Drafting LokPal

Institutionally, India’s law enforcement system has been suffering for decades due to the lack of an executive and independent Prosecutor. Lokpal bill appears to be intended to address this gap with respect to corruption by appointing Lokpal as the independent prosecutor for corruption cases.

For effective functioning of the Lokpal institution, drafters of the law need to prioritize their attention on the following 3 critical elements.

Appointment
Appointment of Lokpal members should be in a way that provides legitimacy to the institution and at the same time ensure appointment of independent and qualified persons who would not be influenced by political considerations of people who appointed them. This would be a difficult balancing act especially since in order to provide legitimacy, the appointment process need to be primarily influenced by the political/parliamentary leadership. I would presume appointment models for the Chief Election Commission or the US Supreme Court justices may provide acceptable starting point for negotiations on this matter in additions to the proposal already included in the jan draft.

Power to take up cases, investigate and prosecute on its own will
Needless to say, operational effectiveness of Lokpal institution will be primarily dependent on this power. I hope civil society will resist any attempt to dilute the concerned provisions in the jan lokpal draft.

Tools/resources to ensure speedy investigation and prosecution of cases by Lokpal
In order to ensure successful prosecution of cases, Lokpal needs to interface with other institutions such as government investigative agencies and courts. For investigation purposes, in addition to the proposed oversight over CBI anti-corruption wing and CVC, Lokpal should be able to deputize any other central investigative agencies for investigations even though such agencies may not directly report to Lokpal. Furthermore, a fast tracked trial process should be introduced by law within judicial courts and central administrative tribunals for cases prosecuted by Lokpal. As such, processes need to be streamlined to reduce delay in investigation and trial.

This is a historic moment for India. If an effective Lokpal commission is instituted in the center and Lokayukthas in states, it will make huge difference in deterring corruption and modernizing government institutions to address aspirations of a billion + Indians! I hope there is enough political will and pressure to see this through.

Evolving Role of the Home Ministry and P.C - Interview

I just watched an interview with P. Chidambaram (Minister of Home Affairs)aired on CNBC TV 18 recently. This is probably the only media interview that I've seen where an Indian minister intelligently discussing the institutional reforms for the country.

In this interview,he was making the case for his ministry to exert greater "political oversight" on all security agencies of the central government, even the Research Analysis and Wing (RAW)! Further, he wants to limit executive roles of National Security Advisor (NSA) by leaving such work to "professionals" (i.e MHA subordinates).
I fully agree with him on these reforms..Afterall, if something bad happens, he will be the one getting fired. So he should be rightly given all powers necessary to do his job right (trying to keep 1+ billion citizens safe is no easy task!)

What made me jump out of the couch while listening to this interview is what he said when talking about setting up the new National Counter-terrorism Center(NCTC). He said: "NCTC will be an institutional mechanism rather than individual headed mechanism and the response will be an institutional response rather than an individual driven response".
It may be a dull boring quote but what it tells me is that he gets the point: What India needs for its chronic governing inefficiency is an institutional response not individual response.

P.C is great! I am sure he will be able to do to Home Ministry what T.N Sheshan did to the Election Commission. After taking care of Finance and Home, I just hope that he will also get an opportunity to "excert" his skills on the Law Ministry before becoming the PM! India will be a better place if he can..

See the interview below
Part 1


Part 2


Part3


Part 4

The Best Indian Government Ever!

The new council of ministers Manmohan Singh inducted into his government is definitely the best team I have seen in my life time on the helm of Indian politics. He has picked the best men and women for the job given the choices he has to make.

The Duo of SM Krishna and Shashi Tharoor in Foreign Ministry signals a drastic positive change in India's relationship with our immediate neighbor ( Pakistan and resolution of Kashmir Issue) and even better relationship with larger powers is coming soon. They are indeed the cream of the crop and no reason to expect anything less from them.

Chidambaram back in Home Ministry is very reassuring. The most able minister in the cabinet has given the most difficult task! He is smart, visionary, good communicator, mature, tactical and an executioner. A man like him is the need of the hour to contain and eradicate the naxal , terrorist, communal and northeast issues hurting India for a while. His priorities should be on strengthening the internal security institutions and enforcement of law.

