Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai on Tuesday raised concerns over the dominance of the Big 4 consulting firms in government studies and policymaking, alleging that tender conditions are being manipulated in their favor.
Reacting to a post by economist Sanjeev Sanyal, Pai wrote, "Well done @sanjeevsanyal, you have been fighting this for long. Pl look at how the Big 4 have captured central and state govts in many studies and policy matters. The tender conditions seem manipulated to fit them. We need to open up the system, it is getting corrupted."
The Big 4 refers to the world's four largest professional services firms — Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG — which provide consulting, audit, and advisory services to governments and corporations. Critics have often argued that their increasing influence over policy formulation raises concerns about transparency and national interest.
Pai’s remarks came in response to Sanyal’s post, where he highlighted the deep-rooted involvement of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) in India's National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and questioned its past influence on the country's medical data and social policies.
In a tweet, Sanyal, who is also a member of PM's Economic Advisory Council, wrote: "Quite amusing that some people are outraging that USAID was not removed from NFHS earlier. Well, none of them seemed interested when a few of us began to write about it some 4 years ago. No one cared when NFHS was completely taken over by GoI two years ago."
The economist said that the only media reports from that time were concerned that GoI had "unfairly" replaced certain senior personnel from IIPS. For those who have arrived in the scene yesterday, the link between foreign aid agencies and our medical system goes back to the 1960s, he added. "A handful of us have been writing about this systematically. The last column that I co-authored with Bibek-da was about how foreign agencies deliberately popularised sex-selection abortions in India in the 1970s and 80s."
Sanyal further elaborated that USAID "effectively ran India's National Family Health Survey (NFHS) from the 1990s till it was stopped two years ago" and claimed that its survey methodologies were skewed to push a particular social narrative. He pointed out discrepancies in NFHS questionnaires, noting that while the men’s questionnaire was 29 pages long, the women’s was 94 pages, with many questions deliberately structured to highlight intra-family violence.
The economist also stated that removing USAID from NFHS was not a straightforward task, given how entrenched the system was. "It takes time to recognize a problem, and build capability to replace it. Nonetheless, GoI has been tightening FCRA over the last decade despite many howls of protest," he wrote.