayawati. At best there is grudging and condescending admiration of her rise to power against impossible odds; at worst there is a visceral loathing for her extravagant ways, her vulgar aggrandisement of wealth and the crudities of her style. Her obsession with creating monuments, which host her statues along with the Dalit pantheon is seen as being pathological and evokes uniform outrage. Yet, she seems impervious to ridicule and continues to do exactly as she pleases , decreeing as Kubla Khan reportedly did , yet another stately pleasure dome.
And ‘ Stately’ those domes indeed are. They are designed in the grand imperial manner, they are pure pastiche- an extravagant panty raid into the Lutyens closet- vaulted arches, Corinthian columns with an Indian twist, a wide stepped entrance, intricate stone jaali-work and of course the phalanx of elephants with raised trumpets. every feature is meant to strike awe. Triumphalism has rarely had so elaborate an expression.
I pass by the Noida monumental ‘park’ everyday. While it may not conform to my standards of architectural aesthetics, there is no doubt that the whole complex is pleasing to the eye. The proportions,the massing, and the groupings of the various structures are competently done. The quality of stone work is astonishing. The scale is very impressive and anyone who claims not to be impressed by the sheer grandeur of the structures and the landscape is pretending.Any day, in terms of design, the complex is far more impressive than the Akshardham temple or the Birla Mandir and infinitely superior to the ‘modernist humdrum’ monstrosities churned out by the CPWD.

Why then do the sneering and condescending classes feel so outraged ? The expression of outrage normally runs along the following predictable lines: ‘ Mayawati is an epitome of corruption, venality and pursuit of vaulting ambition and this obsession with scarring the landscape with her own statues is a typical example of her pathetic record of governance. The squandering of public resources on such an unprecedented scale, when essential priorities in health and education are so woefully neglected deserves unqualified condemnation. Our politico cultural traditions do not tolerate commemorations of the living.’

This deserves rebuttal. It is necessary , firstly to distinguish between Mayawati’s accumulation of personal wealth through the abuse of State power and her wasteful use of public resources. My guess is that Mayawati’s spend on parks and monuments contributes little ( If at all ) to her personal wealth, this expenditure being highly visible and subject to public audit. Most corruption income is not through such visible public expenditure but through the clever use of State power in such areas as grant of concessions for the use of land, mining, allocation of natural resources, licencing and the granting of approvals for various private economic activities. Associating her monumentality with her corruption is therefore incorrect. We need to de-link the two.

Mayawati’s corruption or the growth of her private wealth through the use of political power has a political, cultural dimension which is often ignored. It does not justify it, but it may offer a possible explanation for the blatant manner in which it is done.

Purely in terms of scale Mayawati will rank quite low in the gallery of rogues in comparison with many members of the Union Cabinet, many present and former Chief Ministers, sundry progenies and sons in laws of prominent political dynasties, and other shadowy denizens of Indian political life. Yet while most others will evoke nary a reaction from the chatterati, Mayawati’s conduct invariably evokes voluble expressions of revulsion. Caste prejudice is undoubtedly at work here.

There is also no doubt that as much as the upper classes hate her, her own constituency adores and admires her despite or maybe even because of the growth of her wealth.Her identification with her own lot is so complete that her growth is their growth and a form of retribution for centuries of servitude and exploitation.The growth of her personal wealth also corresponds to the growth in her political stature in a mutually reinforcing relationship so that her wealth and her open flaunting of it makes a strong political statement -that in a world so hostile to Dalits she has singlehandedly fought her way to the top. Her wealth is to be admired for the power it gives to her to continue fighting for Dalit pride. For them she increasingly becomes more iconic and each statue of herself that she unveils confirms the durability of the mythic hold she has in the minds of her worshippers. It is not vanity ormegalomania, it is a powerful political statement .

