'All forms of blitzkrieg look good initially but soon lose momentum': Sanjeev Sanyal on Elon Musk's DOGE exit

Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, on Thursday weighed in on Elon Musk's dramatic exit from the Trump administration. Sanyal said that all forms of blitzkrieg look good initially but end up losing their sheen eventually. 

He also said that going through one regulation or process at a time is certainly a pain, but there is no alternative other than that to run a government. 

"As Elon Musk leaves DOGE, want to repeat what I have said before, that the Indian approach of process reform by attrition warfare is far more tenable. All forms of blitzkrieg look good initially, but soon lose momentum. Going through one regulation/process at a time is excruciatingly painful - we don't enjoy it - but there is no alternative," Sanyal wrote on X (formerly Twitter). 

In a surprise development on Thursday morning, Musk stepped down as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). His tenure as the DOGE chief was marked by deep budget cuts and moments of public bonhomie with US President Donald Trump. 

Musk moved aggressively to reduce US government spending, due to which many government jobs and departments were slashed, including staff at the US nuclear programme. He recruited “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” to overhaul US federal operations.

Around 260,000 of the total 2.3 million federal civilian workforce have either lost their jobs or accepted redundancy deals as a result of DOGE's job cuts. In some cases, the US courts blocked the mass firings and ordered terminated employees to be reinstated. 

Due to his aggressive moves to cut government spending, Musk became a figure of contention in Trump's White House. Musk even admitted in an interview: "Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything," adding that not all goals had been met. 

House Democrats Maxine Waters and Brad Sherman flagged concerns about DOGE's access to sensitive financial data.

They warned that improper access to this data could potentially lead to market manipulation and loss of investor confidence. Not just Democrats, DOGE also attracted criticism from within the ranks and files of the Republican Party. 

Commenting on DOGE's aggressive budget cuts, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticised Congressional Republicans for failing to codify spending cuts proposed by DOGE and even went on to call it a "betrayal" of the American voters.