Ever since my introduction to the corporate world, I have been wondering or rather wanting to compare how running a private organisation is different from running a government. Some differences are evident, i.e. government has much bigger targets especially when it comes to running a nation as large as India. Also, here the stakeholders are the citizens of the nation & since lives are moulded by government's decisions the responsibility of the ones running a government are higher than one running a private holding. (Not saying that the ones with responsibility always live up to it or are more talented)
The fact that there is a lot of resemblance in the act of governance and running a business, became further clear, when I read about Nandan Nilekani being offered the role of chairman in the Unique Identity Authority of India. Creating unique identity for each and every citizen of a 1.14bn+ population is not only ambitious but one of the biggest challenges. Ofcourse, once the challenge is attained, hopefully governments will be able to address a number of loopholes existing in various systems & sectors.
The current government has allotted a number of such business brains into policy making roles. Arun Maira, Capt. Raghu Raman & Shailesh Gandhi are now part of Planning Commission, heading National Intelligence grid & heading Central Information Commission respectively.
Clearly, the current ruling party has recognized how and where they require to work like a private organization. These stalwarts have taken up the risk and the challenge of almost rewinding themselves back to the situation of handling a start-up. There are gaps and lags in small things like lack of adequate equipment, lack of incentives for professionals and lack of adequate information. Simply put its like working in a public sector*.
The only hope being that they have been able to create some of the richest & most efficient private companies and can work the same magic in the government.
For those who are as ignorant as me, this is not the first time that private sector's leaders have been asked to lend a hand in building our nation. Sam Pitroda, the father of Indian telecom industry was also asked to take the avatar of advisor by Indira Gandhi and before that 3 others by Nehru. For people who have been following politics for a longer period than me ( I am amateur in this), is Congress the only party which believes in running government like a private company? Do you know of such examples when others have been holding the government's seat? (serious query, would like to have this information)
I am eager to see what becomes of this experiment. History has seen some major success and loads of frustrations and surrenders. What I don't want is, either of these people to turn into the commonly defined politician. Will the ambitious and much needed projects really see the day of light? Will our government really run like a successful private entity?
*Source: Forbes India, Feb19, '10 edition
4 comments:
Government decisions not only affect the citizens, but also the industry, which is a completely different class of stake holders altogether. A government has to protect the interests of 3 sides - the individual, the industry and the nation, hence making it a much tougher and complex decision. Good private leaders need not often be good public leaders because they fail to account for all 3 sides.
I completely agree with Akshay. Private sector folks have a narrower focus (a good article was written in Time or Newsweek about Meg Whitman's plan to contest as the governor of California).
My guess is like other initiatives it will be a mixed bag some good, some bad.
Thats what i mentioned. In history too there remains evidence of some good and some bad. Private leaders have narrower focus but then where are public leaders any good? Am not saying that all of these leaders will prove to be gr8 public leaders, am just hoping that they do.
History has examples of good public leaders, George Marshall the architect of post-war Europe with the Marshall plan. We also have Lee Kan-Yew the founder of Singapore.
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