While political speech in India is mired in the ’70s doublespeak jargon, agitations too are stuck in between the Independence struggle and the strident trade unionism of the ’80s.

Sample some of the battle cries used even today:

Agitations in India are held at the drop of a hat. Be it for hike in pay, increase in allowance, regularisation of jobs, back wages of sick PSUs, accident compensation, shortages in public utilities, venting public anger against price rise etc. Like a broken record, on and on, the slogans are repeated. Often those voicing them do not even comprehend what they mean. Just about anything from sublime to nonsense for which a case can be made out for government intervention, is worthy of an agitation.

The various methods used for agitation are:  strike, fasting, slogan shouting, effigy burning,  ’gherao’ , ‘dharna’, ‘bandh’, ’satyagraha’, rallies, token arrest, protest march, burning tyres, damaging government property, burning buses, smashing cars, obstructing railways, stone pelting  etc. From being largely instinctive earlier they have all now been reduced to well choreographed, carefully orchestrated, skillfully enacted pieces of drama. Effigy burning, slogan shouting, ‘Gherao’,'dharna’ are all played to the gallery with majority of action reserved for the camera.  Token arrests likewise feature a bout of spirited slogan shouting, jostling with the Police, then being packed into buses, detained at a playground and ultimately being let off as if returning from a day long picnic. The efficacy of these hackneyed forms of agitation in fulfilling their desired goals is declining by the day, forcing people to use even more violence to cause greater disruption of public order. The one thing that is common to all forms of agitation though is  public hardship. The targets of the public anger on the other hand are rarely, if ever  put to inconvenience.

Agitations are in a desperate need for innovation. The need for innovation is driven by growing public disenchantment with the means of agitation  as well as changes in the underlying assumptions on which most agitations are modeled.  Whereas earlier protests were meant to cripple the economy, causing financial losses to the British (or the businessmen) to eventually drive them to quit. The opponents now in our day to day battles are however not going anywhere else. The losses too return to haunt us eventually in the forms of botched up services, additional tax burden or rising prices. It is especially harsh on the daily wage earners whose wage loss may, at the end of the day, entail hungry stomachs. Biggest irony is that for a country that prides itself for having successfully used non violence to fight the foreigners, now freely uses violence and arson to fight against its own.

There have been minor innovations in the past such as begging bowl demonstrations, boot polish protests or even naked demonstrations – yet nothing has caught the public imagination. The only recent innovation that caused a flutter was ‘Gandhigiri‘ but that too seems to be fizzling out. We could do with a lot of new ideas on how to make the government responsive while causing minimum disruption. Ideas for new innovation could include an early start (possibly 6 AM instead of 10 AM) to a ’strike day’ ending in a symbolic protest. Other ideas could include switching off electricity at predetermined hour, declaring a protest to be ‘bicycle only’ day, or wearing clothes of the same color, or mass planting  of trees etc. The online protests meanwhile  will keep gathering steam from ‘Pink Chaddi‘ to Boobquake to the trending topics on Twitter. The next wave of agitation innovations will be driven by public acceptance shaped by media appreciation of ideas that harp on constructive engagement instead of public disruption.

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One of the most redeeming qualities of Nitish Kumar is persistence. Most politicians have a tendency of launching something with much fanfare, only to fade away in a whimper once the public gaze shifts. Nitish on the other hand has an inclination for following up on his initiatives. One of the best examples of his persistence is the ‘Janta Durbar’ program. Every Monday morning, he along with his key ministers and top bureaucrats meets complainants who approach him.

Such programs had been in fashion with earlier administrations too, but then they were primarily used for either dispensing favours to select groups, patronizing sycophants (ala ‘Lalu Chalisa’), or most importantly for earning useful publicity news bites . However, more often than not they quickly lost their utility and were slowly relegated to the back burner. One of the first significant changes that Nitish made to this program was to change its name from ‘Janta Durbar of Chief Minister’ to ‘Chief Minister in Janta Durbar’. The change though symbolic, epitomizes Nitish’s approach to governance. Another important improvement that he brought in was to connect all the complaints to an online tracking system. This online system assigns a ‘ticket number’ to every complaint that is logged in. The complaint is then followed up through the maze of bureaucracy till its resolution. He also experimented with ‘Janta Durbar’ on specific topics such as cases related to Police or to other departments and schemes. After assuming Office, Nitish Kumar has meticulously stuck to his ‘Monday morning’ schedule of ‘Janta Durbar’. The only time he makes an exception is when he is unwell, away for some important business or any other extenuating circumstances ( like the period of mourning after his Wife’s demise). Another time when he changed his schedule was when he took the program to the electorate’s door steps during his ‘Vikas Yatra’ while campaigning for the Parliamentary Elections.

