One of the biggest
issues staring at all those who are in the business of
running sarkari
companies is how to efficiently and without collateral
damage, engage
contractors for getting specific jobs done in a specified
timeframe or in other
words entering into contracts. During the over three
and a half decades of
working for the Sarkar I have been a hapless victim
on many occasions
trying to fathom ways and means of engaging the right
contractor for the job
on hand, without being judged in hindsight as
someone who favoured
someone else with ulterior motives. For it is strange
but true that
enthusiasm and aggression for delivery is rather almost
always misunderstood
for an activity directed towards personal gains.
Equally strange is the
enthusiasm displayed by various agencies
collectively defined
as watchdogs to view a mistake or a deviation from
established rules and
processes as an act of malafide deserving of
exemplary punishment
so that all others who are watching from the sidelines
and maybe inclined to
act and thereby commit mistakes are instantly
motivated into rank
inaction.
The smart ones having
realised the pitfalls of contracting and also the
fact that they are
merely human and therefore prone to committing mistakes
have achieved
excellence in the art of procrastination. And the contractual
file therefore keeps
on going round and round in circles and why not: the
archaic process
perhaps designed for purchasing basic necessities like
potatoes or maybe
tomatoes is being utilised for purchasing everything
under the sun. The
extent of damage that is being caused in the garb of
transparency and the
need to have a system howsoever ridiculous it may be
is indeed beyond
comprehension. Indeed if the emperor Shah Jehan also had
the compulsion of
going through the tendering process for building the Taj Mahal,
this 7th wonder of the
world would have remained confined to his dreams.
The day I witnessed in
the early nineties that a machine costing almost a
quarter of a billion
has to be kept idling for want of a spare part that
may be costing less
than a tenth of a million, only because the tendering
process has to be
religiously followed, whatever respect I may have had for
contractual mechanisms
being followed in the sarkar, evaporated. And I also
started questioning
the first canon of financial propriety that our
professor of finance grilled
into us during our foundation course at the
staff college, that
government money has to be spent as if it's is our own.
What bullshit - one
does not tender for purchasing refrigerators and one
invariably and quite
often speculates with his own money. Try that with
government funds and
then watch the fun for a lifetime maybe from behind
the bars.
Gross national wastage
cannot and should not be overlooked in favour of
following some silly
rules and processes originally made by whites to lord
over us, for trusting
the natives was in no way one of their compulsions.
Strange it is that
even after almost seven decades of being a free nation,
our systems and
processes are mired in layers and layers of mistrust.
Yet no one complains
and surprisingly most of us from the bureaucracy
either do not feel the
need for a change or worse still defend the
indefensible and
valiantly fight for status quo. And why not, a system that
does not differentiate
between horses and donkeys obviously fails to
provide encouragement
to perform. Rare are those who trudge along
nevertheless and that
is the tragedy of this nation that we have been
repeatedly told was
once upon a time even the envy of the gods.
There are two things
to be done. First is to rewrite the tendering rules
and processes so that
goods and services of the requisite quality and
quantity can be made
available timely and at the right value.
And the
second is to follow
what is already laid down - treat malafide as such and
not to be equated with
not towing the straight line in so far as following
the laid down rules
and processes is concerned. And they can be done
easily, there is no
rocket science involved. Perhaps a tremendous penchant
for deliverance would
be of essence in ridding this nation of the scourge
of tendering
processes. The new government is indeed like the light at the end
of the tunnel and we
have to merely keep moving forward regardless of the
roadblocks.
