Sujavna 3:18

1230 hrs/Sunday 12 May 2013

On Friday last, as I was waiting (along with 100 other invited guests) for the top bureaucrat of my city to grace the Annual Day celebrations of a Chamber of Commerce (who incidentally came almost an hour later than his scheduled time), I started thinking of the numbers of game-changing and innovative public administration projects, initiatives and policy reforms that the top bureaucrats of Indian states should have completed in the 60-plus odd years that Indians began governing themselves.

Think: Assuming that a top bureaucrat stays for 5 years on his job, we have on an average around 12 individuals in each Indian state (during the last 60 years), who were recognised for their excellence in public administration capabilities (that is why they could reach the top job, isn’t it?). Focussing just on 20 of the current 29 states, means we have a group of 240 individuals, whose career excellence in public administration (be it in revenue administration, in law and order administration, in health and nutrition administration, in legal and constitutional understanding and interpretation to support government projects and policies, be it in education or land reforms) was recognised and rewarded with selection to the top Post.

That means we should have a catchment of 240 case studies that illustrate how lateral thinking, innovations in processes and systems, and application of the right sets of data analytics to effect the right interventions for the benefit of the largest segment of the affected citizens, could be achieved.

Where are these case studies? Who is chronicling them? How are the lessons learnt being communicated to other public administrators (including aspiring ones), and to their political masters? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is a well-documented compilation of a list of current and past projects of innovative public administration, along with the names of key officials who were directly involved?  

And how cynical can one be, if one were to conclude that the 240 top bureaucrats reached their positions not because of their excellence in public administration but because they knew how to play the system and were in the right place at the right time seeming to do the right things for their political masters? Perhaps justified, if one were to look at the preponderance of archaic systems, laws and civil procedures that plague all of our states and the Centre and shackle them from offering good governance transparently!

Any views or suggestions? Signing off here.....