This is not to suggest that all the complaints that land up in the ‘Janta Durbar’ get redressed. While many complaints are frivolous in nature, many seek personal favours and some are even antagonistic and require investigation of the contrarian point of view also. However still many genuine problems too face bureaucratic resistance in spite of the direct intervention of Chief Minister. Moreover one of the unfortunate offshoots of persistence has been that that those whose problems get redressed are less likely to return for expressing their thankfulness than those whose problems do not get redressed. This has led to several publicity disasters with complainants turning to the Janta Durbar multiple times unable to get redressal even after repeated attempts. Anyone else would have given up on this program if not for anything else, then for the bad publicity it generates when complainants recount their horror story of bureaucratic apathy and expose the inability of even the CM to cut through the red tape. Yet he has steadfastly stuck to his guns and refused to shut the program down. Four years down the line, different people may have different take on the efficacy of the program, still its regular continuance is an achievement in itself. That people continue to flock his Monday morning sessions and are allowed to approach repeatedly if their problems are not resolved, is no mean achievement at all.

In conclusion, Nitish Kumar has turned out to be an honest politician who has sincerely worked hard to put the state back on rails. He however, does not just bring good intentions and hard work to the table but also actively engages in realpolitik to ensure his political survival. He may not be a perfect politician, but his persistence scores well over his lack of perfection. Yet it may not be desirable to have him at the helm in perpetuity. On the contrary, we need many more such politicians so that we can rotate power among them and be sure that one takes off from where the other left. Only then, the people’s work can finally get done .

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It is for not for nothing that Nitish Kumar was called ‘Chanankya’ of undivided Janta Dal in the early ’90s. In his present avatar too, he has mixed up a fair dose of realpolitik with his developmental plank. From the very beginning of his term he strategically targeted the vote banks of his two chief opponents in the state – Lalu Yadav (RJD) & Ramvilas Paswan (LJP).

He began by assiduously wooing the Muslim Community to break the Muslim-Yadav (MY) axis of Lalu Yadav. Apart from symbolic gestures of admitting a large number of Muslim Leaders to his party (JDU), attending Muslim festivities, drafting a Muslim bureaucrat for the critical Home Secretary position ( rarity for a BJP ruled/partnered state) etc., he also has also launched several schemes for the Muslim community (such as ‘Hunar’) and recruited ‘urdu’ teachers in bulk . He took credit for finally convicting the main accused of Bhagalpur riots of 1989 and distributing relief to its victims on the lines of Delhi 1984 Sikh riots. He has cleverly positioned himself as a ‘doer’ versus Lalu who he says, only provided ‘lip service’ to the community. His recent decision of allocating 250 acres of land for establishing a center of Aligarh Muslim University in Bihar too, has been a step in the same direction..

At the same time he also targeted the ‘Dalit’ vote bank of Ramvilas Paswan. He first broke off a large chunk of the community by branding them as ‘Maha-Dalits’ as they had not received the benefits due to them while all their benefits were being cornered by the more well off communities among Dalits. A separate “Mahadalit Vikas Mission‘ was founded under his supervision and a flood of schemes have been launched to directly target succour to this community. To add injury to salt, he has slowly expanded the ambit of ‘Mahadalits’ leaving only the ‘Paswans’ in the dalit community. This move has been greatly resented by Ramvilas Paswan who has seen his electoral fortunes dwindle.

He has even tried to neutralize Congress with his demand for a special state status for Bihar. He strategically voiced this demand just before the declaration of the results of General Parliamentary Elections, at the time when Congress was fishing for more allies. The Congress was initially sympathetic but backtracked later after they were able to cobble up a comfortable majority on their own. Nitish now periodically uses this demand as a stick to beat Congress apart from his usual lament of insufficient central assistance. He has not even spared his partners in the government – BJP. Starting off as junior partners with BJP in the undivided Bihar, he has slowly pushed them to a corner and assumed the role of big brother in the state. He also asserts his authority clearly in matters of protecting his secular credentials such as the recent land allocation to AMU.

