Reflection of the recurrent lapses in observing financial discipline in the Annual Performance Assessment Report (APAR)
F. No. 21011/21/2015-Estt. (A-II)
Government of India
Ministry of Personnel, P. G. and Pensions
Department of Personnel & Training
North Block, New Delhi-110001
Dated: 16th/18th January, 2017
Office Memorandum
Subject: Recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee regarding reflection of the recurrent lapses in observing financial discipline in the Annual Performance Assessment Report (APAR).
The Public Accounts Committee in its Nineteenth Report (16th Lok Sabha) (PAC) on Excess over Voted Grants and Charged Appropriations (2012 -13) which was presented to Lok Sabha on 29th April, 2015 has, inter-alia, recommended in its recommendation no. 21 that:
"the Department of Personnel & Training to look into that the recurrent lapses in observing financial discipline should be reflected in the Annual Performance Appraisal Report of the budget controlling authorities as well as the Financial Advisors of the Ministry/Department concerned so as to ensure strict adherence to the financial discipline thereby reducing the recurrent phenomenon of excess expenditure to the barest minimum, if not, eliminated altogether.
2. The matter has been examined in this Department. There already exist various tools in the existing PAR formats to assess the attributes and performance of the officers by reporting, reviewing and accepting authorities including observance of financial discipline. Therefore, whenever instances of recurring financial lapses come to light, these may be brought to the attention of the Reporting/Reviewing/Accepting Authority so that they may include these instances in the PAR of the officer of the relevant year.
Yes, this is the Asian Century. But there’s still cause for Western optimism
Watch the Asia takes the Lead session from the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2017 here.
The big question of our time is a simple one: should we feel
optimistic or pessimistic for the future of humanity, all 7 billion of
us?
The world’s response is divided. Many Western societies are drowning
in pessimism. By contrast, the rest have never been more optimistic.
This represents a reversal of previous centuries’ pattern, where the
West was always more optimistic. What happened? And what do the facts
tell us?
The facts are clear. The human condition has never been better.
Global poverty is declining steadily. In 2015, we far exceeded the UN’s
Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty. According to the NIC, extreme poverty could halve again by 2030.
The global middle classes are exploding, from 1.8 billion in
2010 to 3.2 billion in 2020 and 4.9 billion in 2030. The world’s infant
mortality rate has decreased from an estimated 60 deaths per thousand
live births in 1990 to 32 in 2015. This translates to more than 4
million fewer infant deaths per year. If we were rational and objective,
we would be celebrating the current human condition.
Western naval-gazing
Why are we not? One simple answer is that Western intellectuals who
dominate the global intellectual discourse are only aware of their
societies’ short-term challenges, not the long-term global promises.
Francis Fukuyama illustrates this well. In an essay
written after the election of Donald Trump, he says, “Donald Trump’s
stunning electoral defeat of Hillary Clinton marks a watershed, not just
for American politics, but for the entire world order. We appear
to be entering a new age of populist nationalism, in which the dominant
liberal order that has been constructed since the 1950s has come under
attack from angry and energized democratic majorities. The risk of
sliding into a world of competitive and equally angry
nationalisms is huge, and if this happens it would mark as momentous a
juncture as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.” [Note: emphasis
added.]
Please study his words carefully. He is conflating the condition of
the West with the condition of the world. It’s true that populism has
risen in the West. That explains Trump and Brexit (and possibly Le Pen).
But it hasn’t emerged in the more populous regions of Asia and Africa.
More importantly, the West only represents 12% of the world’s
population. 88% live outside the West. And their living conditions (with
the exception of a few Arab countries and North Korea) have never been
better.
Take three of the most populous countries in Asia: China, India and
Indonesia. The lives of the almost 3 billion people in these countries
have never been better. And they will get much better in the coming
decades, as this figure shows. The decade of 2010 to 2020 is probably the best decade Asia
has ever experienced. The Asian middle class population is going to jump
from 500 million in 2010 to 1.75 billion in 2020. In short, Asia is
going to add 1.5 times the total population of the West to the global
middle class population in one decade.
Why is this happening? One simple answer is the triumph of reason.
