The Elephant & The Tiny Dot: A week @ Singapore

The development story of Singapore is arguably a legend among the developmental economists because of reasons more than one. The first key feature about the growth is the speed and consistency with which it took place. Hardly could anyone have imagined that this “tiny little dot” of a city would become a thriving global financial powerhouse, once it unwillingly gained independence in 1965.

The second key feature that sets this story apart is the network of constraints within which Singapore has grown. It wasn’t ready for political independence- The idea of securing its borders and the maritime offshore interests from the world was a nightmare for its political leadership. It had a nearly fully migrant population that resided in closely packed squatter settlements, making a living out of the port operations. Singapore has handled these constraints in a spectacular way and even today while the global financial powerhouse shines to its strength, the potable water to be used by its residents finds its way from Malaysia. Hence, Singapore’s story of governance is not a “done and forgotten” type, rather a “continuous blossoming” type.

Amidst such continuous tweaking, it is important for the government to have a set of underlying principles that need to be mandatorily followed amidst all the policy experimentation. Singapore has been smart enough to define them thus -

  

1: “Leadership is the Key”- Singapore looks at leadership as both political and administrative. Efforts are actively taken to ensure that the best talents of the nation is recruited and retained in the public sector. This is done through fair and meritocratic selection process and pay parity with the best in the private sector.

The fact that this is the first principle enunciated by Singapore in its list also shows their perception of their political leaders. The fact that the same party has been in power in Singapore right since its independence and a single person has been at the helm for 35 continuous years and still remains overtly powerful as the Minister Mentor of Singapore, calls for an analysis.

Being a small state that started its journey by fending for its own survival, Singapore and its people have put the stability of government’s vision and policy as their topmost priority.

2. Anticipate Change and Stay Relevant- Given the strict and quick enforcement of its policies, Singapore has to be more cautious about making mistakes in its policies. Such course corrections require the governmental sector to be attuned to receiving feedback and acting on them positively.

A number of sessions that we attended in our stint at the Civil Services College showed how smoothly Singapore’s government has pro actively addressed the changing needs of its population. Eg. The design of public housing projects and the allotment policies were changed in the real time due to the changing needs of the clientele – Hence, increase in the car ownership led to constructive planning for inclusion of parking spaces and the change in the location preferences of the people led to restructuring of tariffs of the public housing projects.

3.  “Reward for work, and Work for Reward” - Singapore is the melting point of civilizations and financial business houses of the world. It naturally understands the concept of incentives and opportunity costs in human resource management. Young and talented people are recruited and retained in the public sector through competitive salaries and professional growth opportunities.

4. “Create a Stake for Everyone and Opportunities for All” - Singapore as a democracy maybe doing a devil’s job in curtailing civil liberties when it comes to protests and political demonstrations, but, inter-alia,  the involvement of the citizenry in governmental processed serves as real tool for democratization.

All the policy interventions in Singapore are oriented to include the relevant people as important stakeholders. It provides scope for participation in planning, enforcing, implementing and in course correction.The people we met in our visit also showed a keen understanding of their stakes and show how proud they felt in being included. This gave people a sense of “one country, one government” through their most routine interactions with the government.

Singapore has its turfs guarded very possessively. There are a number of blanket restrictions regarding ownership of private property and other associated rights for migrants. Similarly even the migrants, who obtain “Permanent Residency” of Singapore, receive fewer governmental privileges. However, when it comes to its citizens – Singapore offers them a number of opportunities in employment, ownership of property and education.

 “Leadership is the Key”: Messiah from the Indian Chaos?

Given the political stability in Singapore, a shared vision and policy outline that remained consistent through more than 5 decades was made possible. One can argue how much of the same is possible in India and how one can assist in that.