Internally he has moved swiftly against detractors in his own party. Early dissenters like Upendra Kumar Kushwaha were promptly shown the door. ( He has recently rejoined Nitish after unsuccessfully trying his luck with NCP for past 4 years). Even the party patriarch, George Fernandis who was also the convener of NDA, was kept at bay. Fernandis was denied a Loksabha ticket on grounds of ill health, though he was later accommodated in the Rajya Sabha. Other detractors such Nagmani were thrown out or the ones like Prabhunath Singh were neutralised through election defeat.

However despite all his brilliant strategies, Nitish received a body blow in the last bye-election for 18 assembly seats in September 2009. He along with BJP could only manage to win 5 setas whereas RJD+LJP won 9 and Congress 2. This has exposed his razor thin lead in the deeply divided caste equations of Bihar. While the marginalisation of Ramvilas Paswan has pushed him firmly into the Lalu camp, the rejuvenation of Congress nationally and the decline of BJP (his partner in the state) together have the potential of stinging him badly in the next assembly elections slated for late 2010. Only saving grace for him is that there is still another year to go and if he heeds to the warning signals of the recent bye-election defeat, he can still re-work the magic next year.

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Literacy rate in Bihar has consistently been the lowest in India and it has been responsible for the state being a laggard in all developmental indicators. Education in Bihar is characterised by poor quality of infrastructure, lackadaisical attitude of teachers, rampant corruption in student welfare schemes, teacher absenteeism and chronic session delays. As a result many students migrate out of the state for higher education. Migrant bihari students have even become the main stay of several private professional colleges nationwide. Anyone who has had the discomfort of traveling in Bihar during examination or interview dates, when entire trains are taken over by examinees, would also be witness to the longing and yearning of students who wish to flee the clutches of poverty on the wings of education.

Another manifestation of this hunger for education is the widely acclaimed Super 30 which is a free residential JEE coaching program for extremely poor students that has turned out 100% success rates in last two years.

When Nitish Kumar took office, mending education was one of his key priorities. To fix the prevailing teacher student ratio of 73 : 1, he plunged headlong into recruitment of 2.35 lac school teachers at one go. Such a scale of recruitment was previously unheard of. Simultaneously he also reserved 50% positions for women and decentralised recruitment down to the panchayat level. The ensuing period has been anything but smooth, with systems creaking under record 10 million applications, post offices running out of stamps, fake degree rackets being busted, charges of corruption at ‘mukhiya’ levels, court cases being filed by disgruntled candidates, protests, ‘dharnas’ et all. Yet unfazed, the government has recruited more than 2 lac school teachers in the last 4 years and is still trying to recruit many more. While it is true that quality has given way to quantity and the endemic problems of teacher absenteeism, inadequate infrastructure etc are yet to be addressed satisfactorily, the resolve and priorities of the government have shone through. Another key development has been the realisation that gender differential (large female illiteracy) is the main culprit behind the abysmally low literacy rate in the state. Hence a number of schemes specially targeted at girl students have been launched. These include a free dress scheme & a popular bicycle gift scheme for every girl student (recently extended to boys too), ‘Hunar – a vocational training program for girls from marginalised community, and a scheme to improve sanitation facilities (Poor or lack of sanitation facilities forces many girls to drop school out of shame) in schools.

The success in higher education has been more visible. Within 6 months of coming to power an MOU with BIT, Mesra (the Private Engineering College that ceded to Jharkhand during bifurcation of state), which was hanging fire for a couple of years was signed promptly. The first batch of students will pass out in 2010 from its spanking new campus with adjoining housing facility for staff and students. Its . Another two new impressive institutions were started by the state government, albeit from temporary campuses. One of them is Chanakya National Law University that provides an integrated 5 year degree course in Law. Another one is the Chandra Gupta Institute of Management that aspires to model itself on the IIMs pattern. More good news followed when IIT and NIFT started functioning from Patna in quick succession last year.

