part0023

In recent months, much has been written about the compulsions of the so-called ‘coalition dharma’. Besieged by a series of scams and corruption scandals, the Congress-led UPA-II government has sought refuge in the argument that the harsh realities of running a coalition government have necessitated unpalatable compromises and made toleration of corrupt practices within the government inevitable. Thus, for instance, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attributed the appointment of A. Raja as telecom minister for the second time in 2009, despite evidence that he had flouted rules and acted unilaterally in allocating 2-G licenses, to the compulsions of ‘coalition dharma’.

At one time, it was fashionable to attribute India’s slow growth, as compared to China, to the fact that India was a democracy and could therefore not take decisions by diktat. We were told that being a democracy necessarily implied some sacrifice in terms of good governance and economic growth. However, one does not hear this argument being seriously advanced in the last two decades, after the Indian economy managed to achieve and sustain a high rate of growth .

One should not confuse between governing as part of a coalition and governing badly. The former describes the mechanics of government while the latter defines the quality of governance. Bad governance erodes the effectiveness of government policies and programmes, blunts the delivery systems of essential government services and public goods and leads to a break-down of accountability, probity and ultimately, the public trust without which no government can continue to function. At the end of the day, there cannot be any compromise with corruption, and any society or economy which seeks to rationalize or justify corruption on the basis of the compulsions of coalition dharma (or adharma) is embarking down a slippery slope which can only lead downwards in a vicious and ultimately self-fulfilling cycle.

The contention that coalition governments breed corruption, lead to bad governance and constrain growth is a variant of this now discredited argument and is equally spurious and without basis. The fact is that no party has enjoyed an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha since 1996. However, the Indian economy broke free from the shackles of the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ and climbed on to a high growth path after the economic reforms of 1993. Despite being governed by a series of coalition governments, India remained on this high growth path for two decades, becoming a key member of the BRIC grouping of emergent and aspirational economies and being seen as an important driving force of world economic growth as a whole.

The Deve Gowda and Gujral governments, from mid-1996 to early 1998, had short tenures as coalition arrangements between parties with widely differing perspectives. However, they were able to usher in far-reaching reforms, many of which are still playing out. Practically every reform in the past 15 years has had its origin and substantive advance in the period of these governments, especially the one presided over by Deve Gowda. I had the privilege of being the Cabinet Secretary during practically the entire period of these two governments; Satish Chandran was the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Deve Gowda. Practically every major move during this period originated at the ‘bureaucratic’ level, had the full blessings of the political leadership (mainly the prime minister and the key ministers) and there was cohesion among the alliance partners that during the short period that they were in power, wide ranging reforms needed to be ushered in; this was also successfully achieved. While commentators in general have been, in a sense, contemptuous in their treatment of ‘governance’ during this period, an objective look will indicate the far-reaching nature of the positive moves taken during this period and the quality of governance that was given to the country. The following paragraphs briefly review the new directions initiated, and the results that were obtained. These are a matter of record, verified through contemporary documents of the period.

The Common Minimum Programme of the United Front (UF) government included a commitment to incorporate the Right to Information as a Fundamental Right in the Constitution. This was the first time that this proposal had been made at the government level and it signified a recognition by the government that the logic of globalization, economic liberalization and participatory democracy inevitably implied open access to information, knowledge and ideas as a means of empowering the common man.

This was the first time that the concept of Right to Information was brought up in the government, and pursued to the point where it almost became law. That it did not is only due to the fact that the government did not survive long enough to pass it. In pursuance of this objective, the central government set up a working group under the chairmanship of H.D. Shourie, a well known civil rights activist in January 1997, and mandated it to prepare the draft legislation on the Freedom of Information Act within a period of two months. Another eminent personality in the working group was Soli Sorabjee, a former Attorney General and legal luminary with a record of decades of campaigning for freedom of expression. The government signalled its seriousness of purpose and clear political will to move from an opaque and arbitrary system of governance to a new era of greater transparency, accountability and empowerment of the citizen .