Whether intentional or not, these investments also have a sound economic rationale. First, it means enclosing a public space, adding value to it through architecture and design, and making it into a useful public asset. Compare this to what most politicians in power do- appropriate public spaces through means legitimate and illegitimate, create deliberate land scarcity, hive off scarce land to speculative developers/ builders and then take a share out of the windfall gains through the artificially induced astronomical rise in real estate prices. In Mayawati’s case public assets remain public and in fact become useful public recreational space. Second, as an asset creation investment which provides meaningful employment to thousands, it is far superior than any number of those brainless, rent seeking yojanas churned out by the Central Government Ministries and the Planning Commission in the guise of poverty alleviation( NReGA included) which create sub standard assets designed to to sink and collapse soon thereafter, to keep alive the rent seeking opportunities. Those investments perpetuate dependence on the state through wage slavery,while these provide to the workers and creators an income gain substantial enough for them to overcome their dependent status. Third, they are a major contributor to urban regeneration. Anyone who has visited Lucknow after Mayawati came into power has to acknowledge the regenerative and transformational role these creations ( with accompanying upgradation of civic infrastructure) have played in rescuing a city which had seemingly degraded and decayed beyond redemption and making it into a hub of urban vitality. Fourth, the interventions generate very substantial employment for a class of artisans steeped in traditional building skills, particularly, stone masonry and stone carving skills, which were otherwise on well on their way to extinction. Lost skills have been regained and reacquired without having had to set up expensive National Skilling Missions.

One of the arguments hurled against her monumentality is that of perverse priorities. While Mayawati’s fiscal mismanagement maybe comparable to most Chief Ministers ( and probably no worse than Punjab, or West Bengal or Andhra or Orissa) singling out her monumentality as an example of irresponsibility is uncalled for. There is an economic justification and more than that in any democracy, decisions on priorities in public expenditure are the sole prerogative of the Legislature and the elected Government. If an investment is openly and transparently a part of the Legislature approved and voted Budget, the question of priorities stands decided. That is the way of federal democracies and merely because we would have determined priorities differently if were in a position to do so does not make Mayawati’s priorities any the more inferior.

Article published in the IIC journal in 2008

Bureaucratic

Park

By Amitabha Pande

As a confirmed backbencher who had perfected the art of appearing to listen attentively to lectures while being fully asleep, I was very disbelieving when I received a command invitation to give a keynote address, of all things, on ‘Governance Reforms’! It can’t be me, I thought. This is the kind of thing that very senior, very high-minded civil servants do when they are re-employed in constitutionally secure assignments and can afford to say all the things that should be done but were not, when they were in a position to do them. So I checked with my hosts whether they really wanted to inflict yet another secretary to the government on to an audience aspiring to reach similar heights of mediocrity and whether they wanted an ‘official’ point of view, in which case I could think of many better suited than I to make nifty ‘power-point’ presentations on such serious matters as ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’, ‘smart-governance’, ‘outcomes budgeting’, et al. They gave some kind of assent; so I assume I have the license for a very personal and digressive ramble through some of the issues that have concerned and bothered me and which may also, incidentally or otherwise, reflect on some facets of governance.

Most bureaucrats, as they grow greyer and graver, tend to become quite insufferably pompous and not only lose their capacity to ask the right questions, but also become intolerant of the question raising ability in others, especially their subordinates. This is more serious than it appears. Quite apart from the fact that a pompous bureaucrat makes for terrible company at a party, the inability to ask awkward questions, constantly, often has disastrous consequences for policy-making and governance.

As bureaucrats, we know that correctly defining a problem is central to problem solving. yet, more often than not, when we do not question accepted wisdom, we confuse the problem with the manifestations of the real problem, the symptom with the disease. We then attempt to administer treatment to problems, which have been incorrectly diagnosed. Consequential failures are then attributed to poor ‘implementation’. you often hear the statement that ‘the policy was well-conceived in theory, but there was a failure of implementation’. To me, this is a contradiction in terms, almost an oxymoron. A well-conceived, well-considered policy, made after asking the most probing, the most searching, the most uncomfortable of questions can never fail during implementation because ‘implementability’ and the appropriate designs of implementation mechanisms have to be an integral part of policy thinking.