To my mind, it is a fact that the political system in Singapore has elements and traits of an autocracy in it. There is always a risk involved in such autocratic regimes – It is Singapore’s fate that its longest serving prime minister of the country had the abilities of a stalwart. Most importantly it is also Singapore’s fate that the focus on curbing of corruption was started from its inception by the political leadership and has continued since then. Systemic corruption can twist and turn any policy intervention in ways that are difficult to predict. The fact that the political establishment was highly motivated to curb corruption, helped Singapore in good stead – one could ask, what if it would have been otherwise – how and when would the people have revolted against it.

So even though “autocratic democracy” worked for Singapore in ways that could have been best possible, it cannot, to my mind, be prescribed as the panacea for all developmental ills.  

In India, the nature of polity and politics gives room for change of parties with every election. It brings in fresh ideas and views, in line with the ever changing demands of the multi-colored society. Politically, India can come on broad terms of agreement for governance of the nation and if that is done and agreed to by all the parties like the “Model Code of Conduct” is, in case of elections conducted by the ECI.

Such a broad framework can give the country’s governance a sense of continuity. Similar framework can be evolved for the state’s administrative setup.

We cannot dream of a messiah to emerge from our crowds, it’s better we start with what we can do in the existing milieu of mortals.

 “Anticipate Change and Stay Relevant”: Dancing Elephant?

Based on the exposure I received during the Singapore stint, this is the single most important principle for India to learn from.Singapore’s “manageable” population (it was lesser than the population of my sub division of Raigarh in Chhattisgarh), makes it easy for the government to proactively assess and address the changing needs of its population.

The “manageable population” might have made it possible for Singapore to be a perfectionist in its service delivery to the people, however as a state, India can start with adopting an attitude that allows it to introspect and self-correct.

When a semi-autocratic public system can go back on its harshly implemented policies and make regular course corrections to allow for achievement of results, why the public sector of India doesn’t adopt the humility to receive and process feedback objectively and tweak the policies based on such real time feedback.

The way I see it, adoption of this principle in India is not impractical. Visualizing our system as an elephant that moves at a glacial pace will not help our levels of public service delivery. For a wise man would have once said, with enough political will and administrative acumen, even elephants can be made to dance!

 “Reward for Work and Work for Reward”: If You Pay Peanuts, You’ll Get Monkeys!

A senior administrative officer of Singapore, on getting candid in an interaction, said “If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys.” The simple line summed up the Indian bureaucracy’s state of affairs beautifully.

 Singapore trainers were not proud of paying their civil servants high salaries. They didn't look at the salaries as “high”. It was very clear to them that if you want a world class bureaucracy, you need to give world class incentives. And the salary, they defined, to be “apt and respectable”. Such a change in attitude is required in the Indian setup to enable the civil servants from getting de-motivated by seeing their peers in the private sector.

The Cosmopolitan Commonality

The one striking similarity between the two countries is their fundamentally diverse population. The manner in which Singapore has addressed the issues brought by a fundamentally diverse type of population is noteworthy. It has given a sense of inclusion to all the citizenry by including all the major communities’ languages as the official language. Moreover, the country celebrates its diversity in population – while little india is scintilla-tingly decorated for Diwali, the Malay population area shines during the month of Ramzan.

The way the country is run, it makes it clear that Rule of Law is paramount and no mercy can be expected based on anything that is politically accepted. It’s what leads to what people call “Curtailing of civil liberties to protest and demonstrate”, while others find it enabling to have a stable environment to do business.

It is very easy to dismiss the entire Singaporean experience as a “chance incident” with the right mix of political leadership and size.

It is easier enough to belittle their achievement by smirking on its geographical and population size.

However, the future of our country lies in us challenging ourselves to think of ways in which we can learn from Singapore’s experience. The fact that good policies, if implemented ruthlessly with eyes and ears open for feedback, can bring about miracles – is shown by Singapore in more ways than one.

