The Inclusiveness Story told on The Rapid Indian Railways

THE RECENTLY concluded 57th National Development Council witnessed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noting some of his observations about inclusiveness in the Indian union. Going forward he noted that,

Rapid growth also contributes directly to inclusiveness because it provides greater access to income and employment opportunities. Policies aimed at stimulating growth in agriculture and in medium and small industries, combined with steps to promote education and skill development, will produce a growth process which is inherently more inclusive.

Rapid growth, as noted above, plays a vital role in achieving higher inclusiveness indeed. But the reason growth has to be rapid in order to achieve inclusiveness is that the whole process of inclusiveness, at a larger scale, is all about a race - race towards modernization, towards beating the one ahead of you. However, at an 'India' scale, which is large enough too, the race is towards relative modernization, and a race towards beating the State ahead of yours.

Competition is the essence of this race, and the Indian union has to allow this race to take place between Indian States. It cannot take part in the race as a proxy to the non-performing States, perhaps only to disprove the classical allegation that the the rich States got richer and the poor States got poorer. The central government need only be a neutral arbiter to ensure a fair race for all States, and perhaps protect, within reasonable limit, the interest of our States from out-of-scale competition from beyond the national borders. It is sad however, that the very existence of the Planning Commission and its modus operandi look oriented in such fashion so as to make Government of India (GoI) not only a lone proxy for all non-performing states, but also dictate terms of the race altogether! This is not only driving our States into a wrong race, but also jeopardizing their chances of winning the real race.

Railways Overloaded by being Indian?

There are many parameters that act as enablers for each competitor in this race. Today, most such parameters are either directly or indirectly controlled by the GoI. Take the railways for instance. It is shocking to know that the GoI has only added about 15% of rail lines in the last 62 years after having inherited the rest 85%. Railways, that have triggered rapid growth in many countries worldwide, have failed to do the magic in India, thanks to such a bulky administrative and governance juggernaut it is after being centralized in the hands of the GoI.

A general look at the pace at which railway projects are undertaken in India explains how railways could even be having a degenerative effect on growth. Specifically, this example of a railway line doubling between the cities of Mysore and Bangalore initially slated to take 24 months now remains doubtful of completion even after 42 months, quoting petty operational flaws as reasons:

However, if the state government hands over land in Mandya, Maddur and Srirangapatna, the work of electrification and doubling could be completed within six months, he added.

A perfect case for decentralization - Railways remains an unquestioned union list item and the States feature in the deal only when they have to part with their capital and revenue assets in the national interest of laying 10000 kms of railway lines in 62 long years! If that speaks about the inability of a central government in using railways to rapidly grow a vast diverse nation like India, the disturbing skew in delivery, of electrified rail in this case, between different States of India speaks for states like Karnataka and Gujarat that are begging for more efficient (electrified) mode of railway transport.

In a decentralized state of existence, each state would have paved its desirable set of internal rail network, meetings its own needs of rapid growth and competing at the global level.

Overall, it would be an over simplification of the inclusiveness problem to believe there can be one central authority (call it the Planning Commission) making an inclusiveness plan for entire of India. Development of this country is necessarily a cooperative endeavor involving the private and public sectors. Hence, it is important that the central government realizes that a cooperative endeavor cannot be undertaken with a hierarchical master-slave engagement between Central & State governments. The goal of future NDCs had better be to foster a peer relation between the governments and create a decentralized environment for this partnership to achieve rapid growth.

(Previous post in this sequence: Moving the BIMARU under a Shining Skin)

Moving the BIMARU under a Shining Skin

(pic: hindubusinessline.com)

IN his speech addressing the 57th National Development Council meeting of Chief Ministers from various Indian states, PM Dr Manmohan Singh yesterday (Dec 27 2012) made some observations of the state of affairs in the nation. Right from the fact that the invited Chief Ministers were not allotted enough time to speak it was clear how unmanageable and unfruitful any such conglomerate would be in this vastly diverse nation.