The dream project of Nitish Kumar is however the Nalanda University. He has roped in two distinguished patrons to pilot the project – Nobel laureate Amartya Sen & Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The project has also attracted funding interest from several budhist circuit countries . Once it comes to life, it will transport Bihar back to the glorious days at the dawn of civilization when it was a global center of learning. Other notable institutions that have begun operations in Bihar are Amity Business School & ICFAI Business School. Yet others in pipeline include AMU, IGNOU Regional Office, Aryabhatta Knowledge University etc. However not everything has worked out well . AIIMS type institute that was promised long ago has failed to take off. There are no other new Medical Colleges that are coming up. Even existing Medical Colleges are being threatened of de-recognition by MCI for lack of facilities. In case of Engineering & Management institutes too, the demand far outstrips supply. Also, most of the new institutions are operating from temporary premises. Soft infrastructure such as housing and entertainment for staff and students is still missing.

To put things in perspective, whereas during the earlier regime ‘Lathi Ghumawan, Tel Pilawan’ rallies ( Oil and wave the stick, ostensibly to ward off communal forces) were the order of the day and teachers & educationists were treated with scant respect, today education is the crown jewel of the government strategy to put the state back on track . The battle on the education front is far from over but at least it is moving in the right direction.

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Out of the many advices that Gandhiji gave to the nation, none has been turned on its head more completely than his three monkeys sermon. His three monkeys symbolised the purity of inner self with ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil’ . The bureaucrats and the politicians have conveniently taken two of his three advices to their hearts - See No Evil and Hear No Evil.  That is what prevents them from seeing any corruption or hearing about any either.

Governments routinely go about their work with blinkers on, paying scant attention to the rampant corruption all around them. While government can’t find corruption, people can’t seem to lose it. A common man meets corruption everywhere. To him, government itself has become the fountainhead of corruption. Wherever citizens come in contact with government, corruption potentially happens. The incidence of corruption is so pervasive in the day to day life that it is ironical that government vigilance departments have to work so hard to nail corruption. When corruption is present everywhere, all one needs is the determination to confront it. Yet the charade of catching and releasing culprits goes on, while the malady of corruption festers and grows by the day.

If the government is serious about confronting corruption, first of all, it needs to get its head out of the sand and boldly acknowledge the existence of the problem. Any solution can only emanate from there. The government can then begin its war on corruption by holding ‘Anti Corruption Weeks’ for promoting awareness and informing about future corruption control methods.  This should be followed by ‘Corruption Audits’ of departments for both the people as well as the processes. The aim of these audits should be to locate those departments that can be easily rid of corruption and used as models for the rest of the departments. The audits should review official documentation and the procedures that are being followed, especially with respect to common citizens. It should also review the financial status of the officials to match their known sources of income. Most importantly public comments should be invited to gauge the perception about the department. Wherever feasible social media should be used for the purpose. The audits should certify certain departments as ‘Corruption Free’ based on their findings. The rest of the  departments should be asked to draw a migration plan for being certified ‘corruption free’ after repeat future audits.Once certified, the departments should be subject to even higher standards of accountability and any transgressions should be severely punished. All this may seem like a fairy tale but a driven person like T. N. Sheshan or A. P. J. Kalam, as our ‘Corruption Czar’ can quickly turn fairy tales into reality.

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Guru Nanak had once famously remarked to his disciples – Tell me which direction there is no God and I will point my feet there. Corruption  too has acquired similar proportions.  There is nowhere to hide from Corruption. It is becoming omnipresent.

The next time you happen to pass by a roadside Traffic Police ‘May I Help You’ booth, on way to your office in the morning, look closely.

You just might see the Traffic Policeman doing puja with ‘Aggarbatti’ (incense sticks) in his hands. No! he is not merely being religious. He is also acknowledging the fact that apart from this being his duty station, it is also his seat of business. He is beginning his workday like any other shopkeeper by propitiating goddess Laxmi.  He then proceeds to be on the lookout for candidates to extort money from. The more entrepreneurial of the lot, even hire an assistant at their cost to receive bribe money on their behalf. This is to protect themselves from getting caught red handed. Is it any secret then, that many of these booths at strategic locations are prized possessions and transfer postings to them take place after considerable sums of money exchange hands.

