Tryst with Governance

It’s almost 4 days since I heard Prime Minister Modi address the nation from Red Fort on 15^th August 2014. I must confess that as a Government servant, for the first time, I am feeling enthused and excited that I am working for a Government that is headed by a leader who has a vision and  a roadmap for the nation. It’s not that this was the first speech that I was listening to an Independence Day – though this was the first time I had gone to attend the 15^th August function at Red Fort. One reason for this was obviously the buzz that it was mandatory for us to attend. However, the more compelling reason was my Dad, who was very keen to attend and had asked me almost a month back if it was possible to get passes. I have seen my Dad transforming from an online enrolled AAP member to a die-hard Modi Fan. Many a dinner conversations we have had regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders we have and over a period of time, I have found myself getting to agree more with his beliefs in the new leader.

So we went, early morning and were lucky enough to get seats which gave us a view of the podium as well as the feel of the surrounding ambience. What impressed me most was the tone of the speech. It was so very different from the Lalan College, Bhuj speech that he delivered last year. That was of course an election mode speech but the tone was too adversarial. As compared to that, this year there were no negative sentiments. He began by acknowledging previous Prime Ministers and thanking the opposition for the support in getting important legislation passed. This was a changed Prime Minister – it appeared as if a true leader and a statesman is in the making.

However what made me his fan was the simple ideas. The thoughts on Bureaucracy, Sanitation, Women, Manufacturing, Skills and E Governance were music to my ears. The icing on the cake was the decision on Planning Commission. I have myself endured the tyranny of the Commission which has caused delays of at least 9 to 12 months for the EFC and Cabinet proposals mooted by my Department. The problem with Planning Commission has been that it gets into an executive role and starts taking decisions for the Departments which is totally a transgression of authority as Departments must be free to conceptualize their schemes within their planned and budgetary outlays. Role of Planning Commission needs to be to bring in synergies between Departments and come up with long term vision and plans rather than tinkering with the day to day functioning of the Departments. It would have been wonderful had the ideas regarding merger of Departments like Steel-Mines-Coal and Power-New and Renewable Energy et al came from the Planning Commission. Even the experts on PPP in Planning Commission are so convinced of their own points of view that they would refuse to entertain any alternate perspective and would even refuse to share soft copies of documents. The institution had become truly archaic and if what has been announced is implemented it would cut the internal red tape of the Government by a great deal.

Another notable feature of the Speech was that it was not presented as a certificate for the greatness that we normally bestow upon ourselves. There was no mention of our rockets and missiles, our super power status, our potential economic might or how we stalled an agreement at WTO. There was no thumping of chests for the Gujarat model or what all the Parliament just achieved in the Monsoon session. The Speech had elements which read like the To Do list of a serious CEO of the nation. The issues identified and the ideas espoused are so very relevant. The take on rape and crime against women was so very different than the ‘Boys would be Boys’ mindsets. The target of all schools with toilets for girls is so very achievable. Similarly the model village concept gave an action plan for all the elected MPs and will definitely have a trickle-down effect if the Rural Development Ministry works out the minor details. The ideas on Financial Inclusion and insurance for the poor are similar. I doubt if any previous Independence Day speech had so many time bound quantifiable targets.

The focus on Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship are key to take India back to the growth cycle. The Mantra of Come, Make in India will of course require much more action on infrastructure and regulatory issues – but the idea is that once the goal is defined, efforts can be made to resolve the roadblocks. This will be the biggest challenge as the retro tax measures and the New Land Acquisition Act will require a lot of tweaking if the Made in India tag is to become a reality.

The ideas on Skills, Digital India and E Governance are so very critical for us to reap the benefits of our demographic dividend. All this was like the things that we always talked about with friends becoming the priorities of the Government. I am happy to be part of this change. Am willing to do my bit to make India a better place. This hour on the 15^th was a true Tryst with Governance moment.

Towards City States

Towards City States

The other day my maid asked me if I could help one of her relatives, who lives in Bihar, get any job in Delhi – expectation was for any job that pays Rupees six to eight thousand  a month. I asked her if that would actually result in a better standard of living as costs here will be much more than that in Bihar. However, apparently for people without land, there are very few jobs available and they are more comfortable doing manual jobs in an urban environment than in their own village. It’s also because most people generally relate moving to a city as a sign of moving up the socio-economic ladder and can actually result in better education for their children.

