METHOD
IN THE MADNESS: Insights from my career as an insider-outsider-insider.
Parameswaran Iyer. HarperCollins, 2021. Pp 245. Rs 499
When I started reading this
book, India was reeling from the utter collapse of governance and
administration in the wake of the second wave of the Covid pandemic. Questions
were naturally being asked about bureaucratic competence as well as
inflexibility, and the hoary generalist-versus-specialist debate had
resurfaced. I hoped this book would give some answers. Fortunately it did.
The day after I finished it,
the clip of a district magistrate physically assaulting a young man for
violating the lockdown in Chhattisgarh had gone viral. That brought back
memories of another district magistrate in Tripura, who was also caught on
camera slapping people at a wedding for a similar offence. Obviously one
started wondering about bureaucratic arrogance and whether something in the
system either actively fosters it or simply fails to discourage it.
Unfortunately, this book doesn’t yield any answers on this count.
But this is just an aside. It
would be unfair to burden Method in the
Madness with the expectations of readers revolving around incidents the
author is not even remotely connected with. In any case it isn’t Parameswaran
Iyer’s failing alone. From what I remember of the memoirs of other bureaucrats
that I have read, no one touches upon this very real problem of high-handedness
with the public. They dwell on, as does this book, their training at the Lal
Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, being constrained by – and
getting around – hidebound rules and budget constraints, navigating political
undercurrents and corruption, the specialist-generalist debate. But this issue
is glossed over. Maybe some future memoir will make up for this lack.
Iyer, who was in the Uttar
Pradesh cadre of the IAS, became a household name because he was the face of
the Swachh Bharat Mission, but he also has under his belt the success of the
Swajal rural drinking water programme in the mid-nineties. And he also went
back and forth between the government and the World Bank, specialising in the
water and sanitation sector. So this book ends up offering wonderful insights
on work cultures and problem solving approaches – not just in the government
and World Bank but also in other countries he dealt with when working with the
latter. It is a very readable account and Iyer peppers it with pithy management
tips highlighted in boxes.
So what are the key
takeaways from the book?
One, there is a case for
specialisation after a point of time (Iyer feels it should be after 15 years of
field experience), but specialists with a good grounding in
administration/management can deliver better results. But the civil services
system is not inclined to encourage specialisation. A year into the Swajal
project, Iyer was offered a more attractive posting but he turned it down to
his senior’s befuddlement. This was a case of him being offered something; he
might well have been transferred summarily. Indeed, how can any developmental
project succeed if the person helming it is to be transferred within a year? After
his return from the World Bank, Iyer was posted in higher education despite his
domain expertise and then to environment in less than a year. Such stories
abound in the annals of civil service history.
Related to this is the issue
of lateral entry into the civil service – can domain experts with no knowledge
of how the `system’ functions be effective? People like Mantosh Sondhi, Raja
Ramanna, D.V. Kapur have proved they can but this may not always be the case.
Iyer’s stint outside the government certainly helped him implement SBM with
innovative methods, including getting young professionals to help district
magistrates. But could he have, say, broken down silos without the benefit of
knowing how the system works?
Two, it is important to get
the political leadership on board. In 2002, Kerala was all set to launch a
public-private-partnership for handwashing with soap (PPP-HWS) along with
Unilever. But the state government scrapped it, despite the support of the
senior bureaucracy, as it was seen as a “World Bank/capitalist (multinational
soap company) ploy to undermine the socialist traditions of the state”. Years
later, while helming SBM, Iyer met Akhilesh Yadav, then Uttar Pradesh chief
minister, who promised all help to get two districts open defecation free.
Nothing happened for months. Things changed, he writes, when Yogi Adityanath
became chief minister.
And then there are chief
ministers like Mayawati who do not let political
considerations override good economics and administrative practices. In the
mid-nineties, Mayawati overruled opposition from her entire cabinet to a
proposal to get rural communities to share the capital cost of the Swajal
scheme. Women have to bear the burden of fetching water and a small
contribution by the community to get piped water to villages is perfectly
alright, she said. No wonder Iyer observes “political leadership is a golden
ticket to implementing big ideas”.
An interesting tidbit: when
touring China during his World Bank days, Iyer found that water was not
supplied free; water utility managers had to collect a minimum percentage of
the dues and even poorer households were willing to pay.
Three, any successful development
programme requires community involvement. Iyer demonstrates this in the context
of the Total Literacy Campaign during his years as district magistrate, Swajal
as well as SBM. In the case of Swajal, community involvement reduced the
project scheme cycle from 27 months to 18 months.
Four, the lack of enthusiasm
among district level officials for a particular development programme is not
always due to their apathy. In many cases, it is because of the sheer number of
schemes they have to implement along with other responsibilities; they find it
difficult to focus on any one.
Iyer has edited a volume on
the Swachh Bharat revolution, but the account in Method in the Madness is more suitable for the lay reader. It is a
fascinating telling of the two daunting challenges of scale and speed, overcoming
resistance within the bureaucracy, deciding between the carrot or stick
approaches, involving the community, breaking social taboos, using whatever
leverage was available, dealing with negative commentary in the media and much
more.
This is a good read for anyone interested in how the government works and how it can work.
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