Audit Ain’t the Demon you think it is, if you haven’t Strayed!

In our genteel government ecosystem, audit is reviled, punned, demonized – and rarely welcomed. There are many humours that keep bobbing up from time to time to subtly soften the brutalities of its findings. Some are malicious, some humorous to a T; but for me, the one that takes the cake concerns the four-legged animals. The orders on the subject prescribed that when an animal died, the hide and skin of the dead must be accounted for in the ledger. Some animals had strayed, enquiry was conducted, and their loss was duly noted. But the auditor was horrified. Enquiry was fine, but what about the hides and skins that remained unaccounted for. Livid, he shot off his observations. Riled, the executive officer otherwise known for congenital analgesia with no innate pain sensors exhaled a small laugh and sprung into action: “I’m sorry the animals’ hides and skins couldn’t be accounted for in the ledgers, for the poor dears didn’t leave them behind when they strayed!”

But, now on to the sombre part. Audit indeed is serious business, as much for the auditor as for the auditee. Not too long along, the audit findings of the CAG on Commonwealth Games, 2G, Coalgate and a string of others that followed in close succession brought to the fore the shenanigans that otherwise would not have been put out in the public domain. Notwithstanding the laughable “zero-loss” statement of Kapil Sibal, it is well to remember that in a democratic set-up, along with executive and legislative separation of powers, there are conscious in-built institutionalized checks and balances in the form of constitutional audit and judicial review, not to speak of the media oversight. Each role while being separate and distinct with boundaries drawn is subject to and relies on the other to keep the wheel of accountability well-oiled and ticking. It calls for respecting others’ role in fulfillment of their assigned mandate; and with the judiciary playing the umpire overseeing transgressions and interference, if any, by any of the institutions.

So, when judiciary, the constitutional umpire of matters just and transparent, refuses to audit itself and recuses to be the Caesar’s wife, there indeed is a cause for concern. It is like the fence eating the crop! The recent Jharkhand High court’s order of June 20 recalling its earlier order directing the Principal Accountant General to audit the accounts of three judicial institutions is puzzling; it ex facie smacks of shielding the Jharkhand Legal Services Authority (JHALSA), the Jharkhand Judicial Academy (JJA), and the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi from seeming mis-and-malfeasance. This, naturally, has evoked sharp criticism from lawyers and the Jharkhand high court advocates’ association has submitted a petition, signed by 50 practicing lawyers, to the state bar council seeking its intervention.

Worse still that this was done against the background that not too far ago, NUSRL students had launched protest demanding complete administrative overhaul, audit and publication of financial records. This makes it hugely troubling. “It is well established that review jurisdiction,” as the legal magazine Bar and Bench said, “should be exercised by courts sparingly. The Supreme Court, in Sow Chandra Kanta And Another vs Sheik Habib had held: ‘A review of a judgment is a serious step and reluctant resort to it is proper only where a glaring omission or patent mistake or like grave error has crept in earlier by judicial fallibility’. In this case, it seems that the High Court has protected these institutions from scrutiny.”

Regularity and propriety audit are diagnostic tools aimed at looking at innards of an institution, much as medical equipments help sight the body’s health, with its warts and all – zeroing on how much the cancer has metastasized. How wrong the order is can be seen metaphorically just by boxing the risible lines of an English court cited in the judgment: “Even God himself did not pass sentence upon Adam before he was called upon to make his defence,” with “Caesar’s wife should always be above suspicion!” The surmise is telltale. As is said, not only must you be honest but you’ve to be seen to be so. The audit directed by the earlier bench headed by the Chief Justice – who ex officio is the Patron of the Jharkhand Legal Services Authority (JHALSA) and of the Jharkhand Judicial Academy (JJA), and the Chancellor of the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi – was a step in the right direction to set the house in order.

There is no better institution to audit than the constitutional auditor. In any case, as per extant subject orders, any organization receiving full or partial funding from the government of India (read public funds) is subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General or by offices under his charge. As the Chief Justice’s order of June 7, 2017 said in directing the audit, it was to ensure “transparency in the administration” and in the “interest of justice”. Whoever can complain of transparency and/or justice in public spending? Regularity and propriety audit can thrown up and bring to light all instances of wrong doings, if they are any.

The recall of this order by another bench in such unholy haste – within 10 days of retirement of the Chief Justice who passed the order – to say the least, is reprehensible: not only does it negates transparency and impugns justice but very likely shrouds the goings-on in the three institutions by shielding them from audit and foisting summary opacity. It seeds the suspicion that there possibly are things to hide from audit. Any honest Chief Executive of an organization welcomes audit to beware of the ground under his feet. No head of an organization shies away from getting to know the quicksand it stands on. No one blanches from audit if there is nothing to hide – audit ain’t the demon for the upright and the straitlaced. Far from eroding “public confidence in these Institutions” and not being in the “public interest” as the second order of June 20 says, the truth is just the contrary: sunlight is the best disinfectant, and audit sunshine can only enhance the “reputation” of these three institutions, and not detract from it. The simple inference one is apt to draw is that perhaps the institutions have strayed and indeed have things to hide! Rectitude and internal moral compass do not seem to be their ethical vocabulary.

