The 'system' may be dysfunctional but who failed to reform it?

The Modi government had ample time for reforms but in spite several warnings and suggestions it has failed to do so.

Forty years ago when European history was taught in India through the British prism and via British textbooks, an evergreen question was “Discuss the underlying and proximate causes of the French Revolution of 1789.” 

The expected answer was that the underlying cause was mis-governance and the immediate cause was insensitivity.

If, fifty years from now a similar question is asked about India’s tryst with the Corona pandemic, it will probably elicit a similar answer: administrative incompetence and political insensitivity.

But as with all set piece answers, this is the formula view--both correct and misleading at the same time because the devil, as always, lies in the detail, which is the ‘system’. The narrative is mere the alibi for failure.

So the question does arise: why was the ‘system’ not reformed? The Modi government had ample time to do so--all of six years--but in spite several warnings and suggestions it has failed to do so. 

Instead, the attempt was made to bypass the ‘system’ by centralisation in the PMO, which has excellent staff. 
 

But if you take away the best officers, who will man the posts in ministries that have to execute your policies? 

And if this is how it is at the Centre, what is it like in the states? Maharashtra is a perfect example. 

Objection raj

This administrative rot is the underlying cause of the current debacle, while the immediate one, of course, is the triumphalism and arrogance in display ever since the number of cases in the first wave began to fall. It was almost as if the prime minister, through his yogic powers, had personally willed the virus to go away.

Worse, he seems to have thought so as well.

Be that as it may, the latest case in point of ‘all systems fail’ is the lack of urgency in spending the Rs 200 crore allocated--in October 2020--for setting up oxygen plants. And, it is not just the allottees that failed; the allotter, meaning the central government, also failed. 

But no action has been taken against those who are responsible, namely, the babus who love to ask questions on the file regardless of the delays that these cause while someone tries to answer them. 

Likewise, in the case of vaccines, too, it was the ‘system’ that rejected the Pfizer offer in January. No action has been taken, once again, against those who came up with those idiotic objections.

Since then there have been hundreds of instances of such ‘systemic’ deficiencies. 

The worst of these is the power of unconcerned babus who make even more nonsensical rules for the execution of decisions. 

These powers always hinder, but during an emergency such as this one, they become, to use that term so much loved by this dispensation, truly ‘anti-national’ in impact.

The plain truth is that government’s instruments are blunt and corrupt, and the Modi dispensation has simply failed to sharpen them.

Blunt instruments

I asked a senior minister in late 2017 why this was so. His reply was shocking.

When 80 percent of government employees are incapable of carrying out even simple orders or are just corrupt, the file is the only thing that matters. It’s a weapon as well as a shield.

He added that there’s nothing you can do about it except pray that there is no major crisis on your watch.

Well, that crisis is here now and Mr Modi has the perfect opportunity to take steps that will slowly lead to better instruments.

Once he has arranged to deal with the external virus he must deal with the internal one that is euphemistically called the ‘system’.