Editorial: What government?

A few days ago it was reported that there were only four engineers in the country who could certify aircraft for airworthiness, about a sixth of the number required. It was also reported that there were several police stations in Uttar Pradesh's crime-ridden Noida, bordering the capital, that did not have telephones because the police had not paid the phone bills; local citizens had lent the station house officers their own mobile phones so that calls for help could get answered. And the vehicles given to the police are not used for half the month because the petrol allowance has run out by then. There are schools without teachers, and hospitals without medicines. Postmen do not deliver letters in bustling Gurgaon because the postal department has not recognised the town's explosive growth and provided the staff. Public transport in some cities has almost ceased to exist. Hundreds of judges' posts have been vacant for years, as the cases pile up in courts. College professors are not appointed, either, in even prestigious universities.

There is a rotten core where the people expect services from the government, whether it is law and order, health care, education or postal delivery. The country still maintains the air of being a functioning system, but that will not survive if the collapse of government-provided services is not addressed. Already, the citizen has been left to fend for himself as best as he can "" ask the Mumbai citizens who walked home in torrential rain and through flooded streets a couple of years ago. Or ask the millions across the country who have bought generators and invertors because the power cuts have steadily lengthened. Residential welfare associations have taken on the job of local policing, private security agencies do traffic management at even important junctions, almost all companies have switched to private courier services, and anyone who can afford it has deserted the government health and education systems. Farmers who want water for their fields find that the only way to get it is to dig bore-wells, because public investment in irrigation is hopelessly inadequate.

It took privatisation to stem the rot in Delhi's power distribution system, where power theft in some areas had crossed 55 per cent. It has taken the privatisation of airports for work to begin so that citizens do not continue to be disgraced by the first sight that greets visitors to the country. It takes privatisation before decrepit hotels are refurbished and run as proper hostelries. Yet, privatisation cannot be extended to any and everything. The government has to be made to work.

The politics of a soft state, the sociology of a hierarchical society, the economics of a poor country, the laxness of a system of public administration that gives zero priority to accountability, the work ethic of a people who don't have to worry about losing their jobs, the predatory and exploitative nature of the state that has yet to shed its colonial provenance, the historical experience of a people who have experienced good governance only episodically "" each contributes to the dysfunctionality of the Indian state, which worsens with each passing year. At the level of the individual or of small groups, everyone is aware of the failures and shortcomings. Yet, at the level of the government and the state, correctives do not materalise. And politics does not provide the answers; indeed, manifestos do not in most cases even mention these issues.