One day in 1987, I received a "lightning call" (eight times more expensive than the already high tariff, but promising a connection in 15 minutes) from the managing director of a Fera (Foreign Exchange Regulation Act) company I was then advising, one in which the multinational parent's stake was over 40 per cent. He wanted a presentation to a central minister. Anticipating travel difficulties, he had made an appointment for two days later. The first thing I did thereafter was to beg the station manager of Indian Airlines, whom I had specially cultivated, for a seat to Delhi the following night. After preparing the presentation and rough sketches, I asked a graphic artist to help make the finished version, giving her some of my precious hoard of acetate transparencies and overhead markers, carefully garnered during earlier visits abroad.
Twenty-five years on, we don't do things quite like that. We get calls and flights when we want, pay competitive charges for them, and get to choose our telephone company or airline. I can make world-class audio-visual presentations with nothing more than my laptop. And, above all, there are no more Fera company presentations to ministers - because there are no more Fera companies!
But just a few months ago, I faced a long struggle to get a telephone tariff plan of my choice. Refunds for unused air tickets and modifications to itineraries could be maddeningly frustrating. And when power goes out inexplicably - even in power-surplus Gujarat - getting an indication of likely time of resumption could try Job's patience. My recourse to the top at such times helps, but at some cost to the goodwill assiduously built up.
These are supposed to be mindset problems prevalent among service organisations that were once monopolies. Their front-line employees still believe they are doling out favours to paying customers. They are not supposed to affect new-age airlines, telephone companies or banks, but they do. Such attitudes prevail in other sets of organisations as well, especially the government; they are found at all levels, including the very top despite the politest of sugar-coating. The reason? Our liberalisation, now in its third decade, did not do away with the earlier practice of decision making by exception. Rather, it expanded the list, with more people now in position to exercise discretion of various kinds.
We imbibed our service ethos as Macaulay's children. We learnt the King's English and office routine all right, but what we really zeroed in on was power calculus. We quickly grasped that exercising power is never a zero-sum game: your gain is someone else's loss. Rank does not define one's place in the hierarchy, but the power one wields does, especially the kind that constricts others. The unctuous bada babu was the presiding deity in most old Calcutta offices. His counterpart today is the section officer who initiates notings in government files.
Morarji Desai in the 1960s, and Veerappa Moily more recently, laboured hard on much-touted administrative reforms, but made little progress. Meaningful reforms would necessarily control discretion, but no one wants to share this power, let alone give it up. We use terms such as procedures and systems to justify the power stasis. Sir Humphrey Appleby, the practitioner par excellence of power-speak, would readily approve.
Politics is all about power. The most loyal opposition is not supposed to allow the rulers to go unchallenged. That is the rule and not an exception in a democratic polity. Even Barack Obama, supposedly the most powerful person in the world, has to face a recalcitrant Republican-controlled House of Representatives to get the resources America so badly needs. What he does not face, though, is power politics closer home. Once the president makes a decision, there is no room for dissent within the cabinet. That is not quite the situation prevailing in India.
Our government faces opposition in Parliament and outside, as also from civil organisations. That is as it ought to be. Since 1996, coalition partners have been at times opponents within. Again, that too is acceptable. But in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), in-house obstacles first from the Congress and, increasingly since 2009, from the Cabinet itself have shackled decision making.
The much-discussed policy paralysis is the most visible, but not the only, manifestation of such turf battles. They are seen when a rogue telecom minister flouts the collective will of the Cabinet and the law of the land. They also appear in Jairam Ramesh (and now the supposedly pliant Jayanthi Natarajan) against everyone else; Kamal Nath against Montek Singh Ahluwalia. And now even senior bureaucrats have jumped in, as A K Bhattacharya noted ("Internal dissent, external crises", Business Standard, February 11, 2013). Regardless of the merits of arguments on either side, the unedifying spectacle of economic policy mavens locking methodological horns with the government's own chief statistician further dents the government's credibility.
The UPA is a collection of power centres, and a motley one at that. It tries to paper over cracks within through mechanisms such as co-ordination committees, groups of ministers, empowered groups of ministers, and Cabinet committees. Their only tangible result has been to send Pranab Mukherjee to Rashtrapati Bhavan. C Northcote Parkinson must be sniggering from wherever he is at the UPA providing this validation of his theory of coefficient of inefficiency.
Narendra Modi shines by contrast. He brooks no contradiction in his fiefdom; his decisions are virtually engraved in stone. This offers immense comfort to investors, domestic and foreign, who flock to him in droves. He draws enormous mileage from this and will continue to do so for a long time. But a bulldozer also leaves a lot of wreckage even as it clears a path.
So, as in the bad old pre-liberalisation days, individual-centric exception making remains the decision rule even now, notwithstanding the greater availability of goodies. Belated and possibly inadequate correctives such as fuel price hikes and foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail are hailed as "reforms". Creating the National Investment Board would have been true reform - a different way of doing things - because it would have led to decisions based on dialogue, on issues of the greatest concern, taking everyone along. That did not sit well with those who dug in their heels to preserve their power of saying no.
Growth and development, inclusive or otherwise, require the pursuit of win-win strategies and simultaneous abandonment of zero-sum games as preconditions. We need to look not to the next election, but to the next generation and perhaps the one thereafter, putting aside concerns of who comes out on top. That seems to be beyond the UPA's grasp, as indeed it would be beyond that of any competing dispensation aspiring to replace it.
The writer taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand
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