Economic reform is fine, what about administrative changes

Why is it only in Budget week that we, the people, sit up and take notice of the economy? For this one week, all manner of the average India...

Why is it only in Budget week that we, the people, sit up and take notice of the economy? For this one week, all manner of the average Indian has an opinion on what the Finance Minister should be doing and then, as quickly as they appeared, Mr and Mrs Average Indian disappear and the government is allowed to continue making the sort of economic policies that have made what should be a very rich country very, very poor.

Economic reformists have come and gone and there have been some good moments, like when Dr Manmohan Singh ended industrial licensing, but on the whole, India still looks much as it did before we discovered that socialism, as we practiced it, had succeeded mainly in making India second rate, shabby and poor. More than ten years have gone by since that moment of truth and India continues to look second rate, shabby and poor unlike countries where real change has come.

If you went to Thailand, as I did, in the late Seventies and went back ten years later, you would have seen real change. The airports went from looking much like our own to looking better than most airports in the developed West. Bangkok went from looking like a seedy version of Mumbai to looking as it now does — more like Hong Kong. If you travel in the Thai countryside, you notice that farmers look prosperous and clean and use modern methods of farming.

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Thailand is not the only country where ten years made so much difference. In Shanghai, in 1996, as I marvelled at the modern shops and amazing speed with which a Singapore-like city was rising out of the old one, I remember a diplomat’s wife saying: ‘‘When you see it as it is now it’s hard to believe that two years ago everything was in such short supply that it used to be hard to buy a light bulb.’’

Why have our own economic reforms brought so little real change in the lives of ordinary people? It is true that we now have mobile telephones, private airlines and a choice of cars but, on the whole, we seem to bumble along — budget to budget — much as we have always done.

The reason for this, in my view, is that governance has gone from bad to worse and without governance there can be no change, dramatic or otherwise. If you go into a government office these days, you might see what looks like change. You see computers and modern office equipment. There is even a higher standard of cleanliness, so you might these days find offices that are no longer pervaded by that old familiar, smell of musty files and dirty toilets. In the corridors of power can also be found ministers who are house-proud and insist on high aesthetic and cleanliness standards. But, try and get some work done and you will discover that nothing has changed.

Not even in our more developed Southern states have administrative procedures been changed sufficiently for them to become simple. So, getting anything from the government — whether it is a ration card, a driving licence, a passport or even justice — involves exactly the same ancient, cumbersome paperwork that existed in pre-modern times. Despite computers, you will find yourself dealing with a series of clerks who note everything down in the slow, careful manner of the semi-literate. Why? Because we have so far not bothered ourselves with administrative reform so there has been no attempt to eliminate needless procedures. We remain, for instance, one of the few countries in the world where returning residents are made to fill in an immigration form.

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Cumbersome, unnecessary procedures are not just annoying but expensive. So when the Finance Minister makes his Budget, he has to set aside vast amounts of our money for useless things. Armies of clerks cost money to maintain in the style to which socialism has accustomed them. They need houses, cars, travel allowances and a long list of other perks and privileges. When the Finance Minister has finished budgeting for them, he then has to budget for the many, many useless non-performing assets that the government continues to nurture.

When this is done, there are the politicians to be housed, clothed and fed. Our Members of Parliament want more and more crores to spend on ‘‘development’’ in their constituencies. We also allow them free travel, free houses, free laptops, free electricity and so many other attractive subsidies that nobody who becomes an MP ever wants to give the job up. Quite the opposite. No sooner does one member of a family become an MP or an MLA than everyone else wants to as well. So we have legions of husband-wife teams in Indian politics and when they get old and tired they relinquish their seats only to some other relative.

But, I digress.

The point I am making is that by the time the Finance Minister has finished spending our money on these armies of clerks and politicos there really is very little left to spend on you and me. Roads, modern railways, clean cities, schools, hospitals, clean air and water, these things cost money and by the time the Finance Minister has finished paying for the non-performing asset that the government has become, there is very little left for anything and even less after he has finished buying our annual supplies of military equipment and weapons.

The Finance Minister’s priorities must change if India is to ever really change. But, why should he change his priorities if the only time the average Indian takes an interest in the government’s housekeeping is during Budget week?

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