The spread of Western science and technology demonstrates this most
clearly. At the most basic level, humans around the world can see the
benefits of modern Western medicine. As a result, reason is replacing
superstition. In all spheres of human life, from economic policies to
environmental management, from education to urban planning, Western best
practices are being almost universally adopted by all societies.
So what’s with all the pessimism?
If the world is getting better, why is the West becoming more
pessimistic? The simple answer is that the West has pursued a deeply
flawed strategy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Like the
British defenders of Singapore in World War II, they had their guns
pointed out to the sea in the South when the Japanese came by land from
the North.
To put this point even more starkly, the West thought it had won a
colossal and epic struggle with its dramatic victory in the Cold War. As
a result, it didn’t notice that an even bigger struggle had begun with
the “return” of Asia at the same time. China decided to re-join the
world economy in the 1980s. India did so in the 1990s. The return of 3
billion Asians was obviously going to shake up the global economy. The
West didn’t notice.
It didn’t notice because Western minds were intoxicated with an
unhealthy opiate of triumphalism. Francis Fukuyama’s famous essay “The
End of History” captured this well. As a result, the West developed a
flawed interventionist strategy towards the rest. Many of the
interventions led to disaster. Michael Mandelbaum notes that “the
Clinton administration’s track record was not encouraging: it has
promised order in Somalia and left chaos. It had gone to Haiti to
restore democracy and had left anarchy. It had bombed in Bosnia for the
sake of national unity but presided over a de facto partition.”
And 9/11 made things worse. It seduced the Neo-Con advisers of George
W Bush to invade Iraq, after invading Afghanistan. A decade later,
Europeans saw two-thirds of their refugees coming from three countries:
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
But that was not where the real disaster was. As Western strategic
thinkers were distracted, they didn’t see that the most important event
in 2001 was not 9/11. It was China’s entry into the World Trade
Organization. The entry of almost a billion workers into the global
trading system would obviously result in massive “creative destruction”
and the loss of many jobs.
Trump and Brexit are therefore the natural and logical results of a
flawed Western strategy of not dealing with the real economic challenges
to the West. While the West was distracted, China emerged. According to
IMF statistics, in 1980, in PPP terms, America’s share of global GDP
was 25% while that of China was 2.2%. In 2016, America’s share has
shrunk to 15.5% while that of China has risen to 17.9%.
The relative decline of the West
There are therefore sound strategic reasons for Western pessimism:
From 1820 to roughly 1980, Western economic power either grew steadily
or maintained a huge globally dominant position. In the past three
decades, the combined GDP of North America and Western Europe has shrunk
from 51.5% in 1990 to 33.45% in 2014.
An even more destructive strategic change happened at the same time.
While the workers in the West suffered job losses and deteriorating
incomes, the Western elite became super rich from accelerated
globalization and the return of Asia.
RW Johnson describes well
how American workers suffered: “Between 1948 and 1973, productivity
rose by 96.7% and real wages by 91.3%, almost exactly in step. Those
were the days of plentiful hard-hat jobs in steel and the auto industry
when workers could afford to send their children to college and see them
rise into the middle class. But from 1973 to 2015 – the era of
globalization, when many of those jobs vanished abroad – productivity
rose 73.4% while wages rose by only 11.1%. Since 2000 the wages paid to
college graduates have fallen.”
A reason to be optimistic
The existential questions that the West faces today are quite simple.
Is everything lost? Will Western power and influence steadily decline?
Or is there hope for the West? Can the West also benefit from the
resurgence of the rest?
The simple answer is that the West can benefit from the surge of the
rest. 12% of the world’s population can be pulled along by the remaining
88%. To achieve this, Western leaders and pundits need to make many
significant psychological adjustments.
Instead of constantly trying to retain control of the world, the West
should learn to share power. Asians should be allowed to run the IMF
and World Bank. Equally importantly, Western pundits must drop their
traditional condescension when speaking about the rest. Emerging Asian
entities, like China, India and ASEAN, should be treated with more
respect. India should be immediately given a seat on the UN Security
Council, with the UK and France stepping aside.
All this sounds inconceivable to many Western minds. But until
recently, it was also inconceivable that the rest could be more
optimistic than the West. The West must now do the inconceivable to
prepare for the inevitable inconceivable world.
