Governance for Christmas

Governance for Christmas

Indian premier ruffles feathers with his choice of Dec 25 as a day to highlight his campaign to improve public services.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's good governance campaign is drawing fire from critics who see a hidden agenda behind declaring Dec 25 as Good Governance Day.

Opposition parties and Christian organisations have questioned the declaration given that Christmas is a major festival in India celebrated by people of different faiths. It is the only official public holiday granted to Christians, who make up 2% of the population.

Some critics see the choice of Dec 25 as the work of Hindu hardliners who would like to diminish the significance of the Christian festival. For his part, Modi has been trying to keep his distance from the Hindu nationalist forces led by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the parent of his governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Already the government has been forced to scrap a plan to keep government educational institutions open on Dec 25 to stage quiz contests, essay writing competitions and debates among the students on the subject of governance.

However, civil servants have been asked to be present on the day for governance-related activities. "Coming to work for such activity does not mean doing official work," said Jitendra Singh, minister of state for personnel and training. He noted that civil servants were also at their posts on Oct 2, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi and another public holiday, when Modi launched his Clean India campaign.

The premier's focus on development and governance is also under threat from RSS-allied Hindu groups that continue to agitate for their causes, among them the reconversion of Muslims and Christians who had converted from Hinduism. A perturbed Modi has been forced to issue a warning to BJP members who attempt to pursue a Hindu nationalist agenda. "Even I cannot move away from this (development and governance agenda) even if I wish to," he was quoted having told his party's lawmakers.

On Good Governance Day, BJP leaders and ministers plan to initiate many healthcare programmes related to eye care and blood donations. They will also dispense blankets to poor in hospitals.

Christmas Day also happens to be the 90th birthday of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a former BJP leader and the first non-Congress prime minister to survive a full five-year term (1998-2004). BJP leaders will distribute literature lauding the governance model of the Vajpayee regime and the accomplishments of the Modi government in its first six months. At the same time, they will seek suggestions from public to improve delivery of public services. Seminars and conferences are planned in many places.

Narendra Modi rode into power in May with development and good governance as his core agenda. In his first 200 days he has taken many steps to improve India's infamously poor public services, since public service forms the core of governance. He has held several meetings with top bureaucrats and even given them his personal telephone number for direct consultations.

His regime has introduced biometric scanning in central government offices to confirm attendance and monitor late arrivals and early departures. Decision-making layers have been cut from 12 to four, and around five dozen groups of ministers set up by predecessor Manmohan Singh have been disbanded. Modi has also done away with the National Advisory Council (NAC) which was considered a parallel power centre in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance regime.

The new government is also in the process of repealing 90 obsolete laws seen as impeding delivery of public services. A bill to this effect has already been passed by the Lok Sabha, the lower house. As well, it has introduced self-attestation for major services in place of the requirement for documents to be attested by gazetted government officers.

The premier has told bureaucrats to inform either the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) or the cabinet secretariat if an issue remains unresolved at the ministerial level. He has assured bureaucrats that they will be protected for their bona fide decisions.

Modi has even ordered civil servants to clean up dirty offices and get rid of mountains of paper. Government departments have been asked to prune long forms to a single page. They have been told to weed out excess files and digitise records. Secretaries in the ministries have been directed to ensure effective and timely resolution of people's grievances.

Modi is believed to have transferred around 170 top civil servants with the rank of joint secretary or higher over the past six months. This included the replacement of Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram with Rajiv Mehrishi, who was credited with initiating major market reforms in Rajasthan state. Last month, Modi transferred another 140 officers after a corporate-style appraisal performance, educational background and strengths.

Modi has encouraged his ministers to use social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to reach out to the public. He leads by example as a frequent and enthusiastic tweeter, and the PMO website allows people to connect with him.

Civil servants are scrambling to keep up with their energetic new boss. They have seen how Modi has left no stone unturned to promote his Clean India and Make-in-India programmes. In October this year, he also introduced major labour reforms including allocation of Universal Account Numbers (UANs) to factory workers and Labour Identification Numbers (LANs) to industry owners. The UAN helps workers to track their salaries and provident funds online while the LAN helps factory owners to file a single online return for compliance with 16 central laws.

Direct access to the PM has already emboldened some civil servants to question the decisions of ministers. Former cabinet secretary Prabhat Kumar says it is the first time that a prime minister has actively encouraged civil servants to present their innovative ideas. US President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot have lauded Modi for making efforts to shake up "bureaucratic inertia".

But Modi's government still has a lot to do on the governance front. Having decided to abolish the Planning Commission, a Nehru-era relic of top-down inflexibility, he has yet to replace it with a new institution as he has pledged to do. A review of social sector programmes and labour reforms is also needed.

The biggest problem, however, is that central government has not been able to inspire India's famously independent-minded states, which control most functions such as police, finance, urban development, panchayats (local councils), home and public works.

"The effective delivery of programmes is mostly in the states' domain. They have done very little on good governance," says NC Saxena, a former member of the Sonia Gandhi-chaired NAC. For example, he said, there is no hope of improving sanitation without participation of the states. India has 29 states and seven union territories.

Saxena also wonders why the Modi government has not reviewed many social sector programmes that have failed to achieve their goals. Even countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam had done better than India on poverty reduction, he added. And while there are formats to measure education expenditure under different heads, he said, there is no format to measure the actual progress of students.

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