Reform by a thousand cuts

Recently a friend called me up to ask if I though there was any real reform happening in India since the ascendancy of Shri Narendra Modi to the Chair of the Prime Minister. This friend, who is in the financial markets, said there is currently a view among many that the PM is only doing things which are  not good for the country such as giving bank accounts to poor people, freebies in the form of free insurance, loans and is not really doing anything substantial.

I thought about this and tried to make a list of things that have been done since he has come to the PM's post. Here is a list of which gives a flavour of the kind of things going on

1. Proposal to merge all hydroproject companies into one big company. This is the kind of decision usually a private corporate group takes. It is based on improving  economics, efficiency and reducing costs - all alien concepts to traditional management of PSUs.

2. Instructions to bureaucrats to reduce all forms to 1 page.

3. Proposal to accept citizens self attestation instead of notarized documents

4. Firing of all political appointees from board of PSUs of national strategic importance

5. Closing tax loophole in debt funds by which the ultra rich were not paying tax on their Fixed deposits and making the country lose thousands of crores.

6. Cleaning all government offices and making them organized . Incidentally this is one of the principles of Kaizen. When the Gemba (work place ) is clean, many problems become self evident.

7. Announcing policy to build toilets in all schools and giving clueless corporates a hint and a direction for their CSR programme.

8. Building relations with enemies of our enemies. Sending a clear message to China to decide if wants dhandha with India or territorial ambitions .

9. Fast tracking cases against MLAs and MPs. This changes the incentive to stand for elections completely. If you are a criminal, it would be best if you did not stand for elections in such a regime.

10. Proposal to release under trials who have already served more than half the maximum sentence possible for the crime of which are accused. This has the ability to reduce cases, decongest jails and speed up the judicial process.

11. Nuanced removal of retrospective judgement provision with  losing its teeth. Now the Junior assessing officers have to send their order to a central committee - who will study, vet the order and then issue it. This keeps flexibility to nab crooked companies while removing the powers of junior officers to ruin our nation's reputation by their vile acts/ignorance.

12. 100% FDI in Railway projects.

This is just a top of the mind list. I am sure daily readers of newspapers can write many many more.

None of these by themselves will be great but each of them are a cut on the old establishment. They are a clean break from the old style of doing things. They will have an impact. None of them can be called big-bang but each of them is a small step towards building a new India. 

No one improvement seems to be big but the total will provide massive change. This is very similar to the Japanese movement of Kai-zen - perfection in small steps.  Also most of these ideas have come from those who are working in the area and they have buy-in from those who have to implement the ideas and are not something thrust on them from the "high command". Finally each item is small so there is not much resistance to it.

This way of doing things is to keep making small and steady improvements in each and every activity as you come across them, while also working on the possibilities of the bigger things. In such a scenario there  may be no real big Bang which news anchors can discuss at length at 9 pm. These small changes and improvements  may work quietly and silently and perhaps the big bang may be heard only  during the next election results !

Till then, all we may see is change of the status quo by a thousand cuts.