Government needs an OD overhaul

Like past President Kalam & late PM Rajiv Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, too is a reluctant politician. Upon becoming PM the first time, he announced that no new policies are needed, what is needed is administrative reform to ensure the effective implementation of the existing policies.

The solutions to the problems of India are mostly known. Problem is in the structure & HR policies of the Government of India. It is an OD issue. People who join the government are motivated mostly by security & power. Once in, they will earn till they die, they cannot be fired, at worst they can be transferred. This must change, what we need is people who are motivated to acheive & accomplish. Today, such people will simply not join government because its HR policies attract exactly the opposites.

 The appointment of Nandan Nilekani as a Cabinet Minister equivalent is a very positive and refreshing development.
 
A loose federal structure allows things to fall between cracks, there are no accountabilities. Results are in form of reports not actions & outcomes. The checks & balances are based on mistrust rather than fail-safe strategies. What we need are institutions headed by strong personalities who identify with its successes & failures. Delhi Metro & ISRO are two such examples.
 
Once elected, PM is nation’s leader including that of opposition. Opposition’s perennial role to destabilise the government tantamounts to sedition. PM must be empowered not undermined.
 
A captain can be only as good as its team. We can keep on changing the captains but the team remains the same. 
 
The top down and bottoms up approach to change must converge. As much as we need to weed out corrupt politicians we need to weed out the ineffective middle and bottom layers too.
 
There is no problem that India faces for which the solution is not known, what remains unknown is how to change the government structure, systems & staff. Who is responsible for that? How do we iniate a HR & OD overhaul? Where does one start? Any answers?

7 Responses to “Government needs an OD overhaul”

  1. Dipinder says:

    Nice post Naveen. I agree. But we need to go further.

    Where to start from ?
    The root problem is in our electoral process, and corruption/criminalisation of politics. W/o cleaning up the electoral system, substantial administrative reform is not feasible and will never happen.

    What can you and I do ? Engage politically. Spend atleast a few minutes everyday trying to find more about your constituency, and political leaders. Doing this regularly (‘Everyday’) is important – and not easy.

    We need to spend more time getting more politically aware and engaged, than thinking about smarter ‘technocratic’ solutions/policies.

  2. Naveen says:

    By focussing on politicians, let us not absolve the IAS, IFS, IPS brigade that exists in ivory towers as “untouchables’ who nobody can hold accountable for their incompetences. Imagine, you pass one test and never have to prove yourself again and get to affect the destiny of a nation without ever being questioned. Further, within first few years, most of them view themselves as policy makers rather than implementers and develop multiple barriers to public access.

    While I agree with you but as I have stated it is not an either/or but an AND situation

  3. Alok Mittal says:

    A lot of people believe that the place to start is local level self-governance – while this is a administrative structure reform, and not an OD reform, this starts bringing in direct participation at root level. Part of what is being asked for is ability for citizens to be able to withhold salaries of government staff at local level – that could be powerful!

  4. Naveen says:

    Indeed. Primary school & health center employees ought to be accountable to village panchayats / local councils as is already happening here & there, I believe, in AP & MP. As I proposed, the bottoms up & the tops down, both need to converge.

  5. Dipinder says:

    @Alok – I agree with you. But there are other things which can be done to improve electoral process. Decentralisation of power without local ‘capacity building’ may actually be counter-productive in the short term. We need to better engaged and politically informed citizens, in whatever political processes exist around them (all levels of government).

    @Naveen – there is no question of absolving the bureaucracy … and before that ‘disengaged’ citizens ! Everyone is to blame. It is not a matter of either/or (and I agree with your ‘and’ in that sense). But it is important to prioritise given that we have limited resources. ‘Where to start from ?’ as you had asked.

    Bottom-up top-down convergence is a useful comprehensive idea, but it is too broad unfortunately. We need to figure out concrete solutions – what exactly do should you and I – each one of us – do with the next few hours of our time and resources which we are willing to invest towards our common goals. To my mind, the bottleneck in India at the moment is unwillingness of the so called reformers to move on from intellectual discussions and engage politically in the field. This bottleneck is no doubt widening but this is where we need to focus for now (IMHO).

  6. Naveen says:

    We, the citizens, have elected political layer and hired administrative layer to run the country. Ideally, beyond that you & I should be focussing on our professions & paying our taxes. The problem is that the government that we pay for is performing poorly. Question is why.

    First & foremost, it is a 3S problem. By & large we inherited & continued with the Systems & Structure designed by & suitable for colonial rule. All that we did was to change the 3rd S, the Staff.

    It is time we relook at these 3Ss & devise them to suit strategies of our times. My question of “where to start?” is in this context. We have an HRD ministry, why is this not their job? That this needs to be done is hardly in debate, this was the lament of late PM Rajiv Gandhi as well as of current PM. Our administrative machinery is a resource abyss. Rajiv Gandhi stated that it costs more to collect individual taxes than the realizations, that less than 5 paisa of every Rs spent reaches the end user. As of now we are absolving the bureaucracy by not demanding accountabilities & effeciencies. RTI act is a partial right, a good start. We have a right to see deliverables, the results, to get bang for buck to ensure that our monies are well spent. We are not shy of resources as much as shy of their effective utilisation.

    The raison deter of this forum is the very fact that those we pay to “figure out concrete solutions” are doing an inadequate job, and they cannot be hauled up. A politician at least can be ousted in the next election, but not our DGP or Secretary & like. And they are the ones who actually run the system. And worse so, as generalists. There is hardly anyone who holds a portfolio in which they are experts.

  7. […] this rather than just NGOs and activists. Also, from the presentation, it seems clear that the OD challenges earlier referred to on nextindia.org for other governmental functions are equally relevant here – from PIOs not knowing about it, […]

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