Ask the Right Questions!

I will ask a few questions and I guess the problem will become self evident. The context of all the questions below is present.

Question 1 - Name the person responsible to ensure Industrial growth in India?

Question 2 - Name the person responsible to ensure Industrial growth in your State? 

Question 3 - Name the person responsible to ensure Social Development - Health, Education - in India?

Question 4 - Name the person responsible to ensure Social Development in your state?

I bet most of you can't answer the above questions. Well, I was not trying to test your GK. I am pointing to a problem of ambiguous responsibility in our government setup. There is no single Ministry responsible for the above. More over, the responsibility between Center and State is ambiguous. How can I hold someone responsible for not doing a job, when I do not know who that person is! 

Our government is not structured it is fractured. Let me illustrate this more vividly -

We have a Ministry of Coal, a Ministry of Petroleum, a Ministry of Power, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. If you ask the question, who is responsible for the irritating power cuts even after 67 years of independence, you wont get "a" name. Is it the Coal Minister? Is it the Power Minister? Is it the Petroleum Minister? Or, should by now the Minister of New and Renewable energy be held responsible? Well, to make the matters worse, the responsibility gets fractured even further, if you add the State's power minister in the mix.

So many jokers, but no answer to a simple question, "why do we have power cuts"? Because, Power Ministry can not generate enough power, because Coal Ministry can not produce enough coal, despite having worlds largest coal reserves,  because the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry is not able to sort out the natural gas rates, because the New and Renewable Energy is under funded, because the power distribution companies owned by states are under water and can not afford to purchase power, even if it were available. It goes on and on. We have so many links in the chain that are owned, operated and driven by different people, sometimes with varying objectives, that it defeats the purpose of the whole.

Would it not be a more efficient government structure, if we had only one Energy Ministry, anything and everything related to energy would fall under it, be it the raw material - coal, petroleum, natural gas or the way to extract the energy or the way to distribute it. Then we can hold that Minister responsible, who in turn can hold someone under him/her responsible. It will be a more cleaner, clearer setup.

The point I made above with energy sector is not to say that the problem is only with the energy sector, the problem is widespread.

How do we fix it? First, ask right questions. Answers to those questions will throw up a new structure. 

It is funny and sad to see the small parts working at cross purpose, pulling the whole down!