Who’ll save the Wildlife Institute of India?

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Editor's note: This year, in the just-concluded month of Halloween, a penny-pinching directive from India’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) costumed itself as a ‘rationalization’ measure. This 39-page directive was from the MoF’s Department of Expenditure, which oversees expense management in central ministries and fund allocations to states. Dated 9 October, it recommended the rationalization (shorthand for closures, corporatization, mergers, or disengagement of government support) of 61 autonomous bodies across these ministries: Environment, Forest and Climate ChangeWomen and Child DevelopmentScience and TechnologyDepartment of BiotechnologyTourismDepartment of Sports This isn’t the first snip-snip directive. In keeping with the Centre’s ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ credo, government think tank NITI Aayog has its own Expenditure Management Commission. Some context if you’re wondering where this is going: Excerpt from ‘Rationalization of Autonomous Bodies- Review undertaken by Department of Expenditure- forwarding for implementation thereof’ , 9 October, 2020 In short, these NITI Aayog recommendations are implemented by the MoF’s Department of Expenditure. The rationalization of autonomous bodies (ABs) isn’t unique to the Modi government, but its fixation with flab-cutting is unparalleled. As the October directive tells us, “such bodies …