Rational abdication: the next frontier in good governance, after anti-corruption, training, rule simplification, and portals

In 2011, Naseem Ahmad walked into my office at the Department of Sports and Youth Affairs in Haryana. He was the athletic coach at the Panchkula academy. He came alone — which told me almost everything before he opened his mouth. He had boys from Panipat who wanted to throw a javelin. He had deliberately not brought them. If I said no, he wanted to spare them the disappointment of being turned away. If I said yes, he could return as the person who had opened the door.

The academy had no seat for javelin. No precedent existed for funding it from my budget, no prior sanction, no file that had travelled through the system and received an approving notation. The administrative default in such situations is well understood: note the request, seek a precedent, raise a file, refer upward, wait for the committee.

I had the financial authority to sanction one lakh rupees at my level. I said yes.

One of those boys from Panipat was Neeraj Chopra.

I tell this not to claim a share of the gold medal. The throw was entirely his. I tell it because of what I did not do. I did not wait for the precedent. I did not send the file upward. I did not let the committee meet while the season passed and the boys grew older by another year. The decision was mine to make at my level, and I made it on the afternoon it arrived.

Because a new idea, if not moved forward quickly, wilts. And merit, however real, is not sufficient protection against the institutional habit of deferral.

That habit has a name. I call it rational abdication.

The official who rationally abdicates is not corrupt, not incompetent, often genuinely committed to the purpose his position is meant to serve. His institution, however, has taught him one lesson with perfect consistency: deciding is more dangerous than deferring, and the citizen waiting for the outcome will absorb the cost of his caution in a way that his career record never will.

Consider a singer who received a documented, verified extortion threat — the precise circumstance the arms licensing system exists to address. He applied through the correct channel. The station house officer verified the facts. The Superintendent of Police recommended approval and put his name on the record. The file moved to the District Magistrate, who held the licensing authority. The DM studied his two choices with the care a consequential decision deserves. The official who approves is exposed to everything that subsequently happens to that weapon, at any remove of time. The official who denies is exposed to nothing.

He denied the licence. Nobody was corrupt. Nobody was incompetent. The portal had processed the application correctly. What was missing was a system that made the right decision the safer one. This is the gap rational abdication describes — and it is the gap that the reforms preceding it, for all their genuine achievements, were never designed to close.

Anti-corruption measures, training, rule simplification, and portals have each addressed a real cause of governance failure and each produced results that deserve recognition. The passport process, Direct Benefit Transfers, Aadhaar-linked payments that removed the broker from the transaction — these are measurable improvements in the citizen’s experience of the state.

And yet a woman who needed her married name corrected in the government database waited two and a half years. The official was not corrupt. The rule was clear. The portal existed. What was missing was a decision — made at the level where the authority and the facts both resided, on the day it was needed.

Rational abdication is what remains when the other causes have been addressed. It is the residual failure that becomes visible precisely because the preceding reforms succeeded.

WHY IT PERSISTS: THE RESEARCH

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people feel losses twice as powerfully as equivalent gains. The official who decides and is questioned has suffered a personal, attributable loss. The official who deferred has produced a cost borne by someone who cannot trace it to him. The audit system makes this asymmetry the central feature of every official’s daily calculation.

Ilana Ritov and Jonathan Baron identified omission bias — confirmed across forty-nine studies — the consistent finding that harm caused by action is judged more blameworthy than equivalent harm caused by inaction. The audit system is omission bias made institutional. It examines decisions. Inaction generates nothing to examine.

William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser documented status quo bias — the most replicated finding in decision research — the tendency to maintain the current position rather than move to a better one. The rule that outlived its crisis persists. The better procedure is noted with interest and filed without adoption.

Three independent findings. One conclusion: the accountability architecture most governments have built exploits all three biases and corrects for none of them. The result is not a failure of character. It is the predictable output of a system pointed in the wrong direction.

FOUR CHANGES. NO NEW INSTITUTIONS. NO NEW BUDGETS.

Every month of unjustified referral is a month the citizen pays for the official’s cover. Make referral as costly as the wrong decision. When a file is passed upward without genuine justification, that referral should carry consequences equivalent to a challenged decision. Loss aversion currently makes deferral feel safe. Change the arithmetic and it makes deferral feel exposed.

The woman who waited two and a half years never appeared in anyone’s performance review. Make inaction visible in the career record. Track decisions deferred and files pending beyond stipulated time with the same rigour applied to decisions that attracted audit scrutiny. Omission bias persists because inaction is invisible. Make it visible and the advantage it currently enjoys is gone.

The building permit that needed two signatures in 1975 needs seven today — not because buildings are more complex, but because five crises added five signatures and none were ever removed. Rules made in crisis should carry sunset clauses. The question must be asked at a fixed interval: does this rule still serve the citizen, or does it now serve only the institution that administers it?

Rwanda asked what conditions would make drone blood delivery safe to permit. That question produced a service saving lives in remote hospitals while comparable systems elsewhere were still deliberating. Make the status quo expensive to maintain. Rejecting a new idea should require a written explanation, filed in a record reviewed at the next promotion assessment. Change the default question and you change what officials spend their energy on.

Good governance reform has followed a logical sequence. Anti-corruption addressed the bad actor. Training addressed the unprepared official. Rule simplification addressed procedural weight. Portals addressed friction. Each was right for its moment. Rational abdication is the next step — not because the preceding steps failed, but because they succeeded well enough to reveal what they were not designed to address.

When Naseem Ahmad walked into my office, he had no file and no committee. He had a story and the sense to tell it simply. I had the authority and the obligation to decide. I decided because the rules in that office gave me enough room to make the right calculation. Building that room into every desk, for every official, on every ordinary Tuesday — that is the work that comes next. The boy from Panipat could not wait for the committee. Neither can the next one. / DAILY WORLD /

( O.P. Singh served thirty-three years in the Indian Police Service, rising to Director General of Police, Haryana. He is the author of the forthcoming book Fear Tax: The Price of Playing it Safe (2026). )