THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Bureaucracy often evokes images of serious officers doing monotonous work, buried in dusty files and paperwork. They walk the corridors of power their entire career and are intimately familiar with both the government’s internal affairs and the public’s issues.
But do these experiences help them be highly perceptive and create meaningful content? Probably, yes.
A group of retired and serving bureaucrats, including principal secretary B Ashok, has come up with a book – a tell-all – on the challenges the state faces as well as the required solutions, in what promises to be an interesting read. From land ceiling to liquor policy and private investment, the officers boldly call for sweeping reforms and groundbreaking policy initiatives in crucial areas.
Titled ‘Beyond Cynicism: Kerala 2.0, Insights from Insiders’, the book is a compilation of articles by 13 retired and serving IAS officers, two retired IPS officers and a public finance expert. The book, a first-of-its-kind in any state, was edited by former additional chief secretaries P H Kurian and T Balakrishnan.
According to Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa and former NITI Aayog CEO, Kerala requires a radical overhaul of its economic strategies and shed bureaucratic layers and left-leaning ideologies. “To unlock its potential, Kerala must shed the bureaucratic layers and left-leaning ideologies,” he says in the article ‘Wanted: A Radical Reform.’
Citing central reforms like GST, he says: “Kerala’s political landscape must take heed of this current situation. Congress has adopted policies even more leftist than the traditional Communist Party, trapping the state in a mindset that suffocates ambition. Simplifying complex procedures and creating an environment that encourages investment should and must be at the forefront of a new political agenda.”
In their article, Kurian and Balakrishnan, who headed the industries department for years, reveal the flip side of Kerala’s love for public sector undertakings.
“Many profit-making PSUs are doing financial window dressing. Their profits are negligible and they look smart with statistical jugglery: adding grants and subsidies here, subtracting unaccounted expenses there. Loss-making PSUs are able to show a reduced loss only by converting their loans received from the government and interest due to them as capital and by regularly writing off the losses incurred in the past,” the duo says.
They recommend privatisation of profit-making PSUs through stock market listing and selling loss-making PSUs lock, stock and barrel. In the book, former chief secretary V Venu argues for a saner excise policy and questions the ruling dispensations’ fad for its annual revision.
“The current excise policy is discouraging MICE tourism (meetings, incentives, conferences & exhibitions) and will hurt the state’s tourism prospects in the coming years,” he warns.
He also says Kerala has been losing considerable revenue due to the impulsive act of imposing ‘dry days’. “The government should allow home delivery of low-strength alcohol such as beer and wine... it will be of use to customers, especially women and seniors,” he says. Paridhi Publications has brought out the book.
Ashok reviews devpt model
The book also carries a critical review by principal secretary, agriculture, B Ashok, on the Kerala model of development which faces fiscal stress and performance stress. To address public finance issues and deficiencies of the model, the state should adopt expenditure rationalisation steps and explore effective private sector participation, he argues.
“The obscenely high pensions received by sections of bureaucracy and teachers need to be rationalised with concomitant rationalisation of the needy on the welfare front. It may be worthwhile to develop a state pension authority subsuming all current welfare pensions and rationalising the recipients and the amount,” says the bureaucrat who was recently in news over his frequent transfers by the government.