In the 1970s, the failure of the policy to give incentives for birth-control measures and aggressively achieve vasectomy targets was not a failure of implementation. It was a failure of misreading the problem as one of ‘over-population’ rather than as a problem of poverty, ill health, illiteracy and poor livelihood opportunities. How did this misreading of the problem occur? Primarily, because we failed to ask and raise questions, accepted a

Diagnosis and prescription, which was wrong, and then, vied with one another to implement it with competitive vigour. We all know the consequences of that. Could this then be called a case of a bad policy well implemented? If that is a logical absurdity so is the ‘good theory but poor practice’ argument. My advocacy of irreverence, non-conformity and intellectual restlessness, therefore, as a value to be nurtured and nourished rather than as a character flaw to be subdued and suppressed has a purpose beyond appearing to be a ‘hat-ke’ type of person. Issues of ‘style’, therefore, may not always be divorced from issues of ‘substance’.

Talking of style, I find it extremely disturbing and abhorrent that, over the years, there has been an exponential growth among both civil servant and politicians in the search for, and the hankering for, the frills and fripperies of power. Every other person stands around with a retinue of peons, gunmen and other hangers-on, all festooned with baubles and gewgaws of tinsel and satin; fancier and fancier white limousines are acquired with flagstaffs, and red and blue overhead lights, white curtains, and bigger and bolder number plates advertising the designations of their owners and their positions in hierarchy. It is now customary that children of those in power are taken to school by official, chauffeured limousines; that free tickets for entertainment events are claimed as a birthright; that discretionary quotas in professional educational institutions are appropriated wherever court scrutiny can be avoided; that scholarships to prestigious higher education centres abroad are engineered and manipulated for the children of the favoured; that contacts and contracts with big business are subtly used for securing lucrative employment openings for one’s progeny. These have now come to be taken as the accepted perks and privileges of office without even attracting the charge of compromised integrity. In fact, many defend these privileges as a surrogate compensation for poor pay.

Again, the issue here is much deeper than my aversion to lifestyle vulgarities. At one level, it is the sheer anachronism of the situation which strikes one. We take pride in being a modern democratic State, which has unshackled itself from the chains of its feudal and imperial past, and which hopes to be a big player in the international arena.

Our outward frippery, however, is more befitting of princelings of a declining Mughal empire.

More than the anachronism of the situation, however, I feel that in many ways, the vulgar displays of power on the part of those who are members of the ruling elites or those closely associated with the wielders of political and administrative power, are symptoms

of a much deeper malaise. We are all aware that some of the more widely reported recent criminal trials involve the children of those closely connected with political power and the State apparatus. In all such cases, criminal behaviour was accompanied by a display of swagger and arrogance of a kind which only comes out of knowing that State power can be used whenever required for achieving illicit and undeserved personal ends. What is even more shocking is the blatant use of power and wealth begotten out of misuse of State power to alter the course of justice.

Probing deeper into the problem, I believe that we are witnessing a very difficult socio-political development which, in many ways, is peculiar to the Indian subcontinent. The emergence of the modern State in most countries of the West was a consequence of the

emergence of classes in society. It was the revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which divided society into different social classes. The modern State came about primarily in response to the needs for managing the conflicting and competing interests among these classes as an overarching and seemingly neutral mechanism

for the exercise of legitimate authority vested in it. In the Indian subcontinent, however, the State and the State apparatus was an instrument for the furtherance of imperial interests. It did not emerge in response to the indigenous development of classes. At the time of Independence, therefore, we inherited a State and an apparatus which was ‘overdeveloped’ in relation to the development of classes. This was a thesis that was convincingly developed in the ’80s by the sociologist Hamza Alawi and remains extremely valid even today.

The consequences of inheriting an ‘overdeveloped’ State, to begin with, have meant that the growth of the State has been substantially independent of the development of classes in civil society. Today, in my view, the Indian State constitutes a class for and by itself, whose primary purpose is to expand and perpetuate itself, through self aggrandizement

and extraction of rent from the economy which, in turn, is engineered and re-engineered, produced and reproduced to yield more and more rent. So governance, in fact, often becomes a means for setting in motion a vicious cycle of rent production and rent extraction.