Among other things that he read out at this annual meeting, which is a brainchild of the Planning Commission of India, the Prime Minister (its chairman) morphed available data into potential dire situations, thereby passing subtle threats to the state Chief Ministers, and openly communicated the helpless stance the Government of India (GoI) might have to take in such situations. With such a choice of words the PM has both, taken up responsibilities that he need not (we'll come to that later), and dared the state CMs that he could pull the carpet beneath, leaving the states with very little scope to innovate, perform and deliver to people belonging to their states. By doing so, the PM, representing the GoI indirectly assumes sole responsibility of the people of each state, bypassing the state governments, and thereby violates the very federal spirit this nation would like to adopt in its democracy.

An excerpt of Dr Manmohan Singh's speech goes like this:

While we need to accelerate growth, we do not view growth as an end in itself. Our real objective must be to improve the condition of lives of the aam aadmi, which is why we emphasise that growth must be inclusive.

There are two reasons why rapid growth is necessary to achieve greater inclusiveness. First, it is necessary to generate the revenues to finance our many programmes of inclusiveness. If growth slows down, neither the States nor the Centre will have the resources needed to implement inclusiveness programmes. We will either be forced to cut these programmes, or be pushed into tolerating a higher fiscal deficit, which will have other negative consequences.

As we shall see in the parts to follow this post, the GoI headed by the PM must realize that in a federal democratic set up, delegation of responsibility of governance is from the states toward the center and not vice-versa. Meaning, the center cannot assume every responsibility there is, and then devolve them to the states to tackle. For instance, in a truly federal set up the states need not, and cannot afford to, give up the task of increasing inclusiveness to the center. Given the amount of diversity in the nation, in various walks of life, the role of GoI should be limited to understanding the fact that achieving inclusiveness at a national level is not the way to go at all, and in turn support policy making at state-level to enhance inclusiveness within each state. Any attempts made at the national level in this regard will only roll on the title of BIMARU states from one pack to another! In fact this very phenomenon of moving the BIMARU underneath a "shining India" has perhaps been wrongly interpreted by the PM in the same speech:

States that used to grow slowly in earlier periods have done much better. The average growth rate of the five poorest states exceeds the national average for the first time in any Plan period. I think we may be reaching the stage when the term “BIMARU States” can be relegated to history.

What can be relegated to history and what is indeed running the risk of getting relegated to history, and other analyses will be seen in following posts.

Anatomy of a Rape: Sponsored Crime and Consumer Awareness

LATELY, watching TV at home has become synonymous to watching 'public undressing' performances like this, this, and this (among many others) most of the time. TV today is giving birth to more voyeurs in this society than anything else ever did. It is sad that creativity has lost all its colors and reserved itself to blue!

Sponsored by Lewd Entertainers?

Snapshot of a disturbing AD

With advertisements restricted to 20% of the TV airtime per-hour, advertisers are pushed to the limit of retaining viewer attention, and resorting to 'public undressing' seems to be their way-out?! Watching these lewd visuals have gradually come to being an acceptable ritual in the living room. What used to be earlier a taboo to even talk about has suddenly become the tea-time pastime for a good portion of the TV market. And this very society is now plagued by rapes & other heinous crimes. These behavior changes sponsored by the market forces are not doing any good to us at all.

Daring Questions, But...
Clearly, as a society, you cannot undress in public (on- or off-screen) and not be plagued by crime at the same time! We've got to choose between these two. There's absolutely no logic in daring the opposite sex by taking them to the limit of hormonal tests by means of these public undressing performances. Likewise there's no logic in questioning the integrity of people when there's no way of separating the ones with integrity from the ones without it. It is enough trouble if each city has one rapist at large. But on similar lines demanding capital punishment to anyone that commits this crime, however heinous, doesn't help alleviate the problem. A judicial precedent means nothing for a mind that is weak enough to become criminal.

