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Can officers use red or green ink of files? A simple question, you may think. But in Government it is enough to set off meetings, letters, references to other ministries that stretch over a year, A tree falls on to the house of the Indian High Commissioner; memos fly to and from, and for nine years Government cogitates, and deliberates, and weighs pros and cons, unable to decide who is to repair the house, and how.

From such trifles to matters that spell the difference between life and death, the same pattern, Environment degenerates. Laws are passed. Rules are formulated under those laws. Boards are set up to enforce the laws, the rules, The degradation accelerates, Intelligence agencies, governors, experts on national security issues warning upon warning about the peril that the demographic inundation from Bangladesh spells for our country.

Political parties keep quarreling about the matter. Ministers keep issuing statements, and disowning them. Governments keep ordering intelligence agencies to prepare position papers, and then up-dates of position papers. Legislatures keep drawing the warnings. Courts keep adjourning hearings. The inundation continues, Governments shut their eyes to a problem. The problem swells. Governments look the other way. The problem explodes. Governments set up an institution to tackle it.

Five years later, exactly what had been forecast comes to pass-the problem is still there, and the institution has become another problem, As the institution has not worked, a law is passed. As the law is not enforced, amendments are decreed that make penalties under the law more frightening. Legislation as a substitute for enforcement. Vision statements, plan documents, strategy papers as a substitute for execution.

Can we compete with modern China with mores of the Kuomintang?

Improving governance is the reform we need. But how is reform to be brought about when every proposal-whether it be electoral reform or getting the Government out of running hotels-has to be put through the same winding, interminable loops? How is the system to be overhauled when the decision to reform it, and the wherewithal to carry through that decision lie in the hands of the very ones who benefit from arrangements as they are at present? Can the structures be reformed at all? Or does what was done with Industrial Licensing, with import and export controls, does what Arun Shourie strove to ensure in the telecom sector, show the way? That is, wherever possible, to jettison the function? With a wealth of primary material, Shourie argues that the only way ahead is to revolutionize the nature of the Indian State-from the principal Engine of Growth it was taken to be in the 50s and 60s from The Great Monitor it became in the 70s and 80s, to an enabling State, a State that clears the way so that others may do their best for the country. A leaner State, but one that performs those fewer, and indispensable functions better. A rare glimpse into what has become of governance.

Acclaimed by the International Press Institute as one of the World Press Freedom Heroes of the last half-century whose work has sustained freedom? Acclaimed as a Star of Asia by Business Week, as the Business Leader of the year by The Economic times for his pioneering work on privatization. Winner of the Magsaysay Award, the Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Freedom to Publish Award, the Astor Award, the International editor of the Year Award, the Padma Bhushan, and several other distinctions, Arun Shourie is one of India’s best-known commentators on current and political affairs.

He held several portfolios in the NDA Government –including Disinvestment, Communications and Information Technology.

This is his eighteenth book.