The Goyal Post

The hellish conditions of New Delhi and daily revelations of corruption as the city races to complete constructions projects started eight years ago for Commonwealth Games raises questions about how India is governed. It brings into focus the need for a complete new model of management in Indian government and corporation.

India is ruled in a partnership of its best and worst. It is a cabal of the best performing all-round-achievers of the Indian education system that join the Indian Administrative Services (IAS)  on one hand and hardened criminals and convicts on the other. Dozens of convicted mafia dons, rapists and thieves make it through popular vote to elected chambers in states, city halls and often the national parliament. Media play their role in promoting their candidature so long as they buy news columns during the elections. Once in power, it takes very little time for them join hands in corruption with the IAS — most meritorious of Indian society that compete with tens of millions and often overcome tremendous adversity to come to government bureaucracy. The criminals bring the gun to power – IAS provide the gun powder. Instant cabals form between the vermin of society that rise through muscle power and gun into politics and those who rise through excellence in Indian education system. Though people often elect dons and criminals with overwhelming majority vote in elections – there is a general consensus too, that for appearances India should seemed to be ruled by more presentable individuals that can put a kinder, gentler face on the posters. That brings into picture the royal dynasties of India and certain academics such as  the current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The price they extract for giving legitimacy to this system ridden with corruption is now too high for the country to bear. Much like Manmohan Singh, our Prime Minister, many of these individuals have a genuine desire to serve. But they are no longer in control. Manmohan Singh is said to be a man of impeccable integrity and economic credentials. He is a decent man with the demeanor of a book keeper — in a den of thieves. He has been hovering around power and has held key positions in Indian bureaucracy and government for nearly 25 years. He has overseen and structured at once a great era of Indian growth — and of India’s greatest decline. The corruption, out-right thievery, bribery, conflict of interest, dereliction of duty, absence of accountability in government makes this the absolute low-point in Indian history.

India is witnessing some economic growth. It is uneven, often in wrong sectors, consumption driven and probably unsustainable. In any case it is not reaching over half of India’s One billion. Poor are getting desperately poor. Each street in India is now acquiring the character of a Dubai on one side – and Darfur on the other. A billion people growing as fast Indians grow in numbers can generate 8 percent economic growth if they live an inch beyond bare basics. Indians do much more and all that effort goes waste. Indian growth and individual prosperity is being stolen by the ruling class and bureaucracy. It is also being wasted because of poor governance. A vast majority of Indians work harder, longer hours and put in a greater effort than most people on earth. And yet, they earn a fraction of those in South East Asia, Japan or the west. Their effort is undermined by the corrupt and under performing who rule them. India can achieve 20 percent or greater rates of inclusive growth. Instead it is slipping behind in quality of life because of the mal-governance and  corruption at the top.

Delhi Leads in Corruption and Lags in Quality of Life

The character of Delhi in the summer of 2010 is telling. Monsoon season of this year has turned city into a living hell. Roads have been washed away, pavements have turned trenches full of mud. It is impossible to find a trash bin anywhere in the city. Main highways turn into rivers at the slightest rain fall. Epidemics like Swine Flue and Dengue are out of control and hundreds have died. Others suffer at state run hospitals where conditions could put dark-ages to shame. Patients lie in inhumane conditions, screaming in pain, in open, or in impassable stinking corridors.  Every major building in the city – including those completed recently for the 70 nation commonwealth games – leak. The city has no public toilets meaning tens of millions have to relieve themselves on the road side. Piles of garbage and plastic bags mixed with mud line streets for miles. Leading arteries of the city have not been cleaned for years — even decades. I live on one such. Construction debri from unplanned or unfinished contracts is lying in heaps everywhere blocking lanes, drainage and causing long traffic jams. Billions of Rupees have disappeared in this hell-hole of Delhi, stolen in every single service and contract in every lane, street, slum, colony and project of the city.

Theft goes on unchecked. Delhi has been ruled by the same chief minister and same bureaucracy for nearly seven years now. It is impossible to point a finger at anyone else except numerous Indian Gods for the state of city. India is ruled by the same party and same prime minister for six years. It is doubtful things will be different if another party came to power. It is because the system of politics and governance is now fatally flawed. India’s most powerful city is a helpless witness to the plunder and rape that goes on in full view. Conditions get worse with each kilometer farther from Delhi in every direction. Newspapers are full of daily exposes. Cable news channels show these conditions 24/7. Delhi and its 15 million talk nothing else but this – how the city has been destroyed, ruined by the mismanagement, corruption and greed of its politicians and bureaucrats. And yet – they are most likely to vote for more of the same come next election. India does not need a change of government – it needs a complete change of governance and management.

