Neelkanth Mishra | Aug 30, 2022
Key policymakers NK Singh and PK Mishra have written an insightful book on the dos and don’ts
This appeared in the Times of India on August 31, 2022 (link).
How does the will of the people translate into action? In a fast changing world, how should the few acting on behalf of the many organise themselves so they respond with speed and effectiveness? How does democracy work at the grassroots and how do the complex relationships between the elected and the unelected leaders affect the lives of the people? How must a country manage the complex balance between intergenerational equity, macroeconomic stability and stable economic growth?
The set of people who have hands-on experience from the right vantage point to venture into these waters is very small. While the early Indian policymakers’ reluctance to pen memoirs is now changing for the better, almost by definition these tend to be about the individual’s role in historic events.
The book Recalibrate is thus rather unique. It is an edited compilation of the speeches and essays of two senior administrators and policymakers: NK Singh, most recently the chairman of the 15th Finance Commission (FC), and PK Mishra, currently the principal secretary to the PM. Between them, they have more than a hundred years of experience, much of it at the highest positions of responsibility.
The lens is analytical and objective, instead of autobiographical. Each chapter provides a historical perspective.
- The evolution of government thinking and actions over decades. For example, how the PMO has evolved, the subtle shifts in its power balance with the cabinet secretariat, and its potentially momentous impact on government functioning.
- Future challenges. For example, the reason to ‘recalibrate’, given the accelerating pace of change in geopolitics, technology and climate.
- There is a debate on various options. For example, what the balance of power between the cabinet secretariat, the ‘fulcrum of stability’, and the PMO, the ‘fulcrum of governance’ should be, followed by a set of recommendations; in this case, an arm’s length relationship.
A common thread running through nearly all the chapters is the Centre-State relationship. This is not just, as one would expect, in the discussion on FC and fiscal balances, but also for healthcare, education, agriculture, disaster management, and even the urgent need to strengthen and empower the third tier of government. For example, a good question to ask is whether the FC grants to local governments are additive or merely substitutive, as state governments reduce their contributions.
The book recommends a relook at the seventh schedule of the Constitution (which divides responsibilities between the Centre and the states), including moving healthcare to the concurrent list, a rejuvenation of the Inter-State Council, and addressing the asymmetry in the functioning of FC and the GST Council.
Similarly, while Covid was a healthcare crisis, the book rightly emphasises the lacunae it exposed on several other fronts: Shortfalls in India’s disaster preparedness, fiscal coordination between the Centre and the states (not only in the procurement of vaccines), and devolution of powers to the third tier of government (states that managed this well handled the pandemic much better).
There are insights in the book that come from looking at India’s achievement and ambitions.
- The strong culture of community participation in Gujarat and its impact on the functioning of government and the response to disasters.
- The DIKSHA portal that has digitised 70% of India’s textbooks. There are 2,15,500 pieces of content live in 33 languages, with 50 million hits per day.
- The ambition of the N-DEAR platform to create for academics what UPI did for payments, or what ONDC aims to do for e-commerce.
- The shift of the paradigm of disaster management from ‘relief and response’ to ‘preparedness and mitigation’ has resulted in a remarkable drop in deaths due to cyclones and heatwaves.
The authors also objectively assess Covid and how it caught the world unprepared. While by early 2021 the government was taking into account epidemiological modeling outputs from at least five different sources, these had limitations. The information was not granular enough (even an Indian district is very large), not dynamic enough, and less informed by local drivers of risk.
There are many recommendations, including:
- Rationalise departments and ministries
- Create a risk perception and management unit in the PMO
- Modernise the finance ministry (including better coordination with the external affairs ministry)
- Rationalise regulations (including the challenges of a multiplicity of regulators with overlapping powers)
- Set up a climate credit enhancement fund
While some of these suggestions have been made in the past (the book quotes Manmohan Singh’s remark when taking his leave as finance minister in 1996 that the finance ministry remained totally unreformed), they remain salient and critical, as India prepares for its 100th year of independence in 2047.