I hope the exposure offered to us through this short foreign stint will serve us well in dreaming and creating visions for our own jurisdictions. It also shows how important a role international exposures play in the minds of young officers; Any attempt to reduce or abolish them citing that India’s unique problems leave  nothing to be learnt from others, is short-sighted, in the least. 

PS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

Hello Chhattisgarh!

Time ticks away. It's been one year since i first landed in Chhattisgarh as an IAS probationer and now i find myself going back to where i came from (#lbsnaa). 

Exactly one year back, i had funny notions about the state and its people, there were doubts whether i will fit in. Doubts whether i will survive, both professionally and existentially. Like any other newspaper reading member of the middle class citizenry, i also thought of "Chhattisgarh" as a term synonymous to "Naxalism". (Having read and reviewed a lot of Leftist literature obviously didn't help feel better). 

I remember being pleasantly surprised finding that there is flight connectivity to its capital, the fact that the airport was normal and there was no armed ambush till half an hour after the flight's landing also brought relief. 

The drive from the airport to my district took 6 odd hours and i spent the whole time looking out of the window, searching for People carrying weapons and red flags. What i found instead, were wide roads that led to the highway that cut through a beautiful, serene countryside, dotted with kuchcha houses and ponds..

Over the next few weeks, my preconceived notions about the state went for a complete toss! Instead they were replaced by even funnier notions... 

For one, I was astonished by people's capacity to consume paan... When there are more than 4 people clustered at a place, the place is bound to smell of beetle nut! ... When the "Honorable" High Court decided to confer on us, probationers, temporary powers of a judicial magistrate, i found myself sitting on a high chair listening to the pan chewing lawyers. The height of the chair was enough to make me seem imposing and give wings to my already inflated ego but not enough to prevent the pan filled saliva that splashed from the lawyers' mouths, from reaching me!

The scenes at the courts and govt offices were filled with obnoxious red teethed smiles of middlemen, spread across faces that were made rotund by intense oral activity (i.e. chewing :P)...  I soon learnt the subtle differences between people's choices - the gudaku, the paan, the gutkha and the hundred other products that they subject their teeth to. 

The second pattern that emerged clearly was that of pond bathing! Initially i saw it as an escape from the heat, but then, when my travels increased, i realized its omnipresence. Wherever there is a water body - a river, a pond, a tank, or even a temporary rainwater nallah... There are bound to be people of all age groups and genders bathing, be it early in the morning or late into the evening... ( somehow the nights were given to the poor water bodies to soak in all the human touch). One had had dreams in which the river flowing next to the circuit house would be flowing with soap water and there would be bubbles all around.

Away from the dusty towns, in the tribal villages, i sensed satisfaction in the air; A sort of a unhurried ease that comes with lack of expectations. Children greet me with broad noses and beautiful white smiles (for their teeth are still not subjected to the torture reserved for adults). Barefooted people could be seen carrying tendu patta on their lean, sun-burnt bodies.  The forest that surrounds is cut by roads that are plight-fully checkered with tar. Roads that are used by trucks and lorries carrying produce from the dug-up earth.

In the days that followed, chhattisgarh slowly began to reveal itself. Its a cadre wherein the IAS is still looked up to, a state where administration has shown promise, a state where political intervention is not vile or crippling. A state where problems are huge and complicated and the people are submissive and enduring.

Chhattisgarh has the land from which the richest business tycoons earned their money, made the middlemen rich and left the indigenous people wondering what just came and took away their home. It's a rich state with poor people that challenges the government to deliver and distribute the benefits of industrialization better. 

One can go on writing, but its now time to go back to LBSNAA and somehow describe my dirt and sweat filled field level experience using big English jargon words that no one back in the district would either understand or care to...

PS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

Season of Weddings: In The Name of Democracy

It's the 26th day of November today. An ordinary date - except for the fact that within the next 24 hours the ritualistic process of  my wedding will begin. Exactly a week back it was the anxiety of getting the polled EVMs back to the strong room (Chhattisgarh assembly went to elections) that described my life, now it is that of becoming a householder. In between elections and wedding, one sits here realizing how utterly similar the two are. 

