To the detractors of Kejriwal

I understand where you are coming from. If I may, I can categories your objections broadly as follows -

a) process and procedure for introducing the bill
b) about Kejriwal's grand ambitions, with an eye on Lok Sabha
c) about running away from the responsibility of governance

Here's my point of view -

a) Processes and Procedures - For last 67 years, we have seen how these processes and procedures have been used by the "System", the "Government Machinery", what ever you call it, to deny the country men what is duly their right. Right at the top of this Govt Machinery sits the elected bodies (loksabha, rajyasabha at national level and legislative assemblies at the state level), filled with politicians. So it is no surprise that they set the tone. You go to a police station to get a complaint registered or ask for verification for the passport, or go to local municipality to get your building plan sanctioned or get an electricity connection, procedures and processes are waved in your face. Ever thought why? Because, by making it complex it is easier to scare the people into giving the speed money to get things done. Processes and procedures are used to reward or thwart the efforts. I do not think Lokpal bill is a panacea, but I do believe it is one of the things that needs to be done besides so many others. I hope even the detractors agree with this fact, so why not let the processes and procedures take a back seat and let a good thing get passed.

b) Kejriwal's grand ambitions - First, let me say that it does not bother me. For me that is not even a question, as I look at what he is trying to do now or plan to do for the country and for the people. That is all that I am focused on. Having said that, let's assume that he indeed is ambitious. So, what is wrong with that? Are we all not ambitious? In fact I am happy that an honest, intelligent person, with integrity is ambitious and wants to do something at national level. Is that not good? Would you much rather have a criminal, dishonest person running the country?

c) Running away from the responsibility of governance - Mahabharat, Chanakya Niti, basic texts on governance, all of them cover this extensively. The basic principal is not only to have the good of people at heart, but the ability to deliver that as well. In the present setup, though the Kejriwal govt took the office, it was up against the challenge of entrenched opposition, that wanted status quo. The govt did what it could in last couple months, however, it was clear that the moment it goes after the big guns, or tries to implement the big ticket items on the agenda, hell will break loose. It did. The response of the government, in my opinion is a smart one, instead of becoming a lame duck government, not being able to deliver what is good and is promised, when it found itself stone walled, it quit. The calculation that would have gone into this action would be something like - re-elections are going to be called along with the Lok Sabha elections, the party will come back with majority and then carry on with its agenda of cleaning the system. Smart, isn't it. Also, at the same time, Kejriwal and the team can put their energy in planning for Lok Sabha elections, getting the right candidates etc. So, what is wrong? If a good thing can get bigger, all the more better.

Mamta Vs Manmohan - economically speaking

When it comes to politics, Mamta wins hands down. 

I watched her press conference announcing withdrawal of support to UPA. Trigger for the decision, as she mentioned, were two issues - diesel price hike and FDI in multibrand retail. Both the issues economic in nature. 

Question -  does she know more about economics than Manmohan Singh? Should Mamta decide country's economic policies?

A quick comparison, (from wikipedia)-

Mamta's educational qualification - 

Banerjee graduated with an honours degree in History from the Jogamaya Devi College, an undergraduate women's college in southern Kolkata. Later she earned a master's degree in Islamic History from the University of Calcutta. This was followed by a degree in education from the Shri Shikshayatan College. She also earned a law degree from the Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri Law College, Kolkata.

Manmohan's educational qualification -

He attended Panjab University, Chandigarh, then in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, studying Economics and got his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1952 and 1954, respectively, standing first throughout his academic career. He went on to read for the Economics Tripos at Cambridge as a member of St John's College. He won the Wright's Prize for distinguished performance in 1955 and 1957. He was also one of the few recipients of the Wrenbury scholarship. In 1962, Singh completed his studies from the University of Oxford where he was a member of Nuffield College. His doctoral thesis "India’s export performance, 1951–1960, export prospects and policy implications" was later the base for his book "India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth"

Mamta's early career - 

Banerjee became involved with politics while still in school, joining the Congress (I) Party in West Bengal and serving in a variety of positions within the party and in other local political organizations. As a young woman in the 1970s, she quickly rose in the ranks to become the general secretary of the state Mahila Congress (1976–80).She was a college student in the mid-1970s.

Manmohan's early career - 

After completing his PhD, Singh worked for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 1966–1969. During the 1970s, he taught at the University of Delhi and worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade with the former Cabinet Minister for Foreign Trade, Lalit Narayan Mishra. As the Minister of Foreign Trade, Lalit Narayan Mishra was one of the first to recognize Singh's talent as an economist and appointed him his advisor at the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Singh and Mishra first met, coincidentally, on a flight from India to Chile. Mishra was on his way to Santiago, Chile to attend an UNCTAD meeting.

In 1982, he was appointed the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and held the post until 1985. He went on to become the deputy chairman of thePlanning Commission of India from 1985 to 1987. Following his tenure at the Planning Commission, he was Secretary General of the South Commission, an independent economic policy think tank headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland from 1987 to 1990.

