 ADMINISTRATION AND PLAN
 IMPLEMENTATION

ADMINISTRATIVE TASKS

THE Third Five Year Plan envisages a scale of national effort far exceeding that of the preceding decade. A statement of its objectives and targets can scarcely convey the scope and range of the tasks which the nation has undertaken to fulfil during the next five years. In the last analysis the Plan rests on the belief that the requisite effort will be forthcoming and that, at each level in the national life, within the limits of human endeavour, an attempt will be made to implement it with the utmost efficiency. Of the many assumptions on which a Five Year Plan is based, this is not only the most important but also the most difficult. Tile economic goals of the Plan are vital in themselves and are at the same time a foundation for future growth; yet, they are but one aspect of the challenge implicit in the Plan. There is, for instance, the expectation that, given reasonable conditions. it will be possible to mobilise savings for implementing the entire physical programme accepted for the Third Plan period and more. Against the background of a rate of growth of population of well over two per cent per annum, to expect to provide work at least to the entire addition to the labour force implies not only efficient implementation of all programmes but also intensive and nation-wide use of the available manpower resources. The realisation of the principal social objectives of the Plan, especially equal opportunity for all citizens, the provision of basic necessities, reduction in disparities of income and wealth and the more even distribution of economic power depends on the execution of a wide range of policies and programmes.

2. The Plan has to be implemented at many levels.-national, State, district, block and village. At each level, in relation to the tasks assigned, there has to be cooperation between different agencies and an understanding of the purposes of the Plan and the means through which they are to be secured. In a vast and varied structure orga- nised on a federal basis. a great deal depends on being able to commu- nicate effectively between different levels, and at the same level between different agencies. In many vital sectors of the Plan, re- sponsibility for execution lies with authorities in charge of large projects. The role of such projects Prows as the economy develops and in consequence many new problems of organisation have to be solved. In a developing economy the functioning, side by side, of an expanding public sector and a private sector, which is in part organised and in large part unorganised, also raises difficult administrative problems.

3. The past decade has been a period of considerable change and adaptation in the field of administration. Innovations have been introduced and new institutions established, although perhaps many of them have yet to be fully integrated with one another and with the structure as a whole. With increase in the range of Government's responsibilities and in the tempo of development, the volume and complexity of administrative work have also grown. The administrative machinery has been strained and, at many points in the structure, the available personnel are not adequate in quality and numbers. The administrative burden of carrying out plans of development, large as it is at present. will increase manifold under the Third Five Year Plan, and doubtless new problems in public relations will also come up. In the recent past, certain aspects of administration have at- tracted pointed attention. These include the slow pace of execution in many fields. problems involved in the planning, construction and operation of large projects, especially increase in costs and non- adherence to time-schedules, difficulties in training men on a large enough scale and securing personnel with the requisite calibre and ex- perience, achieving coordination in detail in related sectors of the economy and, above all, enlisting widespread support and cooperation from the community as a whole. In the larger setting of the Third Plan, these problems are accentuated and gain greater urgency. It is widely realised that the benefits that may accrue from the Third Plan will depend, in particular in its early stages, upon the manner in which these problems are resolved. As large burdens are thrown on the administrative structure, it grows in size, as its size increases, it becomes slower in its functioning. Delays occur and affect opera- tions at every stage and the expected outputs are further deferred. New tasks become difficult to accomplish if the management of those in hand is open to just criticism. In these circumstances, there is need for far-reaching changes in procedures and approach and for re-exami- nation of prevalent methods and attitudes.

EFFICIENCY AND STANDARDS IN ADMINISTRATION

4. Each area of development administration has its own specific problems. There are, however, some common directions of reform which are applicable to all branches of administration and deserve emphasis in view of the experience gained in the Second Plan. The primary aim must be to ensure high standards of integrity efficiency and speed in implementation. The

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process of improving administrative efficiency is a continuous one and progressively, through work studies, and improved systems of office administration and in other ways, better methods have to be devised. Already, both at the Centre and in the States, greater attention is being given to organisation and methods, to increasing incentives, and to the evaluation of performance. To an extent speed in implementa- tion and efficiency in individual processes are interrelated. In the context of development, however, the former presents perhaps the more difficult issues in organisation, especially where the structure becomes large and complex and responsibility is widely shared. There are some common features in the way in which this problem arises at the national and at the State level, but, on account of differences in the relative size of the operations undertaken, there are distinct differences in degree, From such study and thought as has been given to this subject, some of the main directions in which action should be taken to speed up implementation are described below. It is recog- nised, of course, that while changes in organisation and procedures can go some distance to remove causes of delay and to achieve greater speed, they have to be supported by greater attention to the training of personnel, to supervision and to reporting and evaluation. Never- theless, without a concerted attempt to make the administration much more action-oriented than at present, these measures may not yield enough results.

