Everyone seems to have pro bono gyaan for the incoming PM. Some adorn the news pages. Others are being fired via Op Eds.
I doubt if even Narendra Modi has processes and structures to synergize - what to speak of assimilate -such an avalanche of ideas.
What exactly is the point of reams of newsprint - I discount television because they invariably prefer the bizarre anyways!
Why so much obvious enough stuff on job creationIJ Or the need for massive investment in infrastructureIJ Or tax reform, the revival of manufacturing, making government spending more productive, or a bigger push to foreign direct investmentIJ
Doesn't Mr Modiknow all of this - and moreIJ!Yet, the same stuff is being regurgitated!
Making matters worse are the folks marketing themselves as being close to Namo. Remember, your views and fantasies (read, pitches for a Prime Ministerial call!) are being passed off as what the next government will do.
One of them, Suresh Prabhu, has hit the front pages of a leading economic daily Tuesday.
No disrespect meant for the man, but the paper has placed him with such prominence mainly because he spurned the Wharton Economic Forum after the Ivy league school cancelled Mr Modi's keynote.
Another greying banker has hit front pages of the same daily when he demanded retention of RBI governor RaghuramRajan. Where is the evidence of the guv being firedIJ But his friends are orchestrating an embarrassing chorus of doomsday if Dr Rajan is sacked - our sovereign ratings hinge on the Chicago professor, you see!
Since it's too much to expectthese policy czars to give incoming PM some space, let me confine them to a gentle poser: was the unmaking of UPA-II about policyIJ Even ordinary mortals like us know that the best of policy intent came unstuck because of abysmal execution.
Didn't each ministry tie itself in knots - its cabinet notes not worth the paper and bottles of ink notings when it came to executionIJ
Which brings me to my two cents on Priority No.1: Get the Comptroller & Auditor General to behave in synch with national goals. These are the kind of folks who would sink the best economies of the world.
What Mr Modi needs, after the euphoria of a remarkable electoral performance has sunk in, is to develop a process where every decision of his doesn't go through a scanner of notional losses - the wonderful 'hindsight-is-20:20' thing that our C&AG officers seem to have. Most of them aren't even trained in accounting and audit - they pick it up only after clearing the UPSC entrance exam. Their original training may be in sociology or zoology!
It is the resultant overkill that has bruised the most hardened secretaries to the government of India. The lucky one's who escaped the C&AG's audit paras spend the rest of their day fighting imaginary probes by Central Bureau of Investigation and the Central Vigilance Commission! (I won't add the amusing side actor, Anti-Corruption Bureau of the Delhi Government - who is trying to become the super power for all action conducted in the geography of Delhi!)
Together, theC&AG, the CBI and the CVC have been running a parallel government, without ever having to contest an election against mounting aspirations of 1.2 billion people.
It isn't my case that checks and balances inherent via the 'Three Big Cs' deserve to be torn down.
But can the incoming PM show them the mirror of a failed tryst with the economyIJ
Or will he begin in all earnestness and then C&AG et al kick inIJ
(The columnist works at the intersect of media, regulation and strategy on RIl. The views are personal. Tweets @therohitbansal).