Ache Din: What Indian Governments Should Do

Political parties in India have coined aspirational slogans extending from “Roti, Kapda & Makaan”, “Garibi Hatao” & “Bijli, Sadak, Pani” to “Poribortan”. Unfortunately, they have remained mere slogans, for even 68 years after Indian Independence, "Garibi" (poverty) remains widely entrenched, with BPL (Below poverty line) figs as per the Tendulkar committee at 22% (270 million people)  & as per NITI Aayog recommendations at 40%(500 Million people), toll-ways have been erected on "Sadaks" & we “pay to use” them while uninterrupted “Bijli & Pani” remain mere pipe-dreams.  Is it not a travesty of justice that after over 6 decades of independence, we have still not taken care of people's basic necessities – the first level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

Prime Minister Modi was spot on when he noted that intelligentsia & officialdom use the words “incentive” & “subvention” while talking about doles to industry while the term ”subsidy” is used for describing a similar exercise directed at the poor.  Incidentally, “incentives” are about 6 lakh crores per year while “subsidies” are around 2.5 lakh crores per annum; demands for eliminating the latter have reached a crescendo while there are no murmurs of protest against the former except from the Left parties.   It is prudent to remove both & allow direct benefit transfers (DBT) to the poor to ensure efficiency. Companies should be fine with a corporate tax rate of 25%.

But for the economic reforms of 1991 not sure if genuine transformative “Poribortan” has ever happened in India. That raises the fundamental questions: Have governments of the day not identified the real problems or have they failed in execution?  Should govt.s concentrate only on basics necessities like food, education, health, law enforcement & infrastructure & create an enabling environment for the entrepreneurial class to do the rest? Should firewalls be created between the govt. & the public sector undertakings in a bid to breed efficiency & make them compete with the private sector under strong regulatory oversight?

Listed below are suggestions against each of the verticals in deep need of surgical interventions.

Food: Public distribution system & Mid-day mean schemes were launched to ensure better nutritional intake & school attendance respectively; however both the schemes are plagued by leakages & controversies like the denial of eggs to school children in MP. With Aadhar in place & bank account seeding gaining momentum, is it not time to scrap the public distribution system & ensure monetary transfers to citizens so that people below the poverty line can buy goods of their choice at market determined rates?

This move shall eliminate leakages & remove market pricing disruptions inherent in the current subsidized model. Furthermore, it shall relieve the Food corporation of India from making further investments in developing storage spaces, leading to huge financial savings; economic waste due to rot of grains stored in open spaces – currently sold at huge discounts to breweries – is also eliminated. While India has been maneuvering to thwart the current pressures at the WTO to curtail food subsidies, it is prudent to get ready for any eventuality. 

Education: All governments since Nehruvian times have paid excessive attention to higher education at the cost of primary education, despite the acknowledgment that democratization of knowledge, starting at the primary schools is the most liberating affirmative action possible. Creation of more IITs, IIMs, AIIMs etc., garners more eyeballs but the woeful shortage of teachers in primary schools doesn’t.  It doesn’t behove well of the legislature to pass the RTE (Right to Education) bill & not force the executive to evolve a time bound plan to have primary school infra with a purported intention to have 100% literacy in a decade’s time.

While the fibre optic backbone in the country is being laid to touch 2.5 lakh villages the plan for “Digital India” would fail without adequate attention to primary education.

Health: Against the WHO mandate of 100 doctors per lakh of population India has 60. Shortages ensure that PHC (Primary health centres) are either un-manned or plagued by absenteeism, prompting a diversion towards private practice.  This partially explains the increase in “medical debt” in India. Health insurance penetration in India is low & the insurance based healthcare model in the US & the debate on Obama-care is the right time to evaluate our own policies.

India produces about 50,000 doctors annually, the highest in the world, but inadequate still to meet our needs. The output is equally divided between the private sector & the govt. sector which the south accounting for 44% of the output.

Capitation fees in private hospitals range between 0.5 – 1.5 crores & 25000 seats accrue about Rs 25000 crores annually & therefore vested interests abound. Supply side measures to increase output to a lakh per annum would help eliminate capitation fees & push the doctors to establish practice in rural or rurban areas.  This is a better measure than imposing penalties on recalcitrant doctors unwilling to work in rural areas, post passing out – although they sign a bond before taking up their courses. Converting district hospitals into medical colleges is a low cost option to increase supply.

Transport: Another sector plagued by a flawed govt. policy is transport infrastructure. While private sector participation in shipping & airlines is welcome, not sure if inviting participation in roadways with its attendant toll-ways is a viable solution considering the huge public backlash that it is inviting; the Raj Thackeray sponsored attack on toll-ways during the last Maharashtra elections being a case in point. The political class which has formed these rules flouts them with impunity; Vittal Radaddiya, in Gujarat, brandishing a rifle & ransacking a toll-way for demanding payment of toll is a fine example. The govt. should be prudent in taking the onus on itself of providing basic infrastructure like roads & environmentally conducive ones like Metro rail - where the private sector is loath to invest due to the long gestation periods involved.

Law Enforcement: Similarly, against the UN norms for police which is 222 per lakh of population (PLP), India has an approved strength of 181 PLP & an actual strength of 136 PLP; total strength is about 16 lakh, short by about 6 lakhs. It is gender skewed too with only about 1 lakh women.  The figures would look worse if you remove the personnel attached to VIP security. Capacity building, therefore, is needed to lessen the workload of an over worked police force & training intensified to tackle crimes including detection of terror modules. Filling a majority of the 6 lakh positions with women would not only bring a greater gender sensitivity but also perhaps lead to more traumatized women walking into a police stations to register their complains which they are currently loath to doing, due to patriarchal attitudes.

Once boots are established on the ground the next step is timely closure of judicial proceedings. The huge backlog of over 3 crore cases – 2.6 crores in the lower courts,  44.5 lakh cases in the 24 High courts & 65000 cases in the supreme court  is partly courtesy the huge vacant positions in the judiciary which needs to be immediately addressed. While the law commission in its 1987 report recommended 50 judges per million of population, India has 19 & 25% of the positions are vacant. The govt. which is the chief litigant, accounting for about 1/3^rd of the cases, should be more prudent in its appeals. Judicial reforms are an urgent need with a time bound justice dispensation mechanism of under 3 years from the trial court to the supreme court with limits on adjournments - not more than 3 say - & postponements. Speedy justice would attract more citizens to approach the courts, thereby reducing the hold of extra judicial bodies like Khap panchayats; perhaps this is affirmative action that the country desperately needs.

The Chief Justice should proactively announce the reduction of court vacations & holidays; furthermore, if call centres can work 24X7, we expect the police department to work 24X7, why can’t we have the Judiciary too work 24X7 or two shifts - of 8 hours each - to start off?; the no of judges & lawyers can then immediately be doubled, using the existing infrastructure alone - obviating need for additional capital expenditure immediately - thereby leading to an additional employment opportunities.

While "minimum Government, Maximum Governance" is a wonderful well intentioned slogan, "Minimum Government" cannot apply to the law & order machinery since it can neither be outsourced nor privatized.

Conclusion

Attacking the basic problems in India is not only a sound strategy but a sure way to create better employment opportunities.  Only that can create an equitable society & a prosperous nation.