During its brief tenure, the UF government managed to kick-start the process of making the Right to Information a legislative (even if not yet a fundamental) right. Predictably, the passing of a national level law proved to be a difficult and long drawn out task. In the event, the draft bill prepared by the Shourie Committee became the basis, albeit in an extremely diluted form, for the Freedom of Information Bill, 2000 which eventually became law under the Freedom of Information Act, 2002. This act was in turn repealed and replaced with the Right to Information Act, 2005, which is currently in force.

The activism of the central government with regard to the Right to Information Act also accelerated the process of enacting similar acts by a number of state governments. Thus, Goa first enacted a RTI Act in 1997, followed by Karnataka and Rajasthan in 2000, Delhi in 2001, Assam and Maharashtra in 2002, Madhya Pradesh in 2003 and Jammu and Kashmir in 2004.

Today, the RTI Act is recognized and widely used as a powerful instrument to exercise oversight and impose a degree of accountability on government decisions. It is not an exaggeration to say that RTI is the single most important instrumentality of ensuring, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, that a ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.’

The concept of the Lok Pal (ombudsman) was mooted by the Santanam Committee in 1962. However, it could not be pushed through, despite an effort made in the late 1970s by Shanti Bhushan. The next major effort was made during the Deve Gowda period.

Like the RTI Act, the passage of the Lok Pal Bill was a commitment made in the Common Minimum Programme of the UF government. This bill too had been in limbo for nearly three decades, with successive governments paying lip-service to the need for a Lok Pal to combat corruption in public life, but doing little to actually bring the bill on to the statute books.

The draft of the bill was discussed and finalized in a Cabinet meeting on 29 August 1996. At its next meeting on 9 September 1996, the Cabinet approved the bill. The Lok Pal Bill (along with bills on reservation for women, electoral reforms and Prasar Bharti Broadcasting) were listed for the budget session of February 1997. Unfortunately, the bill became a casualty of the political turmoil which saw the ouster of Prime Minister Deve Gowda in April 1997. The successor government headed by I.K. Gujral was not able to see through the passage of the bill.

One of the signal achievements of the coalition government was the clearance of Phase I of the Delhi Metro Rail Project in September 1996. Within a few months of taking over, the government was able to give the go-ahead to this major project, which had been hanging fire for over two decades. The materialization of the long-delayed yet much awaited Delhi Metro Rail Project was the result of a real and determined push by the government, despite strong opposition from the Ministry of Finance and other objections from several other ministries, including railways, surface transport and environment & forests. In another publication, I had written about the ‘process’ adopted for clearing the project—essentially this involved ‘locking up’ the secretaries of the concerned ministries in my conference room, providing them snacks and toilet facilities inside, and telling them that they will not be released till a final decision was taken. Not surprisingly, they were able to reach an agreement within two hours on a matter which had been subject to petty inter-departmental disputes for over a decade! Perhaps my inspiration was the method used in the Vatican by the cardinals for identifying the new Pope.

A key decision I took related to the appointment of Sreedharan as the Chief Executive of the Metro Corporation. Apart from turf wars between the various departments/agencies involved, the argument that he was ‘over-age’ was also trotted out to eliminate him. His appointment turned out to be a critical factor for the brilliant execution of the project and commencement of metro services in record time.

In the event the project started on the ground, with the mandate that within five years the first train should roll. The first metro train carrying passengers in Delhi started operations in October 2001, exactly on schedule. Ironically, as is normal in such matters, the inauguration was dominated by the leaders of the day of the central and state governments, with no reference to how the project came into being. As a footnote, it should be added that thanks to the success of the Delhi Metro, at least 20 metro systems are under construction in various cities and towns in India, as of summer 2013.