Let me briefly elaborate the point. First the State uses its inherent coercive power to enter as many spheres of activity it can muscle itself into including such ‘spaces’ as would traditionally be seen as belonging to civil society. This encroachment is through legislative and administrative means, by prescribing an increasingly complex set of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’, by requiring the obtaining of permissions and approvals for virtually any and every action, by taking on the role of being a supplier of a whole range of services in a monopoly situation, and by itself becoming the engine as well as the driver of the economy. Having occupied an overwhelmingly dominant space– remember the concept of ‘commanding heights’ – it then delegates and decentralizes the power to say ‘no’ and the veto power both vertically and horizontally. Everyone in the government has the power to say ‘no’, to block, hinder and inhibit. The power to say ‘yes’, on the other hand, is selectively centralized so that a class of collaborators and intermediaries and facilitators can generate rent and share it with the functionaries of the State for manipulating a ‘yes’ decision. The opportunities for rent extraction, therefore, exist in every sphere and at every stage – from cornering approvals and permissions for industrial activity to acquiring land for fuelling real estate speculation, to personnel placements – there is a bewildering range of rent production and appropriation opportunities too long and numerous to list.

I believe, therefore, that the biggest problem of governance reforms is how we can whittle down the State and look at forms of governance which can progressively enlarge the sphere of action for the civil society and civil society organizations.

…

It is ironic that in a country that pioneered the most innovative forms of governance and social mobilization, where the best practices of the deepest forms of participatory democratic action developed many years before such innovations became a part of

the governance jargon, we sometimes tend to look outwards for models and practices. I am referring to that most impossible of romantic revolutionaries, Mahatma Gandhi, who realized, far ahead of the times, the dangers of the unchecked growth of a centralized

State. The concept of small, fully autonomous, fully empowered, interconnected and interdependent, yet free of central control, village republics which exercise all legislative, executive and judicial powers is probably the most radical and the most futuristic blueprint of good governance ever drawn up. What is remarkable is not only the boldness of the vision and the centrality of placing the individual, direct democracy and the exercise of democratic ethical choices at the centre of governance processes, but also the extent of detail to which processes have been engineered. I will not today dwell on this blueprint but only commend to you to read, absorb and marvel over the grandness, elegance and simplicity of the architecture and design of governance Gandhiji has bequeathed to us. It is a legacy which we ignore at our peril.

It is easy to dismiss Gandhiji’s blueprint as the impractical, utopian fantasy of a faddist. Quite apart from the fact that this does grave injustice to the magnitude and the magnificence of Gandhiji’s practical achievements, it also ignores the impact on social organizations of the single greatest technological development of our times – the Internet

Revolution. What has it done? It has enabled the mushrooming of small groups of knowledge-savvy entrepreneurs to come together to form very high-tech, compact, lean and highly profitable businesses. It has redefined relationships between the home, the neighbourhood and the work place. A whole new geography of relationships has developed between people, institutions and places. Geographical distances have shrunk in cyberspace. Even giant IT transnationals, such as Google, or Microsoft, or Intel, or Apple, are nothing more than a very large number of highly decentralized, geographically spread, fully empowered, small communities or collectivities, fully networked with each other, which only happen to work under a common umbrella and a common ‘brand’. The monolithic giant enterprise is a dinosaur of the past – an extinct species at least in the knowledge industry. New forms of exchange relations have emerged – barter trade in knowledge and the emergence of a knowledge currency. Internal hierarchies have been completely shattered with pyramids replaced by networked nuclei. The distinctions between owners, shareholders, management and labour have got blurred

to the point of obliteration. These fundamental changes have taken place within just a decade. Do we still dismiss the dream of decentralized, interconnected, self-governing, self-regulatory sustainable communities and neighbourhood and village republics as idle fancy?

