Summary

Governance Class 01

SIGNIFICANCE OF GOVERNANCE (5:00 PM):

Governance forms a significant portion of the General Studies Paper 2.
Governance also overlaps with the General Studies Paper 4 Ethics.
Apart from exam relevance, power will be instrumental in being a good civil servant and citizen.

Administration:

"Administration" is derived from the Latin words Ad & Ministrare.
The literal meaning is " to serve" the interests of the concerned organization.
Administrators are those people who are expected to serve the interests of the objectives of the organization.
From the perspective of the government, administrators are expected to serve the interests of the country and its citizens.
They are expected to maximize the welfare of the people.
Both government officials and citizens are involved in the administration.
The efficiency and orientation of the administration are directly related to the development of the nation.

GOVERNANCE (5:30 PM):

The natural orientation of anything is to move towards Entropy- destruction.
Governance is an instrument that can help promote negative entropy- sustainability of civilizations for a longer period of time.
For example, there are many countries in the world that are poor and backward despite being rich in natural resources because of their inefficient governance system.
These countries are mainly in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa & South Asia.
At the same time, there are also other countries that have achieved rapid economic growth and development in a short period of time due to efficient administrative systems.
These countries are mainly in Western Europe, North America, etc. and Japan.
Governance is the process and the institutions through which decisions are made and authority in a country is exercised.
Governance is the method through which power is exercised in the management of a country's economic, social, and human resources so that they are utilized for development.
Governance is the exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country's affairs at all levels.
It comprises the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights, meet their obligations, and mitigate their differences.

Comparison between Indian and British Systems:

As Britain has a much older and more mature democratic system, we can see some evident differences.
It is customary that the British Prime Minister faces questioning in the parliament every day in the House of Commons.
British CAG is both the Comptroller and Auditor General in the true sense.
No money can be spent from the British Consolidated Fund without the authorization of the British CAG.
British CAG also audits all the expenditures done by the British Consolidated Fund.
In India, the CAG can only do post-mortem operations by auditing the expenditures done by the Consolidated Fund of India.
Indian CAG's authorization is not necessary for any expenditure out of the Consolidated Fund of India.

In simple terms, governance means making decisions and ensuring their effective implementation.

From a broader perspective, governance includes the following:

Creation of institutions like legislatures, executive, judiciary, civil services, local self-governance, and so on.
These institutions are expected to be related to the utilization of resources, including human, natural, financial, and technological resources.
Governance also includes effective implementation of these decisions because a developing country like India always faces a problem of scarcity of resources.
Optimum utilization of resources is a prerequisite for rapid economic development.

BAD GOVERNANCE (6:00 PM):

Some common/important indicators are :
I. Corruption.
II. Absence of Rule of Law.
III. Red Tapism.
IV. Absence of quality-service delivery mechanisms.
V. High levels of secrecy in government functions.
VI. Concentration of power at the top of the administrative system.
VII. Absence of accountability.
VIII. Absolute monopoly of the state over allocation of resources.
IX. Dictatorial decision-making process.
X. Complete absence of citizen participation in governance.
Citizen participation in representative democracies is only restricted to voting in elections.
XI. Inability to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence, like we are seeing in Manipur.
XII. Failure of regulatory authorities to prevent systematic corruption and crony capitalism.

Red Tapism:

Red Tapism refers to the inordinate delay in the functioning of government departments.
It is commonly seen that public officials in the garb of following rules, keep shifting responsibilities from one office to another.
This costs much time for both common people and industries.
Red tapism reduces both the public respect for government offices and the ease of doing business.

XIII. Delay in justice delivery.

World Bank:

World Bank (WB) provides developmental loans for poor and developing countries.
These loans have very low-interest rates and long repayment periods.
These loans are extended without collateral, only on the sovereign guarantee.
A sovereign guarantee can be understood as the goodwill any country enjoys.
The International Monetary Fund on the other hand gives only short-term loans for Balance Of Payment Crises.
IMF's assistance comes with many strict conditionalities.

