Table Of ContentPrathamesh Sri Siddhi Vinayak
For
Rukkumani and Chandrasekar
for being there, always
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Public Failures, Private Solutions
1. WATER
Pipe Dreams
2. HEALTH
Bypass Surgery
3. EDUCATION
Pay Per R
4. POWER
Short Circuit
5. SECURITY
Law & Disorder
EPILOGUE
The Exodus
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
PREFACE
Public Failures, Private Solutions
T he truism about India is that for everything that you see, that you
hear, frequently the opposite is equally true.
India’s scientists successfully launched the Mars Orbiter Mission,
executed a perfect slingshot to place it in orbit and left the world in
awe – at a price less than what it cost Hollywood to produce the
Oscar-winning movie Gravity . Lunar explorations continue apace
with Mission Chandrayan 3 to be launched in November 2020.
India’s engineers are designing and executing the world’s highest
railway bridge over the river Chenab in Kashmir. India’s Election
Commission manages the exercise of franchise in the world’s largest
democracy, enabling over 910 million citizens to vote, whether at
15,000 feet above sea level in Anlay Phu in Ladakh or 35 kilometres
deep into the Gir forests.
And yet, the above maxim about the multiple truths that are India
is unfortunately proven by the sordid state of affairs in the delivery
of public goods and services. The country’s ability in dealing with
complexities and scale, alas, has not resulted in creation of capacity
for transformative change. Truth be told, our many governments –
central, state and local – have flailed and failed in delivering basic
governance.
The promise of piped drinking water continues to be a pipe
dream. Households and businesses spend hours cursing power
outages despite the claims of surplus power. The inadequacies of
preventive and primary health care systems render the poorest the
most vulnerable. The millions coming out of India’s broken school
education system lack the rudimentary comprehension of the basic
three ‘R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic. And the security of
homes/businesses depends on outsourced private security
contractors.
It used to be said that India is a nation of many nations. Fact is,
India is morphing into a nation of gated republics. Slowly, these
gated republics are spreading across the landscape and their tell-tale
signs are evident in anecdotal snapshots. The empirical picture is
changing at a glacial pace and the scale is momentous. Year after
year, governments launch new avatars of old promises to deliver
public goods and services and taxpayer money is poured into these
avatars, but at every milestone of per capita income and
affordability, there are public policy failures.
The many failures of public policy are propelling a ceaseless
secession. The term ‘secession’ owes its Latin origins to plebeians
withdrawing from ancient Rome to force patricians to address their
grievances. Early settlers, said Jean Jacques Rousseau, resolved
disagreeable conditions within groups by withdrawing from one and
seeking another. 1
The choice before India’s denizen is to grieve, grate and grimace,
or get out. In his seminal tome Exit, Voice, and Loyalty , Albert O.
Hirschman points out, ‘Once this avoidance mechanism for dealing
with disputes or venting dissatisfaction is readily available, the
contribution of voice – that is, of the political process – to such
matters is likely to be and remain limited.’ 2 The voice of the
average Indian is not heard and the wait has been too long. And so
Indians are desperately seceding, as soon as their income allows,
from dependence on government for the most basic of services –
water, health, education, security, power – and are investing in the
pay-and-plug economy.
In the last decade, total government expenditure, both central and
state, has shot up from Rs 18.52 trillion in 2009 to Rs 53.6 trillion in
2018–19. That is Rs 6,120 million of taxpayer monies per hour,
every day. Over one-fourth, or 26 per cent, of this money is devoted
to what the government defines as allocation for delivery of social
services. The expenditure on education has shot up from Rs 1.62
trillion to Rs 4.41 trillion in ten years, yet more parents are pulling
their children out of government schools and sending them to
private ones. Allocations for health have more than trebled from Rs
742.73 billion to Rs 2.25 trillion between 2009 and 2018. Despite
this, nearly 70 per cent of people prefer being treated by private
healthcare service providers. 3 This pushes millions below the
poverty line as they borrow to pay for healthcare, triggering
catastrophic costs for families. 4 That there is this continuing exodus
even as the government is allocating more and more money has led
public-policy pundit and economist Lant Pritchett to ask in the
context of delivery of public services if ‘India is a flailing state?’ 5
The system is wracked by a curious dysfunction – there is too
much government and too little governance. There are the passive
government failures resulting in inferior outcomes as well as active
policy failure, where the design and implementation of policy
results in outcomes that worsen the situation.
During the research for this book, what has been intriguing to
learn is how taxpayers and other citizens have internalized the
incapacity of the state to deliver public goods and services. Millions
are opting out mentally from holding governments accountable and
are turning to private service providers, despite the double whammy
of costs.
Central and state governments harvest revenue by taxing income
and consumption. Overall tax collections between 2009–10 and
2018–19 have more than trebled from Rs 9.84 trillion to Rs 34.94
trillion. 6 The primary imperative and obligation of the state is to
deliver education, healthcare, water supply, electricity and security.
In reality, parents of over 75 million children in private schools
are dealing with the cost economics of education, millions are
choosing to seek healthcare from private providers, and households
are dependent on inverters. They are paying for services they have
already been taxed for. The secession is not by choice but by
compulsion and in sectors which form the crucible of economic
development.
The normalization of failure is accompanied by misplaced notions
of what constitutes a big government. A fallacious and gratuitous
explanation often used is that it is better that these services are
offered against payment by private providers. The popular
