Government should play subsidiary role

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2003]

LUCKNOW: 'Subsidiarity' essentially means that the role of the government has to be subsidiary to the people, a concept that seems to have been obliterated by successive governments. Sauvik Chakravarti, director, project subsidiarity, Centre of Civil Society, here to participate in a convention organised by the Lucknow Management Association on 'Towards Good Governance-Identifying the action agenda' expounds the New Public Management Theory (NPM).

Chakravarti said this needed to be explored from the perspective of economics, political science and public administration. For political science enthusiasts an interesting phenomenon is the Public Choice Theory exemplified by the popular TV series 'Yes Minister'. While a utopian understanding of bureaucracy meant that bureaucracy is engaged in 'public welfare' this theory illustrated how public administrators were as 'self interested' as any other businessman.

Just as businessman maximise profits bureaucrats maximise budgets. This concept of self-gratification, read as exploring alternative sources of money making, suddenly made the bureaucracy Public Enemy Number 1. Given this context the idea of NPM was born which experiments with the proposition of a distinct separation of provision of services and production of services.

Rati Kant Basu, managing director, Tara TV, also endorsed a similar view. "A more practical approach to the problem of governance is to understand that in any organisation shareholders need to have an interest or motivation. The difference between private and public is that for the private sector, money, is the motivation. Another impediment for the honest public sector servant is the more he innovates and works, he exposes himself to scrutiny. Hence there is no will to rock that boat".