No need for a grand secretariat in Delhi

The world over capitals have government offices spread across the city

Of all the many slogans that Narendra Modi used on the campaign trail last year, one stood out to many ears: "minimum government, maximum governance". It seemed to suggest that Mr Modi would, once in New Delhi, rein in the Indian state's tendency to expand itself in the most useless but self-aggrandising directions. He would instead, the slogan suggested, focus on what the Centre could and should do. It is now becoming clear that this was always a little too much content to read into a four-word slogan. Certainly, Mr Modi's time in Gujarat did not provide much evidence for the theory that he was a small-government man. If anything, as chief minister he had been an empire-builder, happy to see public sector enterprises become larger and more powerful.

But, even so, there are elements of Mr Modi's premiership that startle. One of the less visible, but most symbolic, is the National Democratic Alliance's apparent dedication to the idea of a new and vast secretariat complex in New Delhi. Certainly, the old North and South Block were designed for a different age, and office space for government should continually be updated. But some of the plans being published in the media are startlingly grandiose. In addition, they seem to concentrate on the government excessively. Instead of decongesting Delhi, they would cause it to become further sclerotic. Any modern city must have multiple hubs - and if the central government offices are to be expanded, then a location south of the city, say, would serve as one such hub. Naturally, bureaucrats don't want that, because India's rulers cannot commute in the manner that their people they rule do. Other capitals have government offices spread across the city - look at Washington, where the US federal government has giant office complexes miles and miles away from each other - some, like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon, in suburbs. This has not notably affected the productivity of the US government, so the idea that every central government official must be close to every other for efficiency is genuinely puzzling - especially in the age of the internet.

In any case, India's central government has built itself offices in recent decades that are either hideous - Shastri Bhavan - or too large and sparsely populated - such as the office of the comptroller and auditor general. The first step, therefore, should be to reduce the amount of state-owned living and office space per senior functionary. The government can start with the Lutyens Bungalow Zone. Replace three-fourths of the crumbling and unremarkable bungalows with modern housing - or, better still, offices. India's democratic government should not live like its imperial predecessors. If Mr Modi starts on that instead of grandiose projects for skyscraper secretariats, then he will begin to live up to his "minimum government" promise.