Daily News Mail - News of 05/05/2015

MEA refuses to reveal expenses on Obama visit

• The Ministry of External Affairs has declined to reveal how much money was spent by India on U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to New Delhi in January this year, claiming it was sensitive information and could put under strain relations between the two countries.
• The MEA said the information was not only “sensitive” but also pertains to India’s relations with the U.S. and, therefore, could not be disclosed. The Ministry cited Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act 2005, which allowed information to be withheld if its disclosure could affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence.

Local politics in foreign policy

• When it comes to foreign policy, India is one whole, not the sum of its parts. Which is why the government’s plans to introduce a Constitutional amendment in Parliament in order to operationalise the India-Bangladesh land boundary agreement (LBA) for the three States of West Bengal, Meghalaya and Tripura, but not for Assam, is an unwholesome precedent. Simply put, of all the 162 enclaves and 5,044 acres of land in ‘adverse possession’ that have been carefully analysed and agreed to for the land swap on both sides of the border, the 268 acres that Assam is due to hand over will not be included. The reasoning for this exclusion seems to be political: ahead of the Assam Assembly elections this year, the ruling BJP doesn’t wish to be seen “giving away” land to the neighbour, Bangladesh. Equally political is the reaction of the Opposition Congress party, that rules the State of Assam, which now opposes the government move simply because it doesn’t want to give it a political advantage ahead of elections. Both have over the past decade allowed these short-sighted calculations to turn an important bilateral agreement into a game of political football. Even though former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had, after several delays, signed the protocol for the LBA in 2011, the UPA government never made it enough of a priority to clear it through both Houses of Parliament during its tenure. Now, the NDA government, that had promised Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that the bill would be tabled in the winter session, plans to introduce it at the fag end of the budget session, and that too in truncated form. Each of these delays don’t just put off an agreement to resolve a crucial issue between India and Bangladesh, they chip away at India’s credibility in the neighbourhood. Four decades later, India seems no closer to completing an agreement that had been all but signed and sealed, and even ratified by Bangladesh in 1974. And it is no closer to putting the roughly 51,000 people living in these areas out of their uncertainty and misery.
• What seems to be even more troubling is the Bangladesh government’s claim, as spelt out in an interview by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in Dhaka, that it was yet to be formally notified about the revised plan for the bill. If the NDA government is indeed serious about its neighbourhood policy, such a lapse of communication is unhealthy, as its handling of this issue will be a key indicator to all neighbours about how India will attempt to resolve issues with them in the next few years. The government and the Opposition must put their political differences aside to build bipartisan support for the original agreement they have both at various points acceded to. Bilateral accords are built on the principle that the government of India speaks for all States and all parties within the country.

The Smart Staff

• The Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut) envisage Central assistance of Rs 48,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore, for 100 and 500 cities, respectively. On the face of it, the amounts seem staggering, but once we break them down, Smart Cities is slated to draw an average of Rs 96 crore per city per year, and Amrut, Rs 20 crore. These amounts are modest. Municipal bodies need to be right-staffed to plan, fund, execute and maintain sophisticated urban projects. At present, our municipal bodies fall significantly short.
• Right-staffing municipal bodies with enough skilled employees is continually neglected. Even as we await detailed guidelines on Amrut, the states need to formulate a roadmap to address the skills shortage and suboptimal human resource practices in municipal bodies. Our cities are expected to house over 800 million citizens by 2050. The current backlog in infrastructure and services will only be exacerbated. Right-staffing of municipal bodies, therefore, must be a central objective of any urban reform agenda. This has three components — enough employees to meet target service levels, ensuring municipal staff possess the right skills and empowering municipal bodies with an organisation design that positions them to deliver well on citizen outcomes.
• First, the workforce numbers of municipal bodies must be estimated. Currently, the relevant norms are non-existent or poorly determined. Municipal bodies could undertake a 1-3-5 year workforce planning exercise, addressing target service levels, capital budgets, the span of control, jurisdiction etc. Effectiveness or efficiency enhancing measures need to be factored in while determining such norms. Municipal acts as well as cadre and recruitment rules need to be amended so as to mandate a scientific 1-3-5 year workforce plan that synchronises with concurrent fiscal and city development plans. State governments, and sometimes the Centre, must provide financial support. Such salary costs can be linked to revenue mobilisation and self-sufficiency measures over a five-year period.
• The second element of right-staffing is ensuring municipal personnel have the right competencies. The delivery of urban services requires specialised skill sets. Role specifications, in terms of both technical and behavioural competencies, need to be well defined. Technical skills stem from the subject matter of the job and the latter from the organisation’s strategy and values. The Greater London Authority, in the job description of its group finance manager, says the role needs full membership of a professional accountancy body and experience of local government finance. It also specifies behavioural competencies such as building and managing relationships, communication, decision-making, stakeholder focus and problem-solving. Contrast this with the Karnataka cadre recruitment rules, which specify only minimum technical qualifications, in terms of basic degrees, examinations to be passed and the years of work experience required. Municipal cadres can solve this quality challenge. Once competencies are defined for each job, they should be integrated with other components of human resource management, such as hiring, evaluating, developing talent. Cadre and recruitment rules should reflect such an integrated process.
• Having an optimal number of staff with the right talent is not enough; they need to be organised in a manner that enables them to perform. This is the third component of right-staffing. Indian municipal bodies are designed to deliver the strategies, processes and systems of yesteryears. This has resulted in skewed pyramids, significant gaps in the design of middle management roles, the absence of critical verticals and a lack of robust horizontal operations such as human resources, strategic planning and performance management. While designing the organisation structure, municipal bodies need to factor in the value chain of functions to enable collaboration and communication across departments and parastatal agencies.
• The skills challenge facing Indian cities is complex but far from insurmountable. They can effectively redesign their organisation structures and build a workforce capable of delivering the desired quality of life for their citizens if they apply proven contemporary human resource techniques and practices.