India At Turning Point
Author: TSR Subramanian
Publisher: Rupa, Rs 595
This book unearths the intricacies of Indian politics and takes on crucial issues like security, public policies and financial structures from the perspective of an insider, writes Ved Marwah
The author of the book India At Turning Point, TSR Subramanian, is a former Cabinet Secretary. A versatile and dynamic figure, he has pulled no punches in exposing the deepening malaise in the administrative and political system. The growing nexus between unscrupulous political leaders and corrupt civil servants is posing the biggest threat to the stability and integrity of the country. It is a timely publication when there is widespread public anger against political leaders and bureaucracy. Subramanian is both an angry ‘outsider’ and an ‘insider’ who knows the system inside out having held many important posts in the administrative system. With his sharp analytical skills, he exposes the disquiet that is getting deeper with every passing day. But he is not a pessimist. He has made concrete suggestions to revive it even at this late stage.
It is not an autobiography, but he has given many instances from his own experience to buttress his conclusion. He narrates how corruption has become all-pervasive and that even as a retired Cabinet Secretary he had to pay bribes to the lower functionaries. He has the courage and integrity to admit his own failures while in service. He regrets his role “in delaying the process of administrative reform due to insufficient comprehension” and for not supporting the demand for autonomy for the CBI when he was the Cabinet Secretary. He also narrates how the CBI tried to fix him. “Framing innocent people are as regularly practised as deliberately allowing wrong-doers to escape”. He is forthright in his judgements of the villains in the system and has not spared even the highest. But mysteriously, he has kept to himself his “closest thoughts and most important experiences”.
He has some harsh things to say about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He laments the fact that the authors of public policies are in the hands of persons, some of whom have lived and educated abroad, but have little or no touch with ground realities. He takes a dig at Mani Shankar Aiyar with his scathing sense of humour. According to Subramanian, Aiyar’s “knowledge of Indian rural conditions was as much as I know about living conditions in the Antarctica”.
Recalling the assessment of his colleagues when Manmohan Singh was the Deputy Economic Adviser in the Finance Ministry, he narrates how Singh made himself indispensable to his seniors. His colleagues in the Finance Ministry had correctly assessed the upwardly mobile qualities of the future Prime Minister. “Manmohan Singh would quickly and shrewdly grasp what the boss wanted, prepare a case even before the boss articulated it, couched it with arguments replete with economic theory, make it sound profound and put it up for boss’s approval, finally announcing the policy as emerging from the boss.” The systematic use of the strategy has catapulted him to the highest executive post in the country. According to the author, “clearly Manmohan is the ultimate demonstration of the Peter Principle, as evident not only over the past 10 years, but throughout his illustrious career”. In its variant the highest executive post has been rendered “insignificant and inconsequential”.
Each chapter is conceived as a self-contained essay and discusses an important issue in a frank and hard-hitting manner. In the chapter on the media, he has taken pot shots at the holier-than-thou attitude of some of the anchors: How they push their own views and some the given agendas of their masters. He underlines the fact “how the financing structures of the major houses are controlled through remote mechanisms, the compulsions of the programmers and anchors to follow certain directions and the blackmailing potential of the press in general”. At the same time, he has acknowledged the contribution of the media, especially the television, to expose the glaring shortcomings in the system and pushing the policy-makers to take some initiatives for political and administrative reforms.
In the chapter titled ‘Placebo Governance’, Subramanian writes how Governments “frequently produce schemes which they know will not work, to appear to be acting, to appease segments of the citizenry”. These are “games that are played to lull the population into thinking that serious attention is being given to basic problems, frequently through “placebo schemes” and laws which have little or no scope for implementation.
A separate chapter is devoted to issues of national security. He has made some important points on issues like communal violence, left-wing extremism, India-Pakistan and India-China relations. He has rightly criticised their poor handling by the Government. Vote-bank politics should not be a factor in deciding our relations with our neighbours. India is a soft state not because we lack resources to deal with hostile neighbours, but because of muddled political thinking. In this brief chapter, he has succeeded putting his finger on the most important issues that need immediate attention.
The chapters on Public Health and Education have highlighted not only how inadequate the delivery systems are, but also what needs to be done both in the immediate and long term to improve them. There are separate chapters on the neglect of physical infrastructure and improved delivery of services. The civil service reforms are crucial for effective governance. The chapter on civil services reforms lays down the immediate steps the policy-makers must take, otherwise the entire public administrative system including the criminal justice system is likely to collapse. The author was the main moving force behind the PIl for reforms in the Supreme Court. He laments the fact that lately even institutions like the Election Commission “have not fully discharged their functions; they have not used the full authority vested in them” under the Constitution. The model code of conduct needs to be given more teeth. He is in favour of changing the selection procedure for the membership of the Commission to make it bipartisan and completely neutral.
The author has obviously enjoyed writing this book, but he has seen to it that the reader enjoys it as much. In a no-hold bar style, he has made a number of startling revelations about how public interest is being sacrificed at the altar of self-interest. Capturing power and ensuring its perpetuation appear to be the only purpose of our rulers. The book will be of great interest to all concerned about governance and how the most crucial institutions of governance are being systematically destroyed.
The reviewer, a former IPS officer, was Governor of Jharkhand, Manipur and Mizoram