District Level Good Governance Index

 The Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory is to get a district – level Good Governance Index. The index is modelled on Good Governance Index 2021.

What is District Good Governance Index?

The index will assess the governance in different districts of Jammu and Kashmir. It is to be calculated considering 58 indicators in ten different sectors. The Centre for Good Governance (CGG) provided the technical support to create the framework of the index. The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) is to prepare the index.

What is the plan?

The index is to be calculated based on the performance of the districts in 10 sectors such as citizen centric governance, public safety and judiciary, welfare and development, economic governance, public infrastructure and utilities, public health, human resource development, commerce and industry and agriculture and allied sector.

Significance

The index will help Jammu and Kashmir increase its district governance to the level of other best administered districts in the country. The next step is to take good governance to block levels and tehsil levels. The index aims to change the work culture in government organizations. It will help the Union Territory march towards “Maximum governance and minimum government”. Also, the index will help in time bound disposal of office files, Increased citizen participation, increased accountability and transparency.

Key Points on District Good Governance Index

It was first announced at the regional conference organised by DARPG (Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances) in Uttar Pradesh. The DARPG operates under the Ministry of Personnel, public grievances and pension. It is the nodal agency for administrative reforms and public grievance redressal.

Good Governance Index

It was released by DARPG on Good Governance Day (December 25). Gujarat topped the ranking and was followed by Maharashtra and Goa. It is essential to release these indices in order to assess the governance in the state.

Use technology to improve governance

 

NITI Aayog released a discussion paper earlier this year, in which it identified use-cases where the technology can potentially improve governance ranging from tracing of drugs in the pharmaceutical supply chain to verification of education certificates.

A memorable quote paraphrased from the Arthashastra by Kautilya goes: “It is as difficult to prevent a government servant from corruption as to prevent a fish from drinking water.”

This suggests that corruption is not a new phenomenon.The East India Company is known to have struggled to keep corruption in check. In fact, the problem of corruption in the social and political spheres has often come in for strident criticism.This issue has triggered several measures aimed at enhancing integrity in public life – the enactment of the Public Procurement Bill, Lokpal Act incorporating, inter alia, the disclosure of assets by public servants and reforms in higher judicial appointments to name a few. While there are divergent positions in terms of strategies and focus areas, the one point of convergence is the unanimous acceptance that technology and e-governance promotes greater transparency.

It has been five years since the adoption of the United Nation (UN)’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) by India and other member states. It can be argued that corruption in public life, directly or indirectly, adversely affects the achievement of all 17 SDGs. A proactive and preventive vigilance regime is critical to the realisation of these SDGs.

Governments are expectedly risk-averse in dealing with both public policies and public money while enterprises thrive on risk-taking. This often hobbles the entrepreneurial spirit in the public sector. How do we make governance more effective without inhibiting its objectives? Today, administrative affairs grapple with leakages in public delivery of welfare and development goals on account one critical problem— manual processes that can be very easily manipulated. These are often so complex and laborious that even a well-intentioned public servant is, on occasion, chary of implementing beneficial decisions. Technology can cut through much of these daunting processes.

In the recent discourse on procurement methods, transparency of policy, procedure and practices is increasingly being seen as an imperative when utilising public money.However, transparency is not an end in itself. The whole process must be open to public scrutiny. The transparency of procedure as seen in online applications is one of the simple yet effective features of digitisation, as it shifts the onus of submitting correct information and data to the applicant.

In an effort to plug leakages in procurement systems, the government launched the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) in 2016 for goods and services required by central and state governments, and public sector undertakings. This not only made it simpler to procure goods and services but also significantly impacted cost savings. An assessment by the Centre for Public Impact showed that the savings from the implementation of GeM has been substantial. The price reduction of approximately 56% of goods and services coupled with demand aggregation has led to savings of ₹40,000 crores annually.

Given the fact that the public procurement economy in India constitutes about 20% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it is imperative to build on this initiative with a view to onboard as many goods and services as possible.In the next decade, the business of government is going to experience massive disruptions. This comes on the back of technological enhancements that reduce the need for intermediaries and ensure that the sanctity of process remains unimpeachable. One such technology is blockchain. NITI Aayog released a discussion paper earlier this year, in which it identified use-cases where the technology can potentially improve governance ranging from tracing of drugs in the pharmaceutical supply chain to verification of education certificates. The three key principles of blockchain technology are transparency, decentralisation and accountability.

One of the most productive areas of intervention for this technology would be in land records. A vast developing country like India, with its diverse land tenure systems, is bound to have major problems in this area. The system is riddled with inefficiencies that reduce trust in the government. Currently the United Nations Development Programme is involved in Proof of Concept (POC) pilots across India. This is to create an immutable history of transactional records that helps in checking authenticity; create a tamper-proof system to avoid forgery; create a distributed ledger so that all stakeholders see the same information and set up a secure encrypted environment, where updates are available in near real time. The NITI Aayog paper notes that, in order to ensure that transactions are not fraudulent, the physical presence of witnesses is mandated at the time of sales deed registry. Deployment of blockchain would potentially eliminate the need of these processes while maintaining the sanctity of the transaction.This has several spin-off benefits. It helps create a tamper-proof audit trail that allows for tracking decision-making and ensures that such decisions are in accordance with anti-corruption principles. It addresses concerns around cyber security that come with any effort towards digitisation. Currently there are interesting pilots being conducted across the world, where deployment of blockchain is being tested for public procurement.