AK Antony as Defense minister is telling me that Congress has no plans to go to war with any country for the next 5 years! His personality is not what one would expect from a Defense Minister aka Offense Minister. At least he will live up to the name of his ministry! A truly defense minister! He is not the minister to project the military strength of India but rest assured he will do his best to prevent corruption in Defense spend. This is indeed great for our defense forces long term.

Pranab as Finance minister seemed like a mediocre pick to me given his baggage from old license raj era. But given allocation of other important ministries to other able persons (Chidambaram and Kamal Nath), I think the best position to accommodate a senior congress man like him was indeed Finance. Especially, since MMS can strongly influence this ministry, if warranted. I was hoping Sonia will create a deputy PM post for him and keep him out of finance but it is little unrealistic to expect a deputy PM post in Congress for him while Rahul is supposedly being groomed for the PM post.

Snatching up the infrastructure ministry from DMK and handing it over to Kamal Nath tells me MMS has big plans for modernizing India’s infrastructure. Really glad to see Kamal Nath in this post. A China style infrastructure face up is on Indian horizon!

Kabil Sibal as Human Resource Development minister and Ghulam Nabi Azad as Health minister show UPA is very much committed to to social sector development. Both had a combination of vision and execution to do great things in these ministries.

I am also very optimistic about having Veerappa Moily as Law minister. His previous experience as the chairman of Administrative Reform Commission will make him a unique law minister. If he was serious about the recommendation that he made under ARC and other institutional strengthen initiative that he proposed, law ministry gives him a platform to implement those proposal.

Finally, I am glad to see young people like junior Scinda , Sagma and Pilot (all sounded extremely smart and sharp on TV and also well educated despite their family background that could have spoiled them) was inducted to the government. I would like to see them as Cabinet ministers or as PMs one day!

-Jai Ho MMS

Strengthen India by Strengthening its Governmental Institutions

Recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai demonstrate yet another example of the weakness of the Indian governments. Rather than turning our anger at politicians and bureaucrats for being incompetent as usual, as Indians, we owe it to ourselves to think about the underlying causes behind widespread incompetence across Indian government systems.

Incompetent politicians, bureaucrats and slow judiciary are just symptoms of a sickness. The actual cause of the symptom is poor design of government institutions where incompetence breeds and allowed to flourish.

I hope it is obvious to everyone that for a country as big as India, a few good politicians or bureaucrats cannot do much of anything. What is absolutely necessary for lasting positive change is strong intelligently designed governmental institutions that can harness energies of thousands of Indians and coherently work together to effectively tackle the changing challenges facing the nation.

Most of Indian government institutions are inherited from the British Raj. Starting with our parliamentary democracy to various ministerial department and bureaucratic systems such as Indian Administrative Service are rooted in the British Raj. British intent in creating such institution was to run India with an Iron hand, not with quality. Unfortunately, we have failed to adjust these colonial era institutions to the new century and have it work for better serve the rising aspirations of a billion + citizens.

In surface, India’s institutional design is in par with any other modern developed countries but why is it not effective to address the current challenges?

Generally speaking, Ineffective feedback dynamics between the people and the politicians is the underlying problem within our democratic institutional framework. Sadly the bottom line that we see again and again is that the peoples demands/needs are not met by their representatives. The long five year between elections cripples peoples grip over the representatives and the bureaucracy. In American system, the lowest legislative bodies of local, state and federal government have only 2 year terms. This means a few months after election, they need to be back on election mode and start begging for mercy of the voters. The short terms will keep the legislators on tow and force them to be very responsive to the voters needs.

Since having a stable executive branch in the central and state governments is equally important, a good approach for Indian parliamentary system would be to have Rajya Saba MPs elected directly by the people on a shorter cycle (2 yr) and give Rajya saba more oversight powers over the cabinet.

To its credit, the grumpy incompetent Indian governments institutions are successful in achieve its most important goal that is to protect the great Indian democracy and unity. This is no easy task. Any future changes to the system should ensure our democracy and unity would not be at risk.

During the recent past, the Central government has taken some good steps to adjust the countries institutional set up to enable the country to better face the new challenges. Right to Information act, creation of the new central agency to investigate terrorism cases and the creation of the office of National Security Advisor in the last decade were all good example of institutional strengthening. Though these changes are delayed and reactionary, nonetheless should be appreciated.