The situation at the Police Station is far worse. Everything there begins and ends with money. Try lodging an FIR for any crime or incident. Once you satisfy many of their preconditions such as whether the complaint is genuine, whether it falls under their jurisdiction, whether it is for a ‘material’ item or not, whether the item (if missing) is insured or not, whether the complaint is not against any prominent person, etc etc., the next thing you will be told is that there is no paper for writing the FIR. Bring the paper, get copies made, add the customary ‘paper weight’ of bribe and then only your FIR will be entertained. Post lodging of the FIR till the filing of the Final Report, the complainant becomes a potential source of regular income to the inquiry officer unless he can find the criminal(s) with whom he can cut a deal for implicating them or setting them free.

If you still can’t find corruption, walk into any of the tax collection offices. What is most shocking to a young entrepreneur is that even if one wants to take the first step for paying tax by applying for a tax registration number, be it for sales tax, service tax, excise tax etc., you need to pay a bribe to procure the tax registration number. You need to bribe for the luxury of being able to pay tax. From then onwards, for every rupee you pay as tax, the bureaucracy needs their own share. Don’t be surprised if the Tax Commissioner is cross with you for paying the entire tax that is due. He would rather, that you pay less and share the booty with him.

From one department to another the gods of corruption are watching you every step of the way and they seek your obeisance for letting you pass by.     

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A recent CAG sample survey report stated that only 3.2% of the target households of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have benefited from the scheme. This means that 96.8% of the corpus spent on this most ambitious social sector scheme launched in Independent India’s history, might be going down the drain. Even though it was only a sample study and its results can not not be uniformly extrapolated, the statistics are still staggering. Decades after the famous confession of the then neophyte Rajiv Gandhi that for every Rupee spent by the government, only 15 paise reaches its intended recipients, things have only gotten worse. Subsequent studies have shown that the average utilisation figure may be still lower at around 6% only. Slowly but surely, the veneer of public good that’s draped around all government schemes is now coming off and the ‘emperor stands exposed with no clothes  on’.  All the rhetoric about caring for the poor is just that – rhetoric. These schemes are nothing but ingenuous machinations of the politicians, by the bureaucrats for their cronies. Government spending in India has become the fountainhead of corruption and any benefits to the needy sections of society is largely cosmetic and unintended.

If things have to improve, more and more technology needs to be brought into the distribution process. Technology can be used to better target subsidies and ensure transparency. Those of us who had earlier faced the travails of booking a seat in the pre-computerisation era would appreciate the sheer magic of computerised reservation system. More recently the role of technology has again been highlighted in the successful use of Electronic Voting Machines, in elections. There are various technologies available such as – biometric identification, smart cards, direct account credit, payment through mobile, internet – that can all be used to rationalise how subsidies are distributed. Many of these technologies have already been tried in piecemeal manner. But it needs to be taken up nationally on a war footing.

An august beginning in this direction has been made by the appointment of Nandan Nilekani to head the new Unique Identification Authority of India. He has been the prime votary of greater use of technology in targeting of subsidies for the past many years. Government has done well to appoint him to ‘put his money(effort) where his mouth is’. It will now need to back him with its unflinching commitment so that he can weather the displeasure of the entrenched classes and pursue the goal with a demonic zeal. A unique ID to all its citizens that encompasses the various forms of identification used currently can become the basis of targeting subsidies to the needy sections of society instead of wasting them on a broader spectrum. It can then usher in an even greater role of technology in subsidy distribution. The challenges before Nilekani are manifold, as demonstrated by the horde of systemic problems that plague the present sectoral ID issuance such as Ration Card, BPL Card, Passport, PAN Card, Voter ID  , Driving License etc . However the problems are not insurmountable if a concerted, national effort is made with appropriate technological and people management inputs.

The greater use of technology should also be backed by a sustained publicity campaign to educate local communities to take advantage of the RTI Act in tracking the progress of various schemes in their locality. There is no reason to doubt that we can’t do all this successfully. We have already done it in case of railway reservation computerisation and EVM elections, both of which seemed equally intractable at the time of their implementation.

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Have you ever tried pouring water into a narrow test tube from a bucket? Surely! You must have never tried such a thing and there is actually no need to do so even now. It is just that successive governments in India have attempted to do the just that with subsidies. That an overwhelming majority of subsidies are wasted is now an accepted fact. But yet, the enormity of this waste as well as the public apathy to such a waste is appalling. The consequences of this waste go much beyond wastage of public money. It has created huge inefficiencies in our systems that prevent the debottlenecking of our true potential.