It is about time for the Supreme Court to take note of such transgressions and zero in on the fallacies and flaws of the Jharkhand High Court judgment of June 20, 2017, issues strictures and directs a special audit. Such desecrations of budgetary outlays from the Consolidated Funds of India cannot – and shouldn’t – be allowed to go on with impunity. It needs no stressing that the taxpayer must get to know how his own precious money is spent by the judicial archbishop of the nation. In the wake of Justice Karnan’s case when judicial reputation has taken a severe beating, it shall doubtless help restore greater credibility – even bring laurels – to the apex Court, on whom ordinary citizens of this country repose such unremitting faith and respect.

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India Desperately Needs a Full-Time Defence Minister

The defence ministry is far too big and complex to be managed part-time as an additional charge by another minister, no matter how competent and cerebral he may be.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley. Credit: Reuters

Amongst India’s ministries, defence, finance, home and external affairs occupy a particularly special place. They are housed in the imperial and imposing North and South Blocks – finance and home in the North and defence and external affairs, along with the all-powerful PMO, in the South.

The state of these ministries  – in particular defence – are an indicator of how well the nation is being served and consequently exude the state of India’s overall wellness.

Sadly, of the 38 months that the present government has been in power, it has been without a full-time raksha mantri (defence minister) for close to ten months – more than 25% of its tenancy. Surreal, but that’s how it has been. The government started its innings without a full-time defence minister in May 2014. The finance minister at the time held the additional charge for the first five-and-a-half months, and now continues to hold charge for more than four months since March. The clock keeps ticking and is likely to tick some more.

Changing face of Indian defence establishment 

This is rather unfortunate. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is among the larger ministries of the Indian government, both in terms of manpower and budgetary outlay. Historically, it goes back to the military department of the East India Company at Kolkata created in 1776. Through the Charter Act of 1833 to the unification of Bengal, Bombay and Madras presidencies in 1895, to creation of two separate departments (army department and military supply department) in 1906 and to the subsequent merging of the two into one army department in 1909, the face of the Indian defence establishment has changed over time.

The army department was rechristened as the defence department in 1938 and became the MoD in August 1947, with each service placed under its own commander-in-chief, topped by a cabinet minister. Sardar Baldev Singh was the first defence minister of independent India. The government of India is responsible for ensuring the defence of India through the cabinet. The defence minister heads the defence ministry; and the president is the supreme commander of the armed forces.

This is one ministry that is truly gargantuan in size, literally and metaphorically sprawled across the country’s territorial soil, air and water. It is responsible for framing government policy on defence and security issues for effective implementation of these programmes by the services headquarters, inter-service organisations, production units and defence research within the allocated budgetary outlay.

Scope of defence ministry

The sheer range of responsibility can be appreciated from the fact that the integrated defence staff, the three services (of more than 1.5 million strong) and various inter-service organisations, the defence budget (FY 2017-18: Rs 3.6 lakh crore), establishment matters, defence policy, defence co-operation with foreign countries, defence production activities of ordnance factories and defence PSUs come within the ministry’s mandate, as do issues of welfare, resettlement and pension of ex-servicemen.

While the range of activities, impressive in its reach and spread is one thing, so too are its personnel. The civilian bureaucracy and the services headquarters (with their panoply of commanders, in the level of secretary) make this ministry singularly top-heavy.

Not just that. Truth be said, there is an unspoken but palpable undercurrent of difference in approach and perception between the civil and defence bureaucracy. Often the dialectics are resolved by the political master. These two, naturally, meet courtesy the raksha mantri.

There are many such areas in this brick-and-mortar ministry where the raksha mantri remains the lynchpin of all governmental actions and activities.

Ministry’s fund requirement

On budget, setting aside committed expenditure on salary, pension and maintenance of the forces and of the support departments/organisations, what essentially remains is the modernisation budget – the current fiscal year outlay of Rs 86,488 crore rupees. This is the area of high visibility, and loud debates, within the ministry and without. How futile and atmospheric the issue of outlay is can be gauged from a simple example of a roll-on plan.

The parliamentary standing committees have over the years, beginning April 2003, been impressing upon the defence ministry to set up a non-lapsable defence modernisation fund or a roll-on plan to take care of the inevitable fund lapse on capital acquisition at the end of every fiscal. Even the finance minister in the interim budget speech of 2004-05 went ahead and announced creation of the non-lapsable defence modernisation fund with a corpus of Rs 25,000 crore. Someone seemed to have wisened up and gotten real thereafter and the general budget of 2004-05carried no provision for the same. Yet, committee after committee, year after year, has persisted to buzz with this bee in its bonnet. Last year in April 2016, when the parliamentary standing committee got too insanely persistent for inadequate funds on modernisation, I could hold myself no further. I explained that notwithstanding the general impression of paucity of funds available for modernisation, the truth is just the contrary: the MoD isn’t in a position to spend the funds allocated.

