Rules and lines

At the Congress plenary in January,when the government was being lashed by scandal and impropriety on several fronts,ranging from the 2G spectrum scam to the Adarsh apartments issue and jiggery-pokery in the Commonwealth Games,Sonia Gandhi had exhorted ministers to surrender all discretionary power. Focusing strongly on land allocation,she said there was ample evidence that discretion allowed corruption to fester,and urged ministers to review and relinquish such power. Immediately,a group of ministers was set up to thrash out this abstract issue,and it has now,quite sensibly,concluded that complete elimination of discretion was not possible or desirable.

What sounds good in a scalding political speech does not always translate into a sound policy blueprint. Discretionary power is the authority conferred upon an administrator to make decisions,over and above whats laid down in the rule-book and everything depends on the manner it is exercised. It is value-neutral,and any complex government depends on a combination of rules and discretion. After all,an administrator is vested with a degree of implicit trust,you assume that they act in good faith. And as the GoM pointed out,many of these discretionary powers are used in performance of their bona fide duties. For instance,when the Planning Commission was not immediately forthcoming with funds for the home ministry to provide solar panels to Naxal-affected villages,the ministry simply used its reserve of discretionary funds. Others,like the tribal affairs ministers right to grant aid,education and medical assistance to the needy,are perfectly unobjectionable. However,there is no denying that there is a dark side to discretionary decision-making,and that self-willed ministers can ride roughshod over the rules. Letting land-use be converted by the whim or caprice of a chief minister has resulted in blatant scams,in several instances.

However,to take away all discretionary power is to put heavy brakes on progress to take away all latitude because it is impossible to have rules governing every aspect of administration and every human exigency. The goal,rather,should be to constantly review the kinds of discretion needed for effective governance,and to protect it from misuse,by making government processes more transparent. Context is everything and the government needs to find the optimal balance of rule and discretion for different sectors and sets of circumstances,instead of thinking it can erase corruption with a single self-effacing swipe.