DOGE for India

The malaise in Indian bureaucracy has been extensively documented, but there has been no noticeable reform since Independence; rather things have gone from bad to worse. The Government has tried to leverage technology to rein in corruption by eliminating discretion, but with little success. Rather, technological solutions have promoted centralisation, that has hamstrung bureaucratic initiative at the operational level

US President-elect Donald Trump's announcement ofa proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) drew varied reactions. The choice of lead-ers of DOGE ~ Elon Musk who heads Tesla, social media platform X, and rocket company Space X, and Vivek Ramaswamy who is the founder of a pharmaceutical company ~ elicited copious criticism, mostly because both gentlemen have zero experience in government. It was also speculated that given his extensive business interests, Musk had been selected to interfere in government functioning, with a view to mould government policies in his favour. Some others saw the abbreviation DOGE as some kind of sick joke by Trump (actually, the acronym is based on Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency promoted by Musk).

Trump defined the remit of DOGE in the following words: ".. dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies." The President-elect underlined the importance of DOGE by equating it to the Manhattan Project ~ the programme undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. DOGE is supposed to conclude their work by 4 July 2026, the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence.

Federal bureaucracy in the US has seen a phenomenal increase, originally it had employees only from three small departments ~ State, Treasury, and War, but today the executive branch employs almost three million people. Elon Musk has primarily aimed his guns at the 'inflated' bureaucracy, citing his own record of reducing the staff of Twitter (now X) from 8,000 to 1,500. Overall, Musk has claimed that he will cut Budget expenditure of US$ 6.75 trillion by US$ 2 trillion ~ a saving of around 30 per cent.