Ram Rattan Sharma
Governance was a highly popular term to discuss during the late 1990s and is still among those few subjects that remain in public debate and academic discourse. What constitutes Governance has always been a matter of discussion. It is a process to ensure that certain activities be they of Government, corporate enterprise or any other institution, social, economic, or political are carried out, managed directed and controlled within the parameters of legitimacy, accountability, and transparency as would be in the best interest of all stakeholders, internal as well as external. The Central focus of Governance is how the state as the agent of the society enables, facilitates and empowers its people, regardless of differences in caste, class, creed, colour, gender , faith , political ideology, and social origin to think, reflect critically analysis and take certain decisions which would be in their best interest and which enable them to lead a clean, decent, dignified, orderly, peaceful, happy and autonomous existence. The aim of Good Governance should be to provide an environment to society, where every person can have equal opportunity to allow genius to flourish to promote a good quality of life based on recognition of dignity, decency , equality , social justice and freedom of all individuals and simultaneously caring and considerate for everyone in the society, and not just for a few selected individuals , sections or factions. It is aimed at promoting and sustaining holistic and integrated human development.
In a liberalizing economy good Governance will be the engine for development. Economic reforms aim at optimizing the potential and efficiency of every individual and every public and private institution. Since the Government wants bigger roles to be played by non state entities in the process of growth and development, the role of Government changes to that of a facilitator. As growth has not been inclusive in our country, the responsibility of the Government. increases even more. The Governments responsibility of playing the role of a facilitator requires the presence of good governance as the first and the most important pre-requisite. This requires honesty and transparency, which can ensure governance for development. Corruption is one single factor that has nullified the whole process of planned economic development in the country, corruption is anti economic development, anti poor and anti-national, and the supreme importance of checking corruption is therefore obvious. As the central focus of the entire planning process has been removal of poverty, checking corruption becomes even more important. Basically, the ability to use governance as an effective tool for economic development will depend on our success to effectively check corruption. If there is a corruption in the financial system or in the capital market , there will be a economic disaster and not economic progress. There are two specific areas where corruption has plagued the process of economic development.
Time over – runs and cost over- runs of Government projects behind every case of time- over run and cost overrun, there is a case of corruption. The sooner we recognize this the better it is . In the context of Governance for economic development, the supreme importance of corruption is ,therefore obvious. The economic survey 2009-10 says that administrative delays by Government departments is the main reason for it, which, in turn, is caused by the hierarchical organizational structure of decision making in the Government Incomplete contracts are a major cause of cost over runs. Every project involves procurements and awarding of contracts and this has been a very fertile ground for corruption, kick backs and favoritism run rampant, which distorts the very objective of Government developmental programmes. A determined leadership can make changes in the system to improve probity in public life . Governance cannot be improved, unless we have a very fast, fair, and effective Judicial system. Justice delayed is Justice denied. The fact that conviction rate in India is only six percent, shows why corruption has become a high profit and low risk business in India. The issue of criminalization of politics may be tackled hopefully by bringing in transparency about the criminal background of the candidates in elections and by activating effective electoral reforms, unfortunately on the latter issue India still lacks political consensus. The protection which civil servants get in India is perhaps, given nowhere else in the world. In the context of economic liberalization, there is perhaps a need to review the basic approach and relationship between the Government and the public servants. The Civil services bill 2009 has many provisions by which a number of related ills can be cured. But the Government has not been able to even move the file which has a very sensitive clause, which talks of curtailing the powers of CMS to write the confidential reports of bureaucrats, the other very important clause is fixing the sole responsibility on the bureaucrats for the performances of the programmes and schemes. Developing a system of Governance in which non performers are punished and performance is rewarded, is of utmost important. The elements of transparency therefore, plays a very significant role in checking corruption. Transparency in Government policy making can be brought out by more access to information.
We may say that everything which disrupts the normal flow of life, such as red tapism corruption, dishonesty, cheating etc by any Government or non-Government agency is bad Governance. It is the duty of the democratic Government to ensure that an environment of good Governance prevails in the country. For this the Government activates changes in the legal and administrative frame work together with initiating new laws and rules. The judiciary would accordingly take clue and try its best to ensure that adjudication is done in time. In its pure sense, Governance consists of all of us not only the Government . Again, we should remember that the state of good Governance is not something which can be enforced up on a country from outside it should emanate from within the society itself.
The Government is the supreme agency responsible for putting that kind of conducive atmosphere in place. We cannot expect a situation of good Governance if we, as citizens, are not careful about our duties and responsibilities.
Ultimately, we as a nation are responsible for bringing the state of good Governance in the country. In area of governance, reports have found more problems at the state level than at the central level. It has been increasingly felt that without concerted federal effort, promoting good Governance will not be possible. This way, we can hope for a better paradigm of Governance emerging in the country in the coming times under the spirit of cooperative federalism.
(The author is Former Dy. Librarian University of Jammu).
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