AN UPSTART IN GOVERNMENT
Journeys of Change and Learning
Arun Maira
Rupa
252 plus XII pages; Rs 535
Arun Maira has always been pleasant and soft-spoken - a consultant to the core, he patiently listens to both sides of an issue before offering mostly optimistic scenarios to help solve it. But a stint in the Planning Commission as a member from 2009 to 2014, where he enjoyed the rank of a Union minister of state, appears to have had a visible impact on him. His latest book, which is largely devoted to the challenges he faced in the Planning Commission, bears the imprint of his optimistic persona, retaining that obsession for scenario-building and Total Quality Management. But it is hard to miss the tinge of disappointment and even frustration when he recounts how the Planning Commission failed to restructure itself in spite of a clear brief to achieve that transformation.
The dissatisfaction was probably more acute because Mr Maira had decided to retire when he turned 65 after a successful career with the Tatas and as a consultant that saw him head the Boston Consulting Group's India operations. Here he was at the start of his very first post-retirement holiday in Prague when he got a call from his old college mate, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who had then been reappointed deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. The call was an invitation to join the government's premier think tank as a member. Even before he could discuss the issue with his wife, a call from Manmohan Singh, then prime minister, came through.
Taking that call on a tram in Prague, Mr Maira was understandably overwhelmed and took just a few moments to accept the offer to serve his country. Few job offers come that way. And for Mr Maira, it was an opportunity that he had missed a few decades ago after he completed his Master's in physics from St Stephen's College. Then, the Tatas grabbed him after convincing him that he should not be obsessed with joining the civil service since the Tatas also served the country through its many plants and projects across the country. Indeed, the group served India in many foreign countries, as Mr Maira would discover while rescuing the reputation of Indians and Indian firms when he steered a Tata venture out of trouble in Malaysia.
Imagine his disillusionment when he saw how the tasks of restructuring the Planning Commission were ignored and his grand plans demolished by powerful forces that favoured the status quo. The irony was that months after he quit the Planning Commission, the new government under a new leader, Narendra Modi, scrapped the decades-old planning body and replaced it with a new outfit, NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog. The brief for the new body was somewhat similar to what Mr Maira had envisaged for the Planning Commission. That the author manages to control his bitterness over this failure is a triumph of sophistication over genuine feelings.
Thus, Mr Maira describes Montek Ahluwalia as "a reluctant reformer". When Mr Maira wanted to introduce some blue-sky thinking on changing the way the Commission should function or to hire some bright people to take that process forward, he was gently advised to work his way without ruffling the system. No attempt was made to instill some direction into annual meetings with state chief ministers to decide on their annual plans, even though few disagreed that these meetings needed to be more meaningful. His favourite plan of building scenarios for the Indian economy seemed to have troubled those who opposed change within the Commission.
In fact, the headlines of the three scenarios were suitably toned down and made more acceptable politically in the final Twelfth Plan document: "The Flotilla Advances" was changed to "Strong Inclusive Growth"; "Muddling Along" became "Insufficient Action"; and "Falling Apart" became the less provocative "Policy Logjam". He could claim some success in that the Plan document was no longer confined to just putting out some cold numbers on growth and output ratios but also provided alternative scenarios of development. And the basic structure of the India Backbone Implementation Network, which Mr Maira created, was intact to take the process of change forward.
His biggest shock perhaps was when Manmohan Singh delivered his last address as the chairman of the Planning Commission before demitting office as prime minister. In it, Dr Singh repeated the same goals for the Planning Commission to make it a systems reforms Commission in the new era - a task that he had entrusted to Mr Maira and yet hardly pushed in those five long years. In another chapter, Mr Maira attempts a cogently argued analysis of why the task of revamping the Planning Commission could not be implemented. The five reasons he cites are an eloquent but sad commentary on the strong anti-change forces within government and the failure of the leadership to identify them and take corrective action.
That mild note of frustration apart, this autobiographical account is an easy read, made more insightful by the detailed narration of the many events that enlivened and enriched the life of this son of a displaced refugee from west Punjab, which is now part of Pakistan. In a way, the title of the book is misleading. It is not just about an upstart in the government. The book reveals a lot more about a man in post-Independent India, coming to terms with his ambitions for change and the difficulties he encountered. His experiences in the private sector, thus, stand in contrast with the five years he spent in the government. A notable omission is what certainly could have been an eye-opener - an account of the process that he had to follow to reclaim Indian citizenship and take oath as a member of the Planning Commission.