During its brief tenure, the coalition government was able to effect major, structural changes in the oil and gas sector; in fact it lay the foundations of the policy which is being followed even today. The announcement of the New Exploration and Licensing Policy (NELP) was a far-reaching reform which fundamentally changed the face of oil exploration in the country, infused substantial amounts of fresh capital into the industry and, over the longer term resulted in the discovery of major new oil fields by the private sector, thus reducing India’s crippling dependence on oil and gas imports.

If my memory serves me right, the government was also able to find a formula to peg the prices of petroleum products, including petrol and diesel (probably only excluding kerosene and cooking gas), automatically indexing the pricing to London Crude. This significant decision, which takes into account the inevitability of linking market prices in India to crude prices was a major step forward in realistic pricing. I believe this significant advance was negated in 2004 by the then petroleum minister, who reduced petrol prices to take popular accolades when international crude prices temporarily dipped. We can now see the consequences of the political games being played nearly on a monthly basis, whenever gasoline prices are to be raised .

Major advances were made in the telecom sector, which laid the base for the telecom revolution in the country in the next decade. BSNL and VSNL’s monopoly were dismantled, and a set-up opened up in a big way for private players. The part privatization of VSNL was hailed internationally as the ‘disinvestment of the year’. The internet was released from the monopoly of one government agency—one can see the results now, flowering in so many directions. This has also contributed to the rapid expansion of the Indian IT sector, with major new employment creation. Many new players were encouraged to bid for circles and to make massive investments. Unlike the 2-G spectrum scam ten years later, there was not a single complaint from any quarter about non-transparency or cronyism. The extraordinary developments in India in the telecom sector can be traced to the decisions taken by the Deve Gowda/Gujral governments.

The government sought to keep operational management of the sector at arm’s length. The innovative device for this was the establishment of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India as a statutory body with effect from 20 February 1997. Prior to this, the entire telecom sector (including telegraphy, phones, communication, radio, telex and fax) was regulated by the British-era Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and the activities run as a department of the Government of India.

As an independent statutory body to oversee and regulate the telecommunications sector, TRAI’s mission was to create and nurture conditions for the growth of telecommunications in the country in a manner and at a pace which would enable India to play a leading role in the emerging global information society. TRAI was expected to ensure a level playing field and conditions of fair competition among the private operators and between them and the PSUs, which were also brought within its remit.

The coalition government of the period recognized the need to have a rational policy framework for distribution of natural resources, in a manner which was practical, maximizing the benefits to the nation, keeping in mind the policy priorities of the government of the day. We saw in subsequent years how 2-G and Antrix-Devas sought to utilize scarce spectrum resources for private benefit, how Coalgate sought to use the crony capitalism route to impoverish the state while distributing largesse to selected private players and how mining licenses were distributed and other state resources treated as the private property of those in power. TRAI was the first major effort to bring arm’s-length decision-making in the distribution of the state’s assets.

The United Front governments led by Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral recognized the importance of civil aviation for the development of business, trade and tourism and the role which it could play in bumping up the rate of growth of the economy as a whole. They also had a clear strategic vision for modernizing the sector through de-regulation and competition.

In January 1997, the Cabinet decided to permit up to 40 per cent foreign equity and up to 100 per cent NRI/OCB investment in domestic air service transport services. Barriers to entry and exit from the air transport sector were also removed, albeit with the caveat that preference was to be given to Indian Airlines. Although the United Front governments did not last long enough to see through the new policy, they did lay the foundations for the paradigm shift from government control and outright monopoly to de-regulation and private sector participation in the civil aviation sector.

The results are self-evident today. The domestic open skies policy has encouraged the entry of several new carriers and the arrival of the low cost airline model in India. Several private airlines like Jet Airways, Spice Jet, Indigo and Go Air have been successful in establishing themselves and have left the two public sector airlines far behind. Several new world class airports have been built in the metros as well as in non-metro cities; the public-private partnership (PPP) model has been successful in the long-overdue modernization of airports in Delhi, Mumbai and several other cities. The total fleet size of commercial airlines in India has grown exponentially and stood at 371 in February, 2013. Air connectivity between different parts of the country has improved significantly and air travel services for Tier II and Tier III cities has expanded and become more efficient.