The revised estimate for 2015-16 had been reduced in the wake of non-materialisation of contract for Rafale aircrafts. This frankly wasn’t a new trend but the reality – the way it had panned out over the past many years. So where was the need to create a non-lapsable modernisation fund keeping a certain quantum of funds aside, especially when we resort to deficit budgeting and borrow some more at a far too higher rate to keep the roll-on plan going? But no, they persisted: the fund must be in place. I remember getting back and exasperatingly briefing former defence minister Manohar Parrikar about the whole raft of logic adduced to persevere with the idea. He smiled, exhaled a snort of laughter and said he rather expatiate on capital acquisition in the parliament. And he did in great detail the nuts and bolts and nuances of defence capital acquisition.

Interestingly – and this hasn’t been highlighted in the media for lack of appreciation for what it entails – shortly before Parrikar resigned and moved back to Goa, the financial powers of the raksha mantri were enhanced in February from Rs 500 crore to Rs 2000 crore for services capital annual acquisition plan proposals, and corresponding raise in the financial power of the finance minister from Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 3,000 crore. Contracts above Rs 3,000 crore are to be approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). On a personal note, I must confess I was stupefied that the proposal was agreed to by the ministry of finance before seeking cabinet approval when under the extant delegation more than 88% of cases of capital acquisition were within the MoD’s delegated power.

The reality is processing of cases in finance ministry had not only instilled greater diligence and discipline but also benefited the MoD in every which way of procurement. In my vision, I saw apparitions of the exacting standards diluted in seeking exemption from the purview of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) for such huge sums up to Rs 2000 crore on individual cases – more than the entire budget of most civil ministries.

The ministry of defence had always been rooting for higher powers on capital procurement – power that is untrammelled, and without scrutiny and due diligence of any external body like the MoF or the CCS. The rationale and refrain for such a dispensation was the due diligence exercised by MoD (finance), headed by a secretary-level financial advisor, as part of the integrated financial adviser system.

Acquisition proposals are but based on future cash liabilities, much beyond the current fiscal year’s sanctioned budget and often going into many future years. To suggest architecture without examination of an independent body as the MoF on financial issues or on the likely budgetary support is hard to commend. In the space department, while the Space Commission includes cabinet secretary, principal secretary to the prime minister and the expenditure secretary amongst others as members of the commission, it does not approve cases of capital nature beyond Rs 1,000 crore. Similar too in the Atomic Energy Commission, projects beyond Rs 1,000 crore are submitted to the CCS despite the member finance of the commission being a secretary-level officer like the financial adviser of defence services.

It also militates against the very basis of checks and balances that is the hallmark of an arm’s length system and is the bedrock for due diligence in cases of humongous expenditure from the consolidated fund of India, that is often fraught with the risk of abuse and the scandal of corruption. The quality and fidelity of processes ought to be the gold standard for expenditure from public funds rather than mere speed in according approval on unceasing operational demands drummed up unremittingly by the services; it may likely turn out to be worse than the disease it seeks to cure, and will be hard to reverse in future.

Again does it not also preempt cross-pollination and cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches from other sectors and lead to inbreeding of practices/processes in MoD, which doubtless will impact on openness and transparency? In effect, the onus today is greater than ever before on the defence minister on issues of capital acquisition.   

Unfinished business

Another important concern, as onerous as the one before, is to see through the implementation of the Shekatkar committee’s recommendations that have been accepted by the government: reviewing training, administrative and logistics to optimise defence forces manpower and increase ‘teeth to tail’ ratio; suggesting “redeployment, repositioning and restructuring of manpower and resources” to improve combat capability; suggesting integration of civil infrastructure and resources into the logistic system of the defence forces in war and peace to “avoid duplication and reduce expenditure” and suggesting measures to “correct the bias of defence budget towards revenue expenditure”.

There are many suggestions that are implementable: optimal use and integration of manpower and resources by re-deploying ex-servicemen including retired officers and JCOs in various organisations; increased financial powers to all three service chiefs; restructuring and downsizing of ongoing expenditure by trimming the existing manpower and even closing down certain organisations under the MoD; a joint services war college running a one-year combined course for the three forces to impart jointness; creation of a tri-service intelligence training establishment and a four-star chief of defence staff as the chief single-point adviser to the defence minister on matters military, and generating saving of Rs 25,000 crore annually to fund modernisation.  

No less significant is the strategic partnership issue – recently approved by the Union cabinet permitting domestic private companies to form joint ventures with foreign defence equipment manufacturers – on the defence minister’s table waiting to take shape and flight. If it pans out the way it is envisaged, it will open up the hugely lucrative defence industry business to Indian private sector and shoot up India’s self-reliance index in defence procurement. If carried through successfully and transparently, it’ll help whittling down MoD’s fund requirement.

But it’s a big “if” that stares MoD on its face, given that in the past, the ‘make’ and ‘buy and make (Indian)’ template hasn’t really taken off. Though the selection of strategic partnerships is initially confined to four segments – fighter aircraft, helicopters, submarines and armoured fighting vehicles/main battle tanks – it has the potential to change the grammar and syntax of Indian as well as global defence equipment industry. But it requires pigeon eyes to discern deficits, plug weaknesses and close monitoring, to ensure that the trajectory’s path lain with countless imponderables is not shambolic.

That said, it would be apt to say that the MoD is on the cusp of a paradigm shift and inevitable action. One wonders how all these important issues are to be handled without a full-time defence minister. The MoD is far too big and complex a ministry to be managed part-time as an additional charge by another minister, no matter how competent and cerebral he is.

