Options and Priorities - the Wood or the Tree Dilemma!

Excerpted from the book – “Ethics in Governance - Resolution of Dilemmas with case Studies”

Every situation in administration at any level presents options and priorities. To understand the wide gamut of governance issues that one may face, let us look at a hypothetical example.

If one were to take over as Prime Minister say two months later, one may face a fiscal crisis, food and nutrition crisis, there may be problems with the welfare of women and children or the environment, there could be issues with neighboring countries, the need to decide whether we bid for the Asian Games, diplomatic parlays may be required to lobby for a place in the Security Council of the United Nations, apart from the usual issues like provision of housing, drinking water or roads, etc.

Similarly taking over any job in the government, at the State, or the Centre, in a Public Sector Undertaking or district brings with it its own set of governance issues that present a set of many options for the officer. Of course a lot depends upon what functions your charge covers and you choose to awaken yourself to the issues.

ABC, VED and Twin-Track Governance
The important thing to remember here is that, while taking up a new assignment, it is much more important to find the right questions to ask. Answers will come on their own in due course.

Draw up a list of things to be done
First choose from your list, Category A - things which you want to achieve during your tenure
Choose a Category C: things that you want to do away with, a negative list if you wish- such as combating corruption or downsizing staff in excess of the requirement or some other evils that plague the system at your level or have a wider reach. One has to be careful here to separate the symptoms from the disease in identifying the malaise to target.
What you have left in your list is Category B - everything else!

So now all the points that you have listed out are in three categories - A, B and C.

Aggressively go after A, with equal determination pursue C, and with matched aggression and determination, firmly ignore B. Issues from Category B will keep cropping up every day of the year. The golden principle that applies here is 'The urgent crowds out the important' meaning that you end up fire-fighting only and never get to real policy issues in governance and contribute to development.

In the field of photography for instance as Sri Chandra Babu Naidu and I noted in a discussion once (he was then the CM of Andhra Pradesh and I was the Chief Secretary), the meaning of 'focusing' upon an object before clicking the photograph Is that the rest of the picture should get blurred. Unless that blurring is achieved, one can never get the clarity over the focussed object.

This is exactly like Arjuna seeing only the sparrow's eye in the mythical incident with Acharya Drona, while all other students who were asked to look at the tree saw so many things that they lost focus; seeing the tree, the colourful leaves, branches, even the feathers of the bird itself means that they did not achieve the desired blurring of everything else that was not the priority or focus. To ignore Category B, would be like enacting an Arjuna in your post!

You need to be able to avoid the “Grasshopper Mentality” -with your attention fitting from one thing to another and everything getting blurred.

Another danger to be wary of is the temptation to succumb to “time robbery”. Those around you will often –and with perfectly good intentions, divert you away from the heart of the matter with a great deal of largely unnecessary details.

This is just like placing, all of a sudden, an explanatory note in the hands of a speaker who is otherwise fully prepared with what he wants to say. It may be an attempt to assist him but usually disturb his concentration and probably impair the quality of the effort.

Once you know you have what you need you must resolutely spurn all input not germane to the achievement of your objective.

In order to keep abreast of things “monitoring of monitoring” can be done for this category - with the primary monitoring being done by the system and periodical checking taken up at your level. For this purpose, an occasional peep into the happenings of category B is also desirable.