MANAGING INDIA
S L Rao
Academic Foundation
243 pages; Rs 995
A 38-chapter book on how to tackle issues that concern a vast country like India could well be a treatise on problem-solving but Managing India deals with topics as varied as democracy, governance, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS's) influence on social welfare schemes, and managing family businesses. As a compilation of S L Rao's newspaper columns, the essays in the book have been thematically presented but, as is the risk with anything that examines a wide range of issues, it lacks an expert's insight.
This is not to say that the book is without merit. With his rare combination of corporate, think tank and regulatory experience, Dr Rao comes up with instances that make parts of the book interesting. In the fourth chapter, for instance, while discussing the functioning of welfare schemes, Dr Rao argues for a corporate approach for better testing techniques that involve control area monitoring within a test area. But even as he dismisses doubts surrounding the use of corporate techniques for government programmes, he does not provide counter-arguments to explain his point, limiting his comment to the dismissive statement, "This is nonsense."
Such generality of comment can be seen almost across all the chapters of this book, especially on issues like politics, a subject on which Dr Rao probably has little expertise. "Mr Modi is a strong person, who listens carefully, studies issues and makes up his mind. He is a modern man…," he writes in a chapter on the RSS' influence on the government.
Similarly, in a later chapter on secularism and harmony, he provocatively tries to handle the question on what can be done to tackle fundamentalism across all religions, especially among the minorities, by saying "there are too many people for a pogrom to work. Genocide is not a practical option for these new militant Hindus… there are no other countries to which the vast numbers constituting the Indian minorities can be banished from India". As for the Gandhi family, he rather sweepingly observes that it "is against private ownership and prefers state ownership".
Though Dr Rao's political observations are somewhat immature, he devotes three and a half pages to the future of the Congress party and its first family.
Strangely enough, in the chapter on crony capitalism, he defends special incentives to "a particularly big investor" and says this could be a legitimate state policy to attract investment and improve production and employment in a state. Subsequently, he cites the example of the Adani group, saying that the group has been accused for its cronyism. "The country has benefitted greatly from the Adani investments. If the government gave Adani barren land at low prices which is now worth a great deal because of the efficient investments made therein, we must consider cost benefit," he concludes.
The writer has had first-hand experience of the energy sector as the first chairman of Central Electricity Regulatory Commission. Yet almost the entire section on energy is devoid of any alternate thinking on issues the sector faces. Of the 10 chapters in this section, six are not even remotely connected to energy. These include regulating the Indian pharmaceutical industry, the inspector raj, career professionals, and managing family businesses.
The chapter on energy, running to 47 pages, touches on the core issues of energy security, power shortages and regulation. Dr Rao tackles here the role of regulators and relevance of their independence. He even goes into the details of some state models of privatisation of distribution business. It would have done the book a lot of good if he had elaborated on these topics, given his experience as a regulator.
One whole chapter is devoted to a listing of prime ministers and presidents with Dr Rao's impression of them, leaving the reader wondering about the central theme of this outpouring. In the section on governance, a chapter on American financial markets starts with the unlikely example of Russian president Boris Yeltsin, whom he labels as "a lumbering drunk, with no vision or even idea of where he wanted to take the Soviet Union".
Dr Rao has written more than a dozen books and has been a columnist with a number of newspapers. But this book, more than being a lesson in managing the country's multifarious problems, is a good example of how scattered thoughts on just about everything can only end up being an incoherent amalgamation of observations, the author's credentials notwithstanding.