With all due regard to the criticisms and reservations articulated by defence experts and commentators on Parrikar’s efficacy as the defence minister, it must be granted that he tried cleaning up the Augean stables and triggered many moves that have fructified or will likely fructify in the foreseeable future. Effacing a legacy of complete inaction isn’t easy, and reinvigorating the sundry cogs is truly an unenviable task. 

Today, we live in difficult times: heightened militancy in Kashmir, terrorism and infiltration from across the border, the much hyped and trumped-up “surgical strikes”, accusation of human rights violation in Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir under AFSPA and “the General Dyer moment”. The services are a very proud organisation, very obsessed and finicky with their tradition and legacy that they value dearly, and wouldn’t like to forsake. Ironically, even wrong practices that hegemonised during colonial rule and should’ve been long discarded in independent India sadly continue to persist and haemorrhage. But that’s another story and for another day.

Conflict of interest

Yet, more than anything put out here, what’s troubling is that India’s finance minister is holding additional charge of defence. In effect, he who approves as administrative head accords concurrence of a higher order. For the finance minister to double up as the defence minister ex facie impugns the very concept of checks and balances, not to speak of the in-built institutional conflict of interest in according financial concurrence and according due diligence for the CCS. In fact, a 2006 finance ministry order invokes an arm’s length system in processing of cases and captures the essence of the principle of check and balance.

To wit, financial advisers will in no case be assigned any routine administrative functions of the ministry. It is pretty much an incongruity that the finance minister, whose mandate, as per the Allocation of Business Rules, is to appraise and approve plan investment/expenditure of central ministries/CPUs has been mandated to grant administrative and financial approval up to Rs 2,000 crore on capital acquisition qua defence minister, while at the same time he accords enhanced financial approval up to Rs 3000 crore qua finance minister. 

And yet, 292 (167+125) out of a total of 1,148 days of the BJP government without a full-time raksha mantri – that is 25.43% of its time in power – isn’t surely what we Indians and the armed forces deserve as a nation.

                                                                                                              (Reproduced from The Wire)

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Humanities in the time of profiteering pursuits

The Noble Savage is dead, or dying! Humongous changes have occurred in the last two decades the world over, yet the course curricula on humanities in most universities haven’t changed sufficiently enough; when carried out, they don’t seem to have been thought-out.

The rapacity for profiteering and longing for a good balance sheet, and senseless competition among corporate firms have cast long shadows on educationists. The emphasis has shifted from the finer aspects of life to profit-making — skewing systems of education and discarding skills that are inviolate and inviolable to keep human beings humane.

The humanities and the arts — I consciously use humanity and art here as embracing everything that do not directly contribute to profit-making in business and commerce – have been given short shrift, in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Decision-makers see these as “useless frills” because they aren’t monetisable – they seem abstract and distant, at a time when cutting out these so-called “non-profiteering elements” that do not value-add to business to stay competitive and cost-effective in the marketplace is considered kosher.

Losing relevance

Consequently, they seem to be rapidly losing their relevance in course curricula and in the minds and hearts of parents and children. Indeed, the humanistic aspects of humanities, art and social sciences — the imaginative, creative dimensions not bound by crazy objectives of consumerism and possessive individualism – are getting buried and left asunder in our pursuit of short-term profit-making.

The result is that the impact of humanities and liberal arts on human action and day-to-day activities seems to be distinctly on the wane. Traditional and conventional approaches of teaching coupled with stasis that makes them traverse the same beaten path of course curricula isn’t helping society see the relevance of humanities and social science in a technology-driven, changing world. The approach inevitably will be nuanced and there will be a need to tweak the course content and fine-tune it to come up with newer products to stay relevant and act as a facilitator to business and industry.

Much as critical thinking can’t be wished away, so too imagination that brings in soft human skills and elements to focus on products to re-humanise humans amid the surfeit of technological practices and innovations inexorably hegemonising his mind and life today: compassion and empathy that’s fast becoming an endangered quality; the skewed work-life balance not conducive for children and family; the eternal human values such as decency and courtesy that seem to be under threat of extinction.

Course content, say in subjects of Empathy and Professional Ethics or Decency and Civility in Public Life or An ideal Work-Life Balance or Learning from the Past and Present, with their universal application at all times in all climes and in all professions amid the increasing complexity of the world we live and work in could be developed drawing lessons, say from history, politics, psychology, philosophy, literature(s), sociology and social work et al.

An example

The Harvard Professor-philosopher Michael Sandel’s course, Justice, which for a decade and a half has been a success with more than a thousand students joining the course and with his lectures placed online as open source, and turned into an eponymous bestselling book, comes to mind.

Be it in the medical profession or on the factory shop floor or in the litigating legal world, compassion and empathy indeed have — and will always have — a place for humankind. That needs to be kept alive because the package of life is much more than mere moolah and profit-making; these softer attributes that humanities offer are crucial to retaining the humaneness of human beings that far outstrip the craze for material goods, mindless consumerism and upward social mobility.