Perception of Development seems to have a direct correlation with Urbanization. As families expand and land holdings get fragmented, more people in rural areas are moving to cities in the quest of better life. If you talk to people in the villages, the general perception is the cities have better schools, hospitals and employment avenues. This is also confirmed by migration data. Urban population has expanded from 17.3% in 1951 to 27.8% in 2001 to 31.2% in 2011. In the last 10 years, urban population grew by almost 91 million.

It is also anticipated that more than 100 million people will move from villages to cities in the next ten years. These numbers may exceed 300 million in the next 20 years. How do we plan for such a massive urbanization phenomena? Do we need to bring in structural changes in our Governance structures to adapt to a situation when more people will be living in cities than in villages?

As per Census 2011, we have around 46 cities with a million plus population, 91 with a population of 500,000 and more and 497 cities with a population of 100,000 or more. The bulk of the migration today takes place in the million plus cities and they are today bursting at their seams with no provision for additional housing, sanitation or capacity to absorb increasing traffic. They just don’t have the wherewithal for the additional 100 million people who will be moving to cities in the next 10 years. To meet this challenge, we need new cities or look at the smaller cities as potential big cities.

Projects like the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) which is a $90 billion infrastructure project and will create 24 new cities along the 1500 km long corridor seem to be the way forward. However, there are constraints on the number of such projects that can be undertaken on account of availability of resources and time required for execution of such projects. Thus, can we think of a mechanism by which the 500 odd 100,000 plus cities are made into hubs of growth that can provide city like opportunities and amenities to the people in the hinterland? These 500 cities can be equipped with infrastructure so that each can take in about 200,000 more people in the next 10 years, thus absorbing the additional 100 million people expected to move to urban centres. How do we make this happen?

One way to do this will be to put focus on the cities in our Governance structures. Each 100,000 plus city can be the hub of governance for the population around it. Presently they are governed by Municipal Bodies but lack the financial and administrative authority to be able to devise plans and implement them. Unfortunately in the predominantly Centre-State federal Governance structure that we have, the objectives of developing cities and urban agglomerations are lost. Political authority and power lies in elected MLAs and MPs who have constituencies that are primarily rural and hence the political discourse remains on rural development, agriculture and creating low skill – low pay jobs for people. The real political authority lies in Chief Ministers who are unable to focus beyond their own constituencies. Many States are so big and unwieldy that political executive is unable to focus on the needs like creation of cities and building infrastructure. 

Another problem is the structure of the administrative departments itself – most States and the Centre has too many departments and it does little more than just adding layers of bureaucracy which further makes any real change difficult. The same is true at Centre also and there are many Departments who try to do things at National level which should actually be done at the local level. Most such departments end up just becoming a fund disbursing and account keeping clearing house.

What we need is massive downsizing of Government at Centre and State level. There are almost 50 Ministries in Government of India with more than 52 Departments in addition to Cabinet Secretariat, Planning Commission, Prime Minister’s Office and President’s Secretariat. Compare this to 16 Ministries in Singapore and Australia and 24 in United Kingdom. The situation is similar in State Governments where the compulsions of managing coalitions and keeping MLAs happy had led to almost everyone becoming a Minister. There used to jokes about two Ministers looking after Sports – One Khel and the other Kood Minister!! This stopped when Supreme Court put a cap on the number of Ministers a State can have. However, this has been circumvented by the innovative practice of appointing Parliamentary Secretaries who function just like Ministers. This results in mammoth and irreparable damage to Governance.

Such huge departments and ministries start functioning for themselves and the Ministers for their acts are not accountable to the constituency that choses them. The majority of MLAs and MPs do not get a chance to playing an active role in Governance. Most of them are very often as frustrated with the way Government systems function or rather don’t function, as anyone of us. Everyone in the system has someone to blame for whatever is wrong and there seems to be a very depressing outlook. How can we ensure that elected representatives get an active role to play and at the same time be accountable to their constituency?

In order to address these challenges, we need to move to a City State kind of Governance system with directly elected Mayor as the head of political establishment for the City. The Mayor needs to be supported by a CEO who can be a civil servant with 15-20 years of experience. The CEO can have under him a crack team of 5-6 young civil servants looking after Education, Health, Sanitation, Power and Infrastructure. This team can be given targets and goals which are audited by independent third parties and their performance evaluated accordingly.  The Mayor can be elected every 4 years with provisions of right to recall. The City will also have ward counselors who would vote on the Mayor’s proposals. Thus accountability to the City’s people will be ensured. Funds from Centre and State should devolve to the Cities based on population and development index and there can be complete transparency on the funds flowing and works being undertaken.

