Daily Post 1503
INDIAN GOVERNANCE – WHERE NOBODY FAILS!
Governance is all about goals worked out on data coupled on the needs, the resources that can be commandeered and the time taken to achieve those. Given the resource scare economy, which we continue to remain, funds would always be the most critical element. The project management capability to make it happen is what is known as governance. You should make out the number of stakeholders and the nitty gritty of the whole exercise, if it were to happen, the way it is flaunted. Have all the stakeholders contributed to the data and the planning of the area they know best and would be impacted the most. Has the blueprint churned out is the best possible workable document in the given scenario.
Even at the Policy level, how much do the intellectuals / academicians / researchers and even practitioners have a role to play through the numerous Public Policy Schools and hundreds of Public Policy Think Tanks remains unknown. Silos and turf war is our curse and public policy cannot have an organic growth in this scenario. Unfortunately, given its complexity public policy with an intellectual consensual approach with data enabled field information will only deliver results. The policy, directives, guidelines and SOPs of programs and projects should be such that it is easily understandable and doable.
It is then pushed on to an administrative mechanism, which is standardised in its own way, whereas today’s developmental administration needs different skills and capabilities to deliver. Not that things are not being delivered in that mode, but scale, quality and pace is challenging. Dynamic and real time is a necessity today. Every age has its own system and so is in the Cyber-Physical Age. Deliverables will not happen commensurate to the demands or the requirements, if this bottleneck remains. The lack of sync is manifested in degraded quality of deliverables, sometimes full ommisions as well.
In this scary scenario, the best way is to announce everything delivered. No nitpicking, no detailing, nobcross matching, no audit reference, just a simple declaration that all is delivered. Self-certification is our forte. This attitude shows up in electioneering. Completely divergent narrations of the same reality. It is rare to find any element of government or the ruling dispensation accepting that something has not been delivered or wrong action has been taken. Delivery, deliverables and development has become a made a state of mind. Whatever is not measured or wrongly measured has not happened. Where nobody fails nobody succeeds as well. Democracy of the 21st century has to be different.
DEVELOPMENT DEMOCRACY IS THE FUTURE. HACKING GROWTH SHOULD BE THE NORM.