By Harsh Shrivastava, The Optimist
My first column said it was imperative for all to work harder in the coming year. This second column will argue that all stakeholders must also work together with each other and for each other. The challenge of working together comes in two broad parts. First, within the different levels of government in Meghalaya. Second, between government, civil society, business, and other groups like the church or youth groups.
Let me explain the first challenge of collaboration within government. Meghalaya’s 2011 population was 2.9 million. Uttar Pradesh’s population was 199.6 million. Uttar Pradesh has 71 districts. Each district of UP has an average population 2.8 million or 96 percent of the whole of Meghalaya. Usually, the government in a district is simply the District Magistrate, the District Judge, the Senior Superintendent of Police, and perhaps a “Guardian” Minister from the state government.
Yet, Meghalaya-one district of UP-has a full state government, with ministers and officers (IAS, MCS, IPS, IFS, etc.), 60 MLAs, and now a separate High Court. There are eleven districts, with their DCs and SPs. There are three autonomous district councils, which have their own powers-and their own voters. Shillong city has its own municipal corporation. Finally, there are traditional bodies of Nokmas, Durbars, and Syiems.
Each of these levels of government has their own issues with each other. You’d think that with so many officers, elected representatives, and staff, Meghalaya would be the best governed state in the country. Yet, as the pages of The Shillong Times point out every day, the ability of the government to deliver consistent services across all its offices is not good.
Officials struggle to handle their multiple departments, schemes, and projects. I’ve seen how the Chief Minister and his team of senior officers routinely work long hours. But, that’s within the secretariat. Outside, the government has other coordination challenges-with the ADCs and the traditional institutions, with the BSF, Army, and the Air Force. If that was not enough, government has to deal with Assam and with Bangladesh. One would think that these two states, both ruled by the Congress and having a common Assam-Meghalaya cadre of officers would ensure perfect harmony.
The challenge of better governance-of working together-is magnified in Meghalaya by the number of other stakeholders. For a state the size of a district, it seems to have the most number of organizations (with their many acronyms!), as every edition of this newspaper will show. There are many different religious groups-all of which have an important role to play. Then, there are the different student unions. Then, of course, there are the multiple political parties. Not to mention the “militant” groups, who have their own acronyms. And, that’s before the many NGOs who work in the state on environment, culture, AIDS, or trafficking. Or, the media. Much as I prefer this newspaper, I know that the state has many others. And now, under the Basin Program, so many out-of-state and international organizations are also present in the state. On any given evening, Pinewood hotel’s lobby is full of people coming from different places, all trying to do their bit for the State. Once, the Entrepreneurship Facilitation Centers start creating hundreds of small businessmen and businesswomen in the villages and towns, there will be another stakeholder-business–that will also ask to be heard.
In a UP district, there are also many different national, state, and district entities that are working together, but I’m sure that the multiple agencies in Meghalaya would make things more difficult. And, that’s before one considers the three tribal groups and their own issues with the government or with each other. Thus “managing” Meghalaya is more difficult than any other state in India (bar Nagaland and Manipur), but Meghalaya has the resources to do so. Starting with the educated, egalitarian, and civil citizens that reside in this mesmerizing State. Next, if it has more problems than the average UP district, it also has more governmental resources than the average district-including more money. Finally, by re-electing a Congress CM, the state has built on the goodwill that it commands in Delhi-both politically and bureaucratically.
So, what’s the best way to manage this complex state? Only by working better together! Management theory says that if everyone has the same goal and has the same incentives then it is easier to “align” the work of the organization. But what happens when each organization within the state has different goals and has different incentives. Why should they cooperate with each other? What is the “common good” that should theoretically bind everyone? Even if everyone agrees to the goals, the organizations responsible to achieve them work differently. So, how should one foster collaboration?
In business, it is easier. A big company that wants to work with others knows that the way it works is not very different from the way that another big company will work or broadly a medium-sized company. In Meghalaya, the state government departments have different ways of working than the ADCs or the traditional bodies, which in turn have different resources and capabilities then that of unions or the Church.
One way is to build closer person-to-person ties. One of the many virtues of a small state is that everyone knows everyone else. Also, the great advantage of tribal societies is that they are egalitarian-so each person can work with another person without thinking that they are superior. People in Meghalaya are also comfortable wearing many hats-and combining them where possible. So a government official can also use the fact that he’s a resident of the same local Durbar as an MLA to solve coordination problems. Similarly, an activist in a youth group is also likely to run into a minister at the church and she can get her work done. And, if one wants to reach out to out-of-state officials like bank managers, well their children and your children are likely to attend the same school, whose alumni might be an entrepreneur and a minister. With Facebook, there are even more ways of connecting with like-minded people.
Thus, the coordination problem has, so far, been solved by relying on personal connections. This is not sustainable. More and more “outside” individuals and agencies are coming to the State. These outsiders aren’t so closely connected to the tribal or religious network within Meghalaya. In my previous column I said that the problems and the opportunities that Meghalaya faces are also related to the “outside”. Finally, younger people all over the world and in Meghalaya too, are becoming more individualistic-so appeals to group unity may become less effective. The only way out is to strengthen institutional collaborations and capabilities that do not depend on the individual, but are built into the system. Governments, civil society, and businesses must create models of working together that make business sense, bureaucratic sense, and political sense for one organization to work with another organization.
We need a common goal that all can believe in. Meghalaya has a Twelfth Plan that sets out targets for 2017. There’s a Meghalaya Vision 2030. There’s the manifesto of the ruling party. Yet, if one asks the readers of this newspaper if they’re: a) aware of the content of these documents and b) do they agree with them, I’m sure most will say “No” to both questions.
Such a common dream must come from the people, who must all feel part of this future. When big, successful companies create new vision documents, they don’t have a small team of twenty or two hundred managers making them. They go out and ask all fifty thousand employees what they want. That’s what the Planning Commission tried to do in 2011 when it made the Approach to the Twelfth Plan, in an unprecedented, inclusive way.
Vision is the first step. Then, one needs to work with every institution inside and outside the government asking them what they can do to contribute to this goal on their own-and what do they need from other entities so that they can jointly achieve this goal. There are many more things that theory and experience (within and outside India) can teach us on how to foster much more effective collaboration. It’s not enough to have 1 + 1 = 11. Given Meghalaya’s complexity, we must have 11 + 11 = 111!
One of the most appreciated slides in Meghalaya’s May 2013 presentation to the Planning Commission was that which showed how combining two different schemes and departments resulted in something much more beautiful coming up. In the coming months and years, Meghalaya must come up with many more such examples. I’m optimistic that the Meghalaya Institute of Governance can be the catalyst and facilitator for this transformation.
(Harsh is a Director in the Meghalaya Institute of Governance. He’s the CEO of a startup in Delhi-the World Development Forum. He’s worked in the Planning Commission and in the Prime Minister’s Office; in the Confederation of Indian Industry and for Anil Ambani’s business. He has an MBA from IIM