The same would hold good for the few illustrative cases suggested above. A case study method adopted with the study content drawn from life’s variegated experiences will help involve and sensitise students to simulate, internalise and imbibe lessons drawn from myriad disciplines and build architecture in their heads that will trigger their thinking in their primary areas of work. It will mainstream the humanities disciplines and make teachers and students feel relevant and connected, and prompt them to trigger thinking to conflate their ideas with the changing dynamics of the world today, and view their own specialties in a new light.

A need triggered by the globalising times concerns development of communication skills, verbal and written. This will not be the preserve and concern of language teaching departments alone, who though will need to get into the disciplines they are working on to understand, familiarise and internalise the latter’s contents and needs, and thereafter offer inter-disciplinary electives in collaboration with various disciplines. English having become a universal language of transaction and commerce, the English language teaching department will have an important role to play. These soft skills development should become an important part of the curricula of a good finishing school university.                                                                                                                                       (Reproduced from The Hindu)

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Civil Service Reforms: Few 'Innovations' By NITI Aayog, If One Can Call Them So

As civil service reforms go, the Niti Aayog’s Three Year Action Agenda: 2017-18 to 2019-2020, released recently, contains little that is new or innovative. The idea that policy making is a specialized activity and needs lateral entrant of specialists on fixed-term contracts to bring in competition into established career bureaucracy has been talked about for years and is a tautology today. The same goes for making the goals and progress available publicly to incentivize delivery and measure performance objectively, with high performance rewarded and poor performance reprimanded. Likewise, E-governance is no new beer, as is outsourcing of services; they’re old wine in new bottles.

The only innovation, if one can call it so, seems the plea for longer tenure of Secretaries. It creates two important inefficiencies. One, with a time horizon shorter than two years, the officer is hesitant to take any major initiatives. Two, and more importantly, to the extent that any misstep may become the cause for charges of favouritism or corruption post retirement, the officer hesitates to take decisions on any major project. This causes an inordinate amount of delay in decision-making. The inefficiencies are two-fold: (a) hesitation to take any major initiative; and (b) fear of misstep to take decisions on any major project.

It’s bemusing how these two inefficiencies can be overcome with longer tenures. For one, empirically, officers with tenures of more than 2 and going up to 3/4 years haven’t fared any better than the ones with shorter tenures. Lack of foresight and initiative aside, to be fair, they have been moved around to more than 2-3 departments/ministries, thereby not granting them the time needed to settle down and make salutary contributions. But it’s not fair to blame the system entirely for there are departments/ministries that are low/high in the mandarin’s perception/weight indices and with the long window available to them, there is the human urge for upward pecking mobility. Lobbying, jostling, networking (see the work-hours wasted here!), nepotism, and favouring the powers-that-be through subtle sleight of hand are rife. One has with growing frustration seen how people with no little knowledge/experience, but with the right “connect” and “networking”, go up and up the proverbial totem pole only because the new post figures high in the perception-cum-weighty index and is a better springboard for post-retirement sinecures.  This is the nub.

Like statistics, the Niti Aayog’s eggheads conceal more than what they reveal; its platitudinous recipe is less relevant than what it shrouds: post-retirement sinecures. The heart of the problem is that no bureaucrat (apart from one-odd outliers) ever wants to retire. In a feudal mindset, retirement sucks: identity-loss after a lifetime of humongous ego-trips and condescension, vanishing into the woodwork is the hardest ask; retirement is sudden cold-blooded cremation. Hence exists the the intense urge to stay on somehow. It is also the reason why senior officers close to R-Days take calculated and “desperate” gambles to “oblige” political masters at the cost of their much vaunted “professional ethics”. In effect, the two “inefficiencies” stay. One wishes the Niti Aayog had provided answer to this endemic nettlesome syndrome that defeats every sanguine public motivation.

One wonders how practical and efficacious Niti Aayog’s suggestion for specialization and induction of lateral recruits for a fixed tenure is. No questions are asked on the need for specialists and domain experts in public policy, but the issue is: Given the bureaucratic construct, will this behemoth of bureaucracy easily admit and acknowledge the role and contribution of the newbie, especially when their own unimaginative low-performance and lassitude hitherto unquestioned will (inevitably) be shown in poor light in comparison. Though a fixed tenure might help shielding the laterals from being junked midway, will frustration not creep into their day-to-day efficiency, thereby nullifying the cross-pollination and cross-fertilization of their ideas? Will they be accorded their due for the contribution made to improve public policy and the same acted upon without bureaucratic machinations and legerdemain? Or will the ear of political masters earned by mandarins negate any such noble impulses making it a zero-sum game?

Rather than shooting the breeze, I wish the Niti Aayog had drawn an earthy roadmap. A host of issues glibly prescribed will amount to nothing if they are not implementable. To be fair, E-office, long overdue, is the way to go; when I was holding additional charge as Additional Secretary & Financial Advisor of the Ministry of Civil Aviation more than 2 years ago, it had gained currency. It was liberating to retrieve data in a jiffy; it granted flexibility. I could work in my parent Ministry of Environment and Forests in Indira Paryavaran Bhavan rather than getting the files over or going over to the civil aviation ministry located in the Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan. Not to forget that electronic transactions don’t lie on such (seemingly) small matters as date/time of disposal. The embedded system and escalation facilities can show stark delays, apart from alerting the higher ups of such delays. E-governance needs implementation within a tight timeframe.

