Optimism down the drain...

With the new government announcing its 100 day agenda, and sounding business-like, there is unprecedented sense of expectation in the country. After, what is being called a positive vote, people are expecting this government to really deliver goods. It is a first in India, people actually expecting the government to deliver on governance, not on issues.

And as optimism started getting on to perennial cynic like me, I came across an article in Mint - A better bureaucracy. And this made me realise that fundamentally things are going to be delivered the same way. Change in intent is not going to make a cosmic change.

The author, himself a former top bureaucrat, is suggesting that poor governance in India is primarily because of extremely slow and ineffective bureaucracy. Corruption is not the only monster, ineffectiveness of our bureaucratic set up is an equally challenging problem. Depending on our current bureaucratic structure is like relying on old age steam engines to compete with new age electric engines.

Despite the best intentions of Prime Minister, UPA 1.0 failed to deliver on the most of infrastructure targets it set for itself. The reason of this failure is essentially the way in which our bureaucracy decides, or rather does not decide. It still takes huge effort and time to move things from one decision point to another.Presence of multiple decision points does not help the situation. With this lethargy and apathy I do not expect UPA 2.0 to perform any better.

A lot of this government's policies are aimed at providing relief to BPL (Below Poverty Line) families. Analysts are debating if it is more efficient to hand out food and education coupons to BPL families or to provide them subsidised food and education. But a bigger concern is around identification of BPL families.

This is another glaring display of our inefficient, indifferent and insipid bureaucracy - Planning commission says there are no more than 60 million BPL families in India. All state governments put together have already issued more than 107million BPL cards. AP has almost entire population (incl those with Sania Mirza's pic on BPL card!) listed as BPL while some of the poorest states have a very low count of BPL families!

Its issues like this which derail the agenda of government. Its not a policy issue. Its a governance issue. And we face this issue because of a failed bureaucracy. We desperately need an intelligent, efficient and honest bureaucracy. It seems too much to ask...

Its the sheer ineffectiveness of a large elephantine apathetic bureaucracy that is pegging back India. Unless we carry out structural reforms in our bureaucratic set up it is impossible to deliver the kind of changes that we want and more importantly that we need in our country. We all have experienced this, we all know it, then why are we not doing it?