Both Elections and Weddings (especially the big, fat ones) are exercises in mega event management that inevitably end up consuming the entire energy of the administrative (or the familial, whatever is applicable) setup for the preparation and conduct of "ceremonies" on a given day. Both exercises demand a lot of compromises from the routine aspects of life (again, administrative or personal) and leave the respective acting players praying for some time off.

Both are guided by heuristics/guidelines - either scriptural or ECI's. Irrespective of the source, they are almost always too cryptic to be understood by a novice and too sophisticated to render a singular interpretation. In fact, just as any other crucial event in Indian life, both elections and weddings invoke the divine power multiple times - whether it is to determine the exact date and time of submission of candidate's nomination paper or to check the match-quotient of the couple.

It's often stated that an Indian wedding is a miracle in itself - as it wrestles with multiple complications and expectations and still manages to fall into place, eventually. Over the  last few weeks, one has come to realize that elections are no different. A proactive and disciplined officer, if present at the right place, may streamline the process (i.e.decrypt the divine guidelines and cut through their absurdity to make people follow them) but there have been and are numerous places without such officers and elections have gotten conducted. One might argue the qualitative nature of things but the question of eventuality remains undisputed. So be it elections or weddings, the "Ram-Bharose" nature of things cut-through both.

A satirical perspective would not exclude the hope and utopian expectation that usually characterizes both elections and weddings. Despite that, both these mega-events are only and overtly cursed in common parlance. Yet one just hopes that maybe this time over, things will be different. Amen!

PS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

What Shall Thou Seek? : A case of misplaced incentives in the Govt and beyond

Most "successful" people start their journey by chasing material gains and well-recognised targets like medals, public appreciation, competitive positions, etc. It takes some time, when they become mature (old? :)) enough to realise that they actually derive pleasure from the process and not the end result. eg. one swims because he likes to challenge himself in the pool and the medals won are of token importance, similarly intellectual curiosity is what propels him and not the greed for extrinsic recognition.

But, this transition from seeking outward incentives to finding joy in things one likes to do, is often an elaborate one - It takes years to mature. In between, there is a position (where I often find myself) when one starts doing something because he genuinely likes to do it, but when the possibility of gaining some extrinsically-awarded and socially-appreciated benefit lingers close - the mind goes back to the old habits of target-chasing.
It becomes a typical situation of a greedy man looking for everything he can grab - without knowing what he wants and what he would do even if he gets it all. (a common sight of dogs chasing a moving car and when they do outrun it, they don't know what they did it for)

It is in this context that we need to look at the incentive structure available in the Govt. of India. It is now urban legend that the usual incentives in Govt service - transfers, postings, and often (allegedly) awards in the Govt. are determined more on non-professional considerations than on merit. Sycophancy has its own sweet importance - and it pays! We have seen it not just in the field but sometimes even in the training regimen. (Although the field situation can be much more brutal, often not even offering a facade of distributional justice to help one heal his wounds). So what incentives are left for one to chase?

Clearly, chasing fame or money or even recognition can often lead to gross errors of judgement. Search for fame has made some officers "encounter specialists", "media savvy" and "news room commentators"; Those seeking recognition often confuse the latter with the appreciation of political and bureaucratic bosses and become just another cog in the wheel of exploitative state machinery; I guess I don't need to elaborate on the effects of chasing money while being in the public service.

So the only thing that is possibly left to chase is this cliched, catch-all phrase called "inner satisfaction". But as I had mentioned earlier, for less-than-mature people like me, this is often a difficult task, because the mind is still tuned to the old habits of seeking appreciation. After all, who would like to spend hours and days of effort into a risky, difficult and out-of-the-league endeavour when he knows that a much easier and cheesier presentation is likely to be more appreciated?

