A few weeks back, a young entrepreneur—a recent returnee from the US mulling about his ghar wapsi—observed that every hope one harbours seems to depend on politics and political connections. A large number of educated Indians subscribe to the Reaganesque thesis that government is not the solution to our problem, but is the problem itself. Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s decision to install a department of government efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk—which initially aimed to slash the size and cost of government by $2 trillion—has catalysed popular imagination.
It is early days as yet, and we must wait to see how the Musk plan pans out beyond the speculation on why the idea’s co-author Vivek Ramaswamy left or was edged out. While one may doubt whether the trillion-dollar targets will be met, there is no dispute that it will bring focus on how the government works or not. Be that as it may, Mr Ghar Wapsi believes India needs a DOGE.
Without going into an archaeological dig, one can review the many DOGEs that Indian governments constituted in recent history and what came of the recommendations.
This February marks 25 years of the setting up of the Expenditure Reforms Commission by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Led by K P Geethakrishnan, the commission addressed “growth of non-developmental expenditure” and “downsizing the government”. The commission examined 36 ministries and submitted 10 reports that ran over 1,300 pages. Pramod Mahajan had quipped, “Everyone is for reforms till it’s about their ministry,”
Suffice to say that three decades after liberalisation, India continues to have a ministry each for steel, telecom, shipping, textiles, aviation and the likes. The largest ministries and allocations are for those subjects that are technically under state governments. While the number of employees in the Union government is more or less static at around 35 lakh, the wage bill has shot up 10-fold from Rs 31,945 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 3.24 lakh crore in the current fiscal.
Post 1991, Indian governments have promised to shrink their footprint in business. In August 1996, the government instituted a Disinvestment Commission chaired by G V Ramakrishna to recommend ways to monetise assets. The commission submitted 10 reports between 1997 and 2002. Other committees followed, including one under the Niti Aayog. The net result: when the Disinvestment Commission submitted its final report, India was home to 250 public sector enterprises, of which 234 were operational and 16 under construction. In 2024, India was home to 448 central PSEs—272 operational, 64 under construction and 72 awaiting liquidation. The cumulative losses since 2004 have crossed Rs2.7 lakh crore.
To recast the structure of government, the Vajpayee government instituted the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution led by Justice M N Venkatachaliah. This commission delivered 58 recommendations involving amendments to the Constitution, 86 relating to legislative measures and the rest for executive action. One interesting recommendation urged the government to “specialise some of the generalists and generalise some of the specialists”. The outcome of the recommendations is manifest in the data on delivery of public services and administration of justice—India has over 5.16 crore cases pending in courts.
In August 2005, the UPA government appointed the Second Administrative Reforms Commission under Veerappa Moily. This commission delivered 15 reports spanning the spectrum from human capital, crisis management, ethics and state capacity to local governance, terrorism, e-governance and structural inadequacies—for all three tiers of government. The reports were parked with a group of ministers in 2007. In 2009, the government told parliament the recommendations were being “processed for consideration and decision“.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the concept of “maximum governance, minimum government”. The 2014 budget invoked the idea and appointed an Expenditure Management Commission under Bimal Jalan. The report is not public; details of the implementation of its recommendations are not known either. Interestingly, four years later, Jalan was asked to head a committee to recommend a rejig of the transfer of excess capital from the RBI to the government to fund expenditure.
This week, the government announced the creation of the 8th Pay Commission. The terms of reference for pay commissions seek “to promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in work culture”. It is unclear how that has been factored and implemented in the recommendations. A sentence from the 7th Pay Commission perhaps offers a window to the challenged mindscape. It simply said: “There is no blueprint for enhancing efficiency and productivity in the government.”
The question is not whether India needs a DOGE. The need to spur change in governance cannot be overstated. Take tax reforms. Its journey begins with the 1993 Chelliah Committee, traverses the 2002 Kelkar Committee, slips past the direct tax code bill of 2009, and is a frequent visitor in budget speeches. In 2025, a modern tax code is yet in the making.
The quest for efficiency in governments is as old as the republic, and has been underlined by a series of commissions and committees. Indeed, India’s journey from penury to the promise of prosperity—chronicled in my book Accidental India—is defined by one constant and that is the arrival of change in the wake of crises.
There are murmurs of hope about an efficiency initiative in the budget. The litany of history speaks for itself. Very simply, India has been there and dodged that!