Mamta's track record  -

In 2009, Mamata Banerjee became the railway minister for the second time. Her focus was again on West Bengal. She neglected her duties as a railway minister to concentrate on electioneering in West Bengal.

She led Indian Railways to introduce a number of non-stop Duronto Express trains connecting large cities besides a number of other passenger trains, including women-only trains. The Anantnag-Qadigund railway line of the Kashmir railway that has been in the making since 1994 was inaugurated during her tenure. She also declared the 25-km long line-1 of Kolkata Metro as an independent Zone of the Indian Railways for which she was criticized.

Reuters reported that "Her two-year record as railway minister has been heavily criticized for running the network into more debt to pay for populist measures such as more passenger trains."The Indian Railways became loss-making in her two-year tenure. Even before stepping down as railway minister to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal, she declared that she would be able to handle both the portfolios together. Her nominee Dinesh Trivedi from her party succeeded her as railway minister.

On 14 March 2012, Dinesh Trivedi announced the annual rail budget 2012 that included an all over hike in passenger fares, ranging from 2 paise to 30 paise per kilometre for reasons of safety, along with network expansion and associated modernisations. The rail fare had not been hiked for nearly a decade  putting Indian Railways in ICU as far as its financial viability was concerned. The proposed fare hike would have added 4200 crores to railways income, which while paltry compared to its expenses, would still have saved railways from becoming bankrupt. The budget received enthusiastic support from a wide cross section of society including the general public, industry groups and all five Rail Unions. However, the fare hike proposal in the budget was fiercely opposed by Mamata Banerjee. Although Trivedi initially tried to defend the budget by pointing out that it was necessary for making Indian Railways stronger, Mamata Banerjee forced him to resign as Railway Minister on 18 March 2012

Manmohan's track record -

Following the advice of International Monetary Fund in 1991, Singh as Finance Minister, freed India from the Licence Raj, source of slow economic growth and corruption in the Indian economy for decades. He liberalized the Indian economy, allowing it to speed up development dramatically. During his term as Prime Minister, Singh continued to encourage growth in the Indian market, enjoying widespread success in these matters. Singh, along with the former Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, have presided over a period where the Indian economy has grown with an 8–9% economic growth rate. In 2007, India achieved its highest GDP growth rate of 9% and became the second fastest growing major economy in the world.

Singh is now a strong supporter of globalization, seeing India's immense labor capacity as a path to delivering Indian goods in a worldwide market and eventually relieving large-scale poverty.

Singh's government has continued the Golden Quadrilateral and the highway modernisation program that was initiated by Vajpayee's government. Singh has also been working on reforming the banking and financial sectors, as well as public sector companies. The Finance ministry has been working towards relieving farmers of their debt and has been working towards pro-industry policies. In 2005, Singh's government introduced the value added tax, replacing sales tax. In 2007 and early 2008, the global problem of inflation impacted India.

Now, I let the readers draw their own conclusion. A litmus test for each one of us though, if you were to send your kids for economics education, who would you send them to - Professor Mamta or Master Manmohan? 

President - A useless expense!

What good is a President for? President has zero power, but a whole retinue of staff and huge paraphernalia that goes with it, all paid for by tax money. When Pranab Mukerjee was eyeing the Presidential position he was looking at it as a retirement home, that has exclusive gardens and lawns! I for one do not want to pay for Mr Mukerjee's morning walks in perfectly manicured gardens.

President is a  rubber stamp, a constitutional necessity. It is a position that is given as a reward for loyalty and is a complete drain on the national exchequer.

Would it not be a good idea to merge the position with the position of the executive head of the government, that is the Prime Minister? We can call this position by what ever name, but there is no sense in having a constitutional head, with zero power, that is different from an executive head.

To make the entire government setup accountable and answerable to the people, the executive head of the government should be directly elected. So we, the people, know who is going to lead the country. Today the situation is such that if you want to know who would lead India after next general elections, you have to either read Madam Sonia's mind or get into the head of RSS Chief or wait for M3 (Mulayam, Mamta and Mayawati) to make their mind!

President for all practical purpose is useless, only time there is a real need for the President is when the government is transitioning. I am sure those functions can be performed by Chief Justice. Let us make the government leaner and efficient. Let's start from the top!

Teachers Day - What courses can our Parliament run?

The entire legislative machinery is stuck, parliament is not functioning, important state matters and legislation related to economy, which have real material impact on the well being of large population of the country are pending. However, even in this situation political parties are able to push  a bill reserving quota, based on caste and creed, in promotions. You may ask - How low can they fall? Well, the digging is on.

When you think you have seen the lowest, they surprise you with their ingenuity of going even lower. Politicians should patent this process of finding newer depths to which one can fall. They can sell this IP to the corporates who are also falling over each other to get part of the spoils. In fact Indian parliament, as a whole, can probably run some courses, with formal degree and all, to share their collective knowledge of defrauding a nation and make some more money. I am taking a stab at the courses that they may want to offer -

a) Maximizing ROI - How to make multiple times the money you spent on getting yourself elected
b) The art of disguise - How to be religious but completely immoral
c) Self development - How to kill your self conscious
d) Innovation - How to find ways to make money where none seems to exist
e) Team work - How to team up with rival political parties of diametrically opposite ideology and make money

The candidates who pay premium on top of the regular fee will get the best seats in the parliament's visitor gallery to see the practical on the floor of the house.