Some progressive political leaders and civil servants are using technology to fundamentally alter governance paradigms and models. However, resistance to e-governance from entrenched interests and Luddites will take a while to make this a workable model spread all over the country. Suffice it to say that technology now makes it possible for us to move out of a paradigm, which treats governors and the governed as distinct and separate and move into one where people govern themselves without needing governors or governments. The challenge for us is to support, accelerate and empower the creation of a social environment and forms of governance and power structures that provide the framework for the expression of a collective initiative and community control as well as the development of the full capabilities and creativity of the individual. This is now a distinctly practical possibility.

Perhaps the time has come for us to make ‘Gandhigiri’ the central focus of governance reforms, and to say ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’.

. 

Junk the Lokpal.

There exists an astonishing perversity of consensus about the desirability of having a Lokpal .  Every one seems to want one and everyone seems to think that having one is critical to the crusade against corruption . Voices of dissent have been few and far between and  more about the role a coterie of  self appointed ‘ Civil Society’ representatives have arrogated to themselves and the manner in which they have tried to sidetrack the processes of parliamentary democracy than about the Lokpal per se.

Will the Lokpal make  even an iota of difference to the bewildering diversity of rent seeking avenues that exist within the Indian state system ? Will it bring about a change of heart in the corrupt ? Will he transform decision making processes within the Government and make decision makers more democratically accountable ? Is  greater centralisation of authority in a public official and the creation of a whole new bureaucracy an answer to problems created by bureaucratic centralisation in the first instance ? The answer to all these questions is an overwhelming ‘No’. Why then persist with a proposal which we know will only open yet another rent seeking opportunity and the emergence of new Czars of anti corruption corruption. The proposal deserves to be summarily jettisoned. Not dilution or moderation but  an outright rejection.

Why ? For one, a prescription made without knowing what the disease is, or  made  after defining the disease in such simplistic, generic terms so as to make the definition meaningless, can lead to fatal after effects. ‘Corruption’ is one of those  seemingly universal, umbrella words which can mean very different things to different people but which everyone thinks they know But let’s face it, even when we talk of ‘financial’ corruption , we are referring to a bewildering variety of wrongdoings. There is ‘corruption’ which is better described as rent seeking. There is corruption of cronyism. There is corruption of misuse of power and authority for personal gain. There is corruption of defalcation and embezzlement of public funds. There is corruption of patronage and favouritism. Each of these forms of ‘corruption’ requires to be treated very differently and rarely, if at all , through a cure all prescription like the Lokpal. The votaries of the Lokpal Bill have neither attempted a diagnosis nor seem to have the critical, analytical faculties to do so and yet offer a universal prescription with the smugness of a  self righteous quack.

It is difficult to attempt, here, a detailed analysis of some of the causative factors which make the Indian State into a gigantic rent seeking apparatus, but a few major factors stand out. The first is the sheer size of the state. The Indian State remains ‘overdeveloped’ ( using an old thesis of the sociologist Hamza Alawi ) in relation  to the classes of civil society and constitutes a class by and for itself.  It uses its inherent coercive power to encroach,  through legislative and administrative means, into as many spheres of activity  as it possibly can.  Then by prescribing an increasingly complex set of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ it ensures that permissions and approvals  are required for virtually any and every action. By taking on the role of being a  monopoly producer and supplier of a whole range of services and by itself becoming the engine as well as the driver of the economy, it positions itself in a perfect situation to become a super rentier. Corruption is therefore embedded in the basic framework of the State system .

The second factor is the structure of Indian democracy, heavily biased in favour of a centralised, unitary state in which the legislature plays a secondary role to the executive on the one hand and federated units and local governments get increasingly subordinated especially in the economic and financial decision making sphere. Their primary role becomes something like that of a franchise holder who operates the  rent seeking business for the parent company on a revenue share model. The unit ( the state or the local ‘government’ institution) is not really an autonomous unit of democracy taking its own decisions but an implementing agency. The number of such agencies is  so large that it is impossible to fix responsibility and maintain any kind of transparency. The power to say ’no’ is completely decentralised and devolved, so that everyone can block or hinder unless paid their share of rent, and the power to say ‘yes’ so centralised so that at the apex the highest share of the rent revenue can be collected.