The National Highway network, constituting less than 2 per cent of the roads in India, but carrying about 40 per cent of the total road traffic, was in urgent need of overhaul. Over 80 per cent of the highway network consisted of two-lane roads and a further 14 per cent was single-lane, with barely 5 per cent having been converted to four-lane highways. The Ministry of Surface Transport had identified a number of National Highways which needed to have their traffic-carrying capacity doubled over the next five years. The United Front government took a number of steps to provide incentives and encourage the private sector, both domestic and international, to invest in infrastructure development.

Under the new infrastructure policy, equity participation of up to 74 per cent was permitted for road and bridge construction in the case of foreign direct investment in infrastructure projects. As a further incentive, housing and other developmental activities were deemed to be integral parts of any highway project. In order to build confidence in investors and lenders in the early years of operation of the 'build-operate-transfer' system in India, in-principle approvals were accorded to proposals to provide a minimum ‘traffic guarantee’ to the concessionaires. Procedures for clearing projects were considerably simplified. A one-rupee cess on each litre of diesel was levied to form the corpus for a new highway fund. The ground work for enhancing the National Highway grid was well laid out during this period.

Taken together, these concessions helped to underline the importance which the government attached to the development of highway and port infrastructure and to incentivize the private sector to consider investing in this hitherto unattractive sector, where gestation periods were long and returns traditionally uncertain. This helped to set the stage for the rapid development of the National Highway network as a matter of national priority under the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

A new power policy for the country was announced by the prime minister on 16 November 1996. Since power is a state subject, it tends to be heavily subsidized on the basis of social, political or electoral considerations. Outdated technology and poor maintenance result in huge transmission and distribution losses, which are sometimes as high as 50 per cent, as against the international norm of 10 per cent. Most State Electricity Boards are departmentally run and routinely suffer huge losses year after year without being held to account. State governments are generally reluctant to either raise power tariffs or restrict subsidies. It is therefore not surprising that successive governments have been unable to reform their State Electricity Boards or cope with the increasing demands for power generation in a growing economy.

In October 1996, the Centre announced that state governments would be allowed to clear power projects of all sizes and costs without having to come to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) for clearance, a major departure from the earlier policy. By a notification on 10 April 1997, the union government delegated to the state governments the authority to issue environmental clearances to certain categories of thermal power plants, after holding public hearings with all the concerned parties and stakeholders.

The government also decided to unbundle power transmission from power generation and distribution and allow transmission to be treated as a distinct commercial activity. This was an important initiative to facilitate the issue of separate, ‘stand-alone’ licenses to private transmission companies. Power transmission was opened for private investment by a Cabinet decision in January 1997.

It should be added that the central and state Power Regulatory Authorities, whose primary task was to fix tariffs without political considerations, were established during the period. However, due to intense politics in this area, the concept of an independent regulator has not been as successful in this field, as it has been in the telecom field, though it has brought some rationality in decision-making processes. The nation has miles to go before it can reach a satisfactory power supply position.

The phrase ‘unity in diversity’ has been used to describe India’s social and cultural ethos so frequently that it has become a truism and is often taken for granted. While the idea does have its origins in ancient Indian scripture— the famous Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam or the whole world is one single family of the Mahopanishad — its rediscovery and enthronement as an over-arching political concept owes much to the brilliance, eloquence and charisma of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Yet, as we have discovered, the unity of India is by no means a historically given fact, but is, on the contrary, a distant objective to be constantly sought and striven for. Tribals, Dalits, the poor and the dispossessed (recently dismissed, collectively and cynically, as ‘mango people living in a banana Republic’) all attest to the reality of the many ‘other Indias’ whose diversity translates, not into the happy harmony and unity of the Nehruvian myth, but rather into the disaffection, alienation, hatred and insurgency of Naipaul’s ‘million mutinies’. Today it is no longer possible to assert with confidence that every Indian feels himself to be a part and parcel of the Indian experiment in nation-building; that India runs in his blood and is inscribed in his DNA.

