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| Sunday, 28 November 2004 |
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Features |  |
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The right column Crab as role model By the time this column reaches you the Second reading of the Budget 2005 would have been passed in Parliament. Writing about the Budget last week we said "kudos all round". What about the Opposition? To use a local metaphor, Opposition's critique was something like giving birth to a mouse after labouring for a mountain. The best it could do was to pose the question - Is it workable? This is like drawing horoscopes for an unborn baby. Yet the question cannot be ignored. Is it workable? We pose a different question. On whom does its implementation depend? Obviously, it depends on the public servants. This would have been the thinking of the government too, for the public servants have been well treated by the budget. Its proposal, however, to increase the number of their working hours seems to be ill judged. A better solution would have been to get them perform better in the statutory eight hours working day. As usual expert committees will meet and deliberate on ways and means of enhancing productivity. There will be a bit of foreign expertise too. Judging by the outcome of such committees earlier one would have to appoint other committees to inquire into their productivity too. We would like, on the other hand, to demonstrate some home truths that the government could take note. The public through experience views the public servant as someone who is arrogant and non-cooperative. This is because in ninety cases out of hundred a member of the public visiting a government department for some need is sent from pillar to post and is usually shouted at by some irritated official. Public servants hardly know the art of public relations. Any administrative reform should naturally include a course on public relations or customer relations management. The public servants have no role models worthy of emulation. Any public service reform should be top down and not bottom up. In most government departments the boss does not work for eight hours. He usually comes late, goes out for lunch and spends at least two hours to return. In such a case how could he expect the subordinates to put in eight hours work? Of course, he/she lectures the subordinates to work hard. That is why we have the crab as a role model in all layers of the public service. As long as this role model remains no improvement in productivity is possible. Of late, most bosses hang around politicians, attending to even their private needs during office hours for their future prospects are so closely linked to their affinity with the right politicians. As long as politicians nurture favourites and stooges, as long as they entertain tale-carriers, as long as they interfere in the routine work of the public service no productivity enhancement is possible. So in the ultimate sense, the effectiveness of the budget would depend on the effectiveness of the politicians on how upright and sincerely committed they are to the public good as against personal benefit - The Sceptic |
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