GOOD GOVERNANCE IN INDIA

2021 DEC 28

Mains   > Governance   >   Aspects of Good Governance   >   Governance

IN NEWS:

  • Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah released the Good Governance Index 2021 prepared by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) on 25 December 2021.

GOOD GOVERNANCE:

  • Governance is the dynamic exercise of management power and policy, while government is the instrument that does it.
  • There is no single and exhaustive definition of “good governance,” nor is there a delimitation of its scope, that commands universal acceptance.
    • In the 1992 report entitled “Governance and Development”, the World Bank defines good governance as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development.”
    • Good governance means that processes and institutions which produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal and adhering to the rule of law.

PRINCIPLES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE:

1. Participation:

  • Participation by both men and women is a key cornerstone of good governance. Participation could be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives.
  • Participation needs to be informed and organized. This means freedom of association and expression on the one hand and an organized civil society on the other hand.

2. Rule of law:

  • Good governance requires fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. It also requires full protection of human rights, particularly those of minorities.
  • Impartial enforcement of laws requires an independent judiciary and an impartial and incorruptible police force.

3. Transparency:

  • Transparency means that decisions are taken, and their enforcement are done in a manner that follows rules and regulations.
  • It also means that enough information is available in easily understandable forms and directly accessible.

4. Responsiveness:

  • Good governance requires that institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe.

5. Consensus oriented:

  • Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on what is in the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved.

6. Equity and inclusiveness:

  • A society’s wellbeing depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society.
  • This requires all groups, but particularly the most vulnerable, have opportunities to improve or maintain their wellbeing.

7. Effectiveness and efficiency:

  • Good governance means that processes and institutions produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal.
  • The concept of efficiency in the context of good governance also covers the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment.

8. Accountability:

  • Not only governmental institutions but also the private sector and civil society organizations must be accountable to the public and to their institutional stakeholders.
  • Accountability cannot be enforced without transparency and the rule of law.

NEED FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE IN INDIA:

  • Promote inclusive development:
    • When all stakeholders feel able to rely upon government, it leads to stronger, longstanding relationships with their stakeholders. The benefits that can be reaped are numerous, such as peace and stability, attract economic investments, foster political participation and equitable sharing of the fruits of development.
  • Minimize wastage, risks, corruption and mismanagement:
    • Strong governance practices typically increase levels of transparency, trust and integrity which reduces opportunities for corruption and any source of mismanagement.
    • Eg: Digitization of Public distribution system has led to decline in diversion of food grains.
  • Enhances Sustainability: 
    • A public agency committed to good governance is able to evaluate the ongoing effectiveness of public officials or public bodies and resolve any systemic issues.
    • Eg: Mission Karmayogi to enhance the capacity of civil servants in India.
  • Enhance ease of doing business:
    • A country that is seen to be stable, reliable and able to mitigate potential risks is perceived as business friendly. Such a perception is a major attraction for investors into India. 
  • To respond efficiently to a changing external environment:
    • New technologies and cultural changes are introduced at a brisk pace. Only a responsive and adaptive government can suit this environment and promote inclusive development.
    • Eg: The new drone policy by government to regulate the use of drones.
  • Unity in diversity:
    • Good governance is essential to accommodate the views of the people in a country as diverse and culturally distinct as India. This in turn promotes participatory governance and cooperative federalism.
  • To ensure justice:
    • Good governance is essential to ensure that the gap between ‘haves' and ‘have-nots’ is reduced. Abiding to rule of law ensures that no one is inequitably benefited in a country.