John F. Kennedy’s ich bin ein Berliner in 1963 and Ronald Reagan’s ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ in 1987, have rightly gone down in history as examples of effective symbolism and communication. In their own much more modest ways, both Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral instinctively understood the importance of symbolism in politics. Deve Gowda’s knowledge of Hindi was rudimentary, but he tried to learn the language, famously delivering his 1996 Independence Day speech in transliterated Hindi, reading from an English script. However, instead of being appreciated, he was ridiculed and derided.

In 1996 the prime minister visited the Kashmir Valley, the first time in nearly ten years, which was followed up with two more visits in succession. This tempo was kept up by I.K. Gujral who within a fortnight of taking over, made his first visit outside Delhi, to Kashmir. In July 1996 the government announced a $ 715 million rail project to connect Baramulla in the Kashmir Valley with Jammu and the rest of the country. This project was later declared as a national project and was thereby assured of committed funding (readers will recall the photo opportunity used by the prime minister of the day and party chief in summer 2013, to inaugurate a bridge, which was part of the project announced in 1996—naturally again there was no reference to the origin of the project). A major road project—the revival of the historic Mughal Road—and acceleration of two hydroelectric projects were also announced. The 480 MW, Uri hydroelectric project has since been built and commissioned, despite extremely adverse circumstances of insurgency, at a cost of

3,300 crore in the remote Baramulla district, close to the line of control,

The close attention paid to normalizing the evolving situation and reviving the political and democratic process in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) culminated in the holding of elections to the Legislative Assembly in the state in September 1996. The National Conference, as the single biggest party in J&K, had hitherto demanded the restoration of the pre-1953 status for the state and had refused to participate in the elections to the Parliament; the prime minister spoke to Farooq Abdullah and persuaded him to participate in the Assembly elections. Farooq Abdullah’s agreement to participate in the Assembly elections came less than a month before the first phase of the elections and it transformed the political situation in the state.

Ultimately, elections to the 87 seat Assembly were held in four phases in September 1996. A large number of candidates, 1,029 in all, or an average of 12 contestants per constituency, contested the polls, braving death threats from militants, and an average polling of nearly 54 per cent was recorded. Both the local and international press acknowledged that the polls, held after a decade, were by and large fair and peaceful.

By the 1990s, the demand for separate statehood, dating back to 1957, had achieved almost unanimous acceptance among both the local population and the national political parties. The state Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh passed government-sponsored motions demanding the creation of Uttarakhand state in August 1991 and again in August 1996.

The critical intervention was made by Prime Minister Deve Gowda in his Independence Day speech on 15 August 1996, when he conceded the long pending demand of the people of Uttarakhand for a separate state and announced that a bill would shortly be introduced for this purpose. While the announcement was by no means altruistic, being timed just before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in September-October 1996, the political momentum in favour of a separate state of Uttarakhand essentially became unstoppable after the United Front government took the bull by the horns and endorsed the demand for the new state.

I should add here that I had joined the post of Cabinet Secretary very early in August; I would have strongly advised a re-think on this issue. I believe that quality of governance is size-neutral; small states need not necessarily mean that they are better administered; indeed in Indian conditions, there could be inverse relationship between direct attention to detail by the political executive and the outcome. The jury is out on the performance of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh; the Telengana/Seemandra genie may not be so easily rebottled. Reckless permission to break-up states, mainly on political considerations, could lead sooner or later to ‘Balkanization’ of India. These are my personal views. However, the fact is that the formal genesis of Uttarakhand came about this way.

After suffering decades of neglect and exploitation, the seven North Eastern states, the ‘step-children of Mother India’ have become sullen and alienated. Various groups have been formed and are involved in insurgency in these states. In this troubled and complex scenario, the short-lived United Front government was able to engage with the problems of the states as a matter of priority. The central government had recognized the need to pay special attention to infrastructure development in the North East.