Private Sector No Better

It is the case often that conditions are much worse in Indian private sector. I have been witness to fraud, lying, stealing and kickbacks in three private companies recently. These are the only three companies I had a chance to look into. Nearly every western business manager I meet complains of theft in his company by Indian staff. Nearly every Indian entrepreneur I speak with talks of “people problem” in business. Young managers with European level salaries and perks often start stealing through clever schemes and manipulations before they learn to do the most basic executive tasks to bring any benefit to the company. The generation with most riding on it gives the least hope. Criminal levels of incompetence, unethical conduct, lies, misrepresentations and a complete lack of commitment to customer and shareholders has started to creep into nearly every open corporation. Only those companies that are closed to outsiders and are paranoid about all change, keeping business within the closest of family, never trusting or promoting any outsider – can survive in this situation. Many corporations have taken on criminal character and find no dearth of talent – much like the IAS – to join them in their insidious corrupt schemes. Honest, ethical companies are finding it impossible to grow. They can find neither the mentors among leaders in society nor followers among the young generation.

Way out, Innovation

There is a way out. India can adopt a whole new and innovative system of management based on less fixed cost, greater collaboration and very personal accountability. Western style management has failed in India. Even Wall Street Journal is calling this an era as the “end of management.” We , the Indians, now need to make a quantum leap into a new form of governance and management. We need to ditch the MBA and theories of management that have led to collapse of western financial system as well.

Instead, India needs its own very open, collaborative and free agent style of work culture. There needs to be greater transparency in all organizations and their business practices even as they are slowly dismantled to their leanest possible status. Every bureaucratic bottleneck is now used to commit an act of corruption and so long as there is bureaucracy in any organization – it will cause bottlenecks. A radical rethink and action is necessary. Whole of Indian bureaucracy - created so it could help the British colonial rulers rob India effectively needs to be dismantled. Instead of a fixed-forever bureaucracy — case and project based management system needs to be brought in. Politicians should be cornered to legislate and not govern. It is hard enough for highly educated and golden MBAs to run organizations – it is too much to expect that our illiterate criminal politicians can. They can steal but they cannot govern so why keep expecting them to.

In Delhi, bureaucrats need to be shunted out of their offices and placed by road-sides and in communities that they are responsible for with a chair and an umbrella, a mobile phone and a laptop with broadband. If they want full time jobs, let them move from project to project. Otherwise, let them earn their project management skills from people that pay for them — on the spot. The only guaranteed employment should be the state handout of Rs 100 per day under Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Scheme. Why is it that a farmer is guarateed 100Rs and a bureaucrat a million? Only when this safety net created for themselves by the politicians and bureaucrats is destroyed can things change. Let there be personal accountability too. If they take kickbacks from projects and a pot-hole appears causing an accident – let their be capital punishment for such crime. In most cases a jury of local citizens can decide the matter on the spot with the guidance of a magistrate. India absolutely needs capital punishment to be brought in for corruption that leads to death.

Change must be quick

Government needs to move out into the open rather than stay behind leaky walls and palm sized windows. India is an information technology leader. Government can be run from a thousand homes of bureaucrats/managers and all their actions can be visible to political leaders and public. They do not need offices and desks for work – they use those for running feudal courts and bribe extraction only. Each manager must face the customer and remain in full public view at all times he acts for public. Management needs to be where the project is and it can remain connected with all other resources through the latest on telecommuting.

This is not a change that will come slowly or gradually. It needs to be  a complete reset of how our nation and our organizations are governed. Bureaucratic structures must be dismantled and re-engineered for the 21st century and beyond. India cannot be governed by 18th century rules as it tries to catch up with China, Cambodia, Vietman and half of Africa. So much is available to so many Indians at the press of a button except good governance. The technology, the knowledge, the delivery systems for better governance are all robust and freely available. It is possible to trim the size of government by 90 percent and achieve a year on year efficiency improvement of 100 percent.

2010, the year of hell in Delhi, can either lead to mass unrest, suffering, death, disease or more of the same. Or it can cause the first management revolution in India and end the suffering of a billion people .

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Obama Vacations

President Barack Obama is under a storm of criticism from US media and right wing commentators for golfing and vacationing too much. Despite his formidable legislative achievements, command of two wars and steering the US steadily through numerous economic and environmental disasters he inherited – nothing is he does is enough for some. Every minute he spends resting or lecturing seems to inflame passions. The worst racist instincts of American society are being stoked. When he or his wife go on a holiday, all hell breaks lose. How dare he, say some, when so many Americans are without work. Really?

He was forced to take a weekend off in Florida and swim in the Gulf waters so he might take a week off in his favorite Martha’s vineyard. No doubt he will be accused of elitism and snobbery.