The larger issue is of efficiency: will e-office for all its good, engage the citizen through the electronic medium and make governance effective? Only early last year several directions of finance ministry to upload fairly innocuous information in the website went unheeded lest it attract public ire.

Public policy issues are roiled – apart from the much-maligned and putative red-tape-worm – in time-worn vested interest, personal advancement, colonial baggage and mindset. Holistically, the answer is in tightening governance’s value system. Financial malfeasance is bad, but worse is intellectual dishonesty, subtly crafted under the guise of amnesic mnemonics, poor data analysis and obfuscating interstitial interpretation kept under wraps in grimy official records. Financial misgivings no matter how convoluted they are, still palpate; intellectual dishonesty covertly hemorrhages.

For a feudal society with a bespoke traditional mindset of grand reparative gestures to espouse and promote the biradiri cause and where the state is seen as omnipotent and where few realize power is but abuse of power, it is imperative to have an arm’s-length system.

But is that enough? Maybe not. There could be a need to actualize implication of Robert Klitgaard’s formula on dishonesty: Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability (C=M+D-A). Even that too may not be enough. Proactive disclosure provided under Section 4 of the RTI Act 2005 will need to be sculpted into the e-governance platform. In this our Indian Gilded Age, the atmosphere is agog with ideas and impulses despite the consistent stonewalling of the established order. Citizen rants against diminishing public value are getting louder by the day.

True, in today’s battle of dialectics opacity wins, but then for how long? Over time and amid battling dialectics, society’s voice will inexorably tilt in transparency’s favour. The USA too went through the Gilded Age and the trauma of the robber barons. They came out of it triumphant through laws crafted in the teeth of opposition. For us the battle may be long and hard too but it’s time we had better see the future. I wish the Niti Aayog had the vision to sense a Eureka moment here and suggested measures to move in that direction.

(Reproduced from Outlookindia.com)

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Tightening Governance’s Value System

Citizen as Ombudsman

As a former bureaucrat, who, for years was a part of India’s policy making and overseeing implementation, I sensed, as did many others, serious governance deficit in Indian public policy. Lack of transparency, age-old Indian tradition of promoting family/clan/sub-national loyalty, culture of materialism that’s gotten more pronounced with economic liberalization in a globalized world, and the urge to get-rich-fast, have distorted priorities.

Ethics, in the broadest sense, is at the heart of these problems. Looking at the psychology and compulsions of the early man, it would seem that the raison d'être of the social compact has been defeated; in the schematic social contract versus individualist aspirations construct, individual aspirations have triumphed. Human aspirations and ingenuity have, from time to time, trumped regulations/contracts/rules; regulations have failed to smother this primordial human urge to self-aggrandize. Are there lessons to learn here? I still can’t get over the shock when, in my bureaucratic diapers in 1982, I saw a file how white ants had eaten away road rollers! Same too where cyclones had been “manufactured” in the trans-Himalayan belt to score off inventories. It seemed something was egregiously and unacceptably wrong.

Corruption though is not mere financial. As damaging as financial malfeasance is intellectual dishonesty, manifested in policy-making kept under wraps in official records. While financial misgivings are palpable, intellectual dishonesty – covert and subterranean – hemorrhages soundlessly till fixed; it skews and wrinkles public morality.  The damage is incalculable. The clutch of scams and mega-scams that struck India circa 2008-12 extinguished citizen’s monk-like patience. Apart from the financial loss of taxpayers’ money, it showed how corruption had squeezed money out of the system creating a skewed developmental agenda.

Propriety – financial and intellectual – is a key determinant of citizen’s quality of life. It encompasses legislation, governance, healthcare, education, commerce, business, justice system etc. Yet, the architecture of rule of law designed to hold the order, often fails to squelch wrong human impulses. Human nature – possessive, hedonistic, self-interested – trumped regulations. With the dishonest networked across professions, the countervailing institutions have often failed, swaying to interest groups’ agenda. The people’s movement against corruption in 2011 for creation of Lokpal turned out a false dawn. Was it because the four pillars of democracy – executive, legislature, judiciary, media – supposed to checkmate one another didn’t wish to disturb the applecart? How does such mindset affect governance?

Even 26 years post-liberalization, the Indian rural population still looks up to government intervention for poverty alleviation. Governments hold the fund and welfare entities for the poor. For a feudal society with traditional bespoke mindset, state patronage remains the Holy Grail for majority aspirations. Nor are most men in the four organs of governance immune to quid pro qua: bought-out press and paid news; post-retirement sinecures for most who have been in government employ; rewards and gratifications, are just a few examples. Socio-financial iniquity has burgeoned; unrest – born off a growing educated young middle class finding it hard to navigate opaque archaic government procedures and a corrupt officialdom in day to day living – leveraging technology and social media bristles asking moral questions: Does it not diminish human beings? Does it not impugn basic human dignity?

