We speak as if schemes are often well designed, but poorly implemented. As Appleby pointed out a long time ago, nothing is more invidious than the distinction between design and implementation. For one thing it is a ruse to absolve the top layers of any responsibility for the failure of schemes, as if the Planning Commission and purveyors of Centrally sponsored schemes should not be held responsible once they pass their directives.

More importantly, this distinction is a reminder that the hierarchical structure of our administration ensures that no one takes ownership of anything. In a strange way, government offices are also the purest distillation of passive aggressive class warfare, an inevitable consequence of the enormous social gap between the different levels of government. Training for the IAS by the Kennedy School of Government and Duke University is all fine, though it fallaciously assumes that the problem with the IAS is its lack of exposure to the world. The real issue is that very little attention is paid to lower levels of the civil service and frontline service providers, who are actually more consequential. Would it not be time to leverage pay hikes for the top tiers of government for a commitment to diminish all kinds of hierarchies that beset this system and radically restructure work patterns?

The problem of absenteeism in areas like health and education is rampant. There are various proposals to overcome this — from individualised incentives to decentralisation. But as far as one can tell, no government has thought it proper to make the problem — the unions — part of the solution. Before a pay hike is doled out to teachers, will government sit with them and share the magnitude of the problem and ask them to come up with workable solutions? No union would defend absenteeism, and a fair contract would be to extract some verifiable commitment to meeting targets in return for a pay hike.

... contd.