The first concrete economic and financial package for the region was announced in October 1996. The

6,100 crore package was ear-marked for several specific projects, including the fourth rail-cum-road bridge over the Brahmaputra at Bogibeel, upgradation of the Guwahati airport, developing industrial growth centres, road projects, railways, hydel power, drinking water supply schemes and health care programmes. The creation of the department and later the Ministry of Development of the North East (DONER) owes its origin to this period. The announcement was made in Guwahati by the prime minister after a week-long visit to all the seven states of the North East.

Unlike the present scenario, when the North Eastern states merit passing attention only when elections are round the corner, the United Front government did make a sincere effort to study the problems of the region in depth and lay the foundations of a long-term strategy of governance, development, inclusiveness and integration.

35 years after the border war with China, a pact was entered into between India and China (29 November 1996) on mutual troop withdrawal and a pledge that ‘neither side shall use its military capability against the other’—the first time both countries agreed to abjure force on the border, since 1962. This was the culmination of earlier steps taken by the previous government, particularly in 1993, for preparing an understanding relating to the Indo-China border. The 1996 border agreement was accompanied by other measures, intended to give momentum to India-China economic relations. After the border disaster of the 60s, this clearly was a breakthrough intended to pave the way for a solution to the pesky border problem with China; the issue was put in cold storage thereafter. It would be recalled in this context that the border issues are again in prominence in 2013; sadly this strategic issue has been reduced to political knee-jerk response and reaction mode in a pre-election year. The point is that the coalition government saw the strategic importance of settling the border with China and took the first concrete steps in this regard; there was the recognition that if China and India learn to cooperate on major international issues (keeping their respective special interests and concerns aside), their collective weight in international affairs can be formidable, for the mutual interest of both countries. Only in October 2013 has a new agreement signed between India and China, which incidentally does not take the relationship, including delineation of border, any further.

History will record that the Women’s Reservation Bill was first moved in the Lok Sabha by the Deve Gowda government. The bill was discussed in the Cabinet meeting on 28 August 1996 and thereafter introduced in the Lok Sabha as the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill, as it then was, on 9 September 1996. Discussions on the bill were blocked on various technical grounds in a pattern which was to become familiar in later years. A subsequent attempt to get the bill passed by I. K. Gujral, who succeeded Deve Gowda as prime minister, met the same fate.

After the nuclear Pokhran test by Indira Gandhi’s regime, there was a clear need to re-verify and update the nuclear armaments status. I had worked very closely with Satish Chandran to persuade Deve Gowda to permit a third test, to validate all computer assumptions. Initially Deve Gowda was horrified, afraid to touch the issue with a barge pole; he was persuaded to agree in the overall interests of our defence-preparedness. As it happened, before the start-up process could begin, he lost his position due to the politics of the day, and was succeeded by Gujral, who was a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist. He was terrified at the thought of a nuclear experiment from our side and peremptorily dismissed the idea. It took three months of gentle persuasion, to convince him of the major utility of this line of action. As irony would have it, he lost his job within three days of agreeing to this proposal. It was thus that in the ‘Top Secret’ list of ten-top-priority items pending before the next government, I had listed this as item number 4 before the new Prime Minister Vajpayee. In the event, Pokhran-II took place weeks into the new government—I had retired a month or so prior to that.

A mention needs to be made of the Conference of Chief Ministers on Effective and Responsive Administration held in May 1997 under the aegis of Prime Minister I. K. Gujral. The conference recognized the urgent need to ensure a responsive, accountable, transparent and people-friendly administration. It also approved an action plan for an effective and responsive government at the Centre and in the states, while explicitly acknowledging that political will to implement the plan was both necessary and essential.