GOOD GOVERNANCE INDEX:

  • GGI is a comprehensive and implementable framework to assess the state of governance across the States and UTs.
  • The objective of GGI is to create a tool that can be used uniformly across the States to assess the impact of various interventions taken up by the Governments.
  • It is released by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions.
  • The GGI 2019 encompassed 10 Governance Sectors and 50 Governance Indicators. For GGI 2020-21, the same 10 Governance Sectors are retained while indicators have been revised to 58.
    • Agriculture and Allied Sectors
    • Commerce & Industries
    • Human Resource Development
    • Public Health
    • Public Infrastructure & Utilities
    • Economic Governance
    • Social Welfare & Development
    • Judicial & Public Security
    • Environment,
    • Citizen-Centric Governance
  • Further, the GGI 2020-21 categorises States and UTs into four categories:
    1. Other States – Group A
    2. Other States – Group B
    3. North-East and Hill States
    4. Union Territories
  • Based on the GGI Framework, the Index provides a comparative picture among the States while developing a competitive spirit for improvement.

OTHER GOOD GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES IN INDIA:

1. 73rd and 74th Amendments:

  • Gave constitutional status to local self-governments in the country.
  • This was done to encourage people’s participation in governance and enhance the process of decentralization of power

2. Right to Information Act, 2005:

2ND ARC: RTI AS A MASTER KEY TO GOOD GOVERNANCE:

            The 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission identifies Right to Information as a master key to good governance. For ensuring the effectiveness of RTI, the commission makes some key recommendations:

  • Repeal the Official Secrets Act, 1923 and substitute it by a chapter in the National Security Act, containing provisions relating to official secrets.
  • Amend the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules to keep in line with the objectives of RTI Act.
  • Establish a National Coordination Committee (NCC) for effective monitoring.
  • Establish Public Records Offices as an independent authority to for record keeping.
  • Amend Section 123 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 which prohibits giving evidence derived from unpublished official records relating to affairs of State.
  • Remove the requirement oath of secrecy.  Ministers on assumption of office may take an oath of transparency along with the oath of office.
  • States may set up independent public grievances redressal authorities to deal with complaints of delay, harassment or corruption.
  • The Second Schedule, which deals with agencies exempted under the RTI, needs to be periodically revised to include or exclude organizations in keeping with changing need.

3. National e-Governance Plan (NeGP):

  • The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was formulated by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) in 2006.
  • The NeGP aims at improving delivery of Government services to citizens and businesses through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs.

4. Citizen Charter:

  • A Citizen Charter is a document that outlines the commitment of a public body towards standard, quality and timeframe of service delivery along with grievance redress mechanism.
  • Six principles of the Citizens’ Charter movement are:
  1. Quality: Improving the quality of services
  2. Choice: Wherever possible
  3. Standards: Specify what to expect and how to act if standards are not met
  4. Value: For the taxpayers’ money
  5. Accountability: Individuals and Organizations
  6. Transparency: Rules/ Procedures/ Schemes/Grievances
  • Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, coordinates the efforts to formulate and operationalize Citizens' Charters.

5. Sevottam Model:

  • It is a quality management framework applicable to public service delivery organisations, in all its departments. It provides a framework for organisations to assess and improve the quality of service delivery to citizens.
  • Its objectives are:
    • Successful implementation of Citizen’s Charters: It requires opening a channel for receiving citizens' inputs into the way in which organizations determine service delivery requirements.
    • Service Delivery Preparedness and achievement of Results: An organization can have an excellent performance in service delivery only if it is managing the key inputs for good service delivery well, and building its own capacity to continuously improve delivery. This shall include identification of services rendered, the service delivery process, its control and delivery requirements.
    • Sound Public Grievance Redress Mechanism: This requires a good grievance redress system operating in a manner that leaves the citizen more satisfied with how the organization responds to complaints/grievances, irrespective of the final decision.
  • There are seven basic steps for implementation of Sevottam:
  1. Define your services and identify your clients
  2. Set standards and norms for each service
  3. Develop capability to meet the set standards
  4. Perform to achieve the standards
  5. Monitor performance against the set standards
  6. Evaluate impact through an independent mechanism
  7. Continuous improvement based on monitoring and evaluation

5. Social audits:

  • Social auditing is a process by which an organization / government accounts for its social performance to its stakeholders and seeks to improve its performance.
  • Social audit focuses on the neglected issue of social impacts, while a development audit has a broader focus including environment and economic issues, such as the efficiency of a project or programme.
  • The 73rd Amendment of the Constitution empowered the Gram Sabhas to conduct Social Audits. It has also been made an integral part of MGNREGA scheme since 2011.
  • Recently, Meghalaya became first state to operationalize a law that makes social audit of government programmes and schemes a part of government practice.

