THE GAME CHANGER

RAJIV GANDHI (1944—1991)

The reluctant prime minister

From the beginning of his full term as prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi focused on ‘responsive administration’ for the common man as the need of the hour. Initially, he appears to have been in favour of a managerial solution to this issue, exemplified by two innovations that the district collector of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra had introduced: a ‘single window’ for the receipt and disposal of petitions from the common man and a grievance redressal system which had at its fulcrum a day in the week when the collector, accompanied by all his senor officials, would receive the general public in the open under a tree and attempt to dispose of problems on the spot (rather in the manner of the Diwan-e-Aam, the assemblage of the common people, in the Mughal court).

However, it became increasingly evident during the numerous tours that Rajiv undertook to the remotest corners of rural India that it was not a ‘managerial’ but a ‘systemic’ solution that was required to secure a ‘responsive administration’. Years later, he was to tell Parliament: “At that time, I must confess, we were in quest of managerial solutions to unresponsive administrations. We were looking to simplify procedures, grievance-redressal machinery, single-window clearances, computerisation and courtesy as the answers to the problems. As we went along, we discovered that a managerial solution would not do. What was needed was a systemic solution.”