The parade takes place on January 26. But every year I unfailingly notice that CPWD begins erection of the stands in early November - nearly three months before the actual event. It takes another 45-60 days to fully dismantle the stands and make the place accessible to the public. Since this is an annual exercise, whose operations can be easily standardised, it need take at the most a fortnight. Yet, CPWD happily keeps its employees and contractors busy for nearly 120 days.

In other words, the grandeur of the Republic Day Parade hides our government’s monumental inefficiency.

CPWD’s lethargy is symptomatic of a wider malaise in much of governmental functioning in India, both at central and state levels. Exceptions apart — and, reassuringly, there are many of them — most institutions of our Republic work without any accountability norms. Time overruns and cost overruns are endemic to most government-implemented projects. Last week this newspaper carried a series of startling reports on how the Defense Research and Development Organisation has consumed thousands of crores on fruitless R&D projects, and disparagingly called DRDO the ‘Delayed Research, Derailed Organisation’. Similarly, our courts are clogged with countless long-pending cases. Shockingly, government itself is not only the biggest litigant in India but also the greatest contributor to delays through adjournments and appeals. Most government departments are overstaffed, where more people doing less work is the well-established norm.

There is no audit - internal or social - of their output. Go to a typical dusty, cobwebs-in-the-ceiling, paan-marks-on-the-wall, files-stacked-everywhere government office, where an ordinary citizen is rarely received in a welcoming and sympathetic way, and you will wonder how far India still has to travel to realize two famous prime ministerial promises: ‘A government that works’ (Indira Gandhi’s slogan for the 1980 parliamentary elections) and ‘A government that works faster’ (Rajiv Gandhi’s slogan for the 1984 elections).

... contd.