It's very intuitive for a lot of us to look at life as a process of walking the tight-rope-  there are two mutually competing contradictions and both of them are real. I guess "putting your best efforts in the service" would mean that you keep on propelling yourself (often by distorting the perceptions of the extrinsic incentives) and still don't become too concerned about whether you grab those incentives or not. (Another one of life's paradoxes).
That is the importance of cultivating hobbies - because pursuing hobbies often (though not always) keep a person tuned in to the fact that the process is more importance than the end, that perpetual chasing is not what life is meant to be. This attitude can enable one to allow the job to consume him- by exploring all the possible avenues for inward self-growth, yet not be too concerned about collecting praises. (In fact officers who fear losing their "popularity" (likability-quotient) can be more spineless than the outright pliable ones)

It's about eating your favourite ice-cream in your favourite store and not getting into the habit of collecting the bills for preserving the memory. And even if you do collect and store the bills (possibly in a photo album), then treat them only as the tokens and not the substance of the experiential pleasure you derived.

So in such a world of misplaced incentives, the choice is simply between the substance and the token; I know what to choose, but hope that my old habits of collecting the tokens dissolve over the course of time.

LBSNAA – The colours of the Foundation Course

It’ s a beautiful place to reside in, the very ambiance of the academy with its hills and curves signifies  a sense of stability, that comes naturally to any place with a rocky terrain.

The interesting aspect of doing FC here is that the pace with which the course moves; There are 250+ people to meet and get to know about, trillions of gossips revolving around hundreds of tit-bit events that happen during the day, and to top it all, every week ends with some organised event that adds to the randomness and entropy (some call it excitement) of the course.

It is this brisk pace of the mind, deeply contextuated in the stillness of the spirit, that acts as the continuous underlying theme of the stay here. No matter how random my day goes – with seemingly irrelevant/ trivial classes, or incidents of incoherent (and often defying-ly irrational) behaviour of some batch mates, I can always find my inner peace just sitting out and staring at the majestic topography that this place offers.

Last few weeks that I have spent here have been an experiment in handling randomness – to do something, experience it and then return to the shell that is secured in the presence of few like-minded friends.

"Pratakal ka Atyachar"- Our Skit in the 1st cultural

A lot of my active participation in the FC has been questionable; The skit that I partly scripted and played a role in – was very well-received by the OTs and faculty alike, but only our team knows how many questions were put to us before we performed on stage. There were batchmates who had a blanket objection to their being imitated (Frankly, I thought it was their inflated egos who made them feel that they deserve imitation), while some took it in the right spirit. We were constantly wary of how the faculty will take their own imitations – being the first cultural night, we knew that we have to set the standards and we took the risk of doing things our way.

A Scene from the Bhojpuri Song in 2nd Culturals

A similar story is that of the Bhojpuri item song that we danced on in the second cultural – although the jury is still out on whether it was vulgar or not (or rather, whether the level of vulgarity was within acceptable limits or not :D). A lady faculty member complimented us on the “unapologetic manner” in which we did it while there were a number of differing viewpoints from some batchmates.

I guess the most difficult type of questions for me to answer would be those questioning the logic of my acts, and I won’t care about such questions unless my behavior gets really out-of-the line.

A major departure from the NPA attitude has been that of image consciousness – while in NPA my acts were directed so as to ensure that my low-profile image doesn’t get blurred, here I am just being myself irrespective of the consequences. This isn’t really the safest approach – I have already merited a personal meeting with the disciplinary in charge along with the image of being “culturally active” (some extended it to assume that i would be energetic about everything, irrespective of its stupidity). Given the latter image, my low participation in the childish fete organised yesterday, brought the ire of my batch mates who coordinated it.

One critically important learning from the stay in LBSNAA so far is that the lonely boring moments centred around somber futuristic existential questions can be humorously evaded by gossiping about the most nugatory things in academy life. This is the importance of friends whom you can talk to.