5. For the execution of any programme or project, the primary need is to fix specific responsibility on the agency concerned and, within it, on particular individuals. Within defined limits, each individual should be given full responsibility and, with it, the necessary measure of support and trust. If he fails in the discharge of his responsibility, he should be replaced. But so long as he holds the office with which he is entrusted, he should accept all its obli- gations. and, equally, he should be placed in a position effectively to discharge them. With responsibility thus specified, it should be open to him to seek such advice and consultation as he may require, but these should not become the necessary ingredients of the executive process itself. In the present functioning of the administration, consultation with other authorities is not always confined to broader matters; instead, it is too frequent and too concerned with details and, therefore, impedes effective action. Exercise of financial control is one important aspect of this problem. Obviously, the question here is one of ensuring wide delegation of financial powers to the heads of administrative Departments, with Finance Department undertaking their principal scrutiny prior to the framing of the annual budget.

6. As was pointed out both in the First and in the Second Plan, Central Ministries and perhaps Secretariat Departments in the States have tended to assume responsibility for an increasing amount of original work. This has reduced the initiative of the executive Departments and their ability to function on their own. The main preoccupation of Ministries and Secretariat Departments should be with matters of policy, general supervision and enforcement of standards, and executive tasks should be left to be carried out by Departments and authorities specially designated for the purpose.

7. A necessary condition of placing specific responsibility and providing the means for fulfilling it is that success or failure -should be judged by the test of results. This is possible only if in the planning stage care is taken to specify the tasks to be undertak- en, the means to be employed, the obligations of the various agencies or individuals concerned, and the time sequence in which different operations must flow and dovetail into one another. These conditions apply to several branches of administration and, more especially, to large projects.

8. By its very nature, a plan of development necessarily in- volves the setting of targets and subsequent appraisal of fulfilment. Targets may provide useful indicators of progress, and may make for concentrated effort, but equally important are the specific measures and policies needed to realise them and their sustained implementa- tion. There are fields in which targets in the sense of final figures of output or capacity are on the whole better avoided, either because of faulty methods of estimation or because the concepts are defective. However where a target is meaningful, it should be worked out by the agency responsible for it after careful study and should be further broken down into smaller units in terms of time-schedules and respon- sibility for execution. Five year targets should also be reassessed each year in the light of experience, and a further view taken regard- ing the likely future trends.

9. Attention has been sometimes drawn to the fact that in the present system of administration, incentives are not given an adequate role. It is obvious that incentives whether for individuals or for groups, help to build morale. A prerequisite for a scheme of incen- tives is the ability to work out performance standards in an effective manner. The directions in which, within any specific area, an incen- tive scheme is likely to prove beneficial would need to, be studied. For instance, in industrial undertakings, in the present circum- stances, incentive schemes might assist greatly if they were directed to objects such as the following :-

(a) reduction in construction costs,

(b) reduction in foreign exchange,

(d) use of substitutes and by-products, and

(e) simplification of work procedures.

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Material incentives are of course important, with these there should also be increasing scope for the development of non-material incen- tives, especially various forms of appreciation and recognition of worth, a sense of partnership in a common endeavour, and human rela- tionships based on mutual respect and friendliness.

III

PROJECTS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

10. The public sector already includes an extensive range of enterprises such as industrial undertakings, irrigation and power projects, railways, road transport, air transport, shipping and oth- ers. Some of the main problems of organisation of industrial enter- prises have been reviewed in the preceding Chapter. Experience gained during the Second Plan has suggested certain lines of action which should help increase the speed and efficiency of implementation of projects and secure greater economies in their construction and opera- tion.

11. Large projects take considerable time to yield results, and their plannnig requires careful preparation. They have to be con- ceived in terms longer than the usual Plan periods. They must, there- fore, form part of a scheme of development stretching over a longer period, say, 10 to 15 years. In the course of the preparation of the Third Plan, although to a smaller extent than in the Second, it was observed that many of the projects proposed for inclusion were not worked out fully, nor were they presented adequately. For a consider- able number of projects included in the Third Plan, the information available even at this stage leaves much to be desired. This defi- ciency arises in part from lack of the requisite technical personnel in several fields, but is due also to the absence of adequate arrange- ments for undertaking detailed studies well in advance of the time for their consideration and approval. It is, threfore, important that both at the Centre and in the States, work on the preparation of projects included in the Third Plan should be completed with the utmost speed. Further, project studies relating to the Fourth Five Year Plan should be taken in hand, so that they are substantially completed in the course of the next three years.

