What India needs is a complete over haul in the current political system and the mechanism of accountability which the politicians and government employees are responsible to. When the elections are on, that is the time for politicians to prove their mantle ensures a smooth working of the government departments. The departments should have a model where, no matter which party comes to power; the running should not come to a grinding halt. While wheels of the election process turn, the wheels of government have practically come to a standstill. With results for the Assembly elections scheduled to come out on December 8, and EC expected to convene the new Assembly before December 17, when the term of the present one ends, little official work is getting done in government departments. Ministers have stopped coming and for babus it seems to be time to take it easy.
Senior officials admit that not much work has been happening over the past month, ever since the election process started off. "The chief secretary has been holding meetings, but there are projects, especially funds disbursements, which need approval of the concerned minister or cabinet. All such projects are in the pipeline," said the official. The worst-affected seem to be the Commonwealth Games projects, work on which has slowed down. The 2010 Games incidentally have been in the forefront of the political spectrum over the entire election month, with both Congress and BJP trading charges of complaisance and lack of vision, respectively, against each other. In fact, the importance of the Games can be gauged from the fact that it was the only project for which chief minister Shiela Dikshit took time out of her electioneering schedule in November.
Ministers infact have been rarely seen in the secretariat in the past month. Most stopped coming from early November, with some like Raj Kumar Chauhan and Arvinder Singh Lovely making their last visit right around Diwali in October. Not surprisingly, the impact has been most on high-profile projects like regularization of colonies, low-cost housing and several PWD CWG-related projects. In the health ministry, the "priority" project of getting National Accredition Board for Hospitals (NABH) accreditation for four city hospitals before the Games is hanging fire while in the UD ministry, the Congress pro-poor plank of low-cost housing is stuck at the final stage of allottment.
In PWD, meanwhile, which is considered one of the busiest government agencies otherwise, nothing seems to have moved in the past fortnight. Though officials claimed work on already-launched projects has been on full swing, they admitted the work has been slow. "We are monitoring the progress of work at all sites. But yes, there has been hardly any meeting in the past two weeks," said a senior official. "Things will move only after December 8. It will take a couple of days after formation of the new government to swing to action. It will largely depend on the person heading the urban development ministry," added the official.
Source : Times Of India |