Here is a quote. “There is need for carrying out organisational changes in the existing set-up of the machinery of government. This is so because there is insufficient coordination in the framing of policies and plans and inadequate speed and efficiency in their execution... It is necessary to bring about such changes in machinery and procedure as would render the process of expenditure sanction more intelligent, well-informed and speedy, and thereby remove the sense of frustration which afflicts, at any rate, several ministries and departments at present; and, at the same time, to tighten up the process of budget control of expenditure, and to promote economy-consciousness and sense of financial responsibility throughout all administrative departments. These are the effective safeguards against extravagance.”

There are fiscal pressures and simultaneous pressures on increasing public expenditure. Therefore, there should be pressures on making public expenditure more efficient. That, in turn, is linked to administrative reforms and a broader agenda of improving governance. In different sections, the Congress manifesto emphasises governance and also refers to reports of assorted commissions, including the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), meaning the ARC established during UPA-I.

However, that quote isn’t from ARC or any 100-day plan UPA-II has. It is from the Report on Reorganisation of the Machinery of Government and the author was N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar. In case the year is still needed, it was 1949. Here is another quote, perhaps even more relevant. “This feeling is intensified by a fairly general belief in the lack of integrity of many of those in high position... No government, least of all the Government of India, at the present juncture, can afford to proceed on the basis that it is better to attempt many things than to achieve a few. If it does so attempt, it must dissipate its energies and resources to little purpose. The basic things are food, clothing and shelter... It does seem that today, after providing for the legitimate requirements of external and internal security, the most important task of Government is that which falls within the economic sphere... There are undoubtedly many other activities in which a modern government has to take part and these cannot altogether be ignored, but the effort and expenditure... on these must obviously not be such as to prejudice the fundamental task, for, if this fails, everything else must also fail.”

... contd.