Train 18 series, part 19...Transparency and Delivery, the twain must meet!

What exactly is transparency? Transparency, as I understand, for a government organization dealing with public funds, or perhaps even in responsible business enterprise, is a culture of honesty and openness. But transparency sans accountability and delivery is meaningless; there is an equally important flip side and that is, the obligation to deliver. If use of public money must be done in a transparent manner, then it is also necessary that the purpose for which this money is being utilized is served well.

It is easy to be transparent as long as it is divorced from delivery. It is also, perhaps, easier to deliver if there was no pressure of transparency. Merit lies in delivering while being transparent. In general, transparency is the quality of being easily seen through. A secondary connotation also refers to complete predictability, i.e., the output is entirely predictable from knowing the input. Since constructive and effective ordering of stores is not a computer game, if you follow such blind transparency, it is liable to be misused by incapable suppliers.

Why am I bringing this subject? Simply because a whole lot of idle people would declare that the way we went about ordering and executing the Train 18 project was not very transparent. Well, it is neither my intent nor place to defend individual cases but I would attempt to give generic examples here and let the readers decide for themselves.

Let us think of a hypothetical case. There is a product X required to be developed, delivered after due tests and validation, and installed in Y unit of time at an estimated price Z.

Our collective experience and pre-bid analysis has shown that,

·      Firm A can develop and deliver as per requirement but at a price 1.05 Z.

·      Firm B can develop and deliver as per requirement but in time 1.5 Y at a price 1.25 Z.

·      Firm C can develop and deliver but the quality is suspect, time line is likely to be more than 2 Y at a price 0.95 Z; this firm is also likely to agree to the required time line and that would remain on paper.

·      Firm D claims they can develop, they appear just about capable on paper but there credentials are not established, the time line is likely to be 2.5 Y at a price 0.9 Z; they are likely to quote any time line clearly detached from reality.

What would a typical Mr.Transparency in a government organization in which there is no premium on performance and delivery do? He would, in spite of having a good insight into the likely scenario with all these firms, call open bids and order bulk quantities on either firm C or D and offer the same price to A as well; this would take unnecessary time. If firm A accepts the order, there would be some delivery from them with the time line burst to some extent. Part of the project would be delivered while firms C and D would keep wavering and delaying. If A does not accept the order, the project is fired. At the same time, knowing that both firms C and D would not meet the time line, Mr. Transparency may go for another bid process and land in the same mess once again. Transparency would have been served well but the delivery would have been given a go by. What price such transparency?

A more responsible executive would, in the above scenario, write down strong eligibility criteria in the bid schedule and also place a clear preference for time line of delivery. Seeing this eligibility criteria, which would obviously exclude some wannabe firms, is likely to result in public complaints with insinuations that firm A is being favoured. If the executives concerned are firm, they would place a large bulk order on firm A at a price between Z and 1.05 Z, try to persuade firm B to take a bulk but smaller order at this price and perhaps assign a small order to firm C or D or both. While the requirement of transparency would be met, with everyone getting an opportunity to develop the product, there would be no ground for any reasonable complaint. On the other hand, if the executives develop cold feet, baulk at the brink and dilute the eligibility criteria, the project would again go the way of Mr. Transparency.

But if transparency and performance were the two main pillars of good governance, the executive involved must call a spade a spade, commit to the best case scenario for development, invite firm A for negotiation, bring them down to the expected price level and order on them without wasting any time in a long drawn bidding process; having secured that, the option of trying to persuade firm B to take an order and perhaps even smalls order on firm C or D or both would be still be open as a parallel exercise. The chances of the project getting delivered in the intended time line, or even quicker, would be very bright in this scenario.

All the three actions, including the last one, do not violate the Public Procurement Policy and General Financial Rules of Government of India. But the onus of choosing a course lies on the decision-maker. What with fear of complaints and Vigilance and so on, government executives do not tend to go for the aggressive course of action and let delivery go boil its head.

One of the railway factories had to order certain equipment and they made an unrealistic provision for delivery time line under pressure from Railway Board. Firms of the category A & B protested that the time line specified was impossible to achieve but to no avail and therefore they decided not to bid at all. The order was placed on firms C and D and the delivery is yet to begin after passage of more than 2 Y time. The project is fired, there is some criticism but the executives go about their routine unscathed.

There is another factory which has been patting itself on the back for calling large bids. So far so good, if they have ambitions to reach somewhere. But their bids are called from a cocooned environment; the kind of analysis of firms A to D and further is absent. A show of propriety has blinded them so much that there is no discussion with major players before preparing the bid documents. So the upshot is that firms of the category A & B or suchlike do not bid at all and this factory is now an expert in calling bids without any ordering to show for!

The actions of these factories remind me of this oldish gentleman, a grass widower, who purchased some Viagra tablets. His friend asked him he had made arrangements so he could use these tablets for the intended purpose. The gentleman replied, “No, yaar. No arrangement at all. But I keep taking these tablets to have some raunaq (lustre and glitter) down there.”

The implication of transparency in governance is that all of an organization’s actions should be scrupulous enough to bear public scrutiny. But should public scrutiny be limited to only some showman transparency, without any premium on attainment? Unfortunately, this is the case, more often than not, in our country. It is so frequently a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, that Macbeth perhaps spoke it for us seemingly responsible for good governance.

At personal risk, we at ICF tried to follow the second and the third routes. Calling bids only to appear transparent and destroying the chances of delivery was not acceptable. I must say that most of the officers, including the key Stores and Finance officers, in the team understood this and worked in a manner which spoke of transparency with a clear sense of responsibility towards performance.

Classic examples of doing something and undoing it at the same time abound in government set ups and indeed other organizations as well. As individuals, we frequently experience that downer feeling at the end of day that you did not spend your time more productively; a sense that you had been working tirelessly hard but had got very little done. There is a big difference between being busy and being productive. Sounds simple but we all wonder so all the time. Organizations comprise of people and they must introspect on this issue frequently at individual as well collective levels. If they did, the situations like the fruitless tendering processes I described would be gradually got rid of.

I beg pardon of the poet Firaq, for using this beautiful piece of poetry in a negative sense, if he were alive, he would drag me over the coals:

Jinhein manzilon ki na fikr thi, jinhein chalte rehane se kaam tha,

Mile  aise  bhi  kai  qaafiley,  tere   gham  ki  raah-e-daraaz  mein**

** Those that had no worry about the destination and their only job was to keep moving, I met many such caravans too in this long sorrowful path.

An aside. These procurement cases are sensitive to begin with and then they involve personalities; although a chronicler must be honest and transparent but can a small time teller like me really afford to be so? I leave the readers with this thought and my open declaration of lack of candour at the altar of expedience; resorting to Firaq once again with a sher from the same ghazal:

Mere sher aainakhane mein,  teri beshumar adaaon ke,

Magar aisi bhi hai koi ada, jo rahegi seena-e-raaz mein**

**My poetry mirrors your myriad coquetry and countless postures but there is one such dalliance which must remain buried in the secret recesses of my heart.

Someday, perhaps but for the nonce, let it be! Suffice it to say that we at ICF were largely free of this syndrome of purposeless sham transparency and that was the reason that we had stores contracts which fructified.

(to be continued...)