Reform the Reform Process First

Context: Stand-off between farmers and GoI is an enormous setback to India’s reforms process.

Issue associated with process of reforms

• Undemocratic way of reforms: Like farm bills rammed through by an ordinance and then in Parliament by a voice vote without deliberations.
• Bold intentions to reform rarely translate fast into actual outcomes: As, India’s economy is not growing fast enough, and growth is neither inclusive nor environmentally sustainable.
  • For faster reforms, infrastructure must be built, public services must be vastly improved, and institutions of justice must be strengthened.
• Indian State does not have sufficient ability to manage complex reforms: A root cause analysis revealed that implementation of infrastructure projects and public policies is poor in India because
  • There is poor coordination among agencies, and there are unresolved contentions among stakeholders.
• Exclusion of principal stakeholders: Simply because they don’t talk sense from the  experts’ perspectives, or because they may oppose the experts’ solutions  makes the experts blind to the forces within complex systems.
• Lip service is given to consultation by GoI:  Representatives of stakeholders are invited to meetings.
  • They are lectured to, their comments noted with promises that they will be considered and then plans are made in technical language stakeholders do not understand.
  • Stakeholders are given a few days to comment on government websites, and, with all boxes ticked saying that many ‘consultations’ were held, the policy or plan is rolled out.

Way forward: Reform the process of reforms

• GoI should learn to make reforms and get things done: ‘No more policy announcements and no more foundation stones, please. Let’s have more finishing stones and outcomes.
• Improved methods of governance that convert confusion to coordination, and contention to cooperation: With this reformers’ intentions will be converted to outcomes much faster.
• Compilation of better methods to make complex reforms from around the world : into a set of principles and methods, which all states and cities , GoI included, could use to produce outcomes faster, and at less cost too.
• Involvement of all stakeholders to define the desired outcomes of reforms as well as their contents.

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