The World This Week

The burden of contemporary management perspective of quantifying performance weighs down heavily on law enforcement agencies such as the one for which I work. Not all kinds of work are immediately quantifiable – it is then important to realise and accept an inevitable time lapse between the start of such work and bringing it to a logical and enforceable conclusion. That time lapse sometimes could be several years during which time the work started by one agency would move across several agencies, each of which have been tasked with a specific function to perform. So while one agency would investigate and bring the factual evidence on record, another agency would relate the available evidence to specific violations of the legislation in question and quantify the penalty and yet another agency would present the factual and legal issues and defend the action taken in the various courts of law which the aggrieved is entitled to move against the penalty imposed. And all these agencies would be manned by several people and different people at different points of time. So while the nature of the work is such that it has to be viewed and appraised in a continuum, each part doing its bit to realise the end goal, yet the pressure (or should I say the norm) to quantify performance weighs so heavily that each agency and each person in that continuum must necessarily reduce its efforts to a quantifiable number even at the cost of a premature and flawed evaluation. Thus we have numerous islands in the form of different agencies, each separate from the other and boasting a number that bestows upon it the glory of self-perceived excellence and each led by a proud chieftain who must also compete and outperform the other chieftains.

The end result is that there is little cohesiveness in the efforts of various agencies, though each is designed to live off the other. The intended design of having several cogs in the wheel, each working in tandem, is replaced by several wheels each big in size and standing apart from each other. What the obsession with the number also does is that it encourages a shallow and compromised approach in which the realisation of the target is more dependent on the goodwill of the accused than it is on the efforts of the investigator. So the organisation ends up having only managers and few leaders. Who then would care for building institutions and for the prestige and credibility of the organisation and about dangers of erosion of authority which is implicit in an approach built on the edifice of compromise?

The question that comes to my mind is that whether law enforcement can be seen divorced from the context in which it operates. And the context being what it is in India, where corruption is widespread, politician-bureaucrat-businessman nexus is ever increasing and grievance redressal and justice delivery mechanisms are weak, is it not inevitable that law enforcement itself has to be done in a compromised manner because the law cannot be seen and enforced in isolation and apart from the context in which it operates – a context which often encourages and even incentivises violation of law? The context feeds the system and the system feeds the context, and therefore we must inevitably end up with imperfect systems in an imperfect context. But then if at all the context has to change, the systems – here in my organisation and elsewhere across the government machinery and beyond – have to be the precursor to that change. Or else, left to the way it is now, we are only doomed to spiral downwards.

Meanwhile this week the Allahabad High Court ruled in favour of farmers whose land in Noida had been acquired by the state government and who were demanding higher compensation. As it turned out the lands had been acquired by the government at throwaway prices under the emergency clause of the Land Acquisition Act in the name of industrial development. These lands had been subsequently allotted to builders and developers, who would go on to design and develop major residential and commercial projects on the same land. It is yet another instance of patronage politics where the men and women in power frame policies and rules in order to benefit a favoured few, even if it is at the cost of causing loss to many. Also this week it was reported that in the remote town of Satna in Madhya Pradesh, the local BJP leader called a press meet in view of the impending visit of L.K. Advani to the town (who is now on a Jan Chetna Yatra across the country) and distributed envelopes carrying money to all the participants from the press, in return for an assurance of wide and favourable publicity. All but one amongst the thirty presspersons present during the meet accepted the envelopes.

Elsewhere on the streets the hoardings across the city cried aloud to its aspiring and well-heeled youth slogans such as “Get used to getting extra” and “Star Material.” (Provided you wear Xylus watches) In a faraway yet similar looking city in Southern Guangdong province of China, meanwhile, a strange incident happened in which a two year old girl was hit by two speeding goods vans which did not return to its victim. But worse still, the girl was left to bleed to death by the side of the road even while as many as eighteen passersby walked past her without bothering to help. Chinese newspapers which reported the incident the next day commented that “selfishness is unscrupulously booming in China” and “that the tragedy reflected a type of apathy that lingers in Chinese society and a moral decay that exists within the nation.” It was also said that “self-interest had become highly tolerated, even respected by some Chinese and even seen as an ideological tool to break the traditional values of collectivism.”

The choice between what is right and what is practicable continues to haunt several young people of my generation. Faced with an aspiration explosion and newly gained economic muscle, the youth continue to try and seek “oneself” while struggling to choose between the heart and the norm and trying to bridge the ever increasing gap between desire and effort. The confusion prevails despite Paulo Coelho prodding (in his “The Alchemist”) and Shah Rukh Khan translating (in his movie “Om Shanti Om”) that “when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” The question that remains is “what do I really want?”And hence the confusion.

Today at the traffic signal I saw a young man riding on a bike take out ten rupees and give it to a “hijra” who had come asking for it, but as the hijra was about to leave the young man said something to her after which the hijra took her hands and put it over the man’s head and uttered something in prayer. At that moment, I had an illusion of a billion hands going up in prayer - for themselves and for the country. And in that same moment A.R. Rahman and Mohit Chauhan crooned “Kun Fayaa Kun” in my ears. It is an Arabic expression which means “Be. And it is...” and is used several times in the Quran, one of which time is when it is said that the Almighty created this world instantly with the phrase “Kun Fayaa Kun.” What it implies is that whenever the Almighty wills something to happen, it takes place immediately. There is no time lag, not even a moment.

I wished I could say “Kun Fayaa Kun” with the same effect....