DailyPost 2561
SCHEMES OR SCHEMED GOVERNANCE
The quality of delivery more often than not is overshadowed by what the governmental departments are projected to deliver and might be at times, they deliver. The exact nature of delivery and its mapping with the rationale with which the scheme was created can be a subject for different research. What is extremely intriguing is the fact that for the type of delivery of nearly each of these schemes, there is already a government department, which is mandated to perform this task. Whatever is not there can be added to the list of deliverables and the same mechanism will start delivering that as well.
In its place we have schemes being created with great fanfare on a regular basis. The vision of the scheme more than not is of involving departments across all state governments and union territories. That is the only way it can be delivered. A name is also assigned to it, at times on the name of a prominent politician and at other times the post itself becomes the prefix to the name of the project. Whichever way this mechanism facilitates to apportion credit if the project is successful. The department/s which actually does the hard work and faces the drudgery, remains as anonymous as one can be.
Not necessarily that the scheme has to be successful, some figures would always be available to show the progress at any point in time and that can touted as the success of the project. The ground reality cannot be encapsulated to the last detail in these numbers, more so the quality and how many of the commissioned gets into disuse after commissioning. The other fact is that the level of transformational change talked about is not visible to the naked eye. Given this stark reality, this all modus operandi of the inefficiency of the department being covered by the scheme and that of the scheme by packaging and media blitzkrieg cannot be the answer, as any developmental administrator would have us believe.
So, are these schemes or schemed governance? The governance being camouflaged or packaged to deliver, makes it easier to be explained to the world of the “outstanding success” achieved. Create a scheme and put it in this format, and any and every scheme would be a success. Every single scheme, on this pre-calibrated route, cannot be anything but successes. A series of such successes would add to the government being declared successful. The court of the people presumed to take a call during elections on this issue and then whosoever comes to power would again repeat the same well-established cycle. In this thought process and practice, the governance itself is schemed.
IT’S TIME TO COME BACK TO STANDARDISED GOVERNMENTAL MACHINERY REGULAR DELIVERY WITH STRINGENT CONTROLS, STRICT MONITORING AND PURPOSEFUL REVIEW MECHANISMS IN PLACE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.