ASI's Rs 289 cr campus in Greater Noida, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Institute of Archaeology, is impressive and expansive. But some key elements, like students and teachers, are reportedly missing.
It was inaugurated with much pomp in 2019. Yet, today, it functions with a skeleton crew of 15 students, and no permanent faculty member. Instead, the 'world-class' syllabus is managed by guest lecturers and consultants, while the library is a collection of uncatalogued books and empty shelves.
This isn't an isolated incident but a broader trend of administrative mirages that crop up mysteriously in our landscape. Take the CAG performance audit of a major rural housing scheme in Rajasthan.
While official dashboards broadcast '100%' completion rates and 'open defecation-free' status, physical verification of 590 houses officially marked as 'completed' revealed that nearly half lacked toilets. More damningly, the audit found that 60% of homes were without electricity, and a significant portion were not even being used as residences, serving instead as storage sheds for cattle or grain.
When official data is decoupled from reality, we are firmly entering Potemkin village territory where facades and optics become the whole point of the exercise.
In a country where every (declining) rupee is a soldier in a war between competing urgencies - healthcare, primary education and climate resilience - treating governance as photo-ops is fiscal hara-kiri. Politics and bureaucracy then become repositories of installation art that puts window fronts without development, facades minus delivery. A campus without teachers is a warehouse, and a house without a toilet is a set of rooms. India can ill afford herds of white elephants roaming across the country.
It was inaugurated with much pomp in 2019. Yet, today, it functions with a skeleton crew of 15 students, and no permanent faculty member. Instead, the 'world-class' syllabus is managed by guest lecturers and consultants, while the library is a collection of uncatalogued books and empty shelves.
This isn't an isolated incident but a broader trend of administrative mirages that crop up mysteriously in our landscape. Take the CAG performance audit of a major rural housing scheme in Rajasthan.
While official dashboards broadcast '100%' completion rates and 'open defecation-free' status, physical verification of 590 houses officially marked as 'completed' revealed that nearly half lacked toilets. More damningly, the audit found that 60% of homes were without electricity, and a significant portion were not even being used as residences, serving instead as storage sheds for cattle or grain.
When official data is decoupled from reality, we are firmly entering Potemkin village territory where facades and optics become the whole point of the exercise.
In a country where every (declining) rupee is a soldier in a war between competing urgencies - healthcare, primary education and climate resilience - treating governance as photo-ops is fiscal hara-kiri. Politics and bureaucracy then become repositories of installation art that puts window fronts without development, facades minus delivery. A campus without teachers is a warehouse, and a house without a toilet is a set of rooms. India can ill afford herds of white elephants roaming across the country.