The malaise is all-pervasive. In a way it’s natural, for regardless of profession, men are cut from the same societal cloth with symptoms of the same ecosystem. Look at the role of legislature and judiciary: Haven’t they been hubristic and for the highbrow as is often alleged, granting preferential treatment to the “well-networked” and the “connected”? How’s the Supreme Court played its part in dispensing justice? Have judges transcended the society’s feudal mindset? A host of recent cases come to mind: highway liquor ban, contempt of a former Supreme Court judge, national anthem case, judges seeking post-retirement employ, the delayed hearing in the Aadhaar case (still on-going) just to cite a few. Restraint, rather self-restraint, is the authentic signifier of a mature institution. Absence of restraint even in the face of palpable injustice or manifest illegalities can only corrode public confidence. The judiciary will do well to realize this. The rippling effect it creates in terms of revenue loss or employment as in the highway liquor ban case is simply beyond their ken to evaluate. The fact is it is not their remit; hubris of power to grant complete justice isn’t in order.

Else, the very fabric of separate of power, one of the basic tenets of the Constitution, will be cast aside. Coming from the protector of the Constitution, it amounts to the fence eating the crop! “The judge’s role”, as one columnist wrote, “in any version of constitutional democracy, is to be a gatekeeper of constitutional boundaries, an ever-vigilant defender of rights, not to author more restrictions on civil liberties... If this is the role judges seek for themselves, then they must make themselves accountable under judicial review. The immunity from judicial review under Article 13 is to preserve the interpretive authority of the court, given the inevitability of disagreement emerging over its interpretations, not to shield episodes of absurd judicial law-making.” Have they then been the Caesar’s wife? How does the judiciary morally explain its dueling with the executive on appointment of judges through an opaque “collegiate system” when the Constitution consciously divvies responsibility between the two to avoid monopoly of either and grant fairness to selection? How fair is it? Does it pass muster of disinterested observers and provide oxygen to public faith?

In an interesting piece in The New Yorker, Evan Osnos refers to an article “on the intersection of health and politics” published in Brain, the British medical journal in February, 2009, titled Hubris Syndrome: An Acquired Personality Disorder? One of the authors was David Owen, former British Foreign Secretary, also a physician-neuroscientist where the authors propose creation of a psychiatric disorder for leaders who exhibited “impetuosity, a refusal to listen to or take advice and a particular form of incompetence when impulsivity, recklessness and frequent inattention to detail predominate.”  This seems to hold good across professions for people in high perches.

The deterrence to such potential recklessness lies in tightening governance’s value system. Maybe, an arm’s-length system and an Ombudsman to oversee operations are necessary. Yet, given extant obfuscation and opacity, will it be enough to stymie unholy impulses? Will leveraging contemporary technology to bring citizens face to face with governance help? Will such interface, an ex post ‘oversight’ governance, aid stakeholders see for themselves – proactive disclosure is already available under Section 4 of the RTI Act 2005, never mind the Delhi High Court’s ruling keeping the Attorney General out of the RTI’s purview – the processes and rationale of decision-making? More, especially when the Supreme Court is implacably opposed to render itself transparent on personal details of public interest, as evidenced in smothering CIC’s order to part with information under the RTI Act, 2005. Is transparency, then, the answer? Will it help to offer on a platter official document in public domain post-decisions for citizen ombudsman? Will the fear of exposé – disciplinary action and social disapproval for “wrongful acts” – deter unsavory impulses? Possibly, yes; no one likes proceeded against; we live on self-respect and dignity amid a 24/7 media. We’ve the technology and we’ve the besetting issue of dishonesty that refuses to die. Sunlight, it seems, is the best and maybe the only disinfectant for public acts.

At the cost of sounding presumptuous, I would say en passant that when I took over as the Controller General of Defence Accounts to helm the Department looking after the financial management of the entire Government of India defense budget outlay of approx US$ 50 Billion, I invoked transparency. All relevant official documents, all pesky issues of officers’ placement and spends from taxpayers’ money were uploaded. It was bloodless; but it had a magical effect. Disaffection with placements was eliminated, with the networkers exposed and running for cover; unnecessary, wasteful expenditure were arrested, with everyone privy to ways of the corrupt and the nepotistic; and with each checkmating the other. Alas, once I moved over to the Ministry of Defence, transparency was given a royal heave-ho and opacity granted its pride of honor!

Leveraging technology to invoke openness and transparency is an option; a culture of transparency seems the viable answer to curb corruption in public life. But it’s nuanced, multilayered. It’ll need tempering through accountability, an effective check and balance mechanism, an arm’s length system not open to tweaking by any public functionary, not to forget public discussions to rework and re-engineer the entire architecture of governance processes to introduce the moral vocabulary sorely missing in public governance. It will take time but a beginning must be made. Political will is the key. 

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Drugging India to Pay More on Healthcare

The recent Niti Aayog’s Three Year Action Agenda, 2017-18 to 2019-20 on Access to Medicines (pages 144-145) is rather disturbing. “A balanced approach towards regulation is needed for achieving the twin objectives of access to effective medicines and a strong pharmaceutical industry,” so says the Agenda document. “There is a trade-off between lower prices on the one hand and quality medicine and discovery of breakthrough drugs on the other. It is therefore recommended that the Drug Price Control Order may be delinked from the National List of Essential Medicines.”

Is this is one among the many instances of the government’s double-and-multi-speak? The Prime Minister and his Minister of Health and Family Welfare speaking in one voice and the Niti Aayog in another! Was the PM trigger-happy in his muscular tweets (as given below), thrice inside 5 minutes, conveying his concern for the poor, the wretched of the earth? Or was he being plain naïve and didn’t (and still doesn’t) know the issues behind it?

