Opinion Going lateral

The Modi government has appointed former McKinsey India chairman Adil Zainulbhai as head of the Quality Council of India (QCI), an autonomous body set up to help Indian manufacturers. Zainulbhai is the first lateral recruitment from a non-government sector by the Modi government and, hopefully, more such appointments will be made to invite fresh perspectives and innovations in the processes of policymaking and implementation. Though the idea has been with us for long, it has never really been institutionalised. Predictably, an influential section of bureaucrats is not enthused about “outsiders” competing for senior posts in the government. A report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) set up by the UPA government had recommended that lateral hiring of people with exceptional talent and skills from the private sector and the academic world be done at the additional secretary level.

Lateral hiring into government was not so rare in the early years after independence. Then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was eager to draw talent into his government from all sectors. The first railway minister, and subsequently finance minister, John Mathai, was an academician while physicist Homi Bhabha ran the country’s nuclear programme. In the 1970s, M.S. Swaminathan, who was heading the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, joined the Centre as a principal secretary in the agriculture ministry to facilitate the green revolution. Sam Pitroda, a successful inventor-entrepreneur, piloted the telecom revolution when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister. Manmohan Singh invited Nandan Nilekani to join the government to plan and pilot the UID project. These individuals brought new ideas and energy to governance.

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The purpose of promoting lateral entry, however, should be to strengthen existing institutions, not to create parallel bodies, like the National Advisory Council under the UPA. Appointments must not lead to turf wars. There must be synergy between “insiders” and “outsiders” if the system is to work; the impediment may not necessarily be individuals but the organisational culture that resists change. To achieve this, it is necessary to institutionalise policy, instead of making ad hoc recruitments.