The challenge for the future of the Indian state is while keeping its institutions and democratic forces inclusive and unites a billion + people, trigger positive changes in its design so that it will become more capable, assertive and effective in serving the interest of its own citizens.

To this end, a more thorough across the level rethinking is needed on the way people’s representatives and bureaucrats are recruited, and maintained and held accountable. This is a very complex subject and cannot be discussed in a single blog post . A good book for anyone interested in this subject is “Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design” by Devesh Kapur.

Government Institutions are above the interest of a few people; they are immortal and are the real guardians of our democracy. I hope enough attention and resources will be spent on strengthening it. All of us have a huge stake in it.

Fight corruption with powerful anticorruption Institutions

In U.S the fight against governmental corruption/waste is raged by two independent constitutional institutions: The Office of federal/state/city comptroller and corresponding Attorney Generals' office. While comptroller has the expertise to oversee the quality of government services and identify fraud within government, Attorney general has the complete teeth to enforce law against culprits. It is this partnership between these two agencies that keep U.S relatively corrupt free.

In India, We have CAG but this office needed to be further decentralized to at least corporation/city level. Furthermore, all 7 suggestions that our honorable president recently put forth to improve government auditor's effectiveness should be implemented. Also, proactive participation from accounting professionals within the country is a must to formulate modern internal control systems for the functioning of all levels of govt.

Evenstill, India lacks a powerful law enforcement institution like Attorney general's office in US. In U.S, attorney general is directly elected by the people in the state and local level while in the federal level this position is filled by a president's nominee subject to senate approval. (Comptrollers are sourced in a similar way as well but federal comptroller has a 15 yr fixed term.) An
attorney general has the power to use the resources of the entire law enforcement agencies under his jurisdiction while prosecuting/investigating criminal acts. Sadly in India, attorney generals are just legal advisers of the government. This ought to change if we want to win the fight against corruption and lawlessness in our country.

The key to fighting corruption is the strength and organizational set up of anti corruption institutions. In India only a few cares about our institutions. I feel some foreign development banks put more efforts in strengthening our institutions, than ourselves. Not the media, not even the NGOs nor activists in the field, focus on the root causes behind our country's problems..their focus is only on symptoms. Remember the famous quote " power corrupts and absolutes power corrupt absolutely", this is true for at least 95% of the peopleWe need to be really cynical when we talk about corruption. ( Even myself, who talk about all these bad things about corruption can't guarantee that i won't take/give bribe one day) The mindset that blames all our failure on our netas doesn't help either. politicians are people too.. Our politicians fails us because our systems fails us in the first place.

Formation of Lokayukthas, implementation of Right to Information Act and various E-Governance initiatives (even with its limitations and lapses) are very positive steps from the government/us and an indication that the government can still
reform itselves. The upcoming deliberations from the second Administrative Reform Commission promises to pump even more positive energy to our government institutions. We shall focus our energy on pushing for more similar institutional changes so that one day our naturally corrupt politicians/babus/citizens will have to think twice before involving in any corrupt practices. For that, we need to hang a
sharp sword above their head, at all times. That sword will be our
anti corruption institutions and its our duty now to sharpen it!

Thanks for reading,
---
PS: Good book to read in this subject: Public Institutions in India, Performance and design.
Relevant websites to check out:
www.Loksatta.org
www.skdubeyfoundation.org
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=187832
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eGovINDIA/

something to add to my last post

No wonder why American universities suck in talent from accross the globe. Take a look at the endowment funds at these top universities. Harvard, $22 billion with double digit growths for a student population of 16,000 or so.. siva siva!!!

A thing about my last semster

Interestingly, out of the five courses that i took, three were taught by Indian (south Asian) professors, one Chinese and only one American borned prof. It is kind of weired going to an American university, paying tution in dollars and feeling like I am essentially getting and Indian education. (fyi, the dean of our management school is also an Indian). anyhow, I am not complaining at all, all my professors irrespective of their nationalities are pretty skilled at the job they do. I just wanted to point out the state of the affairs in a globalized society these days.
In Indian or any developing nation's perspective, this is another instance of brain drain from developing world to the developed. In American perspective, this exemplifies the severe shortage of talent to educates its own young ones and a lack of interest in teaching by a lot of educated Americans . As a result, shortage of qualified teachers exist even in the primary school systems in U.S.A - which is of course not a good thing for America's future....