State Government’s role would be limited and will have departments that only need to deal with inter-city matters and policy matters. All intra City matters will be the lookout of the Mayor and his team. In order to make this a reality, the Cities can be centered around the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. Each Constituency can have the largest urban conglomeration as the City centre. Developing the Cities in a holistic manner on the pattern of Gram Swaraj that Mahatma Gandhi talked of can help us to not only move up the development ladder but will also help create jobs locally that will eliminate the need for migration. Thus all cities will end up having quality schools, super speciality hospitals, recreation centres and more symbols of big cities. Each City can identify one or two areas as its core strength areas and we will be able to create City specific Special Economic Zones that will ensure people with specific skill sets are able to find employment and add value to the City.

An example can illustrate how this will work. Moradabad is a district in Uttar Pradesh with a population of around 4.77 million which is roughly equal to that of Singapore. Moradabad has two Lok Sabha constituencies and nine Assembly Constituencies. The district has two urban centres at Moradabad and Chandausi. However, the quality of urban amenities – roads, power, hygiene, sanitation, water – is dismal. The district has been known for its Brassware exports. However, as part of the State of Uttar Pradesh, the voice of its MPs and MLAs get lost as the priorities and focus of State Government are different.

Instead if Moradabad and Chandausi had their own Mayors and teams off officials to govern the cities, they could address the key issues in a much more holistic manner. They could prioritize the key intervention areas and use the resources to develop the civic infrastructure as also take measure for increasing the brassware exports and creating jobs for its population. The State Government could recognize clusters of such cities as a special economic zone for brassware industry and take measures to promote the industry. The role of Central Government could be in ensuring an export friendly taxation system and access to airports and ports for facilitating exports. The idea is that the Mayor of Moradabad will be like the Prime Minister of Singapore who will make a plan for developing Moradabad as a City State and be responsible for it. The plan will have all critical inputs – education, health, infrastructure, jobs and he along with his team will ensure that the same is achieved in a time bound manner.

So are City States the future of our urban landscape??

Abhishek Singh

(Views are personal)

Open Data and Open Government : Opportunities and Challenges

Open Data and Open Government : Opportunities and Challenges

This week I attended a Workshop on the need for a Global Policy on Open Data at the Internet Governance Form at Nairobi. Christopher Corbin from UK was in the Chair and my co panelists included Professor Anne Fitzegerad from Queensland University, Ms Waltraut Ritter from Knowledge Dialogues, Hongkong, and Dr Rajshree Dutta from CSDMS, India. The session was quiet lively with interesting interventions from Dorothy Gordon of Ghana, Maria Lee Hoon of IDRC and other participants from World over. The event was actively followed on the webcast and twitter thanks to the tweets of @MGPSI and @josemalonso.

The key theme of the Workshop was on the need for a Global Policy framework for Public Sector Information online. This article is about the thoughts I shared at the Workshop.

Open Government is a concept with which no well meaning democratic Government can disagree with. Open Government is all about transparency, public participation and collaboration which will bring in efficiency, reliability and accountability in delivery of public services. India has taken the policy initiative of enacting the Right to Information in 2005 which ensures that all information can be shared with people who seek them. It further calls for an obligation of the Government to disclose voluntarily information to the citizens. Section 4(1) of the RTI Act 2005 requires Government to digitize all records and make them available over a network. Accordingly, India is building an Open Data Platform (data.gov.in) which will place all information and data of the Government, except a negative list, in the public domain.

However, what needs to be understood is that Open Data Policy is more than mere technology, or a data.gov portal or just doing it for the sake of transparency. Open Data Policy has a lot to do with Governance, Social, Economic, Political and Legal Issues. The real issue is that how do we ensure that all relevant data is put in an organized for. It’s necessary to define the metadata standards to be able to link the datasets of multiple Government departments.
The benefits for an open Data policy are immense. Once data is put in an open domain on a platform, entrepreneurs, developers and innovators will have access to this data and they will be able to build mashable applications on top of this and offer useful services on mobile platform. Infact this is the most critical aspect as ultimately putting Data on an Open platform is not an end in itself. Data must lead to enabling services which will be useful for the people.

A challenge that Governments face in migrating to an Open Data platform and an Open Government policy is that there is lot of resistance from within the Government as many functionaries feel that it’s extra effort that they have to put and more importantly most functionaries do not want to let go of the control over data and information that they have now. Given the potential an Open Data regime and Open Government policy has for Governance and Accountability, it is worthwhile for Governments to build in awareness and capacity building of Government functionaries from top to bottom to ensure that the implementation of the policy does not see roadblocks. It will require extensive Change Management sessions as it’s an attitudinal and mindset change, we are seeking to achieve.

