(In the first blog of a series titled “Raghubytes”, T.R. Raghunandan offers readers a look at the functioning of the Government Machinery through the eyes of a former bureaucrat.)

In 2010, after nearly twenty seven years in the government, I retired voluntarily to plunge into the interesting life of being a wanderer, connector, upscaler and story-teller in the governance space. This news was greeted with trepidation and guarded optimism by former colleagues, close friends and family. However, my friends in the NGO sector were very enthusiastic. You must come and work with us, they said, and I readily accepted their offers.  I chose two highly motivated, high quality groups for my first forays into fending for myself in the governance space.

It was a few months later that I discovered that trouble was afoot. “You are still behaving like a bureaucrat”. This was a friend I admired, someone who had done tremendous work in the empowerment of children, an individual with whom I was working closely on Panchayat related issues. She was a staunch socialist and disliked globalization, GM seeds, big business and public private partnerships. Her enemies were predictable.

“You are not an activist, Raghu, you must become one”. She was warming to the theme.

What’s an activist? I asked. How are they supposed to behave? I like precision.

“You must join in our agitations and protests,” I was told. The conversation ended there, but a niggling doubt whether I belonged here was sown.

Niggling doubts, once sown, grow energetically. So it was not a surprise when I noticed that another NGO figure, a respected individual in national circles, commented during a meeting populated by elegant men and women in Khadi, that I was wearing a suit. “Just like a bureaucrat”, he said.  So I was an inappropriate dresser as well.

It was clear that I did not fully belong here, amongst a crowd of passionate anti-globalising pro-environment, pro-direct democracy supporters, who believed that all decisions had to be taken in Gram Sabhas and all these would be invariably the right ones.

NGOs come in all sizes and shapes and there are the ones aligned in the opposite direction, who speak with passion about urban growth and the middle class holding out hope for India. I have friends there too and led a double life working with these champions of free enterprise.

It was only a matter of time before trouble erupted here too. “The power of the market is what should drive policy”, said my friends. “Urban India holds the key to development”, they said. I nodded my head silently; I did not have the energy to argue with them; to say that I did not entirely agree.

Six months down the line, I realized that not only am I an inappropriate dresser, but also ideologically wishy washy. I wished fervently that enlightenment would descend one night and I would wake up either a committed right or a left winger, but that did not happen. I was too right to be left, too left to be right.

Then one evening, as I glumly contemplated a future of unending ideological confusion, the solution to my quandary surfaced. I would specialize in tracking government money. Both the left and the right would eat from my hand, because both need to know how the government rupee is collected and how it is spent.

Being a fiscal detective offers all the perks that bring smirks of satisfaction to an incurable bureaucrat who likes to wear suits. To the inevitable question I face when in polite company, ‘What do you do now?’ I say that I track public expenditure. That answer has the appropriate mix of mysteriousness and gravitas. I am inevitably greeted with the respect that is born out of half-understanding. It is easy to masquerade as one steeped in profundity, if one is specializing in public finance.

However, public finance is dead boring stuff. In particular, holding forth on various facets of this matter should not be attempted at home, unless one wishes to become a social recluse as well. Explaining over dinner how governments collect taxes and spend money on public services does not lend itself to a gay and witty style. Joyful banter is not a predictable outcome of such overtures. Kith and kin who have to spend three hours daily in the commute to office and back often express a desire to see the government take its money and stuff it into certain inappropriate orifices. The fact that I work from home tends to exacerbate the family disquiet over public finance, I know not why.

The fact that I will be writing a blog largely on questions of public finance has been greeted with relief by near and dear ones. Somehow there is an assumption that having been presented with this outlet, I would find no need to inject insights on government expenditure into after-dinner conversations. There is also the feeling that (why do bureaucrats always write in the passive voice? I must rid myself of this tendency) the unsuspecting public must now share the burden of enlightenment being stuffed down their throat.

I am piqued by these attitudes and have set some lofty goals. I am going to make India’s public finance story as interesting as a Rohit Shetty plot. There will be romance, action and suspense. Promises will be made and broken. Sometimes the left will win, sometimes the right. You will not know who did it, till the very last paragraph.

So please join me on this guided tour through the maze of government actions and processes. I promise it will be an interesting journey.

 

About the writer

T.R. Raghunandan is Advisor to the Accountability Initiative and our resident public finance expert.

A former Joint Secretary Government of India, Ministry of Panchayati Raj (Rural local governments),(2004-2009), Secretary Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Karnataka State (2001-2004), he works in several States directly with Panchayats, their advocacy associations and a wide range of NGOs in the governance space. He has been an Advisor to the UNDP- India office on its democratic governance programme and with the Swiss Development Corporation for its local governance programme in South Asia,

Till recently, he was a member of the State Planning Board of Karnataka and Principal Consultant to the Expert Committee constituted by the Government of India, on Centrally Sponsored Schemes.

Mr. Raghunandan is also an anti-corruption expert and was the programme coordinator for the ipaidabribe.com initiative (2010-2011), which crowd-sources reports on corruption from citizens.

In his spare time, he is a model maker, steam railway enthusiast and classic automobile restorer. He is setting up a rural museum for children, named the Museum of Movement, to celebrate the romance of transportation in India through a not for profit, Avantika Foundation, which he has co-founded.