Day #23: Bureaucracy in times of Pandemic...

11th April 2020: -  Indira Gandhi is supposed to have exclaimed that the one thing for which she will never forgive her father was for not reining in the bureaucracy. When it was suggested to her as to why she could not do it, she is supposed to have exclaimed, she cannot and it will devour her.   And she is considered one of the strongest political leaders in India. 

How does the 2 crore bureaucracy of India govern the 140 crore population is an interesting question during the pandemic. India being ''governed'' in itself is a paradox of sorts.  Unless people voluntarily adhered to rules, this country cannot be governed by any ruler, elected or otherwise.  The Colonials understood this very well. 

"...that our power does not rest on actual strength, but on impression.  ...All our native establishments, military or civil, are the followers of fortune.  They serve us for their livelihood and generally serve us well.  From a sense of what is due to the hand that feeds them, which is one of the virtues that they must extol, they may often display fidelity under trying circumstances, but in their inward feelings they partake more or less of the universal disaffection..." recorded Metcalfe way back in 1829.  

Things haven't changed much in the past near 200 years in this aspect one could say. Now, we have our own babus managing the government, but, people adhere to rules only for their livelihoods and the universal disaffection does continue against the rulers just below the surface all the time. I often think that our babus often resemble the Colonial Masters or the feudal before them and can reclaim the behaviour of the same more openly if not for the rules of law that they are supposed to abide.  If our children were not educated in schools that we were 'governed' in a Democracy, they would only see signs of hierarchical benevolent patron kind of governance in this country. People adhere to an impression of rule of law and that sustains them. The only government interference comes as a way of disturbance or development, which could be same sometimes.   

It is interesting to see that at the time of the Pandemic across India, the politicians are silenced and the bureaucracy has taken over briefing the media. Yesterday, we heard that  'experts' have advised the government to extend the lock down. While no one knew who these experts were, their advise is considered adequate reason for the home imprisonment of millions of people in the name of lock down to continue. Neither was an explanation given nor was there an attempt to be transparent.  While across the world, elected leaders appear on television every other day to assure their voters, India seems to have taken a different route of bureaucrats doing the assurance and politicians only shown as being busy doing virtual meetings or sitting masked listening to others. Our PM only appears to congratulate and seek people partake in a social ritual the last couple of time he appeared on television, leaving all strategic direction and action steps for the bureaucrats to handle.  This has resulted in several key policy explanations missing - 

1. why has India not more actively pursued testing process through the lock down and what is the assurance that after another 15 days, the babus and experts will not come back and seek more extension? particularly if the numbers continue to raise?

2. why haven't we pushed for more integrated approach with traditional systems of medicine, particularly when there seems to be confidence and competence available

3. while the plasma based treatment being pushed currently by several states seems to bet on herd immunity, why hasn't the same been made into a policy 

4. what is the rationale behind the centralizing of procurement of the various machinery. is there no trust on the part of the central government towards the states. health care is a state subject, why infringe upon rights when the centre could be more helpful in research, guidance and policy front

5. of course, the biggest one of all - apart from media silencing, what is the policy that the govt. has got towards the 100 million migrant labourers of this country.  An economy that has been built on their cheap labour has abandoned a large section of them and we don't have a response

Urgency of the situation or the massive resource mobilization can always be cited as a reason to not challenge or question the bureaucracy or government, but, when we read reports that the civil society has fed more people than the government during the pandemic, one needs to definitely ask the government what are the policies, after all civil society continues to subsidize the government action or lack of it. Political leaders rather than bureaucrats need to be outlining the policy just now;  bureaucrats can cite numbers, action steps and events, they are not mandated to outline policy nor defend it in public nor are they accountable if the policy fails. 

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Impression building is very critical during this time to establish the sense of being 'governed'. The powerful image of the pandemic ''governance'' has been  so far the several images of policemen and women inflicting several ways of ''punishing'' public for breaking the unwritten lock down rules. Now, none of the  innovative punishments meted out must be in any rule book. So, what guides the policemen in every part of the country to inflict a series of ''punishments'' that have a couple of common threads - to humiliate or to shame. Across India, the policemen and women seem to have either adopted a method by which the violators are publicly humiliated through several actions - squats, push ups, holding placards to be photographed, appear in a video to advise others, etc. - or to put them to shame - other images have appeared where the police are seen with folded hands praying to the violators and apply tilak in their forehead and adorn them with garlands, like a grand guest of sorts - these two techniques are widely used. 

Now, the question is, why humiliation and shame? maybe, because the local cop feels that it works. Provocative action works in India, people who cannot be motivated to perform something, often can be provoked to do the same. This is part of the Indian psyche which is more worried about shame and humiliation than death. 

So, where is law of the land in this? Nowhere. This diverse acts gives an impression that we are being governed by the police force, as the images are beamed in television screens across the nation.  It is as though the bureaucracy has adopted a feudal system of dispensing law according to its discretion.  But, has anyone missed the Courts in the last couple of weeks?   

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The reason to understand how we are governed is critical at this point in time as we have the time.  There is an interesting article on Education that has appeared in recent days in the UK context, 'The project of national education ought uniformly to be discouraged on account of its obvious alliance with national government.' (link).

Couple of days ago, I had given an Webinar on "Future Institutions" where I had outlined the building blocks of new institutions that could emerge at the end of this pandemic. Taking a cue from that subject, Rev. Sara Wolcott is organizing a Facebook Live on Monday the 13th April (9.00 p.m. IST, 8.30 a.m. PST) in which we will have eminent educationists from India and USA participating for a discussion on the future of education institutions.  The same will be live in this page - https://www.facebook.com/sequoiasamanvaya/

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