Why in the news?

• The Supreme court in its recent judgement has given go to Central Vista projects and the new Parliament of India. Limiting itself strictly to “the procedures sanctioned by law”, the majority judgement concluded that the government had followed all the processes as stipulated by regulations. 
• This judgement though may have put an end to litigation but is being seen as a missed opportunity to ensure accountability in civic projects and procurements of professionals’ services by central and state government.

Why miss the opportunity?

• There was hope that the Judiciary would go beyond “procedure sanctioned by law”. Such steps were needed as laws governing prudence in civic procurement and procurement of professional’s services are few. Hence overarching guidelines were needed.
• The problem of prudence is widespread beyond the Central Vista project. Prudence in civils projects is being abandoned for political reasons. 
• The imprudent planning and reckless abandonment of Amravati, the proposed capital for Andhra Pradesh is another such example. In this project, after acquiring vast land and months of planning, the project was abandoned when the projects moved towards construction. This left farmers and others agitated and in difficulty.

What needs to be done to ensure accountability?

• “Vertical accountability” and “Horizontal accountability” are two pillars that ensure accountability.  “Horizontal accountability” is about creating interrelated state organisations such as heritage committees and environmental regulators to keep check. 
• Vertical regulations concern citizen oversight which currently is limited to elections. Though the government argues that there is sufficient Vertical accountability, experience has shown that processes like stakeholder consultations are vague. As a result, Citizens are at mercy of official or judges’ interpretations where different judges can have their different yardsticks. Thus, there is a need to ensure Vertical accountability through better citizen oversight.
• Need for clear regulations which unambiguously state what objective evaluation is needed for a particular project.
• Regulatory changes are needed while choosing designers for public projects as design is a complex service which requires creativity and hence significant bearing on cost of public assets. There is a need to improve the process of procuring design services. Weightage placed on design value should be clear and fixed.
• Alternative method of closed procurement, where select architects who meet a set of prerequisite criteria are invited and choices are made from their design, needs to be given up in favour of open competition. Balance needs to be made between quality and cost. In the cases where Open public procurement is not possible focus should be on reducing entry barriers.
• Removing steep turnover requirements from public projects and introducing quality as criteria is important because the assumption that more turnover means better expertise is not always true. Creative function is not an outcome of a firm’s scale. Steep entry requirements eliminate medium and small size firms and enable only a handful of large firms to qualify. This reduces the pool of choice available for public procurement. 
• Recommendation of the Architect’s council of Europe can come handy in this regard which advocates for dropping turnover requirement and puts emphasis on qualitative selection criteria.

Way forward

• As a considerable portion of India’s taxpayer’s money goes to public procurement there is a need for prudence in the process. Also, regulatory frameworks need to be changed to benefit medium and small size procurement firms, new architects below the age of 35years. This will enhance the pool of options available and hence quality in public procurement. 
• Low state capacity should not be an excuse for not adopting better practices in public procurements. Higher standards of the mature economy need to be implemented in Civic procurements. 
• Responses during the novel coronavirus pandemic of India and the United States has shown that the state capacity is not directly connected with the wealth rather than the will of the nation.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/beyond-the-central-vista-verdict-key-questions/article33532290.ece