Can elaborate systems, designs and approaches make a dent on the real world and ground realities?

GOVERNANCE” caught on as a catchword about a decade ago and by now has been so badly flogged that if the word had any sense of shame it would have gone into hiding. Soon after the word gained currency, World Bank and IMF status reports began tagging it to another catchword of the times – “reforms”. Today, both catchwords have gone viral. No day passes without someone inviting you to a conference or a conclave, a seminar or a symposium on something like “Crisis of Governance” or “Governance and Reforms” or, better still, “Administrative Reforms and Good Governance”. Most such events are organized for no easily understandable reason and with little seriousness, at most inconvenient locations and most inappropriate hours.

Considering all these shortcomings of such conclaves, the one organized by gfiles called “Challenges of Governance” in December was singularly appropriate. For, being a magazine solely concerned with the bureaucracy and the careers of bureaucrats, gfiles has every justification to address the subject and invite a discussion on different aspects of governance.

As far as such conclaves go, this one was rather more vibrant. What made the occasion lively was the rather severe reception the opening presenter, Performance Management Secretary Prajapati Trivedi, received from the second speaker, Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra, and a Punjab MLA who joined the latter in demolishing everything that the protagonist of the evening had so laboriously built. At the end, the antagonists carried the day, with the loudest applause from the participating audience for making mincemeat of the protagonist. Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi, whose turn was in between the first two speakers, was reassuring enough on the working of Indian democracy.

But did Trivedi deserve the thrashing he got from Mishra? Yes and no. Yes, because what Trivedi sought to construct with his Power Point presentation was nothing but a dream structure of fanciful statistics, consistent within its world like the unreal reality of a mathematical model but fanciful nevertheless. No, because that is what he is tasked to build within the four walls of his office, somewhat inappropriately sited in a hotel which gives the feeling of having been created merely to temporize until its usefulness is suitably assessed. As far as building performance architecture is concerned, Trivedi can be said to have built a convincing structure. If it feels fanciful, it is the reality of the country it has to contend with that is to blame. Within its world, the architecture is excellent. The problems arise when it has to be tested against the harsh realities of the tumultuous world, which is what Mishra did when he dashed Trivedi’s numerical exercises against the commonsense of India’s actual daily life experiences. For a journalist with a long career behind him, I am rather easily impressed – as I was when Trivedi showed us around his Power Point Paradise. It was only after Mishra delivered his decisive sentence on the fanciful, otherworldly structure that I awakened to the realization that this onscreen dream world was merely a delusion, enchanting as it may be.

Trivedi’s dream world was further battered by Sunil Kumar Jakhar, an MLA from Punjab, who was not among the scheduled speakers but was fortunately allowed to speak. His intervention made the evening livelier and added to the variety of the discussion because here was a man speaking from the heart, a man from the hard ground where most bureaucrats fear to tread. Here was a man who has to dance on the hot tin every day and listen to the harsh and discordant music of his rancorous voters who beat him down every morning and evening and night with their almost violent demands. Overall, it was a real tu quoque session, a happy note of discord for the participants and for the people of the country at large. There is, otherwise, too much unanimity among bureaucrats, too much yesmanship, too much “lick above and kick below” mentality.

But what was at the root of the discordant notes? Obviously, the divergence in approach. Trivedi represented what is now fashionably called the systems approach to complex issues, the belief that reality can be altered if you change the system in which that reality exists and you can change the system if you can work out a new model created by breaking it up into its minutest elements and then rejigging them according to the pre-set goal. Simply stated, it means that individuals, groups and even entire communities and societies, and their conduct can be changed if the system within which they transact their business or assignments is changed. This is what social engineering is all about, whether in a socialist state or a legislated state in a democratic set-up. This is more or less what Jawaharlal Nehru believed in, at least in the initial years as Prime Minister: if you change the material reality, social reality will change automatically. However, that did not happen and in his later years he showed signs of getting rather exasperated with himself. This was the approach Trivedi presented but he was unable to anticipate how unreal he would sound and how fiercely the audience would respond.

Contrary to the system purists, Mahatma Gandhi advocated a change not so much in systems and structures as in the men these were aimed at changing. He wanted a spiritual change by which he clearly meant change in values and belief systems, a change in individual, group, community and social values at large. All his life that is what he stressed, pleaded and worked for. But changing the value system of an entire nation is a gigantic, daunting task. It may require not one or two generations but several generations to achieve. It is not merely changing the rules of a game but changing the very game itself.

Such a thing is too much for a politician to attempt. After all, in our democracy he has just five years to deliver on his promises. A bureaucrat may have a longer life in office but he is a creature of his political masters and, in reality, he may last much less than a politician in any particular posting. Therefore, it suits both the politician and the bureaucrat to talk of and attempt change in the system. Then he can at least show some result. At present, even that seems unrealizable because of the peculiar political situation in which we are placed. The harsh reality against which Mishra and Jakhar were testing Trivedi’s performance architecture is the creation of age-old values. If they do not change, mere change of administrative mechanisms can achieve but little. Hence the derisive laughter at every hit the two made at Trivedi’s otherwise solid presentation.

The better minds among both politicians and bureaucrats, and thinking men outside realize very well that what is needed is simultaneous change in the governance structure and the value system. But there is no indication that any one has worked out how to do that! One is reminded of Hindi poet Shamsher Singh’s lines:

Haqikat ko laye takkhayul se baahar / meri mushkilon ka jo hal koi laye
(He who wishes to solve my problems must first free reality from the womb of fancy.)