I invite the readers to add to the above list of courses that our parliament could run. You see, on Teacher's day we must contribute our bit so that the great leaders could share with the rest of the nation their hard acquired practical knowledge of bleeding the country dry.

True Federalism

Is India not too big, too complex, too diverse, too varied to be driven by one set of policies and one vision.

Different parts of India are at different development levels, they are grappling with different set of problems, priorities are different. Trying to impose same set of policies whether economic, or for social development,  from a central command and control structure is not working. It is slowing those parts of the country that can grow faster and is compromising those parts of the country where focus has to be on the basic social development.

There is too much control with the center, it is time to restrict that and give states the authority  and responsibility to chart out the course that suits them the best and hold them accountable.

Let the center only handle defense, foreign affairs and ministries related to strategic research and development, for the country as a whole, rest everything including the finance and economic policies should be with the states. There is perennial fight going on between the center and the states with respect to dividing the tax money. Let the center only levy the minimum that is required to maintain the  ministries under its control, rest of the taxes should accrue to the state that is generating the commensurate revenue.

Today, numerous policies and programs are stuck just because not all the states agree to them. Even if the programs and policies are good, they get stuck because they seems to be pushed from outside (center) and because of partisan politics.  We can change that. The states should be able to decide what they want implemented and what they want to block. FDI in retail, insurance, policy on natural resources, reforms in banking, in agriculture, list goes on, all of these should get decided at state level. A mechanism must be created where even if only one state wants to implement a policy it should be allowed/enabled to do so, without waiting for the rest of the union to agree to it. It should be possible to create companies / business entities /legal entities that operate in a state, as if they are operating in an independent country.

This will make state governments answerable to their electorate. Today, bucks gets passed around, state governments blames center and center blames states, development and hence the people suffer. No one knows if the poor development in the state is because of faulty union policies or faulty state policies.

State elections should become more important than the union government elections. The political parties should focus more on putting their best candidates at state levels, they should focus on governing the states better, making them competitive, and improving the lot of people in the states that they govern. This will only happen if the states become more powerful and manage more of their affairs themselves.

I know the present state of the state governments and their governance record is pathetic. In fact, that is precisely the reason why I am suggesting, that we change the structure such that we take away their ailbi of always blaming the center for all the ills. The first principal of good governance and good management is to hold someone unambiguously responsible and accountable for it

It is clear and has been clear for a long time that our current system - both political and administrative - is broken,  what is required is overhauling of the engine and not just change of oil.

Stemming the Rot in Government

These days inefficiency of government officials is also being called out as scam.  That a government official did not negotiate well enough and hence caused loss to the nation exchequer, or some babu bought some substandard equipment when a better and cheaper alternative was available, may not necessarily have "lining of pockets" as the only motive, it could actually be the incompetency of the official. I am not defending babus, but it is important to understand the difference between corruption and incompetence. If we do not understand the true problem, we won't get to the right solution.

Today, everything gets bucketed under corruption. That is not the whole truth.

In lot of  cases, it is the incompetency of the officials that is the reasons for delays, wrong decisions, wasteful expenditure and in general government paralysis.

The reasons why the government is generally perceived to be / or it actually is incompetent are not difficult to find or comprehend. In fact three things that any organization needs to do to keep a vibrant and healthy culture are missing in government  - First  - Induction - The way people get hired in government is messed up.  Selection is based on quotas, cast and creed vs merit. Selections are heavily influenced, money changes hands. Selection techniques are outdated and out of sync with the reality. For example, induction process in police lays more emphasis on the physique of the candidate vs ways to figure out the psychological makeup of the candidate. Do we expect and want policemen to go and beat up mafia dons in their dens, a la "Zanjeer" or do we expect policemen to be able to resist temptation to take part of the loot and let the culprit go scot-free?
Second - The  rise in government is not linked to performance and good work. The process does not reward good performers. Worse still, there is no disincentive not to work. People have figured it out. Now it has degenerated to an extent where, forget about government folks going beyond the call of duty, to get something done, it is a pleasant surprise if they do what is their primary job! Even for doing that they want favors!
Weeding out - You get in you stay in. Incompetent people are happy to have more incompetent people around them. Makes it a very cozy bunch.
In short, government gets incompetent people in, it disincentivizes the competent, till they also become like majority, and it keeps the incompetent people for life!

To make the situation worse, as the government is expected to focus more on policies, procedures, governance and less on operations,  the incompetency of the government apparatus is becoming painfully visible and excruciatingly difficult to deal with.

To draw a parallel, imagine a corporate where top decision makers and executives are a bunch of incompetent people. Irrespective of how hardworking or capable the employees may be, the corporate is doomed.  No organization survives when the next person it higher is worse then the previous. It is a downward death spiral.

While we must work to stem the rot of corruption, we must not lose sight of the fact that we need to fix the basics, the basics of building an organization, in this case a very important organization - our government.