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For the people

Revitalising the State

A Menu of Options

By Pradip N. Khandwalla

Publishers: Sage, New Delhi

Price: Not Mentioned.

THE State has been the most successful and efficient means of unification and has been best able to meet the various needs which the progressive life of societies has created for itself -- a process which continues to happen.

It is, besides, the expedient to which the human mind at present has grown accustomed, and it is also a convenient means for its logical and its practical reason to work with because it provides it with its best available instrument, a clear-cut and prec ise machinery and a stringent method of organisation.

In recent years the general public have noticed a universal decline in the commitment exhibited by the contemporary state. So much so there is an urgent and pressing need to revitalise it so as to make the state more responsive to the needs of the people .

The book under review, containing seven chapters, attempts to explain how to go about building a better functioning, more civil society.

Pradip Khandwalla, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad begins by outlining four principal models of the State that have gained currency in the 20th century: the interventionist welfare state; the developmental state; the `reinvested' entrepreneurial state; and the World Bank model of the humane market-friendly state.

Since much of the state action, including, developmental activity, is attempted through the instrumentality of governmental bureaucracy, recharging the bureaucracy is essential in any strategy of revitalisation. No wonder the second chapter examines the dysfunction of bureaucracy, their seeming imperviousness to reform, and also some notable successes from various parts of the world. The author emphasises the successes of several Commonwealth and East Asian countries to indicate how bureaucracy can be m ade more effective and growth-oriented, and how values such as quality, productivity, innovativeness, discipline, integrity, accountability, customer-orientation and professionalism can be institutionalised in a bureaucracy.

The third chapter argues that fragmenting the state in certain ways can lead to a quantum jump in state's innovativeness and effectiveness. Such fragmentation involves giving greater autonomy to units of the state without loss of public purpose, and grea ter use of professional management. Several cases from developed and developing countries of governmental organisations that were detached from the monolithic part of the state and thereafter could successfully innovate are provided. Among others, the ca se studies include the success of NDDB's management of Operation Flood in India.

The fourth chapter discusses ways by which an over-extended state operating beyond its governance capacity, be slimmed for greater effectiveness. For forms of slimming are discussed: privatisation of state-owned enterprises, privatisation of public servi ces, privatisation of the state's governance functions, and deregulation. Experience suggests that slimming is likely to be effective when it is pursued for pragmatic rather than doctrinaire reasons. Selective privatisation can be a powerful way of bring ing private sector initiative and efficiency into the public domain and public purpose into the private domain, suggests the author.

The fifth chapter explores how a liberal democracy, especially one with a Westminster-style government, can be revitalised. To make a liberal democracy sustainable, it needs to be supplemented by mechanisms of associational, deliberative, and direct demo cracy. In a liberal democracy characterised by non-affluent societies some additional conditions such as reasonable social and economic equality, macroeconomic stability and security, quick material growth and proper implementation of public policies and priorities are called for to make it sustainable. The chapter further probes the relationship between democratic freedoms and economic growth rate, and highlights the importance of civil rights for growth.

The sixth chapter argues that the performance of an evolving state depends upon how well it learns to cope with each of several crisis points. Any revitalisation strategy needs to be tailor-made to the state's context and should be based on an assessment of state's performance. This is illustrated by reference to the Indian state.

In the final chapter, the options and learning of the first five chapters are utilised to develop several options for overcoming the crisis spots of the Indian state identified in the sixth chapter.

Lucid in its presentation and comprehensive in its coverage, this book will be of immense value to political executives, legislators, bureaucrats and scholars in the field of public administration, governance, political science and organisational studies .

Biswanath Acharya