Do governments learn?
P.K. DORAISWAMY
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Keeping the problem alive and blaming the previous government is seen as politically more profitable than solving it
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LEARNING IMPLIES an improvement in one's behaviour or response in meeting one's objectives. When people in an organisation are constantly learning and this learning is internalised in its working, the organisation itself is said to have become a learning organisation. In such an organisation, according to Prof. Garvin of the Harvard University, one finds:
* systematic problem solving
* experimenting with new ideas
* learning from experience
* learning from best practices of others, and
* diffusing new knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organisation.
To what extent do we find these features in our governments?
Systematic problem solving: Elected governments see problems in terms of votes to be gained or lost and rarely from a public interest perspective. Under political pressure and in their anxiety to pre-empt the Opposition from gaining political mileage, governments opt for quick fixes or accept solutions forced by pressure groups.
Keeping the problem alive and blaming the previous government, and undoing the previous government's tough decisions is seen as politically more profitable than solving it. Expert committees' suggestions for effectively solving or forestalling problems are usually consigned to the archives.
Most civil servants, knowing how the system works, either confine themselves to suggesting palatable palliatives rather than durable solutions, or wait for a political hint.
Experimenting with new approaches: In spite of government's rules and procedures being outdated and dysfunctional, strict conformance to them is expected and enforced and deviation frowned upon. No new suggestion, if at all one surfaces, survives the numerous levels of objections and approvals.
If a new procedure is tried and fails, it is taken not as a learning experience, but as a catastrophe. The Opposition and the audit play it up so much that initiators become villains and objectors heroes! Naturally, no one wants to be the first to try anything new.
Learning from experience: Adherence to precedents becomes necessary in government not only to avoid arbitrariness but also to ensure consistency and equality before the law. But in practice, the experience acts as a constraint leading to easy, lazy, status-quoist decision-making.
The political executive learns from the past short-term lessons of what is politically profitable in terms of survival, like how the previous government has bent and broken rules for political and personal benefit, that being strict, honest and financially prudent throws you out of power and that populist measures of distributing largesse from public funds is what gets them votes.
Learning from best practices of others: There is no systematic exchange of ideas and experiences between State governments and the Centre, between State governments or even within a State government.
Even an occasional good practice catching the attention of government is inadequately studied, half-heartedly implemented and soon forgotten.
Diffusion of new ideas quickly throughout the organisation: Even an improved practice tried out on rare occasions by any young enterprising civil servant rarely gets institutionalised and is given up as soon as he is transferred. Successors rarely sustain new ideas introduced by their predecessors.
As learning organisations, therefore, our governments fall far short of Prof. Garvin's definition. A major challenge for the recently constituted Administrative Reforms Commission is: how to create incentives and pressures for governments to learn?
The U.S. government's National Performance Review introduced compulsory pilot projects in improved systems and procedures in every department based on which its performance was evaluated. Something similar is needed in India.
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