The State Level Infra-project Gestation & Processes
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 10th Dec. 2014
We do not have clear reports on actions being taken by States to improve administration and growth performance. The incoming information segregated and spread across different mass media sources depict that the completion time for proposed projects is greatly shrunk compared to past and there is a spate of administration streamlining measures whereby the states are attempting to bring various services/processes online. This may not immediately impact overall business as actual implementation and success will need to be assessed for any real impact including actual budget allocations, however it does represent a slight improvement in urgency being depicted at the state level towards growth.
If this gets translated to bureaucratic processes across different arms of the state such as development authority, industrial development authorities as well as municipal works, then we may be able to see a bit of development for the common man.What is still not seen is transparency being extended to direct bread and butter issues like Ration distribution system (end-to-end), fertilizer, seeds and irrigation distribution, distribution of funds/plots for under-privileged sections including toilets where we only have commitment of funds but lack of verifiability or audit ability about meeting the desired outcomes.
The strangest aspect of the episode is that neither rulers who claim to be going strong nor the rulers posed as weak or the challengers to ruling class is committing to or seeking verifiability or audit ability of outcomes. The politicians know that they need these schemes to satisfy their constituency of active supporters and thus they would be satisfied by leveling of allegation rather than committing to solutions. The commercial new media which claims to be independent continues to play the ball alongside such Netas rather than bring forth ideas for solving the problem. The presentation of ideas actually put problem on the Netas as they are then forced to think of some solution which meets aspiration of their supporter as well while maintaining their optics as problem solvers. However if such solutions are not discussed then the Netas maintain a free hand which is what they want.
The Leaders in government and opposition seem always hell-bent to give them this room almost all the time, alongside the commercial news media while maintaining their optics about running a serious and impactful debate. We therefore have all kind of political leaders and parties hankering everyday about issues where each one is voicing allegations and dissent without offering any suggestions on what have they already done differently in the states governed by them. The situation remains so even when quite a few leaders at state level are likely to go to polls with not much information regards their level of success achieved. We also have issues where not much ground level projects are being kicked off in spite of hype due to lack of redefinition of policies and procedures at central level and commensurate actions by states. Also instead of identifying states as per their merits in taking policy actions and supportive measures (data for which is not published by bureaucracy for political reasons) we always have states classified as per minister’s comfort.
The performance metrics and tabulation which was used by current incumbents at the center to successfully argue in favour of their state level performance have somewhere been thrown out and replaced by some ministers’ rants and rhetoric. If such a data is out, it would not be surprising that some state which is very close to polls are depicted poorly light leading to a collapse of the argument of good governance which the sarkar in power claims to provide. The metrics will also allowed the state level leaders to be tracked as per metrics rather than management of optics which some of them seem to be resorting to. The public perception of course will be built basis the metrics as well as optics if such data is out.What we seem to be having instead is our patrakar friends on some wild goose chase of their own feeding their channels hungry of TRPs, some masala feeds which is used to play the government or leaders up or down depending upon the affiliations and camp followings. Thus it is now more about managing optics rather than identifying data and metrics of performance being essence of the commercial news media. And the normal pattern about conclusions for such optics normally is linked to stock markets i.e. its good if market goes up and bad when the markets are going down. To be fair to the government, such metrics have been toyed upon as per what suits the rulers and therefore have lost some relevance, however it is still better to have a defined performance metric rather than wild goose-chase of media or optics being thrown about ones performance.
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 10th Dec. 2014
We do not have clear reports on actions being taken by States to improve administration and growth performance. The incoming information segregated and spread across different mass media sources depict that the completion time for proposed projects is greatly shrunk compared to past and there is a spate of administration streamlining measures whereby the states are attempting to bring various services/processes online. This may not immediately impact overall business as actual implementation and success will need to be assessed for any real impact including actual budget allocations, however it does represent a slight improvement in urgency being depicted at the state level towards growth.
If this gets translated to bureaucratic processes across different arms of the state such as development authority, industrial development authorities as well as municipal works, then we may be able to see a bit of development for the common man.What is still not seen is transparency being extended to direct bread and butter issues like Ration distribution system (end-to-end), fertilizer, seeds and irrigation distribution, distribution of funds/plots for under-privileged sections including toilets where we only have commitment of funds but lack of verifiability or audit ability about meeting the desired outcomes.
The strangest aspect of the episode is that neither rulers who claim to be going strong nor the rulers posed as weak or the challengers to ruling class is committing to or seeking verifiability or audit ability of outcomes. The politicians know that they need these schemes to satisfy their constituency of active supporters and thus they would be satisfied by leveling of allegation rather than committing to solutions. The commercial new media which claims to be independent continues to play the ball alongside such Netas rather than bring forth ideas for solving the problem. The presentation of ideas actually put problem on the Netas as they are then forced to think of some solution which meets aspiration of their supporter as well while maintaining their optics as problem solvers. However if such solutions are not discussed then the Netas maintain a free hand which is what they want.
The Leaders in government and opposition seem always hell-bent to give them this room almost all the time, alongside the commercial news media while maintaining their optics about running a serious and impactful debate. We therefore have all kind of political leaders and parties hankering everyday about issues where each one is voicing allegations and dissent without offering any suggestions on what have they already done differently in the states governed by them. The situation remains so even when quite a few leaders at state level are likely to go to polls with not much information regards their level of success achieved. We also have issues where not much ground level projects are being kicked off in spite of hype due to lack of redefinition of policies and procedures at central level and commensurate actions by states. Also instead of identifying states as per their merits in taking policy actions and supportive measures (data for which is not published by bureaucracy for political reasons) we always have states classified as per minister’s comfort.
The performance metrics and tabulation which was used by current incumbents at the center to successfully argue in favour of their state level performance have somewhere been thrown out and replaced by some ministers’ rants and rhetoric. If such a data is out, it would not be surprising that some state which is very close to polls are depicted poorly light leading to a collapse of the argument of good governance which the sarkar in power claims to provide. The metrics will also allowed the state level leaders to be tracked as per metrics rather than management of optics which some of them seem to be resorting to. The public perception of course will be built basis the metrics as well as optics if such data is out.What we seem to be having instead is our patrakar friends on some wild goose chase of their own feeding their channels hungry of TRPs, some masala feeds which is used to play the government or leaders up or down depending upon the affiliations and camp followings. Thus it is now more about managing optics rather than identifying data and metrics of performance being essence of the commercial news media. And the normal pattern about conclusions for such optics normally is linked to stock markets i.e. its good if market goes up and bad when the markets are going down. To be fair to the government, such metrics have been toyed upon as per what suits the rulers and therefore have lost some relevance, however it is still better to have a defined performance metric rather than wild goose-chase of media or optics being thrown about ones performance.