Question

Analysis the significance of the executive book for uma.

Answer 1

Answer:

Shankkar Aiyar analyses the extent of the public infrastructure crisis and finds that the divide between rich and poor is growing

Eisenhower once remarked that in governance, the urgent is never important, and the important is never urgent. We also often hear that what gets measured gets done. This is only true of some aspects of governance. It ignores the importance of processes. Hence, the popularity of metrics, compliance, and the top 3 vs. bottom 3 style of reviewing. Meanwhile, what can’t be easily measured — including the quality of governance itself — gets forgotten.

Shankkar Aiyar’s book begins with a list of water despatches from different parts of India. In Bundelkhand, where summer temperatures go above 45 degrees Celsius, people who “borrow” water must return it within hours — and at twice the borrowed quantity. In Mawsynram, one of the rainiest places on earth, residents are forced to ration water in winter. In major urban centres, municipal corporations issue building clearances without ensuring water supply.

In five swiftly narrated chapters, Aiyar lists the malaise in India’s key public services sectors: water, health, education, power, law and order. Pulling from history, research, committee reports, plan documents, national surveys, and reportage to create his narrative, he shows how India’s privileged classes have exited from the miasma of apathy and failure: with bottled water, tankers, storage tanks, water purifiers, inverters, diesel gensets, private healthcare and private security agencies — while outside the gated communities, those with less privilege must contend with overburdened public service infrastructure, power outages, and vanishing or contaminated groundwater.