Mass focus a must
Mahendra Ved
The idea of good
governance as enunciated
by Mahatma Gandhi is that
it demands respect for
human rights, rule of law,
strengthening of
democracy, promoting transparency and
capacity in public administration.
Gandhi believed that the
responsiveness of the state and its
institutions to the needs and aspirations of
the people and inclusive citizenship are
imperative to good governance. The
success of democracy depends upon the
equality of all human beings, their right to
participate in social and political
transformation and the right to
development, to live in dignity.
How far have these been understood,
imbibed and incorporated into governance
over the last seven decades and its
balance-sheet of the success and failure
would require deeper study.
The fact is that all governments since
the Independence have sworn by
Gandhian ideals, but with varying degrees
of real faith, commitment and success in
their pursuit. Like Gandhi's other ideals –
and Gandhi himself, there is more of lipservice
and less of genuine pursuit.
From time to time, but especially during
elections – and elections take place in a few
states each year – the issue of governance
comes into political discourse wherein the
Gandhi believed
that the
responsiveness of
the state and its
institutions to the
needs and
aspirations of the
people and inclusive
citizenship are
imperative to good
governance. The
success of
democracy depends
upon the equality of
all human beings,
their right to
participate in social
and political
transformation and
the right to
development, to live
in dignity.
incumbent is invariably a bad example
of it and the critics, without promising
alternatives mostly swear that they have
the panacea for the people. People vote
for them, at times, only to be
disillusioned.
The turn of the century has seen a
greater refinement and deeper intensity
in this debate as government struggles
to hold power while claiming to shed it,
politicians have become more vocal,
bureaucracy more cautious and clever,
academics draw more ideas from the
global discourse and the media has
becomes more forthright. It takes sides,
shedding its traditional neutrality.
But much of this remains confined to
1,200-word newspaper articles, a few
hours of debate in conference halls and
a few minutes of TRPs on the television.
The discourse remains sterile and
inconclusive. With name-calling as order
of the day, it generates more heat and
less wisdom.
India is in the throes of a fierce
passion for governance. Not just any
governance but 'maximum governance';
preferably in a combo with 'minimum
government'. This was promised by
Narendra Modi during the 2014 Lok
Sabha polls campaign. It caught the
imagination of the people who voted for
him.
Now, his own web site proudly claims:
Narendra Modi
"It is due to Narendra Modi that
governance has become the talking
point all over the country; from the
conversations teenagers have over a cup
of coffee to heated debated in
newsrooms."
It's now a truism that the Modi
mandate of the 2014 polls is "a mandate
for good governance." The extent to
which this has been realized has been
the subject matter of debates, again,
more intensely, during the recent
elections campaigns.
Anna Hazare
The UPA Government, particularly the
2009-2014, lost mandate after being
accused of policy paralysis and bad and
non-governance. Many of the issues that
raged then remain unresolved today and
have merged with the current discourse
wherein not just governance, Modi's
distinctive style of governance is also
being vehemently debated.
Since the NDA government took
office, expectations of effective
governance have been high amidst
considerable change. This gives rise to
wide-ranging new challenges
surrounding issues such as the conduct
of elections, administrative and
performance management reforms, the
ease of doing business, tax reforms,
defence procurement procedures and
foreign investment in defence, cyber
security and the 'Make in India'
campaign.
Good governance has been seen as
the biggest antidote to corruption in
public life. 'Corruption' is not an
ahistorical, value-neutral descriptor.
Only, it has been seen and interpreted
differently in different times, in the
pursuit of different agendas.
In Jayaprakash (JP) Narayan's
movement for 'total revolution' in the
1970s, corruption denoted something
very different from what it did in the
Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption
agitation of 2011.For Narayan,
corruption was a moral evil and
viewed the capitalist system itself as
corrupt.There was his famous quote
that "wealth cannot be amassed
except by exploitation."
Like much of the "free world", India
has come a long way since. Post
economic reforms, making money, and
even if means exploitation, is not a sin.
The fact is that all
governments since the
Independence have
sworn by Gandhian
ideals, but with varying
degrees of real faith,
commitment and
success in their pursuit.
Like Gandhi's other
ideals – and Gandhi
himself, there is more
of lip-service and less
of genuine pursuit.
India is in the throes
of a fierce passion for
governance. Not just
any governance but
'maximum governance';
preferably in a combo
with 'minimum
government'. This was
promised by Narendra
Modi during the 2014
Lok Sabha polls
campaign. It caught the
imagination of the
people who voted for
him.
The anti-corruption discourse that grew
around the Hazare movement did not
share Narayan's reservations about the
corrupting influences of the private profit
motive.
The focus has now shifted to public
spending.Overnight, the entire political
class, the bureaucracy, and social
infrastructure (the public distribution
system, for instance)are deemed as
hotbeds of corruption and held solely
responsible for the State's failures to
deliver the benefits of economic growth.
Corruption is being blamed for the
benefits of economic growth not trickling
down — or not trickling down enough — to
the masses.
