‘Government can cut down on 80-150 of its agencies’

BENGALURU: In a task cut out for the central government, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council member Sanjeev Sanyal said that India can either merge or get rid of 80-150 agencies out of the 840-odd ones to pave for efficiency.

“Now some of them are useful. You need the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Competition Commission of India and so on. But the others can be merged or gotten rid of, and we have been doing that,” Sanyal said.

The 840-tally was dated as of 2020, Sanyal said. The comments he made at TiE Global Summit 2024 on Tuesday in Bengaluru, come on the heels of an announcement of the Department of Government Efficiency that will be reinstated in January once the new Trump administration in the United States comes to power.

Examples of such autonomous bodies that have been shut down so far include the likes of Tariff Commission, All India Handloom Board, All India Handicraft Board, Central Organisation for modernisation of workshops and Rashtriya Mahila Kosh.

Merged bodies on the other hand included the likes of Films Division, Directorate of Film Festivals, National Films Archives of India and Children’s Film Society that fused into National Film Development Corporation.

Sanyal was presenting steps for process reforms in government on the topic of ‘Future of Governance.’ Other types of process reforms, Sanyal included revising default lists and precedents, streamlining existing administrative processes, changes in regulations and legislations and adding capacities to remove bottlenecks.

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