By Anil Swarup-
(Anil Swarup is a former Education Secretary and Coal Secretary in the Government of India. He is also a renowned author. The views expressed in this article are his own)
Will the PM bite the bullet?
“Centre wakes up to extend the tenure of IAS officer who received farewell from Chandigarh a month ago” reported The Indian Express on 23rd of September. Such news items and such occurrences don’t leave us exasperated. Perhaps that is the reason delays continue to happen and we continue to debate how Artificial Intelligence can improve governance without focusing on what can be done with the existing technology. We fail to understand that much more important than AI is “Attitudinal Intelligence”. The good news is that a few in the country have proved that governance can improve dramatically by the use of technology. Yet, we talk big but walk little.
The occasion was the review of schemes by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi wherein a few Cabinet Ministers were present and I was also present along with a few other Secretaries to Government of India. The PM was obviously and correctly irked at the delays in various projects but not many could muster the courage to state that there were delays at Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as well. Nitin Gadkari, Cabinet Minister of Road Transport and Highways spoke about such delays in the PMO. There was a pin-drop silence for a while as the officers of the PMO looked embarrassed. The meeting got over and all hell broke loose thereafter. There was a flurry of activities in the PMO as PM himself appeared very concerned. Apparently, an attempt was made to locate such files and papers where decisions were pending at the highest level. Why was there a need to do so? What was the need for the PMO to be told that the action was pending at their end?
The aforementioned news item and the feedback from a number of officers reveal that not much has changed. When the PM is himself so concerned about the delays and when he is so fond of technology, why isn’t technology being used in the PMO to ‘reveal’ the delays automatically without someone having to tell them? The PM carries an iPad with him and he can access the data quite easily though he may not actually be required to do so if those who are responsible for the delays know that the PM has easy access to the data relating to delays. The potential of the PM to have easy access will obviate most of the delays.
They say, “Charity begins at home”. Very few files get generated in the PMO. Actions/decisions get taken primarily on files coming from various Ministries. Why doesn’t the PMO mandate that only digital files will be received from the Ministries? This will push all the Ministries to go digital and improve governance dramatically as it did in the Coal Ministry in 2015 when coal block auctions were carried out without any blemish and within a defined frame-work. Such a move will benefit in a number of ways:
- It will bring transparency to the entire process. It will be virtually impossible to fudge or change notes on the files.
- Digitization of processes can help re-engineer them as the “pain points” can easily be identified
- Delays will be reduced substantially and automatically as the data relating to files and their movement will be available real-time. Much of the corruption is on account of delays in decision-making (notoriously called “speed-money”).
Even before it happened in the context of the Coal Ministry, a file-less and paper-less office was created in the Cabinet Secretariat in its newly created attached office, Project Monitoring Group (PMG) in 2013 after the scams had stalled all decision-making. The objective of PMG was to fast-track projects (each of which was Rs 1000 crore or more) both in the public and private sectors. It worked. More than Rs 5 lakh crore worth of projects were cleared during a short period of 15 months. The PMG thrived on paper-less, file-less and transparent process. In fact, as outlined in my recently released book, “Encounters with Politicians”, one Cabinet Minister lost her job because she was sitting on files entailing investments of more that Rs 54,000 crore.
Look at what has the use of technology done to Railway Reservation (the first large scale use of technology). Look at how technology has eliminated the “thanedari” of Income Tax Officers. Look at how technology has made getting a passport so easy as compared to the cumbersome process in the past. The list is a long one and almost everyone agrees that technology can transform governance. It is happening in India as well but the pace and the ambit can be increased substantially. For it to happen, the Prime Minister has to drive it himself as he did in the case of highly successful “swachhta abhiyan” even though what is being suggested is a trifle more difficult. The biggest hurdle could be his own office. The PMO itself has to go digital. There could be “risk” of revealing the delays in his own backyard. This is where the PM has to take a call, a difficult one. Many ministries feel frustrated at the delays in the PMO but they don’t/can’t speak up.
PMO going digital with files is not a technological issue or challenge. It is of intent and courage. It is all about attitude. The PM I knew was very keen on eliminating delays. I witnessed that he used to get extremely upset with delays. Rightly so. As mentioned earlier, he believes that technology can solve a number of problems and improve governance. But will charity begin at home? This indeed is a million-dollar question.