Any government engaged in the
delivery of socially critical economic goods
is held to be offering incentives for
corruption. Unsurprisingly, many poverty
alleviation programmes have been
dumped and where expedience demands,
some of them, having earned a 'bad' name,
have been re-vamped and/or renamed. In
some cases, names of one set of
individuals have been replaced by another.
Simultaneously, corruption as being
morally repugnant seems to have
disappeared altogether -- so have
favouritism and nepotism. What has
replaced it is a narrow, technical idea of
corruption as bribery. That gave the
inevitable birth to Lokpal, the public
ombudsman to oversee, and punish,
corruption.
Hazare was joined in by many and
the public perception that it built
contributed to the UPA's ouster. It is
significant, however, that three years
hence, the much-touted anti-graft law
is nowhere in sight. In sum,
hypocritically, everyone swears against
corruption, claims to be not corrupt and
then points the fingers at others.
Since corruption has been identified as
the biggest hurdle to economic
development, the stage is set for its
antidote: good governance. This cycle – of
aspirations first raised and then betrayed
by economic reforms, leading to mass
discontent, which zeroes in on corruption
as the problem, with good governance
presented as the solution – is very evident
in recent Indian history.
But India is not alone. The "international
anti-corruption consensus" has been a powerful vehicle for maneuvering
recalcitrant nations onto the neo-liberal
track. Indeed, one of the 'sins' of the
UPA-II was its failure to push the promarket
economic reforms.
Make in India
How does one achieve the goal of a
corruption-free society? In human
history, there has never been an
instance of a powerful political group
voluntarily giving up its power.
Democracy and elections do provide
solution, but not always. The real
empowerment has always come from
political confrontation and struggle – the
civil rights movement, the youth and
women's rights movement, reservations
and the caste-based movements in
India's case and other rights-based
movements. They attempt to empower
people through the institution of legally
enforceable rights.
Jayaprakash (JP) Narayan
But the good governance model of
empowerment,being largely corporate
driven, is allergic to any rights-based
empowerment. It conceives of
empowerment in individualisticconsumerist
rather than collective
terms. It offers little scope, for instance,
to remedy the social disempowerment
caused by caste. This, perhaps, explains
the curbing of the activities of several
NGOs, especially those funded from
abroad, in the name of security and
citing alleged violation of rules governing
incoming of foreign funds.
Good governance is linked to
transparency. But that transparency is
with regard to business, especially
foreign investors, who are tired of trying
to find their way through the intricate
webs of political patronage (also known
as corruption) and often lose out to
domestic capital, which enjoys a cultural
advantage (so-called crony capitalism).
Witness the efforts made by the union
and state governments to appear
'transparent' and promote of ease of
doing business in the eyes of the foreign
investors.
A new chapter has been added to the
good governance debate by the recent
verdict of the special CBI court into the
2G telecom spectrum allocation issue.
Without going into the politics involved,
the accusers and the accused who were
let off for want of evidence, it needs
noting that the observations made in the judgment are a serious indictment of many
of the most powerful institutions of the
state on whom the society depends for
delivering good governance.
It's now a truism that
the Modi mandate of
the 2014 polls is "a
mandate for good
governance." The extent
to which this has been
realized has been the
subject matter of
debates, again, more
intensely, during the
recent elections
campaigns.
The UPA Government,
particularly the 2009-
2014, lost mandate
after being accused of
policy paralysis and bad
and non-governance.
Many of the issues that
raged then remain
unresolved today and
have merged with the
current discourse
wherein not just
governance, but Modi's
distinctive style of
governance is also
being vehemently
debated.
This judgment of Justice O P Saini
unwittingly dents the authority of the
Supreme Court of India.It is true that the
apex court in 2012 decided on the
arbitrariness of policy, but it is difficult not
to see that its perception of arbitrariness
was shaped by the public perception that
ministerial corruption may have been
involved and the 'conspiracy' theories built
around that perception.
The verdict is an indictment of the
bureaucracy. It argues that the officials
draft rules they do not necessarily
understand. Their notes to ministers are
vague and could be misleading. As against
these un-elected, the ministers, who are
elected and answerable to parliament, are
seen as those who can be misled. But we
know they are not babes in the wood and
are susceptible to their many other
interests. Much of the blame, perhaps
unfairly, is placed on the officials.
The third institutional loser is the
relationship between the Parliament and
the Comptroller and Auditor General
(CAG). In India's constitutional scheme of
things, the CAG's reports are meant to be
presented to Parliament that has to take a
view on them. But over the years, as had
happened in the of the Bofors gun deal,
the CAG has emerged as a super-court in
the absence of parliamentary scrutiny that
is thwarted by our squabbling lawmakers.
Parliamentary dysfunction has
emboldened non-elected institutions,
from the CAG to the Supreme Court, to
exercise authority beyond the brief
devised by the Constitution. It is saddening
that public, too, perceives these
institutions as above the lawmaker that it
elects. At the end of the day, the onus falls
on Parliament.
If the trust in the ability of formal
institutions to deliver justice is low, then
law of the street takes over. Then, there is
no governance, leave along good
governance.
The author is a seasoned
journalist. Currently, he is the
President of the
Commonwealth Journalists
Association.