To Sir, with love: No Government for BCs

The number of transformative changes made since 2019—political and economic—exceeds those in the previous tenure: Ayodhya; abrogation of Article 370; cut incorporate tax rates; new education policy; a smooth relationship between the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India; a brand new national privatisation policy; bold farm and mining law amendments; LIC stake sale; announcement of bank privatisation, just to name a few. Every one of these has been something very difficult where PMO 2.0 has done what PMO 1.0 could not. If failures are attributed to PMO, then so should the successes. To ignore the successes and to lay all blame for alleged policy and other failures at the door of PMO 2.0 is neither fair nor correct factually or logically.

PMO’s principal role is to be a staff office to the Prime Minister, advising him and guiding him between competing choices, within a framework of constitutionally enshrined laws and rules. Leaving aside diverse political views on their desirability or otherwise, both the Ayodhya temple and the abrogation of Article 370 have been executed in PMO 2.0, completing something all previous NDA governments said they wanted to do but could not. This is testimony to an effective PMO—not an ineffective one. Should credit not be given where due even by those who don’t agree with the policy? (It is quite possible that since Swarup was in service during PMO 1.0, he had better access to information then. Post-retirement, information flows do dry up and can lead to fallacious conclusions).

At the outset, to clarify fully, I have had the opportunity to observe the functioning of both PMOs closely and both have had their strengths and weaknesses. I have had my own set of frustrations with them, which I have brought to their notice, not via a public platform like Swarup, but privately, on innumerable occasions. To be fair to them, both the PM and the leadership of both PMO 1.0 and PMO 2.0, have always been generous, open to acknowledging observations and many a time acting upon valid criticisms of policy or people or both.

To believe that this Prime Minister needs to be specifically told about the PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) being short-staffed at leadership levels or for that matter many of the other things Swarup mentions—and that this PMO doesn’t have the courage to do so—is again far from the truth. PM’s machinery—official, personal and party—is a very tight, slick ship and they are in the know of most things (though obviously not all). It is powered by very efficient multi-factorial human intelligence and digital systems (that runs on one of the world’s best, the Sprinklr platform, as also other digital tools) which cull, catalogue and curate almost every relevant piece of information. The PM goes through much of it himself. There is rich anecdotal evidence: a prominent journalist, at the Rashtrapati Bhawan At Home, was pleasantly surprised by the Prime Minister’s repartees to them about events which happened the same morning involving them! Such is the usual precision and timeliness of the information management of this PM and his extraordinary personal staff, even on small things.

Swarup argues about dividends being taken out of PSUs—which is not necessarily bad as is being painted by him. Is the Government as controlling shareholder not entitled to dividends? And it is not something being done covertly. Yes, it is a fact that several directors’ positions are vacant in various PSUs, but is it correct to say this is because one man in the PMO is dragging his feet? Let me throw a plausible explanation—the Chinese couldn’t privatise their public sector entities due to entrenched vested interests and thus allowed them to “wither away” which worked well for them. Could India perhaps be following this as a deliberate strategy or maybe it is something else, altogether. For that matter, there are lakhs of government jobs at lower levels vacant for ages and I for one have been repeatedly calling for a drive to fill these posts of teachers, doctors, railways, revenue and other vacancies via the employment exchanges. Yet it has not happened for various valid reasons. So, should we blame PMO for something such as this, which is well within the powers of individual ministries?

The Economist magazine has almost breathlessly been criticising the Modi administration, but for the first time, it praised Budget 2021 and the first-ever turnaround in decades from the Nehruvian “commanding heights” for the public sector to openly proclaiming the primacy of the private sector in India’s economic development. No PM or PMO has had the guts to say this in the last seven decades, for almost everyone was a closet socialist. This time around if there is a marked departure with respect to privatisation policy (though unarguably the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as to how it finally happens), shouldn’t credit go as much to PMO 2.0’s leadership as to the mandarins of North Block (a couple of whom were also in PMO 1.0)? For the first time in independent India’s history, a PM has publicly applauded the wealth creators in the private sector, which is a marked departure from the past and a signal to the government about his economic philosophy for the future. Should no credit be given to PMO 2.0 for this change in direction?

Counterfactually, if one were to dig into the numbers and mechanics of budgeting over the past many decades, it would be clear that there is often a fair bit of financial engineering done to make the numbers add up. This was true even in PMO 1.0 and was business as usual (BAU) for the system. For the first time during PMO 2.0 the budget has “come clean” on the numbers with an appendix neatly putting down all off-budget borrowings to show the “true” fiscal deficit. Would Swarup blame PMO 1.0 for the financial engineering or compliment PMO 2.0 for its audacious move to come clean on numbers?

Any serious observer of the PMO, including the hawk-eyed ones like Arun Shourie, would remember how files were routinely taken out of PMO for decisions elsewhere where there was authority but no responsibility. Swarup himself mentions about the shocking “Post-It” administration in United Progressive Alliance government times and there has been enough evidence of mega corruption in appointments. In the last six years of this PM and PMO, have there been any “Post-It” kind of messages or corruption in high offices? We as a country, including now Swarup, were quick and correct to criticise corruption in high offices during the UPA. Why is he now slow to praise the absence of “Post-Its” in PMO 2.0?

Today if India is the vaccine capital of the world, it is in no small measure because of this PMO, which hammered out a joint statement in a matter of hours after a public spat between the major vaccine kings of India. Why not give due credit to PMO 2.0 for this, for it was their intervention which made the vaccine makers fall in line on various aspects. Remember the early criticism of the early approval of Covaxin? Well, today the same criticising elite are scrambling to get it instead of Covishield. Who took that bold decision which is now proving right? PMO! On the other issues mentioned such as the insurance meeting chaired by PM, the recollection of those present about what transpired is at significant variance with that of Swarup’s.

As mentioned above, PMO’s role is a staff function to the Prime Minister—not a line function—advising the PM, between competing choices, within a framework of constitutionally enshrined laws and rules. Both the PMOs have uniformly been led by and comprised of individuals of extremely high calibre and high integrity, including the often unsung highly-qualified, brilliant privately recruited staff, who do a remarkable job in a very demanding pressure cooker. Most of them don’t see their families for six days, sometimes even seven days a week, for years on end—a kind of commitment most civil servants or even private sector honchos don’t display. (It reminds me of the punishing schedules of young MBAs post business school at investment banks, preparing pitch books, minus the happy hour). All this is not to say that PMO may not need improvements—it may, like any other living organisation. The architecture of it is by and large known to all. It will hopefully be acted upon at the right time.

Swarup, after reading my criticism of his arguments, will probably say: “My innings is over; now it is up to you how you play yours”, which is what makes him such a fine gentleman. Though on this occasion when he placed uncharitable and unwarranted blame at the door of one man in PMO (and the PMO 2.0 in general), I thought I should remind him that “Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi”! Shouldn’t the Bahu also show the proverbial mirror to the Saas sometimes? And help separate facts from fiction?

As another IAS star J.S. Deepak (also from the same cadre as Swarup) put it so well in a different context: A few officers consider themselves too sexy for the job of a babu. What's becoming increasingly fashionable nowadays is to become "bureaucratic crusaders" or BCs, he argues. BCs discover the press, and sometimes the press discovers them!!!

This PMO is the diametric opposite of the BCs—self-effacing, quiet, unobtrusive, invisible, and effective, as per the overall cards dealt to them. The rest is left unsaid for the discerning ear to hear and perceive! What is left unspoken and unsaid, is much more puissant than what is spoken and said. Indeed, this government is no government for BCs.