Packaging Vs Content

In Hindi film, ‘Gangajal’ Ajay Devgan as a young IPS officer after taking over as Superintendent of Police (SP) of a district in Bihar, is shocked to learn that police stations didn’t have funds to purchase basic stationaries or fuel to run their jeeps and were happy with the contribution from local contractors and businessmen to run the show. Almost similar was the situation in Odisha in the 1980s when I joined the Service. Officers who joined after 2000 cannot visualize under what budgetary constraints government offices then operated. In 1986, when I joined as Dhenkanal DFO, we just had funds for the salary of staff, some amount for travel and other incidental expenses. Allotment for the repair of buildings was so meagre that many forest guards stayed as paying guests with villagers, as their designated quarters were no longer habitable. Funds for travel expenses were so inadequate that I had to put a ceiling of Rs 80 and Rs 120 as the upper limit of monthly Travelling Allowance for forest guards and foresters respectively and restrain officers from claiming any. Funds weren’t available for any forestry activities and the only operation we could manage was patrolling. Thanks to the ten per cent administrative cost embedded in Central Schemes like National Employment Generation Programme (NREP) and Rural Labour Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP), we were able to keep our noses above water. This was more or less the situation in all government departments.

This resulted in lethargy in the system making it so inept and mechanical that after the devastating Super Cyclone in October 1999, the government just planned for restoration of infrastructure to the pre-cyclone status. Donor agencies, who came forward to help rebuild Odisha, pointed out that the current state of misery of the state and the people was primarily due to poor infrastructure. If those were to be brought back to the same level after restoration, another Cyclone could again play similar havoc in future. It was due to their persuasion that the bureaucracy was convinced to invest in cyclone-resistant infrastructure. I remember a very senior officer arguing “do you want us to construct concrete roads with borrowed money for the village vagabonds to merrily paddle around?” However, better sense prevailed and the new government that came in March 2000 decided to invest in infrastructure. It decided to shift the focus of disaster management from providing relief, restoring livelihood and reconstructing infrastructure to systematic planning so that the state is prepared to prevent future human miseries and damage to infrastructure in extreme weather events. The foundation of Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) was laid to bring about this paradigm shift.

But the inherent inertia in the government system was preventing the establishment of a modern work environment for OSDMA. “How can you spend money on modern infrastructure for an organization that has been created to abate miseries?” An eminent citizen even argued that people posted in OSDMA should not even use tables and chairs. “They should spread mats and use desks instead.” World Bank for the first time had approved a restoration project that too worth a whooping 100 million US dollars. They were wondering how could the state utilize the huge amount without robust institutional arrangements. Despite the integral impediments in the system, we were able to set up a modern office, which had more of a corporate look than a typical government office; cubicles in place of chambers, soft copies in place of hard copies, computer networking for file movement and computer savvy executives in place of ministerial staff and minimum possible support staff. Instead of appreciating the newly installed efficient office system, a senior correspondent of a major national level magazine reported, “All that OSDMA has done in past six months, is to gift itself a swanky office.”

The World Bank and other funding agencies were very particular about the quality of work and monitoring. They talked of Quality Based Selection (QBS) and Quality and Cost-Based Selection (QCBS), which was Greek and Latin to us, our system only recognized the lowest bidder (L1). They argued that if we focus on quality the initial cost could be higher but in the long run it will be far more cost-effective; the robustness of the output would far outweigh the initial additional expenditure. “You are so keen on making savings in construction of road, but don’t mind spending ten times the savings on annual maintenance”, said one and another added, “Surface communication is the most critical infrastructure after a disaster to reach out to the affected communities. In the Super Cyclone, the road network in the coastal plains was completely devastated in the absence of adequate culverts and bridges to allow the gushing water to pass through. Therefore, we have to provide those at appropriate locations so that road communication is not disrupted in the event of a flood in future, even if it cost us more initially.”

A World Bank official once told me, “The packaging is equally important as the content. Say, I am a stranger in Bhubaneswar and I want to purchase a shirt, where do I go? As a local person, you might be knowing a better place to shop from your experience, but I will go to the best showroom hoping that a reasonably good quality shirt will be available there. Most likely I will get one. If the packaging is good, you will attract the consumer, but the consumer will reject the content if it is not up to his or her satisfaction and will try another place. But if the packaging is shoddy the content would be rejected even without being examined. OSDMA is the nodal organization for all stakeholders related to disaster management and is the interface of the government for all agencies coming forward to rebuild Odisha. It is very important that it is showcased as an efficient, effective and responsive organization. We know the state government is committed to the cause. But you may kindly appreciate that ‘what is true’ should also be ‘what appears to be true’.”