The proponents of the Lokpal Bill, on the other hand show complete ignorance of these systemic flaws and accept the structure of decision making and democracy as it is. The touching faith in a knight in shining armour going full pelt tilting at the giant wind mills of corruption is pathetic in the poverty of thinking it exposes.

One of the biggest flaws in such thinking is the premise that the fear of getting caught and being punished keeps a check on corrupt behaviour. This is as naive as thinking that theft and burglary and murder will be reined in if the Police is given even more draconian powers to catch and prosecute offenders. In fact, it is well established that beyond a certain threshold, policing and crime develop a cosy relationship with one another and a vested interest develops in keeping crime alive to sustain an expansionary police , especially if crime acquires a strong financial and commercial dimension. The police then goes actively fishing for crime and sniffing out new opportunities for extracting rent. The perpetuation of crime justifies more police so crime requires to be kept alive for police to grow and keep itself in business. Already, the CBI  looks for and more opportunities to carry out investigations not merely to sustain themselves but to reassert their position in the bureaucratic power hierarchy. Trivial cases, generated on the basis of dubious ‘source reports’ are kept alive for years on end either to extort money or other benefits, such as discretionary allotment of scarce Government housing, or simply to show their place in the power structure. For every genuine case of corruption there are five times the number of cases of trumped up charges against honest persons which never come to light because they are deliberately prolonged to keep the business going. Such instances will grow exponentially with a super powerful, ‘ independent’ agency like the Lokpal and the removal of existing safeguards which offer a modicum of protection to the honest.

For the dishonest the deterrent value of a powerful Lokpal  is actually very little.  Having a ‘strong’ Lokpal  only means that he /she has to work out more ingenious ways of escaping detection.  In any case, most corruption rarely comes to notice  because the corrupt are more often than not ( except where sheer arrogance e.g Maran, Raja, Kalmadi, makes them careless ) very careful about correctness of procedure. Vigil keepers and investigators invariably look for deviation from rule, norm or procedure to keep a check on corruption or to nail the corrupt, forgetting the fact that  most of the really corrupt are clever enough to be meticulous in their paperwork and conform strictly to the established procedure.

 In defence procurements, to cite just one example, there is a well established hierarchy of rent collectors along the approval chain. The approval cycle itself is so complicated and so lengthy that the opportunity for each functionary or facilitator to collect his share of the booty along the nuisance value chain is maximised ( the Tehelka tapes gave a fleeting glimpse of that). At no stage does anyone really need to circumvent or short circuit the procedure because following the procedure itself provides the opportunity. Paradoxically, higher the  level of procedural  correctness and propriety required, higher the chances of the bidders  having to pay more for a smooth passage through the procedural rigmarole .For the rent collectors/ facilitators along the approval chain, it is not necessary to either deviate from procedure or to influence the purchase decision in favour of any bidder. All he needs to do is to keep the process moving forward because all the bidders open a kind of Letter of Credit with the established chain of rent collectors before the procurement process begins and as each stage of the transaction is crossed , the rent gets automatically paid at the appropriate level. At the apex of the decision making chain is the Chief Collector, which could be the Minister/ Prime Minister , or his/her confidante who gets the highest share of the rent. It matters little who wins an order, because payment is made for the final approval being granted and  not for deciding in any one persons favour.The drill is so well established that the flow of rent rarely gets disrupted except when there is a falling out  among the middlemen or one of them decides to violate the Thieves’ Code of Honour. No part of the procedure is violated, no rule flouted, no bias shown and no pressure exercised. At the apex decision making level all that is required is steady progress of the transaction along the approval chain and regular flow of  advance information to keep negotiations ongoing with all the bidders until the end and then strike the best bargain with the one who is most likely to win. In the Bofors case , for example, the choice of the gun had nothing to do with the pay outs. Had any other gun been chosen , the same commissions would have been paid, except that the middle level agent/ middleman, like Win Chaddha would have been different for each company. The agents who operate at the highest levels, (like the Hindujas were said to be) are guaranteed their share because it is known that bypassing them means risking the whole deal.Fear of detection, prosecution or punishment has no impact whatsoever in a transaction of this kind.

