Today is the oath taking ceremony of Narendra Modi and his council of ministers. The nation has unanimously selected a leader for the next 5 years. Modi's principle for selecting his council of ministers would be that of " less government, more governance ". The erstwhile PM's cabinet had 34 ministries. One would be astonished to know that the Union of India has umpteen number of ministries and departments, as many as if they would have been run properly, there would have been no problem left in the country. A look at he Govt. of India directory would prove so. Here is the link http://goidirectory.gov.in.
Traditionally council of ministers are chosen from elected candidates from different Lok Sabha / Rajya Sabha candidates. Most of them would be close aides of the leader of the ruling party. So prevalence of cronyism was not less likely. Traditionally in India, ministers were never found to have done much work, barring few. Under the ministers come the cabinet secretaries who are none but IAS officers. So their background is in administration. Hence the model of execution becomes that of more administration and less subject matter expertise. If we borrow some principles from the corporate world, then we can easily infer that there should be only required amount of administration and more subject matter expertise. Hence under each cabinet minister there should be a team of subject matter experts who would provide valuable insights on solving the problems at hand, and the solution should then be executed speedily by the cabinet minister and the IAS officer(s). The bureaucratic chain should be minimised and the govt. should fix a goal to itself to accomplish certain number of achievable objectives within the next five years. The Govt. should also publish a quarterly/bi-annual report of its activities/accomplishments and expenditures, so that the citizen of India can assess the progress made by the Govt., else 60 more years would pass and we would remain where we are. There should be a balanced scorecard for the govt.
As to what Modi would do, we would have to wait and watch...but we would be watching....!!
Traditionally council of ministers are chosen from elected candidates from different Lok Sabha / Rajya Sabha candidates. Most of them would be close aides of the leader of the ruling party. So prevalence of cronyism was not less likely. Traditionally in India, ministers were never found to have done much work, barring few. Under the ministers come the cabinet secretaries who are none but IAS officers. So their background is in administration. Hence the model of execution becomes that of more administration and less subject matter expertise. If we borrow some principles from the corporate world, then we can easily infer that there should be only required amount of administration and more subject matter expertise. Hence under each cabinet minister there should be a team of subject matter experts who would provide valuable insights on solving the problems at hand, and the solution should then be executed speedily by the cabinet minister and the IAS officer(s). The bureaucratic chain should be minimised and the govt. should fix a goal to itself to accomplish certain number of achievable objectives within the next five years. The Govt. should also publish a quarterly/bi-annual report of its activities/accomplishments and expenditures, so that the citizen of India can assess the progress made by the Govt., else 60 more years would pass and we would remain where we are. There should be a balanced scorecard for the govt.
As to what Modi would do, we would have to wait and watch...but we would be watching....!!
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