Many did a double-take when they heard the Prime Minister quote with supreme panache the already immortalised lyrics of Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, in his address to the Global Citizen Festival India on 19 November 2016. He resoundingly endorsed, “your old road is changing, please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand, for times they are a changing.”

It was an impressive remix of the 8 November 2016, post-8 p m demonetisation Address to the Nation. The Prime Minister had exhorted 125 crore people of India to join the historic Imandaari ka Utsav, the Mahayagna, the fight against corruption, black money, fake notes and terrorism, reposing full confidence in their support, short-term “inconvenience” notwithstanding. Of course, what precisely led up to this stunningly grandiose policy still remains well shrouded in the eponymous Delhi smog.

The 125 crore people of India had no choice but to fall in line with the decision, which in its broad strokes was unexceptionable. But there is no denying that they were simply knocked off balance, with barely a few hours to register its astounding reverberations. Being plunged into this unquestionably once-in-a-lifetime experience, they found themselves grappling with hugely diverse, often contradictory responses of self-congratulatory and vicarious pride, heightened hope, unexpected agony, unanticipated scepticism, early disillusionment, raw anger spiked with deep frustration and above all trademark desi jugaad, in all its resplendent glory. The story is still unspooling and has a long way to go. There is no known instrumentality to effectively measure the intensity and aftermath of what is now widely characterised as shock-and-awe therapy. With Government having deftly swerved into the lead role of a disruptor, seeking to craft a new normal, every day is literally a new day. To expect the unexpected has now become the popular theme song.

With Parliament being in the alternative-reality mode of raucous limbo, political opposition, including Chief Ministers, haring around in directionless gloom, the Chief Justice making dire predictions of spiralling chaos, perhaps we are hurtling perilously close to a “post- truth” phase. It is the OED’s International Word for the Year, denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief, in this case, at stratospheric levels of political leadership. It is nothing short of a new-fangled communications and perception battle. Inspite of being held up as the bright spot in the global economy, India now finds itself at the receiving end of sheer bewildered analysis and speculative prognostication.

Among the most remarkable, yet less discussed, takeaways from these ultra-dynamic developments are governance-related. The challenges are enormous and becoming increasingly complex. The administrative apparatus is caught up in the valiant exercise to attempt to ease the panic and pain accompanying the gigantic logistics of replacing 86 per cent of the currency in circulation in a predominantly cash-dependent economy in a tightly compressed time-frame.

Very interestingly, the same apparatus had been castigated, not without justification, by the Prime Minister while ringing in his game changing move. He rued, “corruption and black money tend to be accepted as part of life. This type of thinking has afflicted our politics, our administration and our society like an infestation of termites. None of our public institutions is free from these termites”. Subramanian Swamy and commentators of varied hues have been nimble enough to latch on , finding it politically expedient  to deflect their ire at the faceless, yet easy-to-take-down collective of public servants, derisively caricatured as Lutyens’ babus, for all that is perceived to have gone awry in the humongous conceptualisation, planning and roll-out exercises.

This tendentious refrain deserves to be tossed aside unceremoniously. We are not going through a gold-standard election, Kumbh mela, a major accident or a natural calamity. It is totally unknown, unknowable territory. Yet the administration has held up 24/7 and is being as sensitive and responsive as it possibly can, barring a few exceptions. The paradox in the unimaginably stretched situation needs to be appreciated. Public servants have been pilloried as being at the core of the problem and then tasked to magically transform the canvas in which they are indelibly etched. For the Prime Minister, this is just the beginning. He is right as demonetisation targets only a small portion of the black economy. The bigger tasks, which must include cleansing the political cesspool, lie unaddressed as yet.

And here pops up another tough conundrum in the unfolding saga, intended or not, only history will reveal. Are a new line of robotic apparatchiks being put on the governance assembly line without institutional remodelling? Is the darkly omniscient Orwellian ‘big brother” a figment of frenzied fear or a distinct  possibility? Are we aiming for dizzying speeds without thinking through the essential pre-conditions necessary to sustain them and hit the goals set on 8/11 running? Not much is in the public domain about these valid concerns.

Since there is so much talk of historic decisions, it is worthwhile to recall the findings of the Santhanam Committee, constituted on the advice of Parliament, more than five decades back. It had recommended the setting up of the Central Vigilance Commission which is meant to function as an apex body for prevention of corruption in Central Government institutions. With admirable prescience it had flagged the main sources of corruption — both generative and regenerative — as administrative delays, Government taking upon itself more than it can manage by way of regulatory functions, expanding scope of personal discretion in the exercise of powers vested in different categories of Government servants and cumbersome procedures in dealing with various matters which are of importance to citizens in their day-to-day lives. There should be no mix-up, or worse, a mash-up of big-brother governance and smart governance, when our sights should be on setting global governance standards.

Maybe we have already started on that super expressway . We are given to understand that this is, in fact, “reality governance”. The Situation Room is constantly humming. Maybe this is the stolid rationale underpinning frequent modulations and tweaking of policy, quite mind-boggling an innovation for our Brit Raj-encumbered, termite-infested governance model. Maybe the digital democracy initiative of seeking direct, honest feedback from 125 crore stakeholders, through a customised app, in real time, will add yet another unique dimension of streaming check-points and concurrent course corrections. But it is only in the fullness of time that answers will be known.

For the world’s largest democracy it is not enough to have spotted the messiah of the masses. The claim of sabka saath, sabka vikaas must feel authentic. Whenever an aam nagrik feels, the need to stand up and be heard, the cleansed, changed environment should  enable it — being a Constitutionally guaranteed right — not crush it. Most importantly, governance professionals should not, either by design or default, atrophy or morph beyond recognition into what they were not intended for. That would best epitomise the changing times.

In sync with Chris Martin’s lyrics which caught the PM’s imagination, “… you can be what you want to be… everything you want is a dream away..”

The writer is a retired IAS officer and comments on governance issues