Administrative Reforms and Ethics in Government
FICCI has started a new series of seminars on Governance & Politics. Today was their first conference with Administrative Reforms Commission chair Veerappa Moily and others. I also spoke on the panel, got about 10 mins of time. In the audience were participants of CCS Advance Liberty for Change Seminar! Yes, we brought all of them to see the action. Here are my talking points at the conference:
Government Structure
Fixed term for the parliament/assembly
Fixed schedule of sittings with provision for emergency sittings
Except for the PM/CM, other cabinet members don’t have to be members of the parliament/assembly
Empower each member for the parliament/assembly to vote their conscience (Anti-defection act, schedule 10)
Remove the secrecy around budget — open and transparent process
Political parties and electoral system
Declare donors and audited party accounts
Sovereign functions
Defense expenditures have a strong and vocal lobby but not so for police and judiciary, so fix a percentage of budget allocation to them (4%); Full Price court
Direct/participatory democracy
Create areas for referendums at the local government level
Direct elections for the third-tier of government (mayor as CEO)
Ask citizens to allocate their taxes to broad headings of expenditures
Welfare schemes
Begin to replace them with vouchers and cash transfers
National ID for selection and monitoring
Include sunset clause in all welfare schemes
Ethics:
Transparency (Section 4 of the RTI Act);
Performance pay (citizen charters, report card, benchmarks, fixed year contract;
Impose the same standards and punishments for state provided services as are imposed on the non-state providers (include government services in consumer protection act);
Culture of self criticism and assessment (each branch of government should reflect and come up with suggestions to improve)
Corporate, Media, and Non-profit sector governance
Remove license raj for the informal sector — FICCI as their chamber of commerce
Give management of natural resources to the forest dwellers and local people
Abolish Essential Commodities Act, APMCs, export-import restrictions — Free the Farmer
State Attitude: We believe that people are rational, responsible, and self-governing given the right set of incentives and framework of law. Put it in every government office!