Fear of harassment from the investigation/ audit/ vigilance agency on the other hand has a paralysing impact on the honest. An honest person has only his  carefully built record of integrity to be proud of and his reputation to defend. If he /she is also a doer he is most likely to make mistakes and often fall foul of procedural propriety. If he knows that he has to constantly look behind his back before taking a decision , or that the consequences of making a bona fide mistake or an error of fact or procedure means being subjected to interminable investigation which will wreck a carefully built reputation, he will just stop taking any decisions  which could latert come under scrutiny. This kind of paralysis has already hit many Departments, like Defence, which have to take complex techno commercial decisions.

 Internal  file notations, in which officers were encouraged to freely express their opinions, disagree , admonish, praise, overrule and served as a fascinating record of the internal decision making process, now undergo a pre scrutiny to ensure that before pen is put to paper, the implications of each sentence are carefully worked out and an ‘agreed’  fully sanitised note is prepared which can have a smooth passage. Officers who may not fall in line with such a procedure are simply transferred and replaced with more pliable ones. Inconvenient notations are routinely replaced to ensure that the file becomes a bland, controversy free document, showing complete unanimity of approach, along the hierarchy. Files which may not conform to this sanitising routine, are simply buried and once the personnel concerned have moved on or out, a new file started. And this is the situation within the ostensibly constrained environment that the C.A.G/ C.V.C/ C.B.I  triad function under.. We could soon have a situation ( and we have already come a fair way towards it ) where only the proactive rent seeker  will do things and the honest will either conveniently slip out of the decision making process, or deflect the issue  expertly to put it into a spin so that no decision is possible during his tenure. The bright officers will do doing what they are really good at-  ’ paralysis by analysis’. As no one is ever penalised for inaction, or delayed decision making or nipping bold  unconventional ideas in the bud , the timid, the pusillanimous , the servile, the nit-picker,and the status quo‘ist will prevail. Any discerning observer can see that this kind of rot is already widespread. The Lokpal will ensure that such behaviour now gets wholly institutionalised and rewarded. The incentives will move in the direction of those who do not take decisions.

Is there a way out or should we simply learn to live with corruption? A true crusade against corruption must begin with radically rethinking  and redesigning structures institutions and processes. There are no short cuts to this. The State has to be made to shrink, to reduce the sphere of its activities and to devolve  most of its powers, resources  and jurisdiction to the smallest, feasible unit of democratic governance following the principles of subsidiarity. Devolution has to be comprehensive including the actual , physical transfer of assets, resources and the power to raise resources. Decision making has to involve the participation of the maximum number of people and there has to be a concerted move to move from bureaucratic processes to democratic ones. Budgets, as instruments of control and regulation have to replace administrative hierarchy based controls with clearly designated responsibilities to ‘ Budget Holders’ for achieving budgeted outcomes. Internal delegation of powers has to follow the principle of ‘maximum possible’ rather than ‘minimum necessary’ and mutual trust has to replace mutual suspicion. Direct elections have to be confined to the smallest  identified unit of democracy and governance- village, block, district, city- so that people have direct knowledge of the people they are electing and election costs are affordable to everyone. Elections to any other tier of democracy have to be indirect. This requires a complete rethinking of the architecture of democracy to bring it as close  as possible to the Gandhian blueprint. In other words - Panchayati Raj has to be reinvented, utterly and comprehensively.

These suggestions need to be elaborated at length to carry the debate forward. Enough to say at this point that the grand crusade against corruption has, instead of addressing these issues and mobilising popular support for a large scale transformation of politics and governance has reduced itself to a campaign for an authoritarian bureaucracy, centralised controls and a further diminution  of even the limited institutions of democracy we have been successful in nurturing. What we need is more democracy, not less.