The BJP and Congress should treat scrutinised policy proposals as public goods.
In the first few months after it came into office in 2004, the UPA government set up a large number of commissions, which were mandated to make recommendations on the entire spectrum of policy issues. These were typically chaired by people of some recognised accomplishment, even if occasionally controversial. Their members were also typically people with professional credentials appropriate to the issues they were supposed to address.
Over the past four years, the chairpersons, members and secretariats of varying sizes have undoubtedly put enormous efforts into generating reports, letters to the Prime Minister and various other ways of communicating their recommendations. As the government approaches the end of its term, it is time to take stock of all this output. Does it provide the government a substantial foundation on which to make some fundamental policy changes? Or is it just another bunch of well-intentioned government initiatives that do so much but accomplish so little?
I have to say that my impression, formed largely from the media coverage of the process, is somewhat negative. More than insightful analyses and blockbuster solutions, I seem to remember dissenting members resigning on matters of principle or process, others complaining that their views were not taken into account or chairpersons in regular conflict with members or their secretariats. Protocol and establishment seemed to get more attention than problems and solutions.
Admittedly, I have paid closer attention to some than to others, even commenting extensively on reports of some, such as the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Commission. However, even though I have written on issues covered by many others over the years, I find that I have rarely referred to reports or other documents that the relevant commissions may have put out. Of course, this may be due to simple laziness or fading memory on my part rather than to skimpy media coverage, but whatever the reason, I think it is time to change the approach a little.
I believe it would be fair to make three assertions about the general nature of the output from the commissions. First, there is a lot of it. Second, a significant proportion of the diagnostics and the recommendations based on them are “technocratic” in nature, in the sense that they are not driven by a particularly ideological view of the world. Because of this, they can be seen as politically neutral, worth considering by any centrist political configuration that might assume office next year.
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Third, although this may be a bit too facile a generalisation, a significant number of the recommendations on several issues are essentially the same as ones that are being made on a regular basis on this page and other forums like it. Very few, if any, of the ones that I have registered strike me as being radical or out-of-the-box in comparison with what has been proposed and debated over the past several years, not just the past four.
These attributes represent both weaknesses and strengths. To deal with the weaknesses first, the first and third characteristics probably explain why the recommendations have not received as much direct attention as they might otherwise have. If high-powered commissions are saying much the same thing as your everyday op-ed columnist, they can hardly expect to provoke any excitement, more so if they are so numerous.
However, it is the second attribute that holds out promise of the whole exercise not going to waste. The most important contribution that a commission can make is to subject the range of recommendations floating in the public domain to rigorous scrutiny. Recommendations are typically constrained by the professional or disciplinary perspective of the person making them. Bringing them under the scanner of different perspectives is essential to separating the feasible from the infeasible. Whether the UPA-appointed commissions have actually achieved this or not is a separate question; the point is that this scrutiny is a critical component of the process that translates thought into action.
From this perspective, even though we may have seen very little by way of implementation of recommendations during the tenure of the UPA, the combined output of the commissions represents a significant menu of policy options that have been put through the multi-disciplinary wringer and are, therefore, very difficult to reject on any grounds other than political infeasibility. Whether with regard to the manufacturing sector or education or safety nets for unorganised sector workers, the work of the commissions should provide the government, whoever forms it next year, with a clearly articulated set of objectives and strategies.
But, here we run the risk of falling into our own trap of political divisiveness (and I wouldn’t hesitate to call it immaturity). Going by precedents, if the next government is not formed by a coalition led by the Congress party, the odds are that all the recommendations that the UPA-appointed commissions have made will be swept off the table. The new government will appoint its own commissions, who will, after going through all the conflicts and upheavals that their predecessors went through, emerge with a set of recommendations that, I would bet, will be substantially the same as those of the predecessors.
No party seems to be able to accept and act on ideas on the basis of their intrinsic merit. If a recommendation, however appropriate and feasible it may be, is made by a group associated with the opposing party, it is most likely to be rejected purely because of that association. At this point in time, when so many threats to sustainable and equitable economic growth are visible, many of which have been addressed by the various commissions, the country simply cannot afford the time it will take to, essentially, re-invent the wheel.
Both the Congress and the BJP need to demonstrate a higher level of maturity and sophistication on this issue than they have done in the past. Let them both treat the entire body of policy proposals that have been through the process of scrutiny as public goods, whether by the recent commissions or previous ones, available to both and owned by neither. In the forthcoming campaign, let them clearly articulate their choice and sequencing of options to address the most significant problems that they think the country faces. And, whichever party wins, let the other not oppose policies that it would have implemented, focusing instead on holding its opponent firmly accountable for delivery.
The writer is Chief Economist, Standard & Poor’s Asia-Pacific. The views are personal