The powerful who seem powerless to bring about change

State, Market, Society

When was the last time a newspaper, TV channel or website told you there is going to be a power cut in your area for the next two days? It has been going on for as long as I can remember, and has been quite a regular feature, too. There isn’t even a hint of shame or apology from the powers-that-be, and no one is even asking why we keep having these all the time. The announcements are simply meant to tell the public to do whatever we need to manage, somehow. When it suits them, it’s Nimma Bengaluru.

There is something very ancient about a power utility that cannot execute any maintenance or improvement works without shutting down power supply to large parts of the city. That kind of infrastructure is from another era, which many places around the world dumped decades ago. But we’re in a different world. We have voltage stabilisers, inverters, and other things that actually shouldn’t exist at all. But we still have these, because the government, which has total control over the sector, has not kept up with society and the market in development. Sarkar is still in the 1960s.

There are countless other examples. One look at the way our roads are, and it’s evident that we don’t really have engineering contractors building them. The schools are not teaching even half the children enough to get a high school certificate. There is one public health centre for every 80,000 people. What’s going on? How is it that governments which have accumulated various powers over the decades are still so powerless that they cannot even fix well-known and very solvable problems?

The irony is, for decades they have been telling us they’re about to achieve extraordinary things. The Budget reminded me of this. The Prime Minister called it a step towards making modern India. Others in the Cabinet said it was pro-people and progressive. I spent a little time looking at the follow-up messaging after Budgets each year, and they’re all accompanied by more or less the same PR from the government each time -- game-changing, transformative, cities catching up to Singapore and London.

But the game hasn’t changed. On a lot of different metrics, vast swathes of the country are not very different from sub-Saharan Africa. And we’re trying very hard not to look at some countries we didn’t think much of start to get ahead of us while we keep telling ourselves, “this time it will be different.”

No, it will not be. In a democracy, power is distributed across the State, market and society. There are things that each of them can do, and things that they cannot. People vote with their feet and wallets as much as they do on election days at polling booths. When the government extends itself to try and do nearly everything itself, the result is quite predictable -- all three pieces collapse. The problems we face today can be put into three buckets -- weak government, shackled commerce, and reckless social engineering. If the government focused on fixing the first one, the other two would go away too.

What does this fix involve? Lots of political leaders have had ideas about this, and various schemes have been rolled out as a result. Most haven’t worked well, and the few that have made any difference aren’t enough to change the larger picture. What we need in our development story is something else, which has not been part of the calculation so far. We need speed. Velocity, actually. It’s not just that things need to change. They need to change fast, and in very specific ways.

Think of it this way. If 10 people have to do 10 things, and one of them says he’ll do it all, or even direct it all, it simply won’t end well. The only way things can turn out right is if 10 people do those 10 things. And that’s how the Constitution imagines the structure of government. There is a national government, a state government as well as local councils. All of them have different jobs. And none of them is subordinate to the other, they’re meant to coordinate among themselves where necessary and otherwise stick to doing their jobs.

Cities should be run by Mayors. Metropolitan planning in large urban areas should be separate from the state government and local councils within that region. Each ward should not have more than 5,000-10,000 voters. Ward committees should function regularly. And outside the cities, district governments should be established that can pursue their own development goals and plans without endlessly waiting for the state government or the Centre.

An important part of the change we have been waiting for can only be brought about by diligent, iterative improvements in administration. This work is large, varied, and detailed. Many, many people must convene, assess, decide, delegate, review, and do all that again and again to produce positive outcomes. But we haven’t done this in a long time. And we’ve ended up with a lot of show and no substance. Most of the men in charge of things -- and they are usually men -- are not very skilled at their jobs. How could they be? They never practice doing the right things.

(The author is a Social technologist and entrepreneur, founder of Mapunity and co-founder, Lithium, wakes up with hope for the city and society, goes to bed with a sigh, repeats cycle)