12. In the field of industrial and mineral development, unlike the more familiar fields of irrigation and power and transport, the existing technical organisations are not always adequate. To the extent to which this may be due to lack of experienced personnel, for some years at any rate, there should be readiness to associate select- ed experts from abroad. It is suggested that the Central Ministries concerned with industrial development should take early steps to organise well-equipped technical planning cells. These should be maintained as permanent nuclei and should be supplemented by addition- al personnel according to the requirements of projects which are to be studied. The Ministries might also consider maintaining panels of technical advisers for selected industries. In this way the growing technical knowledge and experience of management and planning avail- able within the country itself could be utilised in an organised manner in developing industry and specially the public sector. As suggested in the preceding Chapter, major State undertakings should take steps to strengthen and, where necessary, to set up suitable design and research units. Wherever feasible, the preparation of new projects should be one of their primary responsibilities. This would enable technical planning cells in the Ministries to concentrate on the broader technical and economic aspects of the projects with which they are concerned and on the study of different stages of execution and of the various related steps which require coordination at the level of policy and administration.

13. In connection with large projects, the question of the adequacy of existing arrangements for examination of cost estimates has arisen from time to time. A small beginning has been made with the setting up of a 'projects coordination cell' in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, but the task has to be conceived on a much larger scale, and the arrangements needed should receive further consideration. Besides scrutiny of cost estimates and examination of economic aspects of projects, it is necessary that each year the Ministry of Finance should be in a position to present a report ap- praising the financial and economic aspects of all industrial under- takings of the Central Government.

14. Long gestation periods are a feature common to large projects. During the Second Plan, the gestation periods have in fact been much longer than had been estimated earlier. There are several reasons why continuous efforts should be made to reduce the time lags to the minimum. Large projects make a considerable claim on the available physical resources. It is important that there should be continuous flow of benefits from projects under execution at each stage in the Plan. The problem is essentially one of phasing work on each project with strict regard to the requirements and the provision of materials and of the ancillary services, including power and trans- port. There has to be a high degree of coordination between different stages or parts of the same project as well as in related sectors. Coordination is required both at the operational level and in the planning of parallel or complementary investments.

15. Management of projects is a relatively new and important part of administrative practice, of which the special features are that definite targets and time schedules have to be fulfilled, costs have to be reckoned strictly at each stage. a great deal of initiative and resourcefulness in execution are called for, and there must be adequate organisation for technical planning. Without advance plan- ning and accurate estimate

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of costs, the success of a project cannot be assured. It is also essential that programming techniques should be improved continuously so as to secure at each stage the maximum benefits from the outlays incurred and to achieve the targets within the budgeted time and resources.

16. In large projects under the same overall management, there is need for special units to assist the management in keeping down costs. raising productivity, setting norms and checking performance. This will ensure that the physical assets created and the results achieved are commensurate with the investments made. the original estimates are not exceeded without sufficient reason, time schedules are maintained, and the responsible authorities are in a position to enforce efficiency, economy and integrity. It is suggested, there- fore, that the Central Ministries as well as States concerned with large industrial and other projects should review the existing ar- rangements for achieving the objects mentioned above and should pro- vide for suitable units for evaluation and review of progress which will function under the control of the top management authorities without, however, being involved in day to day operations.

17. A word may also be added here regarding certain aspects of implementation of Plan projects undertaken through private industry. Tile private sector has to make a large contribution to the growth of industrial production. Through the work of the National Productivity Council, Management Associations and other organisations greater attention is now being given to measures for increasing efficiency of management, reducing costs and, in general, inculcating in private enterprise the consciousness of responsibility to the community as a whole. In a planned economy in which the public and the private sectors have complementary roles, there must be equal concern in both for securing economies, utilising indigenous materials, saving on foreign exchange, outlays for maintenance of production as well as for development, accelerating exports, expanding employment, and generally improving the quality of service. Development Councils which have been set up for many industries and other organisations representing private industry are useful means for bringing the best leadership in each industry to bear on the solution of common problems and the achievement of high standards of management and welfare. They should be enabled to enlarge their contribution in these directions.

PERSONNEL

18. Expansion of training facilities in various fields of devel- opment has received considerable attention since the beginning of the Second Plan. The training programmes proposed for the Third Plan are described in the Chapter on Technical Education. It may be useful here to draw attention to some aspects of the problem of developing personnel with the necessary outlook and experience which will have particular importance for the success of the Third Plan. There are certain fields in which, for many years to come, personnel at we highest level will be inadequate or experience of a specific character will not be sufficiently available. In these fields, in the interest of rapid development itself, it would be desirable for period to arrange to supplement the available indigenous personnel.