Presidential vacations have never been an issue to sweat over in the past. AllAmerican Presidents – white American Presidents — golf, fly fish, hunt, yacht and chill without much ado while the country fights wars or generally self destructs. That is no longer the case. This US president is Black and different rules apply when a black man vacations – or works.

While Obama was taking his Florida working-vacation US senate passed a bill that requires legitimate and legal migrant workers from India to pay an exorbitant amount for visas to the US. This immigration bill is the first of its kind in the US in recent memory that is not only fully funded — but gives the US treasury a profit. The dar skinned people of Indian origin have to pay a tax for doing a hard day’s work so white folk can vacation. US intends to extort from legitimate and legal workers to fight off the illegal one’s coming from across the border. Obama supports this bill – the only one of his tenure Republicans are willing to vote for. He needs the vacation, too.

Ten years ago I applied for a Canadian tourism Visa in Washington DC. Heidi Hollinger, celebrated Canadian photographer had invited me and my kids to vacation with her family near Montreal. I have an Indian passport. I waited a whole day in torturous Washington DC heat to just enter the small consular office and then came next morning again – with my kids – to apply for the visa. So here I was, an Indian passport holder carrying visas to every major European country, countless travel stamps, all manner of bank and tax papers, resident in the US on an business Visa, applying for a Visa in Washington DC to visit Montreal for a week.

A sad woman twenty years older than her age interviewed me and my children from across a bullet proof window with a bias that smelt worse than a swamp in Potomac. “Why did I not travel to to Canada even thoughI had a Visa which expires recently?” Because I had no reason to. “Why do you want to travel now?” Because I would like to holiday. Its hot here. Its cool there. And my friend Heidi has asked us to come over and chill at a lake side cabin.

“But you are an Indian !” The woman behind the glass complained ! “Yes,” I admitted.

“Indians do not vacation, they work. They come to Canada to work. You are lying to me.” she shouted and stamped a visa denial on my passport. Those few minutes are imprinted on my soul as one of the most blatantly racist insults in my life. And yet it happens each day to some Indian or African somwehere in Canada and the US. Over the years I have been convinced that Canadians take the gold in instituional racism even as Canadian citizens could claim top spot as the most diverse and tolerant of all in the western hemisphere. In the US racism simmers like a steam in a contained pressure cooker. The laws keep have kept a lid on it. Not any more. Under a black President and in a state of economic chaos, it is beginning to erupt through medieval laws of US states and now senate.

Asians, Latinos and Africans do the jobs Americans are no longer good at or too lazy to do. But American life is no longer about finding work – it is about depriving others of it. Migrants are not stealing American jobs. Some are incensed at the sight of a dark man working. Imaging their anger when a dark man vacations.

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Moscow is known for its smoke screens but not so much smoke. Summer 2010 started early in Russia. Temperatures touched upper 30s in Celsius ( or high 90s and 100 in Fahrenheit) in early July. Then forests started burning. Uncontrolled forest fires raged across Russia as temperatures soared in to 40s. Now, for nearly a week, Moscow has experienced 40 degree highs of temperatures with round the clock smoke cover across the city.
There is asphyxiating acrid smell all over Moscow. Metros stations and train tunnels are filled with smoke. Airplanes inhale smoke thousands of feet before landing. Visibility is so poor hundreds of flights have been cancelled. And yet, this rare environmental catastrophe in Moscow and across Russia is telling because of what is not being done. City’s mercurial mayor Yuri Luzhkov is absent. So are almost all parliament members and top officials.
The system failure and callousness toward life and health in official stance is blatant. None of the three chambers – Duma, Federation Council or Public Chamber have called extraordinary sessions. A major environmental and health problem is upon Moscow and the government response is about fighting fires 9 to 5. After nearly a month of fires, one official announced that some Moscow fires will be dealt with “round the clock.” Not much surprise then that fires have been raging uncontrolled after office hours.
Secret military bases have burnt down – it is rumored – with dozens of aircraft on the ground. Nuclear weapon bases are said to have been evacuated but ammunition dumps have burnt. No one knows what is in the air. There are no scientific reports about air composition. City administration is silent except in advising that people should wear masks. No door to door check on veterans or pensioners health are being done. No plans have been made to take care of pregnant women or newly born babies. There are no evacuation plans in place for the most vulnerable in case the fires and smoke continue unabated. There is no end in sight yet.
Russian hospitals and homes are without air conditioning and no mobilization of breathing equipment, oxygen tanks or air conditioning has been done so far.
So few reporters are in town that news media are reporting little more than government bulletins.
Air and train rides out of town are full and airlines or administration are making no arrangements for thousands of stranded passengers. No refunds or re-bookings are being given to those delayed because of fires or smoke. There is no sense of national or city emergency.

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