Developed India needs civil governance reforms
These will facilitate greater inclusion, without which the vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047 will be hard to realise
A developed India by 2047 is impossible without an inclusive India, where every citizen gets opportunities to develop to their fullest capability. The country not only needs double-digit growth to raise its per capita income, but it also needs to secure the demographic dividend through better human capital. With half the population set to live in urban locations in the next ten years, urban governance for the poor needs a transformation in city planning and regulation.
There are several areas where civil governance must make a difference, from the income of the bottom quintiles to health and nutrition, from educational attainment and skilling to green growth. It must secure the well-being of the urban poor and improve the State-citizen interface to contribute to ease of living and doing business. Communities will have to play a critical role in developing accountability at all levels.
By general consensus, India’s failure to ensure quality universal delivery of public goods like education, health, nutrition, clean environment, and urban living spaces compromises its quest for an inclusive society and economy, with concomitant fallout for productivity and wages that can lead to lives of dignity. Civil governance has to reorganise itself on the basis of evidence from below, on what works and what does not. Here are some considerations to be kept in mind as we go about restructuring civil governance.
First, decentralised community action under the leadership of gram panchayats and urban local bodies, with funds, functions, and functionaries, monitored by women’s collectives, is the best way forward. Need-based provision of professionals along with flexible untied grants and adequacy of public resources is non-negotiable. Convergence has to be a bottom-up process, through decentralised community action and planning for the 29 sectors in rural and 18 in urban that are in the 11th and the 12th Schedules of the Constitution.
Second, there is a need to make standard setting, city-wide planning, social and financial auditing, transparency in the selection of professionals, and their incremental development through capacity development central to civil governance reforms. A functional right to public service, with timelines and guaranteed compliance, will complement this through community action under well-defined partnership agreements. The institutionalisation of all such partnerships and concomitant responsibilities is needed for effectiveness.
Third, there is evidence that education, health, skills, nutrition, livelihoods, and employment are best delivered through convergence as the gains in each of these sectors have consequences for other sectors. The gram/urban basti sabhas need to be monitored to ensure the participation of every line-department functionary. Civil society organisations should ensure the social participation of vulnerable social groups. The use of Local Government Directory Code (LGD Code) in urban and rural areas allows real-time public information on geography-wise performance. The more we subject data to public scrutiny, the better the outcomes for governance.
Fourth, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework can become a metric for desired governance outcomes. The Mission Antyodaya Survey (MAS) of every gram panchayat, since 2017, has already localised the SDGs in 206 data points. A similar process is needed at the urban basti/ward level to enable the identification of gaps and deficits. Mission Antyodaya data is validated by the gram sabha and duly verified by elected panchayat leaders and women’s collectives. This ensures high credibility.
Fifth, innovations in human resource engagement are a must. Besides the induction of professionals, due weightage should be given to incrementally developing local residents as community teachers, nurses, and creche workers, as local residency does matter in accountability. There is also a very strong case for longer tenures for development functionaries in gram panchayats/urban local bodies as well as block, district, and state offices. Transformation in human development sectors takes time, and there is a role for the continuity of people, policies, and programmes. In human development, outcomes can only be measured over five to seven years. So, transfer policies need to be revisited. There is also a very strong case for performance assessment of frontline workers — school teachers, auxiliary nurse midwives, anganwadi workers, and others. Performance-based incentives for the effectiveness of schools, skill centres, anganwadis, and health and wellness centres need to be considered.
Sixth, institutional flexibility and autonomy is needed to bolster school/health centre/anganwadi-level excellence. Third-party assessments have to be institutionalised to monitor this. Zero tolerance for mediocrity in capacity development institutions has to become the basis for innovations for outcomes.
Seventh, local, state, and national governments must partner for civil governance outcomes. Central and state funding in the sectors falling in the local government’s domain must necessarily be spent with the approval of local governments, after validation through the decentralised, community-led planning process.
Eighth, emphasis must be given to evidence-based selection of beneficiaries of government programmes, with objectively verifiable indicators. The Socio-Economic Census 2011 was one such effort. Its adoption across programmes such as Ujjwala, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), Saubhagya, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) helped create the labharthi varg (beneficiary class) of the deprived across region, religion, caste and creed. Technology must be effectively leveraged for transparent identification and updating of beneficiary lists.
Ninth, civil and technical services must be guided by evidence rather than the pressures and pulls of democracy. Evidence-based action and outcome-based governance are what the higher civil and technical services ought to provide.
The achievement of outcomes is only possible with conviction-driven leadership across levels that are driven by hard evidence. That alone will secure an India for all, an inclusive and developed India.
Amarjeet Sinha is a retired civil servant. The views expressed are personal