Focus: The Eye of the Sparrow in Governance

I have found that a focused approach is of great value in most of the responsibilities and functions entrusted to me during my service. I call that my A, B, C mantra. While taking up a new assignment, I always try to find the right questions to ask, and believe that answers will come on their own, in due course

Between the years 2003 and 2005, I worked as the Chief Secretary to the government of Andhra Pradesh state. My tenure saw two Chief Ministers.

One of them once requested me to focus on a list of eight subjects, which he had shortlisted for special attention by the government. With an indulgent smile, I told him that the very word focus meant that all else should be eliminated from one’s attention.

Much like the eyeball in the eye of the sparrow, which alone was visible to Arjun, the Pandava Prince in Mahabharata, when Guru Dronacharya, the Teacher of Pandava and Kaurava Princes, asked his disciples to aim to shoot at a bird in the eye ball.

Or as for instance, while in meditation or prayer, one empties one’s mind of all thoughts and focuses on nothingness. Which, in reality, is what the world in which we live is, in comparison to the cosmos created by the supreme force.

I have found that a focused approach is of great value in most of the responsibilities and functions entrusted to me during my service. I call that my A, B, C mantra. While taking up a new assignment, I always try to find the right questions to ask, and believe that answers will come on their own, in due course.

First, I draw up a list of things to be done, then, from that list, choose the things which I want to achieve, at any cost, during my tenure. I call it category A.

Next, I choose things which I want to combat, a negative list if you wish, such as inefficiency, graft or intellectual dishonesty. I ensure, while identifying the malaises to target, to separate the symptoms from the diseases. And that is category C. Finally, what I am left with is Category B, or everything else!

Then begins the action part. Firstly, I go after A aggressively, pursue C with equal determination and, with the same aggression and determination, ignore B. Issues from Category B will keep cropping up every day of the year.

The golden principle that applies here is that, especially in public administration ‘the urgent crowds out the important’, meaning that one only ends up fire-fighting, never really coming to grips with the real major issues.

On occasion, I have also used a further refinement of the mantra, with the A category subdivided into V, E, and D, namely, Vital, Essential and Desirable, to facilitate the choice of the order in which the chosen issues should be addressed.

I have used the said mantra in several postings during my service.

In 1974, for example, while working as a Deputy Commissioner in the Commercial Taxes department at Vishakhapatnam, I applied it to the task of examination of the accounts of the various assessees in my jurisdiction, in order to sift the chaff from the grain.

A substantialof assesses paid little by way of tax. I put them in the A group, the small number of those who contributed large chunks of tax were put in the C group and the rest in the middle group, B. The analysis quickly yielded the requisite focus.

I was then able not only to relieve the small traders from undue harassment by conducting summary assessments in respect of their returns, but also concentrate on the big assessees. I left the task relating to the remaining assessments to the subordinate officers of the department, to be attended in the normal course.

Encouraged by the attractive dividend that approach yielded, I used it again in 1976, as the Special Officer and Competent Authority in the Urban Land Ceiling department in Hyderabad.

I had to deal with about 15,000 declarations under a newly introduced enactment. It would have been both difficult and impractical, to analyse them manually to enable decision making. I found that computers came handy.

And, in those days, the 1970s, the computer available, with the Administrative of Staff College of India, which I used under the guidance of Dr Y Venugopal Reddy, then the Collector of Hyderabad, occupied the whole of a large room!

So telling were the results, that I subsequently present them, in the shape of a paper, for publication in ‘Indian Journal of Public Administration’ in the year 1980’

The exercise yielded a neat analysis of the contents of the declarations. Once again, as in the case of the assessees of the Commercial Taxes department, a very small number of declarants had holdings, which were substantial. I placed them in the A category.

The excess lands owned by a substantial majority of declarants, made a negligible contribution about 10 per cent, whom I placed in the B category. The remaining, declarants accounted for the remaining excess land forming the C category.

I chose the A category for my personal attention, recommended to the state government to exempt those in the C category summarily from the provisions of the law and left the remaining work, relating to the B category, to the staff of the department.

The approach came in handy, once again, during my tenure as the Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development in charge of the Department of Land Resources. Addressing the question of how best to use the waste lands in the country (‘wasted lands’ according to Dr MS Swaminathan, my Guru, distinguished agriculture scientist and the Father of the Green Revolution in India), I prepared a plan which divided the lands into A, B, and C categories.

Lands, which could be harnessed to productive use with minimum investment and effort, were placed in the A category, those in respect of whom there was no such possibility in category B and the remaining in C.

Then, applying the V, E and D, categorisation to the lands in the A category, I was able to identify those lands in the country which could be put to useful purposes with optimum investment and effort.

And, to conclude this piece on a light hearted note, there is the story about a farmhand sitting in front of a gastroenterologist, with a complaint of hyperacidity caused by extremetension on account of the stress caused by decision-making.

When asked what the problem was, the farmhand replied,” I spent the whole day, sorting out apples and separating the right ones from the raw ones – decisions, decisions, and decisions!”

(The author is former Chief Secretary in united AP)