How districts are new ground zero to test Modi’s development
It is heartening to note that the new government of India has a mindset that favours putting the country’s administration at the service of the people. The reported move of the department of personnel to call upon the secretaries at the Centre to visit the districts of their first posting for evaluating the progress made by them over the decades since they moved out to another place of duty, was admirable. Reports now indicate that these bureaucrats have submitted their observations ranging from a nostalgic recall of their first assignment to an evaluation of the present day inadequacies of development.
The move was as innovative as it was smart in terms of a strategy for sending out three important signals to all stake holders in good governance. First, it is a practical way of highlighting the commitment and pride that India's bureaucracy ought to have towards producing results for people who have lived away from the seats of power in the national and state capitals.
Execution of schemes
Second, it emphasises the Centre’s interest in finding ways of exercising an oversight on the execution of development projects across the country notwithstanding the constitutional distribution of powers between the Centre and the states.
Lastly, it underscores the importance that Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to attach to the politics of growth and efficiency. The success of a democratic dispensation depends not only on policy makers but equally on their honest implementation down the line by the administrative machinery of the state.
In the Indian situation marked by uneven economic conditions, poor connectivity because of inadequacy of infrastructure in the rural segment and lack of basic facilities of school education and primary health service at the village level, what is needed is a call that "India must go back to the districts". There is a rationale behind this.
The people of India live in its "districts" some of which are of the size of a small country. The trio of collector, SP and district judge wield the sovereign power of the state and together provide the ultimate port of call for the citizens there in matters of both development and security. They should also be able to deal with any corruption at lower levels brought to their notice by the public.
Today, people have to run to the state capital or Delhi because this hub of governance in the district has been seriously eroded due to its callous misuse by political leaders. The Centre — in consultation with the judiciary — needs to strengthen its watch on the performance of All India Services officers who are at the apex of district administration.
Also, it is not yet fully realised that the cause of national security — and this demands dealing with the two prime threats of cross-border terrorism and Maoism — is to be served in the districts since the underground modules of militants take shelter there and the subterranean Naxalite cadres have their network in the forest and hilly stretches of the affected districts.
Direct role of districts
It is in every district that the duty of maintaining law and order has now enlarged into a direct role and responsibility for safeguarding national security. This particularly relates to the production of "intelligence from below" that is so necessary for augmenting information on threats generated by the security agencies. The Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) needs to be geared to this wider role.
The district administration, moreover, is directly responsible for maintaining industrial peace which, today, is extremely important for facilitating manufacture and putting India on the path of growth and employment generation.
All schemes of the Centre or the state come up on the territory of one district or the other and the collector must become a part of the mechanism that would monitor their progress. District is therefore the new ground zero where the parameters of development, public services, and security are tested.
Both development and security are the two intrinsically secular functions of the state and people expect that Centre-state relations will rise above party politics to facilitate these.
If India has to see good governance it has to make it happen in the districts of the country. It is strange that none of the fifteen volumes of the report of the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) specifically deals with this basic concept.