Real Decentralization

'Public Sector Enterprises', 'Steps to improve Efficiency', 'New Approach', 'Too Much of Central Control not Favoured' - these are the headlines in the newspapers that indicate a new attempt being made to improve the efficiency of public-managed enterprises. A plan of 'decentralization' is being hatched.

     The new approach is said to be, broadly, to free the managements from the inhibitions that now result from too much Central control through rigid administrative and financial directives and rules. The inefficiency of public management is too patent to be denied. This diagnosis is accompanied by the theory that Central management is the cause of the deficiency and, therefore, if management is decentralized, the disease will be cured.

     Vain thought, this. The inefficiency is due to the absence of any personal interest in those to whom the responsibility of management is entrusted. This lack of personal interest is a feature as much of local or 'decentralized' management as of Central management. Central control may mean some delay and irksome technical and financial checks and curbs. Removing these checks, curbs and delays will result in more speedy mismanagement, not in better management. Real decentralization will come about only when the State ceases to be the capitalist and the manager, and when individual ownership, responsibility and interest replace the bureaucracy's management. The idea of decentralization is a thought in the right direction, but what is real decentralization, has not been grasped.

     Individual interest is the real remedy and it cannot result from mere decentralization. A hundred irresponsibilities will not be better than one centralized irresponsibility. Responsibility and efficiency issue out of the natural source of it all, viz., real personal interest, and this can be got only when the idea of improving everything by public management is given up and it is kept at the irreducible minimum, and individual interest is allowed the maximum scope.

     The notoriously poor earnings of the public undertakings relative to capital will not be enhanced by what is called decentralization. There will be more wastage, more graft and more pilferage and local interests developed in these abuses.

     For invention, application, economy, vigilance and efficiency in general, we must go from the circumference as far inside as possible, that is, we must reach the centre, where each works for himself and the nation. In the other way, we shall find each stealing as much as possible for himself from the nation - time, material, work, attention and everything. Decentralization, true and effective, is achieved when you go to the real centre, the man and his family. It is only then that work is free work. All other work is slave-labour, that is, work for some other, who again works for yet some other and so on, in an expanding circle of uninterested bureaucracy. The Centre at Delhi is the opposite of the real centre. It is the circumference far away from the human centre.

     The jerry-built paradise called the socialist pattern is based on some kind of reasoning and takes no note of human nature. 'Politics," said Burke, "ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings, but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest."

     Real and purposeful decentralization is done only when the State gives up regimentation and restores to the citizen what belongs to him - what Vibhishan asked Ravana to do. Until that restoration is done, the mischief of centralization continues in one form or other. Decentralization does not consist in greater facilities being given for waste or mismanagement or larceny or laziness, with no one to watch or check. If everything belongs to the State, but the State wishes to decentralize for more efficient production, even from that angle the best form of transfer of authority is to transfer it to him who feels and thinks it is his own, who profits by invention, application and vigilance and who feels when he sweats or worries over it that he is labouring not for anyone else but for himself.

     Apart altogether from the theoretical arguments about the merits of any scheme of administration of the people's economic life from a central secretariat at the metropolis, whether the scheme is sound in principle, and supported by what we know of human nature with which every scheme of governance must be necessarily linked, we have it on the authority and evidence of universally prevalent opinion that the system of controls, quotas, permits, and licences, on which such regimentation must rest, has led to widespread corruption of every form. The power to refuse or grant permission, and the power to bring everything to a standstill at any moment (for industry and business depend every moment on supplies of all sorts), must in the nature of things inevitably lead to temptation and consequent corruption of officials as well as the businessmen and the industrialists who must deal with them. That this has happened in deplorable measure already is well known, and is not admitted more openly in official circles just because of pride and false strategy. The administrative machine which independent India had inherited was the finest in Asia and was, in point of character, assiduity and talent, comparable with the administrative machines in Britain, America and other advanced countries of the world. We had a great tradition of loyalty to principles and courage of discussion when any important issues came up for discussion. Alas, all this is almost gone now, and I fear it is irrecoverable unless we change fundamental policies and go through a purgatory. If any scheme of administration and control of the economic life of the nation is thus fraught with danger to character, it is a worthless scheme, whatever the mathematics or the economics of it may be. For any scheme or policy, however brilliantly conceived, to produce contemplated results, not only training and talent, but absolute integrity is a pivotal condition requisite. Where the nature of the scheme or policy itself carries the deadly poison of anti-integrity, the plan is a chimera and must be given up. Where a political party is obstinately wedded to such a scheme, the party has to be pushed out of office in the interest of national welfare.