While this kind of jargon is not uncommon in government meetings, what was remarkable was the precision and detail in the elements of the action plan adopted at the end of the conference and the agreement by all the chief ministers that their states would work for the implementation of the action plan, after making appropriate allowances for variations in local circumstances. The contrast with the present situation, where many chief ministers routinely boycott meetings convened by the central government, is self-evident.

To give a few examples, the conference decided that the central and state governments will formulate Citizens’ Charters specifying standards of service and time limits for delivery, avenues of grievance redressal and a provision for independent scrutiny with the involvement of citizen and consumer groups. In the age of e-governance, this is an idea which is now beginning to gain traction in many states.

The conference acknowledged that secrecy and lack of openness in government promotes corruption in official dealings and is inimical to accountable and democratic governance. To counter this, the chief ministers recommended e-governance and the availability of open information on essential services and approvals including land records, passports, investigation of offences, administration of justice, tax collection and administration, issue of permits and licences etc. Some advance has been made, but we have a long way to go as we are nowhere near the standards reached in a number of other countries; note that this is one clear route to reduce transactional corruption.

As the principal instrument for the implementation of government policies and programmes, it is a sine qua non of good governance that a honest civil servant be protected from politically motivated harassment and be allowed to do his work without outside interference. In this context, the conference recognized the need for objective and transparent decisions on postings, promotions and transfers of officials, particularly those working in key areas and resolved that institutional arrangements would be evolved to ensure stability of tenure and de-politicized postings at all levels .

Remarkably, the conference of chief ministers, essentially a conclave of politicians, explicitly recognized that the ‘politician-civil servant criminal nexus’ was an evil which needed to be dealt with ‘ruthlessly’. It will be recalled that the 1993 report of the N. N. Vohra Committee, which exposed the existence of a deep nexus between political personalities, public servants and crime syndicates, has still to see the light of day. The malaise that Vohra identified has become worse a hundred-fold in the next two decades. In contrast, the conference of chief ministers recognized the need to check the politicization of the civil services and sought the cleansing of civil services at all levels, adherence to ethical standards, commitment to basic principles of the Constitution and a clear understanding of the relationship regulating politicians and civil servants.

Even more significantly, the action plan set clear time limits for implementation. Thus, the entire process of making approvals, sanctions and issue of permits simpler, transparent and single-window-based was to be adopted as a priority agenda and implemented over the next one year. Legislation to make Freedom of Information a statutory right of all citizens, along with appropriate amendments to the Official Secrets Act, 1923 were to be introduced in Parliament ‘before the end of 1997’. The existing procedures for departmental enquiries and vigilance proceedings against government employees were to be revamped within three months. Further, existing rules and regulations were to be amended within six months so as to enable exemplary prosecution and removal of corrupt officials and the weeding out of staff of doubtful integrity. At the same time, suitable mechanisms were to be worked out to reward employees who do good work.

I have dealt at some length with this remarkable political initiative to improve governance, perhaps the only one of its kind in the history of independent India. While there are any number of studies on public administration and many committees and commissions have been appointed, both by the central and state governments to study and make recommendations on improving the civil services and the delivery of public goods and services, follow-up and implementation have always been weak or non-existent and proved to be the Achilles heel of successive governments. While what needs to be done has always been relatively well known, there has been little political will for establishing systems which will promote efficiency, impartiality, accountability and transparency.

In this context, the 1997 conference of chief ministers was a forum where elected politicians rather than selected bureaucrats or experts, endorsed a time-bound agenda of substantive reforms. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to state that, if this agenda had been implemented within the indicated timeframe, there would have been a substantial improvement in the quality of governance and in turn of the quality of life in India today.

In these paragraphs, an attempt has been made in brief to highlight the far-reaching moves made during a brief period of a coalition government, between mid-1996 to early 1998, led by two prime ministers; the minority government had clearly no major clout in Parliament, but owed its existence to a stalemate between the two major parties. Even the coalition consisted of more than 12 regional and smaller parties and yet, there was remarkable coordination among themselves, a credible consultation mechanism within the political machinery of these parties, as well as an interface between the political forces of the coalition and the executive, both political and permanent. In a highly cooperative atmosphere, each major political or administrative measure got the blessings of the coordination group headed by Late Harkishan Surjeet of the CPM; thereafter there would be no interference in the process of implementation.

