Will environment be the casualty of PM Modi's new efficient governance?

Making policy decisions is not just about speed but judiciousness. Even the most efficient government must allow itself time to weigh the implications of every move it makes.

FirstPost, 14 July, 2014

In its first month, the Narendra Modi government has tried to fashion itself into a mascot for efficiency. Asked to deliver tangible results, ministers have set themselves competing deadlines. The bureaucracy has been unshackled and made accountable for time-bound movement of files. The workaholic prime minister is leading by example. Everybody who is anybody in the government is putting in extra hours six days a week.

Much of this is good news. For example, responding promptly to public grievances, cracking down on hoarders who fuel food inflation or ensuring cleanliness in government premises and services require nothing more than political resolve and swift execution. But there are other areas of governance where the distinction between right and wrong is far less obvious.

Unlike the examples cited above, many policy decisions of the government involve moral or rational questions. One way of ensuring efficiency by cutting down decision-making time is to gloss over a range of nuanced positions and go by one’s pet conviction. When the conviction is personal, a health minister wants to discourage contraception and sex education. When it’s institutional, an environment minister trashes ecological concerns to offer blanket clearance to all projects of the armed forces in the higher Himalayas and virgin islands.

PM Narendra Modi. FirstPost/AFP

An informed, well-thought-out decision may not be the quickest one but it is more likely to stand the test of time. Doing away with so-called roadblocks and stalling instruments such as Group of Ministers also signals centralization of power within the cabinet. The prime minister is supposed to take the final call but it is only democratic that his colleagues get a say in critical policy matters. Unless, of course, the prime minister always knows best and his colleagues have no experience, expertise or wisdom to offer.

The much-hyped policy paralysis during UPA-II was not so much due to protracted deliberations over key decisions as due to the government's refusal to junk the untenable. Hellbent on bulldozing both reason and ethics, the growth hawks of the UPA eventually had their way more often than not but justifying the unjustifiable took considerable time.

If anything, the new dispensation seems to be even less apologetic about its growth-at-all-costs agenda. And with its single-minded, time-bound steamrolling, there is no room for even perceived divisions within the government over policy decisions because nobody seems to have the time, scope or gall to point out, even consider, anything that might be seen as hampering the prime minister’s efficiency mantra.
On the contrary, the ministers are pressing forward with agendas based on one-sided briefings from the bureaucracy and the industry. The latest is VK Singh, Minister for Development of North Eastern Region, who dismissed "most objections" to construction of the 2000 MW Lower Subansiri hydel project on the border of Arunchal Pradesh and Assam as driven by “vested interests”.

“There has been a lot of propaganda that the project is harmful and unsafe for Assam. I know the groups who have been resisting completion of the project. I know the interests involved. What is immediately needed is to put the correct facts out for the people to understand,” Singh said in Guwahati on Saturday.

What are these correct facts? "It is a run-of-the-river project. My own assessment is that it is not going to cause any danger,” he said, adding that people should be told how Tehri dam saved Rishikesh from getting wiped out during the Uttarakhand flash floods. For the record, Tehri dam only delayed flooding, that too because it was early storage season, which devastated much of Uttarakhand last year.

As for the Lower Subansiri project, its reservoir will submerge a 47-km stretch of the river. It will hold back water for about 20 hours daily before releasing the load for maximum power generation during peak demand hours in the evening. As a result, downstream flows in winter will fluctuate between 6 and 2,560 cumecs. The river will trickle for 20 hours before swelling with monsoon-like surges for four hours, every day, risking the lives and livelihood of lakhs of villagers.

Following mass protests, the state government had commissioned a downstream study by experts from IIT Guwahati, Dibrugarh University and Guwahati University, only to launch an ad campaign against the panel’s report that found the dam unviable on geological grounds alone. A subsequent study ordered by the Planning Commission also flagged the same concerns.

Having announced last month that work on Lower Subansiri project -- stalled following local resistance in 2011 -- would commence immediately, Power minister Piyush Goyal had to assure an agitated Assam BJP leadership on 5 July that the government would not make any move without taking all stakeholders on board.

Singh, however, has little regard for his party’s past commitment to scrap the ill-conceived project or the expert committee’s report. “I don’t know what exactly the BJP had said on Lower Subansiri hydel project during the election campaign. I have not seen the expert groups’ report. But having discussed with officials at NHPC and the power ministry, I am aware of the ground realities,” he claimed on Saturday.

Inexplicably, ministers in the new government consulted only a few officials to make up their mind in less than a month to back a project that would impact lakhs of people for decades to come. Unfortunately, this is no exception and has become the default approach to policy making. The downstream population in Assam is unlikely to give up the fight. But remote snowscapes, forests or islands have no people’s movements or political patrons to defend them.

The new government’s urgency to show a sense of purpose is commendable. But good governance is not about losing patience or sight of the long-term consequences of chasing immediate goals.