6. Direct Benefit Transfer:

  • DBT is used to directly transfer the benefits of various government schemes. Eg: PAHAL scheme which transfers LPG subsidy to the consumer’s bank account. 

7. ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’:

  • It means a citizen friendly and accountable administration. It is done by simplification of procedures, identification and repeal of obsolete/archaic laws/rules, identification and shortening of various forms, leveraging technology to bring in transparency in public interface and a robust public grievance redress system.

8. UMANG App:

  • Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) mobile app allows citizens to access government services on a single platform.
  • The services live on the app include Aadhaar, DigiLocker, Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) among others.
  • The app is developed and operated by National e-Governance Division of MeitY.

9. Centralized Public Grievances Redress And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS):

  • It is an online web-enabled system developed by NIC in association with the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) with an objective of speedy redress and effective monitoring of grievances by Ministries/Departments/Organizations of Government of India.
  • CPGRAMS aims at capturing the real time workflow and interaction among all the participant users.

10. MyGov Portal:

  • It is citizen engagement platform launched by Central Government in 2014 to promote active participation of citizens in country’s governance and development.
  • Its objective is to create common platform for Indian citizens to crowdsource governance ideas from citizens. It allows users (citizens) to discuss and contribute on various government projects and plans.
  • It is hosted and managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC)

11. PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation):

  • It is a multi-purpose and multi-modal platform aimed at addressing grievances of common man.
  • It also aims at simultaneously monitoring and reviewing important Union government programmes and projects as well as projects flagged by State Governments
  • It is designed by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) team with the help of National Informatics Center (NIC)

12. Judicial Reforms:

  • Pro-bono legal services: It is a web-based platform through which the interested lawyers can register themselves to volunteer services for litigants who are unable to afford it. Supreme Court has recently released the guidelines, which says that a lawyer should have fought a certain number of cases pro bono (free of cost) in order to be designated as a senior lawyer.
  • Tele-law service: It is aimed at facilitating delivery of legal advice through an expert panel of lawyers stationed at the State Legal Services Authorities (SLSA). The project would connect lawyers with clients through video conferencing facilities at CSCs.
  • Nyaya Mitra: It is aimed at reducing pendency of cases across selected districts, with special focus on those pending for more than 10 years.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS OF ARC:

For Elections:

  • Introduce partial state funding to reduce the scope of illegitimate and unnecessary funding for elections.
  • Amend Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to disqualify all persons facing charges related to grave and heinous offences and corruption.
  • Establish a collegium system to make recommendations to the President on appointment of Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners.
  • Constitute Special Election Tribunals to ensure speedy disposal of election petitions and disputes within a stipulated period.

For Executive:

  • Create a Code of Ethics for Ministers.
  • Dedicated units should be set up in the offices of the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers to monitor the observance of the Code of Ethics and the Code of Conduct.

For legislature:

  • Create an office of ‘Ethics Commissioner’ for each House of Parliament.
  • President/Governor should be made the deciding authority in cases of disqualification of members on grounds of defection.
  • A new Section 75A (the Representation of the People (Third Amendment) Act, 2002), has been inserted which stipulates that

For Judiciary:

  • Establish a National Judicial Council to overview judicial appointments, lay down the Code of Conduct for judges and make recommendations to the President on matters of removal of a judge.