In retrospect, the key to the ‘achievements’ of the coalition governments of 1996–98 rested on their having agreed on a Common Minimum Programme, constructive meetings every week among the political parties under the chairmanship of Harkishan Surjeet and very positive and dynamic leadership provided by Deve Gowda initially, followed by Gujral. There was clear recognition that political support and clearing policies was with the coalition partners and thereafter, all implementation was totally left to the senior bureaucracy to supervise, and follow through on the decisions. Thus, there was clear division of labour between the coalition parties, the ministers and the senior bureaucracy .

One index of the quality of achievements is reflected by the fact that despite the major changes effected in so many vital sectors, there has not been a single major complaint or allegation of favouritism or crony capitalism during that period. For example, in the defence sector, which is notorious for allegations and ‘deals’, during the period of Mulayam Singh as defence minister there was not a single finger raised or suggestion of impropriety mooted.

I had the privilege of being the Cabinet Secretary during this period. I worked closely with Late Satish Chandran, who was Principal Secretary to Deve Gowda during that period—a man of vision and understanding; as well as with N.N. Vohra, an extremely able civil servant, who worked with Gujral in the same capacity. I had the full support and trust of both prime ministers. Decisions which now take months of dilly-dallying could be pushed through in days. Let me share some personal memories of that period.

I recall a very senior official, of the rank of secretary, who was caught in a misdemeanour and asked to resign the same night, under a special provision of the Constitution where an official can be removed in national interest, without detailed process. This happened with no publicity whatever. I also recall at least two files that I called from different ministries, and in my capacity as secretary to all departments, wrote strong notes opposing the final decision of the minister concerned, had the PM (who is deemed to be minister for all departments) supporting my view, to get the department’s minister over-ruled, on his own file. I also recall that during that period, very strict policy was followed that secretaries and joint secretaries would be posted to ministries based on certain parameters, which included that they would not be favourites or desired partners of the ministers concerned. Alas this policy was terminated soon thereafter and one can see the consequences in 2-G and so many other recent instances. Besides, a sharp eye on the activities of staff officers of ministers was kept to ensure a clean image—delicately but firmly, at least two were asked to be relieved.

With the change in the Gujral government, Brajesh Mishra, the new Principal Secretary to prime minister took charge, who changed the ethos of relationships at the top in the bureaucracy. Freedom was suddenly given, sponsored by him, to various ministers to run their ‘fiefdoms’ as emperors. The sharp decline in administrative standards since then can possibly be traced to this. The role of the Principal Secretary to the prime minister, as also that of the Cabinet Secretary in ensuring quality of governance is of vital importance. Brajesh Mishra, who had little knowledge of mainstream Indian administration, took charge of the administrative apparatus; willynilly acting as a political head, he sidelined the Cabinet Secretary and functioned as a political chief of administration, rather than as an administrative aide of the chief executive. For whatever reason, Vajpayee had effectively ceded all control over the operational governance system to Mishra, confining his attention to large, purely political issues. With the high promise and quality of most of the ministers, as well as the stature of Vajpayee, the government could have performed much better, if the back-stopping arrangements were better organized. This gap could possibly be traced to one single factor—that Brajesh Mishra, who had no real qualification to do so, had full control over the operational apparatus and possibly could not give it effective direction.

I need to refer to the image of Deve Gowda, who was literally ‘caught napping’—frequently the press would ridicule him as the sleepy prime minister, who could not keep his eyes open in meetings. Having seen him at very close quarters, I know the reality. Deve Gowda was alert all the time, was listening to everything going on. When he seemed to dose off, it was a kind of a signal that he was bored—which was often—and that he did not think much of what was being said.