The poor must have access to quality and affordable healthcare: PM @narendramodi in Surat
10:45 AM – 17 Apr 2017

After assuming office, mechanisms were put to bring down prices of medicines even if that meant pharma companies are unhappy with us: PM 10:47 AM – 17 Apr 2017

There are powerful people who are unhappy with me. But, my commitment is to provide affordable healthcare for poor and the middle class: PM 10:50 AM – 17 Apr 2017

The PM seems to have jumped the gun to carry out this – to use one of today’s plenty “Modi-ism” – “surgical operation” on branded medicines. Discerning citizens even with a nodding acquaintance with politicians’ utterances take such loud protestations with a pinch of salt; in every welfare activity, we are wont not to be taken in by the government's pro-people motivations. Peel off the epidermis and the hypodermis will reveal the true intent! Mostly people's welfare is shambolic, it makes for good sloganeering, loud and majestic in its decibel, and to win brownie points at the hustings where voters unthinkingly swallow whatever is dished out. Frankly, no government (least the present one) can afford to ignore the big business houses in our emerging economy's electoral processes. Political pragmatism tells them that their acts must be craftily done with the sheen to help the poor. In the cacophony the common man suffers – or lives in a fool’s paradise till he loses the visions of this “paradise” – while the big pharma companies, druggists and hospitals remain as unfazed and unflustered as ever.

That said, it might sound paradoxical to say that while generic drugs should be the order of the day, in today’s India few generic drugs pass the quality test. The 1980s and 1990s was a time of the generic drug “robber barons” thanks to poor laws and populist aspirations of the then governments bent on low drug prices sans quality of drugs. Little wonder India though placed 4th in global generic drug market, has earned the ignominy of manufacturing 75% of world’s counterfeit generic drugs, soaring high above Egypt with 7% and China with 6%.

To be fair to the government, it has in April 2017 made changes to the Drug and Cosmetics Act (1940) making it mandatory for genetic drug manufacturers to submit Bioequivalence (BE)/Bioavailability (BA) study reports for approval as against the earlier practice of submitting the BE/BA reports for genetics of patented drugs in the first 4 years of introduction. Nothing more is asked of them, thus making it a field day for genetic drugs to flood the market. Once in an indigo moon the finished drug was submitted for testing at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). No wonder barely 0.01% of the genetic drugs in the Indian market are tested for its potency and efficacy. In effect, the amendment to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (1940) is a welcome development. But the issue now is one of regulation and implementation. Anyone who has worked in the government knows its innards. The system is so apathetic and opaque and convoluted that a complaint of poor/inadequate potency will keep meandering about in the corridors of government Bhavans; the callousness of our Brother Babus is phenomenal!  

There doubtless is the need to increase the number of test labs all over the country in government medical colleges, increase the number of pharmacists/pharmacologists, put a strict testing process in place, and go fully transparent with test results by uploading them in public domain. Any complaint from a consumer must be attended with a sense of immediacy and the same too put out on the website. But will the government bite such “dangerous” transparency that will jeopardize big pharma companies’ interest? I doubt if this will ever happen, given this government’s poor track record in refusing to appoint a Lokpal three years after coming to power! And to expect the government to seed a billion Lokpals to oversee is a pipedream! We are then back to square one despite the recent amendment to the Drug and Cosmetics Act (1940). 

Large pharmaceutical companies invest huge money in developing a new drug; the amount could be more than US$ 2-3 billion. Naturally they will like to get return on investment – through patent and royalty. India too seeks big bang R&D in drugs and Indian firms are interested. This explains why the government is speaking with a forked tongue: while the PM and his Ministers speak about mandating generics, the Niti Aayog suggests “a trade-off between lower prices on the one hand and quality medicine and discovery of breakthrough drugs on the other”. And recommends that “the Drug Price Control Order may be delinked from the National List of Essential Medicines”

Essential medicines, says the World Health Organization (WHO) are “those drugs that satisfy the health care needs of the majority of the population; they should therefore be available at all times in adequate amounts and in appropriate dosage forms, at a price the community can afford”. While National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) is a list of essential medicines in India prepared by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare,the Drug Price Control Orders (DPCO) are issued by the Government under section 3 of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, to enable the Government to put a ceiling price for such essential and life saving medicines and ensure that these medicines are available at a reasonable price to the general public.

What’s puzzling is the furtive effort of Niti Aayog to defeat the PM’s noble intentions by equating (in effect) lower prices of drugs under NLEM (and hence under DPCO) with poor quality. The digital magazine The Wire in a well-researched piece has shown how there has been an effort on the part of the PMO with Niti Aayog, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, and Department of Pharmaceuticals on board to scupper efforts at popularizing generic drugs and instead hold a brief for multinational pharma firms. Their move to “trade-off” is to delink DPCO from the NLEM will result in soaring of prices of essential drugs. It also runs counter to the government’s affidavit in the Supreme Court and the Minister of Health and Family Welfare’s reply in the Rajya Sabha. The move is blasphemous and highly condemnable. But such are the ways how intellectual dishonesty is sown in Indian system!

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