For Civil Servants:

  • Conflict of interest should be comprehensively covered in the Code of Ethics and in the Code of Conduct for officers.
  • Serving officials should not be nominated on the Boards of Public undertakings

CHALLENGES TO GOOD GOVERNANCE IN INDIA:

  • Corruption:
    • In the 2020 Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, India was ranked 86th among 180 countries. The high level of corruption in India is a major obstacle in improving the quality of governance.
  • Delay in Justice:
    • Nearly 3 Crore cases are pending in our courts. Prosecution rate is very low and most of time it is poor who are prosecuted, since rich manage to escape through better legal services or through loopholes in legal system.
  • Centralization of Administrative system:
    • Governments at lower levels remain underutilized. For instance, Panchayati Raj Institutions suffer from inadequate devolution of funds as well as functionaries to carry out the functions constitutionally assigned to them.
  • Criminalization of Politics:
    • According to the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), as many as 233 MPs or 43% of MPs in the present Lok sabha have criminal charges against them. The criminalization of the political process is having a baneful influence on public policy formulation and governance.
  • Empowerment of weaker sections:
    • The socially and economically backward sections of the society continue to be marginalized in the process of development.
    • Eg: Dalits and tribals are the worst affected by India’s hunger crisis, while the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on Indian women.
  • Growing incidence of violence:
    • Resort to illegal force has been on the rise in India. Strikes, riots, insurgency and terror attacks are examples of this harmful culture of violence. There are also instances of increasing use of stringent laws such as AFSPA and UAPA by governments.
  • Environment vs. development:
    • India is facing the twin challenge of encouraging development at a brisk pace while at the same time ensure environmental sustainability.
  • Pandemic induced challenges:
    • The pandemic has left a severe mark on the Indian economy, especially on the MSMEs. Without the revival of the economy, attaining the goals of good governance will remain incomplete.   

CASE STUDY: Andhra Pradesh using Blockchain technology

  • Andhra Pradesh is in the process of adopting blockchain to prevent tampering of land records. 
  • Blockchain technology is relied upon to prevent tampering of land records, which had already been digitised and placed online.
  • Similarly, the technology is used in Transport Department to streamline titles of the vehicles.

CASE STUDY: Good Governance through e-governance: ‘BHOOMI’

  • The 'Bhoomi' project was undertaken and developed by the State Government of Karnataka, to computerize all the records of the land in Karnataka. It also developed a software mechanism to control changes to the land registry in Karnataka.
  • The project was designed to eliminate the long-standing problem of inefficiency and corruption in the maintenance of land records at dispersed and poorly supervised and audited block-level offices known as "taluka" offices in South India and "tehsildar" offices in North India.
  • The successful implementation of Computerisation of land records under the software Bhoomi has made the Government of India to replicate the same in other states, like Mee Bhoomi in Andhra Pradesh, E-Dhar in Gujarat, Bhu-Abhilekh in Bihar, HALRIS in Haryana and Him-Bhoomi in Himachal Pradesh.

CASE STUDY: Project Akshaya, Kerala

  • Kerala is the first State in India to take initiative for the mass transformation of ICT by the implementation of district-wide e-literacy project ‘AKSHAYA’ in 2002, with an intention of ‘Empowering Kerala’.
  • Kerala has chosen Akshaya centers as a one stop service delivery gateway. The major citizen centric services available through Akshaya centers are banking, Revenue Department Certificate Services, Right to Information (RTI) Services, Public Grievance Services, Payment Services and Motor Vehicle Department

CASE STUDY: Rajasthan Sampark                    

  • Dedicated online platform which provides citizens with a centralized platform to lodge their grievances to the respective departments. The services are free of cost.
  • It primarily consists of a state level call center with integrated web portal where citizens can contact to enquire about their queries and file grievances. It has also developed a Smartphone app.

CASE STUDY: MGNREGS social audit lessons from Andhra Pradesh

  • Despite the mandatory provision in the MGNREGA, Andhra Pradesh (now Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) is the only state government that has conducted social audits regularly and at scale.
  • The state has established an independent and autonomous body under the name of ‘Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency’ (SSAAT) which is responsible for facilitating conduct of social audit by the rural poor. These social audit units have organised regular social audits on NREGA since 2008.
  • The model has been a success, as it has unearthed misappropriations in the tune of several crores of rupees and initiated action against thousands of corrupt officials.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Q. Discuss the key principles of good governance. How does the Good governance Index help in attaining the objectives of good governance?

Q. “Good governance dictates the design and shape of e-tools for improving governance outcomes and processes”. Discuss with suitable examples?

 

 

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