The government of India is an interesting creature, possessed with an impressive posse of clever people and interesting ideas, but woefully inadequate when it comes to actually getting things done. The shambolic preparations for the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi are a most startling (but hardly only) example of how badly the government and its affiliated agencies execute key projects.
What the government really needs are people in the top echelons who can be efficient project managers. Politicians don?t perform this role in any country and generally restrict themselves to policymaking. In India, unfortunately, because of the attraction of pecuniary gains from project execution, politicians do often jump into a domain that doesn?t belong to them. Senior administrators from the civil bureaucracy who ought to be responsible for project execution have proved to be inadequate at the task, distracted by turf wars, satisfied with penning lengthy policy notes, and usually attempting to appease their interfering political masters.
One man in UPA-2, though, has emerged to defy the stereotypes, and is growing nicely into the role of the government?s project manager-in-chief, the man who can actually get things done: Nandan Nilekani.
Nilekani is, of course, the chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), an agency set up by the government to provide unique identity numbers (with biometric checks) to each of India?s 1.2 billion people. That in itself is a massive project, unprecedented in scale by any global standard. But just over a year into that office, Nilekani?s services are being sought by various arms of the government to assist with the execution of other crucial projects. Three of his forays outside the strict boundaries of the UIDAI, in particular, deserve a mention.
The former Infosys co-chairman, in a lesser known avatar, is also the chairman of the government?s Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects (TAGUP), set up to recommend roadmaps to roll out five key government projects, including the struggling New Pension Scheme (NPS) and the much awaited GST. In fact, the existence of credible IT system to administer GST can actually help the finance minister in his political battle with the states who remain suspicious about the revenue collection potential of GST and the fair distribution of the revenues between Centre and states. A credible IT system can ensure efficient collection, minimise compliance costs and ensure an uncontroversial sharing of revenues even if the tax (Centre + state) is levied at just one point.
In yet another avatar, Nilekani was invited by roads minister Kamal Nath to head a committee on Electronic Tolling Cards for national highways. The energetic Kamal Nath has given a fillip to the building of highways and has stuck to the principle of enforcing user charges. But he encountered one practical problem: toll booths manned by fee collecting attendants at periodic intervals on highways were slowing down traffic and leading to congestion, defeating the very purpose of new highways. Nilekani?s committee quickly zeroed in on a relatively cheap and easy to implement technology that can eliminate manual toll collection with a completely automated system that would be acceptable to an array of private road operators. It is now set to roll out across India in two years, by 2012.
Aside from heading committees on the execution of projects in taxes, pensions and road tolling, Nilekani has also been doing his bit for financial inclusion, by leveraging the potential of the future database of the UIDAI to facilitate mobile banking. The roll-out of mobile banking is caught between two sets of turf battles: between telecom companies and banks and between the telecom regulator and RBI. Nilekani and his team at the UIDAI are staying out of the turf battles and working out practical solutions (particularly on verification and safety but also on how best to actually open bank accounts) that address the concerns of all the involved parties and the final consumer.
What explains his success? Of course we know that he is a man of considerable ability and intellect?he has, after all, been a successful entrepreneur, manager, techie and writer. But that isn?t enough to guarantee making any headway in a government system that is generally wary of lateral entrants.
Two things explain his success. The first was given to him by the government in the form of the rank of Cabinet minister. This automatically lent him more weight in the system than a bureaucratic level appointment would have. And yet, being firmly on the outside of the Cabinet, lent him immunity from the political process that often hobbles even the best of men. The second is a favour Nilekani has wisely extended to himself. He has kept a low profile, staying away from turf battles, commenting only on matters that fall strictly within his limited portfolio of responsibilities, and focusing on getting the job done. That has likely helped him earn the trust of a number of senior ministers who are now leaning on him to get their key projects off the ground.
The UPA, always ambitious in rolling out government programmes, desperately needs a few more good men like Nilekani who can get the job done efficiently, without fuss and certainly without the shambles the Commonwealth Games have become.
dhiraj.nayyar@expressindia.com