Kalpajit Saikia
(The writer can be reached
at kalpajitsaikia@gmail.com)
Mostly a yearly exercise, Performance Appraisal is the process of re viewing the performance of the employees of an organization vis-à-vis the goals and objectives set for them. It is core to an organization's functioning which rewards good performers and penalizes bad ones. In corporate set-up, the organization's performance is evaluated with the appraisal of its CEO by the Board of Directors. If the organization's performance is good, the CEO is retained. If it's bad, the CEO is either given some time to improve or else, fired.
Though a Chief Minister is first among equals in parliamentary democracy, he acts more like a CEO. In the personality dominated Indian politics, the elections are fought in the name of the Chief Minister. With this massive responsibility, power comes inevitably, and the Chief Minister becomes the ultimate authority in governance. Hence, his performance appraisal is the evaluation of the performance of the government itself.
There has never been a performance appraisal methodology for the Chief Ministers as the key elements of performance appraisal is always missing. Firstly, no clear goals and objectives are set at the commencement of governments. The only document often cited is the election manifesto of political parties which is nothing but a bunch of promises. Secondly, the objective criteria and the weightage for the performance elements are not defined. Thirdly, the apprising authority is extremely fragmented. It is difficult to have an appraisal framework with highly diverse electorates having different problems and priorities.
In absence of a proper performance appraisal structure, the political parties have taken the adversarial approach of electioneering. Both the ruling and opposition parties criticize each other's policies, performances and political stands to establish their superiority. The parties try to manipulate the population by taking up emotional issues related to religion, caste, ethnicity and real objectivity is given a complete pass. In some rare instances, when some governments talk about development issues, they highlight offers like free power, water, and food grains etc., and sometimes about basic medical facilities, roads, bridges etc. These freebees are nothing but manifestation of successive government's inability to provide adequate income to its citizens to afford basic necessities. Construction of roads, bridges and basic medical facilities are fundamental to any governance and these cannot be cited as achievements.
Comprehensive coverage of the criteria to evaluate the Chief Minister requires extensive research and consulting work. However, we can start the process with a few known economic parameters. Top of that list is income and employment. Chief Ministers have been using Gross Domestic Products (GDP) growth as a measure of their good performance. Though important, GDP can't be the only and absolute parameter. GDP growth percentage is dependent on the base and if the base is too low, strong growth number will have limited impact on the population. Same is the case with per capita income. Per capita income can be skewed by the impact of high-income households. If you take an average of the income of households in Guwahati and Majuli, the per capita income will look high while most of the population will still be below poverty line. At the county level, PCI can still be relevant. But states like Assam should evaluate economic performance of its Chief Minister on improvement of median income. The median income is the mid-point of high and low-income households. Median income provides much better indication of the improvement of quality of life of the population than per capita income. The Chief Minister should be evaluated on improvement of median income at the block level. In the area of employment, Assam is one of the worst performing states. The CM should get good rating if he can make Assam one of the top 10 states with least unemployment.
Next in the list should be availability of essential goods. Though increase in production of essential goods is often cited as the measure of good performance of the Chief Minister, the right performance parameter should be per capita availability of essentials. The measurement should not be on percentage growth, but the reduction of gap with the best Indian states. There are strong reasons for it. Take the example of milk. Per capita availability of milk in Assam is 71gm/day. The national average is 394gm/day and that of Punjab is 1181 gm/day. Same is the case with egg. Per capita availability of egg in Assam is around 15 when the national average is 79 and the best is Andhra Pradesh with 346. Even 100% growth of the present numbers will not take Assam closer to the national average, let alone matching the numbers of the top producing states. The Chief Minister should get good rating if Assam can become one of the top 10 states in per capita availability of essential goods.
Investment is very the key to a state's economic progress. Chief Ministers project the total number of MoUs ) Memorandums of Undertaking) signed in the Global Investor Summits held in their state as their achievement. But the fact is, only around 25% of projects signed as MoUs in these summits see the light of the day. The right measure of investment growth is Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF). GFCF is the aggregate of gross addition of fixed assets which is the yardstick of new industries being set up in the state. Year on year double-digit growth of GFCF should fetch good marks for the Chief Minister. The measure for MSME is not about how many new MSMEs are opened. But there should be increase in average turnover of MSMEs, reduction of closure and credit default. Assam has been a poor performing state in number of MSMEs, employment generated by them and market value of fixed assets employed by the MSMEs. Taking Assam to top 10 high performing states on these 3 parameters should get good rating for the CM.
While focusing on economic growth, it is important for the Chief Minister to ensure equitable share of growth for all regions. One of the strong measurements is the growth of district and sub-divisional headquarters both in terms of geographical expansion, increase in number of enterprises and improvement in infrastructure. The Chief Minister's report card should include how each of these towns have grown in all the above parameters. If average growth of these towns exceeds that of capital city, CM will get good marks.
The critical success criterion of any growth story is its sustainability and the Chief Minister should be fully accountable for the same. In an ecologically sensitive state like Assam, economic growth cannot happen at the cost of environment. The CM will not get good marks if there is increase in pollution levels, destruction of forest cover and negative impact on wildlife because of economic growth. Same way, an ethnically sensitive state like Assam needs inclusive development and participation of the entire population in the growth story. The participation of tribal population and various ethnic groups should be measured by their improvement of quality of life and protection of their land and culture. State labour law should be encouraged to be followed by the businesses to avoid any exploitation. Adherence to minimum wages should be a key criterion to evaluate.
There are many more indicators to evaluate the Chief Minister and his government. But we should start somewhere. It's time to move away from subjective and emotion-driven evaluation to an objective and development-oriented regime. In Assam, we can start it from 2021.
Also watch: Evening Bulletin | 8th June, 2020