Wanted: A bill that makes the government machinery work

The enthusiasm behind the Jan Lokpal has a hard reality: it is not going to eradicate corruption in the country if passed in its current form. Worse, it will stop government department and bureaucrats from functioning.

Bureaucrats need an excuse not to work and with a bill that threatens to scrutinise them for every misdemeanour, they will just stop taking decisions. As it is, most bureaucrats avoid taking any initiative. Rare is the bureaucrat these days who works with the spirit of getting things done. Most of them are busy passing the buck and not taking a decision.

The well-intentioned group of people with Anna Hazare do not realise that corruption is not limited to just policy-making. The common man rarely gets affected by policy everyday. It is the implementation, or the interpretation of policy by civil servants, which affects him. The common man meets corruption not because of a change in policy to award telecom licences, but while getting a driving license made.

The RTO giving a driving licence can choose not to issue licenses. If he wants, he can just stop working and nobody is going to fire him for not working. Actually, a bribe is paid to make him work. But if the bureaucrat feels that there is too much scrutiny on him, he can just stop issuing new licenses.

None of these officials want to lose their job; they are willing to let go of gains but not their job. Currently, the Jan Lokpal bill does not address the problem of delivery or the efficiency needed to deliver services. Most bribes are given to ensure work gets done or it gets done fast.

Therefore, the main thrust has to be on delivery of government services. A system-thinking approach needs to be adopted. As Donella Meadows says in her tome, Thinking in Systems, that to resolve any problem in a complex system, the whole system needs to be addressed.

Scrutiny or penal action is a new input into the government system and system design teaches that before introducing any new input, its affect on the output should be gauged.

Every system comprises of three broad parts – input, processes, and output.

First, corruption is not an end by itself. In the government; the process is controlled by two elements: political leadership and bureaucrats. Bureaucrats run the processes while the political leadership sets the policy to make sure the process runs as per law.

The objective of this system is to deliver certain services, schemes, subsidies, and define policies to make sure the system works in favour of the larger good. Corruption is not part of the system design but has become so.

Politicians change every five years, but corruption does not change as it has become a part of the bureaucratic element. The bureaucracy is rarely questioned about output. They are appointed for life, promoted without performance, and never fired. This is what has led to the system failure.

To address this systemic problem, the Jan Lokpal Bill should focus on the output. And the penalty should not be limited to the corrupt or to those not following the processes, but on the outcome of the processes.

If the outcome is not met, then there should be a penalty for non-performance on all arms of the government. Action should be taken against both the politician and bureaucrats if the outcome promised by that ministry, department, or section is not delivered in its promised time.

Corruption is not an Indian problem; it exists in every country. Moreover, so far, it has not debilitated the country’s growth. China has more corruption than India, but as there are clear performance metrics for every level of the government, they are able to build roads, power plants, steel plants much faster than anyone else in the world.

The myth that corruption is what affects performance needs to be broken. We need to look at the government as a system and address systemic problems, not just one single ugly component of the system.