A K Bhattacharya: Closure and disclosure

Jairam's revelations of the PMO pressure on him buck the collective responsibility principle

Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh made a startling disclosure the other day when he said the Prime Minister’s Office or PMO had influenced his ministry’s decision to allow the resumption of construction at the Maheshwar Hydro Power Project in Madhya Pradesh. There were also suggestions that the pressure to grant environmental clearance to the controversial project came not just from the PMO, but from the state government too. This is a startling disclosure because central ministers are usually reticent about disclosing the various pressures and influences brought to bear on their decision making.

If you look at it a little differently, the significance of what happened will become clearer. In the corporate world, for instance, no general manager heading a department of a company would ever disclose that the chairperson or the chief executive had influenced his decisions on, say, placing orders with certain vendors, although in reality that may well be the case. Indeed, even Ramesh is perhaps not straying from the truth when he said the PMO had a role in many other decisions he made, particularly the ones that reversed his ministry’s stand on a few projects.

Yet, no general manager or a central minister would talk about the pressures they were under before taking decisions. That is because of the principle of collective responsibility that governs the decision-making process as much in the corporate sector as in government. In making public the PMO’s pressure on his ministry in taking a certain decision, Ramesh has made a departure from a time-honoured convention.

It is worth remembering that even civil servants are not very comfortable about making public their individual observations in a decision-making process. The enforcement of the Right to Information (RTI) Act had spelt trouble for many bureaucrats, who wanted transparency in decision making only up to a point. Under the RTI Act, any individual could demand information on the views of the officials concerned on decisions that were in the public interest.

In view of such reservations, the information commissioners under the Act, many of whom were retired bureaucrats and predictably sympathetic to such reservations, had initially barred unhindered access to officials’ notings on government files. Thanks to RTI activists’ sustained campaign, the matter went to court, which has now ruled that information commissioners should consider only on merit the request for access to official files and observations made in them by officers.

There were, of course, other reasons bureaucrats were keen to keep their notings on official files secret. They wanted to avoid possible controversies if the disclosures revealed that they had held a different opinion on an issue. They believed that the thought of such disclosures could deter some of them from expressing their views on the files frankly and fearlessly.

That, however, was not the only reason for keeping the bureaucrats’ notings on official files secret. There was a bigger issue at stake. Would governance improve if people knew which officials disagreed with a certain decision that the government finally took? Would this give rise to extreme forms of democracy, neutralising the gains from such transparency and disclosure?

Similarly, Ramesh’s disclosure should not have raised eyebrows, particularly when seen from a transparency point of view. Since the PMO has not denied its influence on the decision in question, we have to presume that Ramesh has presented to the people only the facts of the case. So, why should there be a problem with the minister sharing with the people what really happened with regard to the hydropower project in Madhya Pradesh?

The point here, however, is not just about facts or transparency. It is also about governance. If Ramesh was indeed forced to compromise following PMO pressure, he should have fought the battle internally. If he failed, he should have accepted the verdict gracefully and not made his differences public.

Ramesh’s problem seems to be worse. He has argued that if there are rules on environment, it is his responsibility to ensure that everybody follows them. If it is true the circumstances are such that he has no option but to ignore those rules and making compromises, then the battle gets tougher. He has to force his colleagues in the government to see logic in either ensuring compliance with those rules or making necessary amendments to those rules so that he does not have to make compromises. However, until such time as this battle is over, Ramesh’s public disclosure of these differences may enhance his personal image, but the government’s image and overall governance are likely to suffer.