Government versus governance

Listening to the same grudges being voiced on a routine basis po-ssibly makes us imm-une to the malaise around us. The challenge of poor governance is one such silent virus that has invaded us and is th-reatening the lives of millions of people in India. Examples of the occurrence of this virus abound but, as in the case of number of deaths, get reduc-ed to mere statistics. A couple of years ago, wh-en the dengue virus was thriving in several cities in India, including Delhi, the government refused to accept it as an epidemic and no standardised approach to the course of tr-eatment was available. Private hospitals prescribed platelet transfusion at a count of 40,000, whereas the renown-ed Safdarjung Hospital and AIIMS resorted to transfusions at counts of 20,000 and 10,000, respectively. It is thus not surprising that there was little ag-reement on the number of dengue cases. We are facing a similar pr-oblem with the H1N1 virus that is creating mass hysteria in the country. Researchers in Science journal have projected that at least a third of the world’s population would be affected by the virus, which means that for a country of our size, it is just a matter of time before the virus hit us. The Indian government had at least three months to prepare its population and medical establishment to deal with the virus. Thoroughly inadequate scre-enings at airports would obviously be ineffective in countering a virus known to be as active as this. What were city governments doing in this time period? Eight-hour power cuts in Delhi, 10 hours in Gurgaon, 12 hours in Ghaziabad — this is the National Capital Region of the emerging superpower, India. City governments and residents venting their ire on power utilities — more so if they are private — are common headlines in most media. For the past many five-year plan periods, we have under-achieved our capacity addition targets by much more than 50 per cent — how can we expect distribution entities to supply power when there is little being generated? The power utility of Har-yana says that power cuts are due to the provision of power to the agriculture sector. But, if we are spending thousands of crores of rupees in extending the grid to cover all of rural India, surely we expected to provide electricity through th-ose wires? So, why should the farm sector be put forward as an excuse for non-delivery in cities? How long do we tolerate this tokenism in the name of governance and the utter misuse of public resources? For years, we have recognised, in word if not in action, the fact that India is extremely vulnerable to water shortages. After over 60 years of Independence, we have neither be-en able to address the challenge of harnessing adequate water supplies for rural and urban India, nor have we been able to maintain the quality of our water bodies. On being hauled up by the Supreme Court and ordered to set up a technical expert committee, the Centre proudly announced that it had launched a “War for Water”— a technology mission called Winning, Augmentation and Renovation for water. One gets the horrible feeling of déjà vu wherein we just seem to have discovered this challenge and are starting to deal with it from scratch! After having struggled for years with the issue of hydrocarbon pricing, both oil and gas, making a complete mess of converting the gas finds from the KG basin into value-generating flows and opening themselves up to an unprecedented, scathing accusation of being partial and interfering, the government is now mull-ing the option of a pooled price of gas — an option that was presented to it at least five years ago. The cost of this indecision, in terms of the opportunity cost of power generation lost, already runs into thousands of crores of rupees. Even if there was some merit in the ministry of petroleum and natural gas’ argument on the loss of revenue on its share of the gas, the government would probably have lost more, in the aggregate, on the subsidies it would provide on the final products (fertilisers and electricity) using a higher priced natural gas as an input. The longer term implication of the compromised role of the government could also take a toll on the future prospects of this sector when the full impact of its actions on the confidence of the global industry, reflected in the response to the eighth round of the new exploration and licensing policy are revealed. A jumbo-sized cabinet with most of the junior ministers without adequate work to productively engage them, as acknowledged by several of the more honest ministers themselves, just adds to the chaos and the cost of governance. The prime minister has been attempting for a while to bring in greater transparency, accountability and coordination in government functioning. As a first step, he probably needs to drastically prune both the number of ministries and the size of government to reflect its redefined role consistent with the ultimate objectives of economic reforms. As Amartya Sen has said in his book, Idea of Justice, that a calamity is an injustice if it could have been avoided. The government has to stop heaping so much injustice on its citizens.