பட்டுக்கோட்டைக்கு வழி கேட்டால் கொட்டைப் பாக்குக்கு விலை

In India, its voters and neutral citizens does not effectively engage civil society and the general populace through reports and audits of government’s service providers, development partners. Our knowledge society does not differentiate between information and knowledge. By confusing information and knowledge, we lack critical thinking. The modern elite people in India do not realize that of the four revolutions of the 20th century, in Quantum physics, Genetics, in Linguistics and in Knowledge, the last two bypassed us. The profound Linguistic revolution had no impact in India except for culture wars despite the fact that an exceptional linguist like Ferdinand de Saussure was a professor of Sanskrit at Geneva in the same period. While the footprints of the Quantum revolution appeared in India well after World War II, the knowledge revolution led by Gregory Bateson, Thomas Kuhn and Claude Levi Strauss never excited us.

Contemporary India was never sensitive to the genealogies of knowledge. We always boast of Planning Commissions, IIT’s and IIM’s. We have revamped a few old British commerce departments/engineering departments and believed that we had reinvented management through IIM’s and IIT’s. In reality, our Indian Institutes of Management/Technology (IIM/T) had little research sensitivity which is relevant through several international education rankings. We have only consumed knowledge but we rarely added creatively to the stockpile. India became a consumer of knowledge rather than a translator or an inventor of knowledge systems in the 21st century.

The consequences have been that evidently, there are a few opportunities for civil society and end-users to systematically exercise their voice on effectiveness, quality, timeliness, quantity, reliability, efficacy and equity of service delivery. There is lack of capacity by grassroots, civil society organisations and some elements of the political society to hold leadership accountable has resulted into inadequate service delivery because of absence of such a “pressure -zone impact”; Once corrupt people (political dynasties) who act as leaders find a way of “muddling through” the top-bottom accountability modalities, they may not feel duly bothered by any upright citizen who are ultimately, the end sufferers. The fundamental impact therefore, evidently and glaringly may be neglect and a downward spiral of poor service delivery of government in quality and quantity over 5 years. A higher level of civic consciousness to hold elected Indian leaders accountable is requisite.

Policies of the Indian government should ideally create two kinds of intellectuals, the policy intellectual and the public intellectual and the distinction is critical. The policy intellectual serves as an extension of the state. He/she is more a product of think tanks, of groups which strictly cater to policy interests of the state or of corporations. A public intellectual is a figure who provides a wide-ranging critique of policy, and looks more creatively at the relation between knowledge and power. A knowledge society needs both sets of intellectuals. Linking knowledge and power is called as a true policy and such type of policies are rarely felt in India. More than 75% of the citizens of India do not have a good understanding of citizens’ rights and obligations particularly, those related to participation in the affairs of government and influencing policies and service provision. In addition to this, many of the people do not apparently understand that it is their duty to hold national and local leaders accountable and their duty does not merely end with voting in elections. The policy intellectual in India usually takes his expertise for granted. The sleepy public intellectual in India never questions the nature of expertise of policies which will allow probing deeper into the ethics and genealogy of ideas due to corruption, lack of support from politics. In the post-liberalization period, India has had more policy than critical public intellectuals with think tanks like the Centre for Policy Research and the Observer Research Foundation dominating the scene.

The think tanks and their attempts to formulate policy raise the whole question of the relation between knowledge and the public sphere. Policy formulation has not really articulated the views of the public sphere. In fact, the first challenges to the corrupt Congress governments of the last decade and the corrupt DMK/AIADMK governments in the state came from the social movements, and from civil society which identified policy and experts as mere extensions to the state/central governments. Governance is now seen no longer as a static exercise and the question of government policies and actions involves the new civil society for citizenship roles, ideas about the democracy of knowledge and the assessment of public policy impacts. Governance should be tied to democracy, with the public sphere for crucial knowledge and public policy a critical field.

Even though audit mechanisms are present, they do not reduce corruption or increase growth of the country. For improved financial management and regulation, it is better to structure and systematically build grassroots social accountability that would enhance the existing ones. This can be done through building the civic capacities of Indians to get relevant information regarding upcoming development projects as well as project documents. To achieve sustainable development and poverty reduction in India is the need to enforce accountability by peer review mechanism. Accordingly, this calls for integration of both top-bottom and bottom-top accountabilities for efficient and effective outputs. The fourth estate such as media (Savukku), press, neutral citizens and independent administrative government agencies should be good at monitoring government development and financial projects. There is need to enhance competence and citizen participation, dialogue, budget tracking and monitoring as well as reporting systems in public policy-making, participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking, citizens’ monitoring and evaluation of public service delivery vehicles as well as advocacy campaigns. This approach will help build-up community-based monitoring and evaluation thereby increasing increase and improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness and equity in social service delivery. This will help in departmental structuring that will enhance accountable leadership in the long run.