The Whole Anatomy
Rapid, unplanned and unsustainable urbanization has triggered unforeseen migration at national levels, leading to unhealthy inter-personal relations in an otherwise well-connected society, also causing a perceivable plummet in average moral values among dwellers. Viral consumerism, considered quintessential to running any urbanized settlement, has blinded the average citizen to the ill-effects of such sponsored behavior changes in a society. The aberration between market and society faced by common man makes him miss the big picture - that he is being modified (from within) in the pretext of being captured better by market forces. Even to the extent of approving the inappropriate and making their societies breeding grounds for criminals.

Although a weird one, this is a comparison I find convincing always - crime is like a river, with not a single clear source of its birth, innumerable tributaries contributing to its growth, all headed towards one common destination: an out-pour of the darkness out of oneself. This state-of-mind called crime cannot be culled by an act of law, instead it should be culled by an act of collective conscious minds. In fact drawing from experiences of various people in the same society, it can even be deduced that penal laws constructed out of similar compelling situations (viz., Sec 498A IPC) have only jeopardized harmony in the society and paved new avenues for corruption of the human mind. Like it is said, in the case of Sec 498A, it has heralded new ways of exposing the lowest levels of the executive & judiciary to corruption, who had been deprived of the benefits of erstwhile penal laws.

Hence, in the interest of public welfare, it would be prudent of the youth to not take up the cudgels for compelling the legislature to play a blind-game. Instead the same youth had rather display their collective sense and strength in warding off spirits in the market that, in the name of consumerism, convince people to even approve vulgarity such as 'public undressing'. Being a better informed customer is as important today as being a better informed citizen. Let us not build unnecessary fortresses of legislation when we can prevent such a need by being a better informed customer.

Rape, Crime, Decentralized Democracy & The Sarojini Mahishi Report

Circle of Federalism?

IF CRIME in general and rape cases in particular are on the rise in Delhi & other north Indian regions, the best way to protect women in other states (viz. Karnataka) is to closely monitor and reasonably control migration of people from Delhi & other north Indian regions into other states. Even while not curtailing what is popularly perceived as a fundamental right in India (to be able to migrate and settle anywhere in this country,) this measure will greatly help local authorities to plan development programs within the state, track settlement of migrants in host state and make sure migrants do not resort to unlawful activities. Had this been in place already, we would have had far lesser incidents like this one, this one, or may be this one...

If all the waves created by the media around this story serve as a cue to any government, it is the state government (Govt of Karnataka for instance) and these state governments urgently need to wake up to their real job of protecting their state and the state's interests.

For starters, here's a list of things each state government could do in the interest of common welfare, and prevention of migrant related crimes:

1. Demanding education back into state list of items.
• After all it is education, or the lack of it, that is leading people to commit crimes. 
• Education being in the concurrent list, and with an ill-equipped central government at the helm of education affairs in the entire nation, employment & economic disparities are easy consequences.
• This in turn leads to social disparity driving the social awareness disparity quotient high.
2. Demand decentralization of Railways - one of the major carriers of migrants across this country.
• Although not the reason for migration themselves, in the hands of a central govt. the railways are an easy pawn for interested parties to create vote banks out of potentially migration oriented peoples.
• When decentralized and handed over to state governments, railway policies will be governed by the respective state and its usage for induced, as well as uncontrolled migration will be curtailed.
3. The labour ministry at the center needs to be dissolved or diluted to have lesser jurisdiction and control than now, and lesser control than the states.
• Each state needs to be the ultimate point of control and legislation when it comes to labour laws and settling of labour disputes.
• Owing to this ministry being currently held by the center, the labour laws relating to various industries uphold homogenization across boundaries of labour market, and in process encourage excessive migration across the country.
• Proper installation of and enforcement as per Sarojini Mahishi Report (vote) will limit unnecessary migration of people into its state.

The points go on, and is not limited to the list above. Revolutionary changes such as these are not easy achievements and certainly not feasible achievements for political parties that have conflicting interests within and outside of the state. At political crossroads, a state with weaker political lobby always ends up losing the battle and thereby its interests. The dire need for all states that are part of this union is therefore an urgent up-rise of (regional) political parties that understand democracy and the urgent need to usher in federal forces to save this democracy from internal plunder.