On the key issue of whether the Global Policy on Public Sector Information can be built upon the OECD and the European Union policy that have been adopted by almost 50 UN Nations, I felt that it might be a bit premature. The level of development of Information Infrastructure and issues of Access and Diversity may require each country to formulate its own road map towards an Open Data Policy. There are Governance and Political issues also and while advocacy towards an Open Data policy is important, what we need to provide is a resource toolkit, knowledge repository about the best practices and metadata standards along with assessment reports on the benefits of an Open Data Policy framework, which will ultimately help more nations to embrace Open Data Policy. The toolkits and metadata standards will be critical from the point of view of integrating data across regions and countries so that applications and services work seamlessly without any borders and boundaries. There are cultural and privacy issues also which differ from nation to nation and each country will need to address them in its own way. The business modeling of sharing revenues from the applications and services developed by innovators and developers with Governments also needs to be addressed.

Another key issue is that in countries where regions and communities are yet to get access to Broadband, what use will an Open Data Portal be? This challenge can be met by first adopting a Right to Information policy which allows people to get access to all information, in electronic mode or in manual mode. The next step can be to provide all information voluntarily on an Open Data Portal and ultimately adopt an Open Government Policy framework. The next step will be to link up Data with Services which ultimately benefit citizens in getting access to better services, innovators to create new business models and revenue streams and Governments to improve Governance and bring in transparency and accountability. All this should be accompanied by extensive awareness building, training and capacity building campaigns to enable smooth transition to an Open Data regime.

Babu Bashing

Being part of the Government has its pluses and the minuses. Very often I wonder as why we in the Government are largely unable to meet the aspirations that people have from us. What I hate most about my profession is being referred to as Babus!! I remember how I used to revolt when my grandmother used to call me 'Babu' rather than my nickname 'Bobby' during my annual summer visits to my village in Azamgarh, UP. Today when the media refers to Government officers (IAS) as Babus, I feel miserable. Atleast grandma's Babu was with love and affection. Media and people by large call us Babus with contempt and ridicule. May be they are justified and rightly so. There are lots of expectations from us and do we actually do justice to what people expect or what is just and fair!!
Very often I feel, we dont and we are unable to. We do have our reasons for the same. Our favorite blame guy is who else, the politician. In 99% of the cases it is true that we do take irrational and illogical decisions on account of politicians. We do explain the wrongs to the politicians and in most cases we are over ruled. Why do the politicians over rule us. Privately most of them agree to our views but they have compulsions for what they do. What are these compulsions and why do they do all that they do.
One prime reason is money. Yes money. Unfortunately Democracy is a luxury and someone has to foot the bill for this luxury. Our democratic processes of elections are pretty expensive. It is common knowledge that anyone contesting Assembly or Parliament Elections has to spend a few crores to be anywhere near an outside chance to win elections. There might be a few exceptions but more than 95% of elections are won by people who spend crores. No one joins politics these days out of love for the nation or for a sense of service and dedication to the society. Those days ended with the end of the British rule when professionals like Gandhi, Nehru, Bose et al quit lucrative careers to join politics. Today people who dont get into Engineering, Medicine, Law, Civil Services, Teaching or any decent profession join politics. Having a criminal background can mean a fast track growth in this profession. Then they spend millions in contesting elections which are rather unpredictable. Huge investments can go awry. Even if one wins the election, one does not know if one will end up in the ruling party. Even if one is on the right side of the fence, not every one becomes a minister. If one becomes a minister, it is not sure if one will be able to get a portfolio that is regraded lucrative. Given the low probabilty of success in this field, those who get an opportunity want to make the most of it - recover their investments, make provisions for future elections and most of all find jobs or contracts for their thousand odd workers - who have families to feed and lives to live. In many ways they are forced to be corrupt and take illogical and irrational decisions. The bureacrats are supposed to check this. But for their own weaknesses and greed, they play along with the politicos and we get the government that we have. Corrupt and Non Performing!!
What then. Whats the solution. One can be State funding of elections and strict laws that check the criminal elements joining politics. This will create a situation when even professionals and well meaning people without money or muscle can think of joining the political profession. People do want clean men but we hardly give them a choice. Once such well meaning people join the Government, bureacrats will also fall in line as they will not have any excuses or alibis for their own acts of commission and omission.
We do need this. Lets think over and do this. It is definitely better than Babu Bashing!!!!