Trump's quick fix for administrative reforms

US President Donald Trump has in his second term, made reforms in federal governance a key component of his MAGA drive. He has established a new department - the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under his closest confidant Elon Musk and given him a free hand in downsizing the various wings of the federal government.

- D C PATHAK

The President is validating decisions of Musk by issuing Executive Orders on a running basis. DOGE has evidently discovered systemic corruption on a large scale and found legitimate grounds for enforcing cost-effectiveness.

Efficiency, by definition, is a measure of output per unit of resource money and manpower in this case and it is enhanced if the number of employees doing a job is reduced to the optimal minimum and likewise, if procedures are pruned to ensure that a task was completed in the minimal number of operational steps.

India has had a history of Administrative Reforms Commissions (ARCs) producing voluminous reports that only added to the size of bureaucracy and left behind no lasting impressions. It is interesting to note that Prime Minister Modi's call for 'minimum government maximum governance' for India is what was seemingly being implemented by DOGE in America.

However, it is the large-scale lay-offs ordered at one go and the quick-fix style of working of the new department under Elon Musk, that has created a stir leading to many orders being challenged in the District Courts. The Trump Administration was not deterred by any of thisit seemed to be confident about pushing the judicial process through the Court of Appeals and even the Supreme Court.

Education and Health are the two basic concerns of the national government in a democratic dispensation for they laid the foundation for producing the right kind of electorate - apart from meeting the obligation of 'welfarism' that had to be discharged by a democratic state.

These two wings of the government are interestingly, the first among the segments targeted by DOGE for downsizing through lay-offs.

Trump signed an executive order dismantling the Department of Education on March 20 but even before that on March 12 nearly 50 per cent of the department's workforce had been laid off.