Bar for governance too low, pace too slow

India's population is well known, as is the vaccine requirement. Depending on the number of vaccinations administered each month, we'll get to 80% coverage of the population by some date. At the current pace, that date is well into the summer of 2022.

Even with increased capacity for production at Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, we won't make a significant dent at the current pace of vaccination. At full stretch, SII can produce about 100 million doses of Covishield a month, and it's not clear if all of that will be for domestic consumption, since SII has export obligations linked to its license. Bharat Biotech can produce 15 million doses of Covaxin a month, tops. What we need is other manufacturers and other vaccines also coming into the supply chain, soon.

The critical word is 'soon'. The trouble with the way we've organised government is that nothing can be done quickly, even in an emergency. The whole system is designed to do things slowly, with almost anyone able to say no to something, and almost no one empowered to say yes.

Slow vaccination has two large risks. One, it gives the virus time to mutate, maybe even to the point where the vaccines that now exist don't work. That's why the rest of the world is airlifting aid to us - to put a stop to a risk that could come to them too later. Not because of any great diplomacy on our part. The second big hit will be on the economy. Other countries are looking ahead, hoping to recover from the pandemic through renewed economic activity. Being unable to keep up with them will hurt India's global competitiveness in several sectors.

This is a bane of our development - things that should be done first and quickly are all done slowly, in some random order. And the things that need to be done slowly with thought and deliberation are all done in a headlong rush of political power, often in stealth. The result - we end up with neither the benefit of well-thought-out interventions nor any gains from nimbly doing some useful things to get started. Instead, we're forced to keep doing whatever seems 'necessary' at each stage, telling ourselves that we have no choice but to do just that.

Why is our governance too slow? In large part, this is because we don't have meaningful district governance. In large countries, between state and local governments, it is common to have an elected district layer too. We don't. Instead, we go from an overbearing and low-capacity state government to small town councils and panchayats that have virtually no power in most states.

In this scenario, the states are stretched to respond to all problems, everywhere. At the same time, local city councils and panchayats cannot see beyond the end of their streets. Between the two, the taluk and district-scale view of things, and the necessary response, is simply left blank.

Without district governments, the reflexive response of the states is to do the same things everywhere. The Centre sets its own example of this through its sponsored schemes, which are trying the same things in Bihar and Bengaluru. When we hit a pandemic, a procurement agency in Delhi puts out a tender to buy oxygen for district hospitals. And the guys in the district who actually need the oxygen are told to wait until this happens.

We cannot have a government structure in which the PM reviews oxygen supply and the states build toilets in small towns. Those are not bad things to do, but those are someone else's jobs. In many cases, those are the jobs of layers of government that don't exist at all.

The quickest fix is to expand the zilla parishads to include urban voters too. If rural voters need that tier of elected representation, so do urban voters. Integrated and elected district governments can respond to regional problems and promote regional opportunities much better than either the states or the local bodies can. Along with devolved budgets and taxation, this could enable different parts of the country to set new examples for both governance and accelerated development.

The irony and hypocrisy of this gaping hole in governance is that in some large states, like Karnataka, for decades, state politicians have promised to distribute development beyond the capital and a few other places. The right way to do that has always been obvious - empower those other places do it themselves. And they will drive development much faster.

As if 'slow' isn't bad enough, we have another problem - the threshold for our definition of success is too low. We are quick to declare victory in development races after only the first few steps, as if running the rest of the steps and getting to the finish line is only a formality.

The bar for governance is too low in our quest for development. And the way we go about even this is too slow. That's why the coronavirus overran us.