When someone writes about Governance or bureaucracy, it is usually about corruption or how officials treat citizens. But this one is way too different.
He didnt talk on the catchy topics like corruption, instead he chosen to discuss how bureaucrats create work for each other as Max Weber mentioned, and how things are getting delayed because each one try to transfer the decision making in the form of a file from one table to another so that they dont have to take the blame if something goes wrong. And how lot of hours, meetings and paper work will go wasted when a person gets a doubt in something. (The first chapter talks about 10years various departments took while clearing the doubt of an employee at SAIL on the color of the ink which should be used to write notes on files)
Then he discussed how administrator try to control things in market economy in the name of administration by creating maze of rules and procedures which lead to confusion and loss. He gave the example of telephone industry in this regard.
Then he moved to how ridiculously we deal with environment problems, and how we could use modern technology to save environment and boost economy at the same time. He discussed the idea to use fly ash which is the product of thermal power stations to make cement bricks instead of spending crores on ash ponds. I liked it.
After that, the discussion is on Muslims. And again he maintained the distance from the popular topics in this one too. He didnt talk about ISI, pakistan, terrorism or not even WAKF boards. The discussion is on how general public blame muslims for population growth which is totally pointless. And what to do with the illegal immigrants who came from Bangladesh and started influencing the politics of north eastern part of India.
Overall the book was good, insightful but i felt little boredom, may be because there is no wit and no rich articulation like in shashi tharoor books.
He didnt talk on the catchy topics like corruption, instead he chosen to discuss how bureaucrats create work for each other as Max Weber mentioned, and how things are getting delayed because each one try to transfer the decision making in the form of a file from one table to another so that they dont have to take the blame if something goes wrong. And how lot of hours, meetings and paper work will go wasted when a person gets a doubt in something. (The first chapter talks about 10years various departments took while clearing the doubt of an employee at SAIL on the color of the ink which should be used to write notes on files)
Then he discussed how administrator try to control things in market economy in the name of administration by creating maze of rules and procedures which lead to confusion and loss. He gave the example of telephone industry in this regard.
Then he moved to how ridiculously we deal with environment problems, and how we could use modern technology to save environment and boost economy at the same time. He discussed the idea to use fly ash which is the product of thermal power stations to make cement bricks instead of spending crores on ash ponds. I liked it.
After that, the discussion is on Muslims. And again he maintained the distance from the popular topics in this one too. He didnt talk about ISI, pakistan, terrorism or not even WAKF boards. The discussion is on how general public blame muslims for population growth which is totally pointless. And what to do with the illegal immigrants who came from Bangladesh and started influencing the politics of north eastern part of India.
Overall the book was good, insightful but i felt little boredom, may be because there is no wit and no rich articulation like in shashi tharoor books.
