Anything extreme is poison is a common saying that we all
have heard during our school days or read it somewhere. In Germany nationalism
is not considered good thing because of Nazi’s extremities with nationalism. Not
singing national anthem is not a big thing (A link is attached at the bottom
you can read it). People are cautious about display of nationalism!
I believe
documentaries can be good tutors. It explains a lot within an hour from spinning
electrons to world-wars! Nevertheless the purpose of writing this blog is not
to discuss the documentaries. Economy politics and culture are very closely
woven knit. I believe fundamental science (and of course mathematics) is the
only independent function and to certain extend in long run it is the fundamental
science that forms an onto function with politics! I will
explain how.
Fundamentals of science are independent of any policies, it
has nothing to do with whether a country has FDI or not! It is this fundamental
when it translates into engineering works policies are required. To derive E =
MC2 no policies were required but to develop it into nuclear power plant
policies are required! So from here we can infer that we need policy makers from
different walks of life. Certainly a specialist can do the job in better way in
much targeted way.
Now lets look at how our government functions. We live in a
democratic country so there is no question of other forms of government. Now
this can be further divided in Westminster style ( our parliamentary style ) or
the Presidential form (eg: USA). Our Ministers are head of the executive i.e.
each ministry is headed by a MP. These ministers constitute the cabinet
ministers. In USA the President selects his cabinet with the consent of
the senate. So the President has a free hand in selecting eminent personalities
in his cabinet.
Now our parliamentary system can be very effective if we
have very eminent parliamentarians so that the probability of eminent ministers
is always high. Unfortunately this is not the case in India. At the time of
writing the constitution it was discussed which model to follow Presidential or
Westminster. Since we were British colony and in the past during the British
Raj seen the Westminster style our framers preferred the latter. But this
system has a flaw especially when the parliamentarians are not very eminent. Now
lets get into the specifics. In USA the Secretary (Minister in our system) of
Energy is Ernest Moniz who is physicist from MIT
while in our country Department of atomic energy is with Dr Manmohan Singh!
Farooq Abdulla is heading ministry of new and renewable energy! Their Secretary of education has managed many
schools he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools (it manages more than 400
schools). The list is very large.
My point is that neither our ministers nor the secretaries
are expert in either of the department. Both of them manage their departments.
I think barring few ministries like Finance (Since 1991 reforms) most of the
departments are headed by non-experts. Its only the Finance ministry which has
seen ministers since 1991 (look at the link below) who had some experience in
finance. I think many will agree that E Sreedharan (Metro Man!) who had long
experience in railway can be a very good railway minister or railway secretary.
Like I said above it is necessary for either one of Minister
or Secretary (who is normally an IAS) to be an expert in that field. Even the
finance secretary is not an IRS but an IAS. Same is the case with CAG. There is
a different service called Indian Accounts and Auditing Service (IAAS) but the
CAG is an IAS. The pathetic case of PSU can be attributed to too much red
tapism. Not long back most of the PSU were headed by IAS and not by a person
who is expert of that particular industry! Even the state electricity boards in
many states are too headed by IAS just like the Delhi Jal Board. The list of
such inefficiencies is very long but I hope you got my point.
China too is not progressing by fluke. They too follow same
strategy. Their finance minister is Lou Jiwei who too is an economist.
Even in states the government should scrap most of the
departments and make it more of Presidential form where CM is more important. This
way you can increase accountability and efficiency. Anyways in todays
perspective state elections are more or less personality driven. So it should
not be a problem. Below i have attached a lecture by Arun Shourie on the same
If we don’t check the inefficiency then we too may end up being Mexico
with rich and developed neighbour China.
Nice read! I too had thoughts on those lines few months back
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