Not just US, India kicked off its own ‘DOGE’ 8 years ago. Here are govt bodies that faced the axe

As Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency shakes up US, govt officials say India started winding up/merging inefficient institutions back in 2017. And layoffs were minimal.

Illustration by Soham Sen | ThePrint Team

New Delhi: America’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by new President Donald Trump and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, is generating a lot of controversy as it goes about firing workers and cancelling contracts in a bid to reduce federal spending and improve efficiency.  

However, the US might not be the only country attempting to increase government efficiency through such a measure.     

Though it has not grabbed the headlines, India has been slowly but steadily working on its own version of DOGE since 2017, driven primarily by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM), and the finance ministry, senior government officials told ThePrint. 

Over a dozen autonomous bodies and institutions, which had outlived their utility or where there was duplication of work, have been wound up or merged with the parent ministries/departments. However, unlike the US, the layoffs in India because of this rationalisation exercise have been minimal. 

It’s not just shutting or merging of agencies and departments that has been the focus of the government. There are larger reform processes underway to improve government efficiency—be it the scrapping of obsolete laws, tweaking of existing rules and regulations, or bringing in new ones like the Drone Rules in 2021 to make the certification process for flying drones easier.

It all started in 2017, with the report of the Committee for the Review of Autonomous Bodies, headed by former finance secretary Ratan Watal, who was then a principal adviser in the federal think-tank NITI Aayog. 

The Watal committee had reviewed the working of 679 autonomous bodies under different ministries/departments and recommended rationalising a third of them by either merging them with other institutions or shutting those that had outlived their utility.

“The idea behind the exercise was to trim the flab in the government and use public money with greater efficiency,” Watal told ThePrint. 

Monitored by the PMO, action started on the report soon.   

What didn’t make the cut

In 2018, the cabinet approved shutting down the Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi and Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh. They came under the department of health and family welfare.

In 2020, the All India Handloom Board and the All India Handicrafts Board, both advisory bodies under the textiles ministry, were dissolved.

In 2022, the Tariff Commission was shut down. Set up in 1951, its role was to suggest changes in duties of any goods and action in relation to dumping of goods. 

In 2021 and 2022, several agencies under the railways ministry were closed. These included the Indian Railways Organisation of Alternative Fuel, Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation, Central Organisation for Modernisation of Workshops and the Special Railway Establishment for Strategic Technology and Holistic Advancement. 

While the rationalisation of autonomous bodies was recommended by the Watal committee, it was Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the EAC-PM, who as principal economic adviser to the finance minister between 2017 and 2022 recommended the closure of the railway institutions as well as some other agencies, a senior government official told ThePrint.   

“Most of these agencies had either become redundant and failed to serve the purpose for which they were set up in the first place, or there was a lot of duplication involved. All in all, it was a waste of public funds,” Sanyal said.  

He cited the instance of the Tariff Commission that was dissolved in 2022. “It had no role to play in our tariff setting system because the tariff setting is done between the commerce and finance ministries. But it was occupying two floors in the Lok Nayak building and close to 100 people were working there. People were under the impression that it had something to do with tariffs but it didn’t.”

The Tariff Commission was set up in 1951 to advise the government on measures to protect the domestic industry.

Asked what happened to the staff working at the Tariff Commission, another senior government official said, “Most employees have been reallocated in the government.”

“There may be some 10 people who lost their jobs, but by and large most of them got reallocated because other things are getting expanded. It’s not that we don’t need people…,” the official, who did not want to be named, added. 

Besides shutting down autonomous bodies, several other public funded institutions have also been merged since then. For example, the Children’s Film Society India, the Films Division, the Directorate of Film Festivals and the National Film Archive of India were merged with the National Film Development Corporation. The decision was met with a lot of flak from artists, filmmakers and civil society.  

“In the last 30 years, they did nothing, it was almost defunct…so the government decided to merge it with the National Film Development Corporation…sometimes it’s easier to merge than dissolve, because the bodies have assets,” Sanyal said. 

Watal said his panel’s mandate was to look at trusts, autonomous bodies and societies that were government-funded. 

“The governance structures in many of these institutions was very weak… there was no accountability,” he said, adding: “We engaged with all stakeholders systematically, keeping in view their sensibilities and points of view.”

The committee had reviewed the functioning of 679 autonomous bodies across 68 ministries/departments. The total outlay of these bodies in the 2017-18 Union Budget was to the tune of over Rs 77,000 crore.   

“Our mandate was to look at the functioning of these bodies and see if the money they are being given by the government was being spent properly. After all, it is public money and should be spent with greater efficiency. If it was not spent for the purpose it was given for, we recommended that the body be closed down or merged or relooked at,” Watal said. 

The Watal committee had, in fact, been set up on the recommendation of another committee set up by the Modi government in September 2014, soon after it came to power at the Centre. 

Called the Expenditure Management Commission, it was headed by former Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan. Among other things, it was tasked with reviewing major areas of central government expenditure and suggesting ways to create fiscal space to meet development expenditure, without compromising on the commitment to fiscal discipline. 

In its report, the commission had pushed for periodic review of the working of the autonomous bodies with a view to examining the scope for their “mergers, disengagement, closure or corporatisation”. 

‘The nuts-and-bolts reforms’

Alongside the closure and merger of autonomous bodies, the government is also working on what it called the “process reforms”. This involved changing processes to make government functioning smoother. 

