IF you can’t aspire, then aspire for aspiration: this credo could have only come from Amitabh Kant, our Sherpa to G 20, the creator of God’s own country on the one end – and the aspirational districts programme on the other.
Unless you give specific targets, matching funds and a robust monitoring programme, results cannot be optimised. This is an important lesson for all development administrators, and the many examples in this essay attest to this. Those were the days my friend.
We thought they would never end! In this article, Anil Upadhyaya talks of the days when Bihar was the best administered state in the country. He talks of people – good, bad, and ugly. He also tells us that honesty and diligence can be seen at all levels – and he also mentions how anti-corruption crusaders who even rose to become Lt-Governors had no compunction about claiming false entitlements. The key message is the moral fabric is not a function of the position you hold!
Simple taxation
In the Shanti parva of the Mahabharata and the Artha Shastra of Kautilya, the king’s share in the produce is fixed at one sixth– thereby giving him the name Shatbhag! So, taxation was simple when agriculture was the mainstay of the economy. However, as Arun Mishra writes in the Role of the IAS in the rollout of the GST- this has been an exercise, not just in rates of taxation, but also in developing a robust system for a ship which was already on the high seas! Thirty thousand tax administrators under thirty-five tax jurisdictions required not just rules, regulations and clarifications, but also a robust IT infrastructure.
Anecdotal recall
The legend called Sheshan, or Al Seshan, or Alsatian is no more, but his famous lines ‘I eat politicians for breakfast’ also shows that the Election Commission has put in place a very strong ‘digestive’ system. This is what Balasubramanian Bhamathi tells us in her anecdotal recall as an Election Observer.
Bijoy Kumar, who was my colleague as the MD NHB, and as the head of the working group on Agriculture under the Planning Commission, does bring in a note of caution when he tells us that ‘we all have to hang our heads in shame for the misdeeds of a few.’ He makes the point that political corruption cannot flourish without an IAS officer being hand -in-glove. This is his biggest grievance, for as a society, we all acknowledge this open secret, but not losing enough sleep on this.
Community empowerment
‘More crop per drop’ is the story of community empowerment through reforms in the water and sanitation sector in Maharashtra by BC Kathua. The pith and substance of his article is best described in these lines: socio economic development is a dynamic process where the goalpost keeps shifting forward due to changing experiences, aspirations, and ever-changing externalities.
