It made Sense - 2

The front page news in Hindustan Time says “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has laid down the ground rules for his ministers.” The three page letter he sent to his cabinet colleagues addresses a variety of management issues like delivery on promises, good governance, coordination with fellow ministers, delegation of responsibilities to junior ministers etc etc.


The Deccan herald had similar news “The prime minister has asked the finance ministry to ensure that the next Union Budget adequately and appropriately reflects the priorities and programmes outlined in the President’s address to the joint session of Parliament.” This directive by PM was put in public domain too.


In a way it is surprising to see that when the CEO of the country asks his division heads to perform it is headline news! Isn’t it expected of them? But such result orientation was not priority for governance in our country most often. For quite some time the electoral math ensured that the PM could hardly demand performance. The only thing he could ask for often was co-operation and support so that the ministry didn’t fall.


It is after a long time that we have a PM who expects professional management from his ministers and who can almost ask for it.


Let us hope that this is just a beginning. Now that we got so much I am feeling greedier. Can we hope for our ministers to declare clearly their targets for the oncoming years, the benchmark performance that we can expect, the objectives that they are working for and announce a set of measures by which we can measure the performance?


Can we go one step forward? Can we have such measures for the officers who man the ministries too? To the extent of public is aware, it is very seldom that the bureaucrats are accountable for specific sets of outcome or results. The best we can often expect is performance on ‘good effort basis’ with no commitment. Sometime it is just pushing personal agenda and not what is good for the system. I don't meant that all bureaucrats behave in this fashion. We have many wonderful officers who give their heart, soul and everything to make a difference. Unfortunately they are becoming a vanishing tribe.


Once we have such measures in place, the people who elected them and the people who fund them by paying taxes will be able to judge whether their choice was right.


The government also should put in place a mechanism by which such performance can be monitored on a continuous real-time basis and made available easily without one resorting to RTI act.


Can we put in place a mechanism by which the citizen can over the net search and find out the status and the funding relating to the development project in his vicinity? If we put such a mechanism in place and the pressure come from the ground, then the demand of performance by PM will have more teeth.


I believe we have the technology and the institutional capability in our country for this. What we need is the will to enable them.


With the help of the young, tech savvy MPs and Ministers if PM enables such a public monitoring mechanism I am sure that we can expect and enforce better performance.