Why we must interrogate the efficiency trap

In last month’s column, I urged readers to interrogate the idea that “efficiency” ought to be the primary and indeed only pursuit of government as it sets about to perform its routine tasks. I pursued this argument primarily in response to the growing admiration in India of Musk’s “efficiency” project, which is really a dystopian project of destruction. Far beyond the United States and the very specific democratic challenge it confronts, interrogating efficiency offers lessons for India and our debates on improving State capacity.

To be clear, in interrogating efficiency, and questioning its dominance as the core value proposition of the State, I am not making the case that efficiency is undesirable. Indeed, entrenched waste, corruption and incompetence of the State is visible to citizens at every turn.

For several years, with colleagues at the Centre for Policy Research, I ran large-scale expenditure tracking surveys, tracing the flow of government monies from the Union government’s coffers, through the pipeline down to public schools. Our surveys repeatedly pointed to the inefficiencies baked into government processes, such that even this most basic of tasks was riddled with incompetence. Schools needed funds to purchase routine, necessary things – from chalks and dusters to materials to repair broken infrastructure. But the perils of red tape ensured that money only arrived towards the end of the academic calendar. When it did, red tape prevented schools from spending sensibly.

My favourite example is of an open air (building-less, in government parlance) school in a remote corner of Bihar, that was awaiting funds to construct its building, being directed to purchase fire safety equipment because of a Union government mandate. In another study on government monies for public health in Uttar Pradesh, my colleagues found that it took signatures from 22 desks (or officers) before a file could be approved for monies to be released from the State treasury to the district to spend in primary health centres! There is no doubt the Indian State has a lot of work to do to cut out its version of waste, fraud and abuse.

However, when the pursuit of efficiency becomes the only goal, we risk losing sight of other important goals that the State pursues and often, this results in making trade-offs with democratic values. At this moment of global democratic erosion, this should concern all thinking citizens.

Sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman, in Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy, explores how ideas of efficiency came to dominate policy making in the US. Legitimised as a politically neutral value proposition, aligned with market principles of choice, competition, and cost effectiveness – efficiency became fetishised as the primary goal of policy making. However, as Berman convincingly shows, the primacy afforded to efficiency as the core value proposition set limits on ambitions for social policy, environmental policy and even anti-trust legislation, by displacing considerations of equity and democracy.

While Berman’s concerns are limited to the US, I recently came across a fantastic illustration of her argument in the Indian context, through the work of sociologist Anindita Adhikari. Adhikari studied the implementation of the Government of Bihar’s 2016 Right to Public Grievance Redressal law. When viewed from an efficiency lens, the obvious yardstick for evaluation would be the law’s effectiveness in resolving citizens’ grievances. And here, the law would disappoint. Adhikari notes that even though the official figures present a picture of “efficiency” (the website shows 97% of complaints have been resolved), the reality is that most of these “resolved” cases are either “dismissed” or promised of resolution. Arguably then, these laws are failed attempts at making the state “efficient”. But Adhikari warns us not to rush to judgement.

Through careful ethnographic accounts of the process of registering complaints and mandatory hearings, Adhikari demonstrates the powerful function that these laws have played as classrooms of democracy. As aggrieved citizens force the State to register and “hear” their complaints, the process becomes a space where power relations are contested. By forcing bureaucrats to listen, a subtle shift is engendered. Bureaucrats usually dispense power by refusing to engage with the citizen; here, she is forced to listen and respond in a manner that is both transparent and appears to be ‘fair’.

This, to use Adhikari’s phrase, forced ritualisation of “performing-fairness” in a deeply iniquitous context where the odds are stacked against ordinary citizens is a powerful democratic act. And it is only through this democratic process that ‘efficiency’ will be obtained in a manner that empowers citizens. This is what our debates on State capacity must aspire too. Efficiency alone limits our ambitions for the purpose of government. And at this moment of democratic backsliding, it can serve as a tool in the hands of the autocrat. As democratically minded citizens, we must interrogate our priors and demand more of our politics.