DNA India, Published : 18th Dec 2014
The significance of the State in nurturing participatory governance has been well acknowledged by the Constitution taking into view the positive aspects of governance such as creating effective legal, judicial and regulatory mechanisms, ensuring transparency, evolving market-friendly forms of State interventions. The concept of regulatory mechanism will pave the way for maximising governance with minimum government.
The ethos of ‘inclusive governance’ has gained prominence in the last two decades owing largely to the emergence of a stronger civil society that has pushed for greater transparency and accountability. The future challenges of the country can only be addressed by taking all dimensions into account, thus promoting the emergence of multiple stakeholders and multi-level governance. So far though the changes have been in an ad hoc manner and not been institutionalised within the public sector.
Amidst this backdrop, the 2014 election result clearly brought out the sentiments and aspirations of the Indian electorate, desiring economic growth and shunning poor governance. The resounding mandate and majority won by the BJP-led NDA government has lifted expectations of all economic stakeholders — the people, corporate and investors alike; to transform the economy and reform government’s approach to problem solving.
Managing expectations of a rising civil society will be as onerous a task as delivering on them. The first step in ensuring good governance is to bring consistency in the policies of central and state governments.
Planning Commission, the erstwhile technical advisory body of the central government responsible for policy formulation and coordination between central and state ministries, had little or no control over policy implementation. It is largely due to its powers to coordinate and implement policy based entirely on the assumption that states would cooperate with the central government. The way forward is to revamp the institutional mechanism based on the concept of cooperative federalism, where the central, state and local governments interact cooperatively and collectively to solve common problems, rather than making policies separately that are redundant and clashing. This can be achieved by reviving the Inter-State Council and National Development Council and dramatically enhancing the Centre-state relations to provide opportunity for a meaningful dialogue on all pending issues in a time-bound manner, thereby creating a ‘Team India’ approach to governance, economic growth and development.
Consensus is required in central fund allocations with steps towards decentralised governance and empowerment of local self-governments and also in key sectors like agriculture, mining, housing and construction.
National policy will need to evolve with acceptance from various state governments to break the current logjam in implementation and provide a kick-start to economic revival.
Another dimension of maximising governance should be to create a comprehensive legal framework guiding the systems and procedures of inclusive governance by removing a socially disaggregated information system, improving monitoring and evaluation system, greater coordination and harmonisation mechanism. Such new initiatives which espouse principles of trust and transparency will build a stronger culture of accountability between citizens and government. In my opinion, for realising a strong governance structure, a three-step decision-making process should be implemented – Information, Consultation and Dialogue.
In today’s society, acquisition of information and new knowledge and their applications have an intense and pervasive impact on governance processes. People who have access to information and understand how to make use of the acquired information for exercising their political, economic and legal rights are more empowered. Democratisation of information and knowledge resources are critical for people’s empowerment to realise the entitlements as well as to augment opportunities for enhancing the options for improving quality of life. The strengthening of the information regime is therefore sine qua non for promoting participative governance and right to development.
Consultative approach to governance should solicit the viewpoints of a broad cross-section of the society, including those communities and constituencies that have been historically excluded. The process should also involve frequent consultations with intellectuals and civil society, in order to develop a shared vision and greater ownership on key issues of governance.
Effective knowledge dissemination and consultative processes require a strong foundation of ICT-based (information communication technology) platforms that engage various stakeholders of the country. e-Governance as a tool for bridging governance gap has been adopted with varied levels of success by both the central and state governments in a wide spectrum of activities and involving re-engineering of bureaucratic processes. ‘My Gov’, the recent initiative of the Prime Minister is an innovative platform for citizen engagement and participation in governance, that has a far reaching impact if extended to every dimension of the decision-making processes.
Such efforts of inclusion and transparency will lead to improved governance which when coupled with simpler processes and deployment of technology will create a strong foundation for maximising governance processes in India.
Today the promotion and actions on inclusion are coming only from civil society and excluded citizens. A common consensus is required to bring together both the demand and supply side of governance with due involvement of both the central and state governments through institutions such as Inter-State Council and National Development Council. The people of India are looking forward to a strong federal democracy which leads the subcontinent, in order for it to take its rightful place as a global economic leader. The nation is not looking for doles and rights-based systems anymore; rather economic empowerment is the new political order.
-By Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO, YES Bank
Source – https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-soaring-expectations-2045171