“These changes are bespoke, targeting a particular thing. Sometimes, you are changing a law, sometimes you are changing a regulation. Sometimes you are adding people, sometimes you are subtracting people… sometimes you are just changing the administrative process… I have been chipping away at it for the last eight years,” Sanyal said. 

He cited the example of India’s drone sector. “Flying of drones used to require a number of clearances. The Drone Rules that came into effect in 2021 created a simple and accessible certification process. The simplification exercise reduced the number of forms from 25 to 5, and types of fees from 72 to 4,” said Sanyal.

“The drone boom that we are having now was made possible by the dramatic simplification of laws for drones. That’s a process reform…,” he added. 

Similarly, the geospatial mapping and cartography sector was the monopoly of the Survey of India. “So we ended it. Now we allow private companies (to do the work). Earlier, if you had to create a map of any part of India, you needed specific permission from the Survey of India,” said Sanyal.   

Besides the respective ministries, most of the process reforms are being driven by a team in the EAC-PM under Sanyal. He calls it “the nuts-and-bolts reforms”. 

“It’s tightening a nut here, loosening a bolt there… the basic idea is to simplify and streamline operational processes to improve efficiency. These reforms mostly involve small changes but have the potential to make a significant impact.”

Over the last seven years, hundreds of such process reforms have taken place across government departments and the Centre has also gotten rid of over 1,000 obsolete laws. 

“They have mostly gone unnoticed. Though incremental, they make a big impact in ensuring ease of doing business,” a second senior government official, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint. 

One example is the packaging and labelling industry, the official said. Small businesses, who are part of the industry, faced a peculiar problem with frequent changes in labelling rules and regulations. On an average, such rules and regulations were tweaked three to four times a year.  

Labelling rules in food packets are essential to inform customers about the product content and other details. But frequent changes in regulations was becoming a big headache for the industry, which typically produces labelling material in large batches. 

“When orders are placed for labelling of, say, a particular food product, they do big batch printing, say 10,000 at one go. But if suddenly the rules change, labelling law changes, font size changes… nothing unusual about it, every country changes labelling laws… it’s a big problem,” said the second government official, quoted earlier. 

He added: “A manufacturer who just got done with all the labelling, and the next day some new notification comes out. His entire batch is now wasted. In fact, sometimes it is even worse, when he has already sent it out and it is somewhere there in his supply chain. He has to recall the product from the distribution network. Imagine how painful it is.”

Every time such changes are announced, the packaging industry has difficulty as normally their inventory is for two years. In 2022, for instance, there were nine labelling updates, and in 2023, four.

Kamala Vardhana Rao, CEO, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), said that last December, the FSSAI came out with a notification that from now on, except in an emergency, all changes related to labelling will only be issued on 1 July.

“This has completely changed the dynamics of the labelling industry… now they know that on 1 July, labelling regulations will be updated and they plan accordingly. It will help them manage their inventory and cut down wasteful expenditure,” he said.

 “A small reform like this has fundamentally changed the nature of the labelling and packaging industry. For them, it is a huge relief,” Rao added.  

Voluntary liquidation of companies is another area where processes were simplified. Earlier, shutting down a company, even if it was voluntary and for personal reasons, used to take years even when there was no dispute. A number of No Objection Certificates were required, which had to be sent to the Registrar of Companies.

“But even while one was getting the clearances to shut down, the person had to keep doing audits and stuff for an existing company. The government looked at the processes and simplified it,” a corporate affairs ministry official, who did not want to be named, said. 

The ministry launched the C-PACE (Centre for Processing Accelerated Corporate Exit) portal, where one can apply online if they are planning to wind up a company and wish to expedite the process.

“When you put your application in, the system itself sends it to various departments from where you need an NOC. After 21 days, when nobody comes back, the application is deemed as approved and it generates a list that the Registrar of Company then puts up automatically as an advertisement,” the official explained. 

This system has been working since 2023 and it has reduced the average amount of time required to shut down a company from 499 days to 90 days.    

According to Sanyal, a similar process reform has turned around the patents sector. 

“Applying for patents used to be so difficult. Ten years ago, we used to give just 6,000 patents a year. Now, this year, how many patents did we give out this year, you know? In the last financial year, we gave out 1,03,000 patents. We smoothened out the process,” he told ThePrint.  

Slow but steady

A third senior government official, who was earlier in the finance ministry, said such reforms take a long time. 

“It’s very difficult to close government bodies and institutions. They have a lot of staff and are sitting in huge spaces… the process takes a long time,” the officer, who did not wish to be named, said.

But the good thing is that a start has been made, the officer added. “It’s an ongoing process… it won’t end so soon. However, I am not sure if results have been commensurate with the efforts yet.”

The officer pointed out that in India, the government was not laying off people like in the US. On the contrary, the government has been on a hiring spree.

“If you see, just before the elections, DoPT (Department of Personnel and Training) recruited 7-8 lakh people in two-and-a-half years because the vacancies were very high. We had vacancies of over 9 lakh. So slowly we have started recruiting,” the officer said. 

Sanyal said India was going about being efficient in a different manner than the US DOGE. 

“They have gone for a blitzkrieg, charging through… shutting of USAID is a big thing… but they are also going to get into other problems… like they will have a large number of legal cases, a lot of opposition will come. When you are doing so many things, some will go wrong, it will have unintended consequences,” he said.

On the other hand, our system is slower but we are getting results, he added. “We have undertaken lots of such reforms and we have gathered a lot of experience by doing this… so we can accelerate it.”

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)