GOOD GOVERNANCE (6:30 PM):

World Bank has very less options if the borrower country cannot pay back its loans.
But if the country wants to seek loans again from the World Bank, the World Bank can attach certain conditions.
These conditions are based on the Washingon Consensus, and the WB came up with the 8 features of Good Governance:
I. Transparency
II. Accountability.
III. Participation of Citizens.
IV. Consensus Oriented.
V. Rule of Law.
VI. Economy & Efficiency.
VII. Inclusiveness and Equity.
VIII. Responsiveness.

ORIGINS OF GOOD GOVERNANCE (7:00 PM):

After the Second World War, many countries gained independence.
Because of centuries of colonization, the economic conditions of these newly independent countries were critical.
For example- India was characterized by high levels of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, backwardness, absence of infrastructure and industrialization.
All such countries were in need of rapid economic growth and development.
It is a well-known fact that rapid growth and development are possible only with investment.
Two important multilateral institutions came up in the form of the WB and the IMF.
WB had come into existence to provide long-term financial assistance to member countries for industrialization and infrastructure development purposes.
Latin American, Sub-Saharan, and South Asian countries have taken loans from WB which had a gestation period of 30-40 years.
Since most of these countries went into the hands of dictators, the financial assistance was misused for their personal comfort.
By the 1980s, these countries failed to repay the loans.
Since it was a sovereign debt (loans given on the basis of the sovereignty of a nation without any collateral), WB could not recover it.
These countries demanded that fresh loans should be given to them so that they could repay the old debt.
WB had agreed to provide fresh loans but with certain conditionalities.
These conditionalities in the 1980s were popularly known as the Washington Consensus.
Countries were asked to cut down their fiscal deficits, devalue their currencies, open up their economies to the rest world( Globalization), privatize their loss-making PSUs(Privatization), and dismantle their excessive rules & regulations (Liberalization).
Within the political and administrative systems, they were asked to implement many governance reforms.
All these reforms combined together are popularly known as the concept of Good Governance.
Governance is a neutral term that talks about the process of making decisions and implementing them.
Good Governance is a qualitative term that emphasizes certain parameters and standards to be followed while making decisions and implementing them.
The objective of good governance is to maximize welfare for the maximum number of people and for the longest periods of time.
The WB has identified 8 important features of good governance.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. GS paper IV, 2015.

Approach:

The second part of the statement dealt with transparency, especially in the government system.
The answer must focus on the need for government transparency, and why government tries to avoid transparency.
We can mention acts like the Official Secrets Act of 1923.
We can focus on the RTI act, and ARC Report's opinion on transparency and RTI.
Second ARC refers to RTI as 'the master key to Good Governance
We must also explore the relationship between transparency and accountability.

TRANSPARENCY: (7:30 PM):

High levels of secrecy are one of the features of bad governance.
It can allow those who are in positions of power to indulge in corruption, nepotism & favoritism, and misuse of their authority.
WB has rightly identified that transparency in administration is necessary to realize good governance.
Transparency will create awareness among the citizens regarding the functioning of their governments.
It can ultimately lead to a demand for participation & accountability.
India passed the Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005 to ensure transparency in governance.

Accountability:

It means making the concerned person legally responsible for his actions.
India has inherited colonial administrative systems where the Britishers deliberately made sure that bureaucracy was not made accountable for its actions.
It gave scope for inefficiency and corruption.
As part of the rights-based approach to governance, many governance reforms have been implemented to ensure the accountability of the administrators.
They include the Citizen's Charter, E-Governance, Social-audit, etc.

Participation of Citizens:

In a democracy, citizen participation must not be restricted only to election times.
Citizens must be involved in governance processes through both inputs and feedback mechanisms.
Citizen participation nudges public officials and politicians to be transparent.

THE TOPIC FOR THE NEXT CLASS IS Continuation of the principle of good governance.