Take the case of petroleum subsidy.  There is hardly a justification for the large differential between international and domestic prices for the entire population. Neither is there a logic for the artificial differential in the prices of petrol, diesel and kerosene. Just because the government is unable to target subsidies to the ‘needy segments’ of the populace it has opened the flood gates for everyone. But the resultant price subsidy is giving rise to monumental inefficiencies while providing very little succour to the marginal sections of society.  In case of kerosene subsidy, it is well established that the bulk of the subsidy comes to rest in the pockets of the black marketers and the corrupt officials from the lowest to the highest levels. Even the neediest sections of the society are unable to escape paying a premium above the government administered price for any extra kerosene beyond their limited quota. The differential in prices of Petrol and Diesel is forcing Car companies to divert precious resources for launching Diesel variants of their cars instead of experimenting with hybrid technologies, electrical cars, ethanol blended petroleum etc. We are about the only country in the world where Diesel is being promoted for passenger vehicles. Why would Indian manufacturer or consumer think about blended fuel when diesel works out to be cheaper than that – only because the government has mandated it  .
The fertiliser subsidy also is largely pocketed by the industry and the intermediaries whereas the farmer has to contend with peak season shortages and black marketing. Similar is the case with food subsidies and most other subsidies provided by the government in the name of the poorer sections of society.

Government needs to realise that theirs is the costliest delivery mechanisms around. It should be used with extreme caution for only targeting the ‘marginal sections’ of society. By opening the flood gates of the subsidy for the large sections of society, the government creates a huge bureaucracy which further adds to its inefficiency and raises the cost of delivery even more. Corruption thrives wherever there is an unnatural difference between the market price and administered price. Every participant in the chain demands his pound of flesh. So much so that a significant part of the differential is siphoned off before it reaches the intended recipient. This is in stark contrast to the efficiencies of the competitive forces in market economy where every player is competing with each other to lower their delivery cost and increase the value for their customers. The success of this model has been most recently evident in the successive drop of prices of the telecom services. Moreover with Dr. C. K. Prahlad’s ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ theory gaining currency, every company is vying to launch products for the lowest segment of the population and searching for a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. In such a scenario government has to give way to the private sector and only focus on the neediest sections of the society who desperately need government succour and are in no position to pay for their needs. Just like in the 90’s when the government embarked on the process of liberalisation and unshackled the economy from the ‘license quota raj’, there is now a dire need to do the same with subsidies. The self appointed custodians of the subsidies will do well to recall the rhetoric of the pre-liberalisation era to realise how out of synch they were then and now.

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A man at the tap needs a glass of water. You pour a glass of water into the system, but the man at the tap only gets a spoonful. What does one do in such a scenario? Politician’s solution to this problem has been to pour a bucketful of water into the system hoping that the man at the tap would get his glassful. Alas!! The man at the tap still goes thirsty because the more water you pour into a leaking system, the more it leaks.

This has been the story of subsidies in independent India. Successive governments have devised new schemes to pour more and more money into the system with pious intentions of benefiting one constituency or another. However the leakages and the holes in our system have kept growing bigger and bigger. The real beneficiaries of this system are an entire gamut of people who cling to governance apparatus like parasites. These people can be freely seen loitering in corridors of power, currying favours to the politicians and bureaucrats alike.

After Rajiv Gandhi’s famous confession that for every Rupee that the government spends, only 15 paise reaches its intended recipient, subsequent studies have shown the figure to be still lower, may be around 6%. Yet there has been no common-sense effort made to fix this problem.

Every day throughout the nation newer scams of loot of government money are unearthed. These scams are then used as a football among political parties for casting blame on each other. Older scams are replaced by newer ones as public memory fades and the judicial system simply labours on . Yet the basic malaise of plugging the holes remains unaddressed.

What we don’t need is just more money into the system, but simply more ‘bang’ for the money that we spend. A start can be made by commissioning an assessment for every subsidy being provided. The exercise needs to be done by independent, non-governmental agencies. Such an exercise will not only expose the quantum of diversion but will also throw up solutions to check the leakages. Hopefully then the man at the tap will get his glassful of water.

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