India's Organisational Structure May Need Changes For Ensuring Future Growth, Says CEA Nageswaran

Highlighting the need for maximum governance and minimum government, Chief Economic Advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran said on Tuesday that in India, one has to go through multiple ministries to get a task done.

At present, India has about 55 central ministries, which is much higher than in countries such as the UK, USA, and China.

Nageswaran's comments came during his keynote address in the backdrop of 'Vision 2047: Administrative Reforms for a Viksit Bharat,' a flagship report released by the Indian School of Public Policy that explores critical barriers in governance and administrative systems and presents actionable reforms to accelerate growth and development.

Governmental ministries in India are organised on functional lines, not on the lines of outcomes, Nageswaran said. 

However, it would be wrong to say that this system hasn’t served its purpose. “But what has brought us here may not necessarily take us elsewhere,” Nageswaran said, stressing the need for administrative reforms in the country.

Echoing a similar view, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, CEO at Niti Aayog, said that bygone organisational structures will not help us progress in the future. We need new structures and mindsets for managing changing challenges, he said.

Subrahmanyam added that certain parts in India are growing rapidly, whereas others are not, and a lot of this is attributable to different organisational structures.

Policy changes must reflect the growth trajectory of our country, and without administrative reforms, we cannot foresee economic reforms, said Luis Miranda, chairperson at the Indian School of Public Policy.

We've talked about the need for better internal collaboration within the government. “We have too many ministries in our country,” Miranda said.

Miranda added that the ISPP team has specifically looked at the urban sector in this report and said that if India is to transform into a ‘Viksit Bharat,’ a better planning of our cities is required. We are going to work with all the stakeholders in the government to see how these ideas can be implemented, Miranda said.

The ISPP report seeks to deal with the questions of whether the current administrative system, which has not undergone drastic changes since Independence, can see it through the rapid change the nation is witnessing.

It highlights that there are concerns of high degrees of fragmentation within and across sectors coupled with an overlap between policymaking and implementation. It further notes that there is a workflow and work culture problem, along with the issue of competent staffing.

Based on these concerns, the report has made recommendations for improving internal collaboration within the administrative system. In addition, it suggests a strengthening of collaboration with external players and an improvement in the risk-taking ability of the government.