CONSULTANCY RAJ NOT A CURE FOR ALL GOVERNMENT ILLS

Governments are outsourcing lots of work to private consultants. This can adversely affect accountability and quality of administration. Consider a results-based system

- KM CHANDRASEKHAR

ON October 4 this year, the Union finance ministry asked all ministries and departments to furnish details of the consultants appointed by them, including their strength, selection process, normal tenure and average remuneration. In the letter, Annie George Mathew, special secretary in the expenditure department, said, "The information is required for meaningful discussion for allocation of budget under the professional office expenses/salary head." An RTI reply published in a newspaper on November 7 sais that between April 2017 and June 2022, the 'Big Four' consultants PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG and the US-based McKinsey had grabbed 308 consultancy projects worth nearly 500 crore from 16 government agencies including the NITI Aayog and Aadhaar authority. This brings up the legitimate question: can policy issues under national projects such as Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat be outsourced to consultants? Indeed, this is not the first time I have heard of the excessive use of consultants, not just by the central government but also by the states. I had a recent interaction with a few mid-level All India Service officers from different states at an administrative training institution. Instead of inflicting a dreary talk on them about what they must and must not do, I let them talk. They spoke freely. They spoke in particular about the excessive role of private consultants in all spheres of work. One of the officers mentioned that our democracy had now become "of the consultants, by the consultants, for the consultants". I had heard earlier of the invasion of the NITI Aayog by a phalanx of consultants of various kinds.