From the perspective of Internal Controls and Governance (Vigilance), it is strongly recommended to employ a five-part test while assessing such deviations from process: One, whether the issue being pursued has corruption connotations; two, the general reputation of the employee involved; three, whether better options were available and ignored without valid reasoning; four, whether the situation inhibited the selection of any other option but the one finally chosen; and, five, whether the larger interest of the organisation was safeguarded.However, a significant factor in blockchain’s success will be the ability to develop/reform laws and building robust data protection and maintenance regimes. Until such time, blockchain is not likely to have a significant impact in creating an integrity-first governance ecosystem.

The general environment now is in favour of a regime which ensures that companies not only do profitable business but do so in an ethical manner. The United Nations Convention against Corruption ratified by India in 2011 as well as the anti-corruption principles of the the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) cover a wide swathe of vulnerable areas and aspects of business operations including anti-bribery, public procurement and conflict of interest. Going forward, more countries will be obliged to establish laws and mechanisms to ensure clean business operations.India needs to review its existing legal frameworks to address issues around, inter alia, data security, corrupt practices and corporate governance with a view to address anti-corruption objectives. The government made a significant change to the Prevention of Corruption Act in 2018. In the earlier regime, even honest public officials were harassed if a decision provided pecuniary advantage to a person without any public interest. Now the element of intention has been added under the definition of criminal misconduct. Similarly, broadening the definition of “unfair advantage” and the introduction of corporate criminal liability will go a long way in apprehending or deterring those indulging in bribery.

While these amendments will help guide the work of internal control agencies, it is important to institutionalise a system where compliance and established processes can be routinely checked and quantified. A metrics-based system for oversight in governmental processes will bring about transparency, build trust with citizens and spur further digital innovation to make any administration more robust.We must also focus on the well-intentioned public servant who finds the processes leading to greater transparency and ensuring value for taxpayers’ money cumbersome and who is, therefore, tempted to short-circuit these. Well-intentioned though she may be, any attempt to overwrite the processes despite even demonstrable honesty of purpose, carries the major risk of opening the system to misuse by dishonest players and will lead to the loss of public trust and decimation of the structure of public procurement. It is only through robust yet streamlined procedures that a bureaucrat can achieve the intended outcome and avoid unintended consequences.

Rajesh Ranjan

Rajesh Ranjan is an Indian Police Service officer

Source: Hindustan Times, 9/10/20

Why government must hire more

We expect that civil servants must be competent, yet instinctively recoil from paying them well.

Of course implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendations will have a fiscal impact. Even if this works out to an additional 0.65 per cent of GDP — and the odds are that the estimate will prove to be understated — it would be a mistake to begrudge civil servants and pensioners the additional money.

Now, public opinion anywhere in the world has no obligation to be logically consistent and India is no exception. We think the government must deliver public services, despite us knowing that it is bad at doing this. We expect that the procedures must be carried out by-the-book, but we still engage those “consultants” and hangers-on near the regional transport office and the sub-registrar’s office.

An index of our attitudes

It is no wonder then that our attitudes towards remuneration, of public officials, is self-contradictory. We expect that civil servants must be competent, yet instinctively recoil from paying them well. This attitude extends towards elected representatives too. Once on a television show, former Union Minister and Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar responded to my argument for realistic pay packages for Members of Parliament by saying that they should be paid the Rs.500 that was set during Mahatma Gandhi’s time. Similarly, there are many people who scrutinise the accounts of non-government organisations and express shock that their staff are paid “that much”. A direct consequence of this logically inconsistent attitude is that politicians who are honest have trouble maintaining themselves and their offices, civil servants yield easily to temptation and non-profits find it hard to recruit good talent.

Nitin Pai

Unfortunately, there are hardly any individuals of sufficient public standing to make out the unpopular case for paying public officials well. Clearly, not all politicians and civil servants will be completely honest, but at the margin, having a higher pay can help reduce corruption. In any system, bad people do bad things and good people do good things. The system works when the balance is in favour of the good. Better pay and social prestige can, at the very least, prevent those who are good from leaving for greener, cleaner pastures. Since there is no way of isolating the good people and paying them better, it becomes necessary to pay everyone better.

Widening governance gap

In any country, the economy and society are usually ahead of the government, which causes a governance gap to emerge. In India, this gap is wide and growing. The only way to narrow it is by increasing the quality and, yes, the quantity of public officials. We do need to minimise government to maximise governance, but that refers to the scope of what the government does; not how many people the government employs.

Despite the perception that our government is overstaffed, the reality is that India has very low numbers of civil servants who are necessary to carry out the basic functions of government. The Seventh Pay Commission refers to this in its report, noting that in the United States, the federal government has 668 employees per 1,00,000 population. In comparison, the Union government employs 139. This is not even considering the fact that under India’s constitutional structure, the Union government has a bigger charter than its American counterpart.

India has one of the lowest ratios of government employees to population in the world. In a World Bank study in the late 1990s, Salvatore Schiavo-Campo, Giulio de Tommaso and Amitabha Mukherjee found that less than 1.5 per cent of India’s population was employed in government, which was behind countries such as Malaysia and Sri Lanka (4.5 per cent) and China (around 3 per cent). In fact, government employment ratios in the rich and better governed West are much higher: around 15 per cent in Scandinavian countries and 6-8 per cent in the U.S. and western Europe.

It turns out that richer countries have more government employees when compared to the poorer ones. In trying to explain why this might be so, the legal scholar, Richard Posner, posits that “[perhaps] the relation between a nation’s economy and the percentage of its public workers is determined by a political and social culture that determines what tasks are assigned to government, what incentives and constraints are placed on public workers, and who is attracted to public service. Maybe, with the right combination, public service can be as economically productive as private enterprise.”

Anyone who finds too much traffic and too few traffic policemen; too many foreign policy issues and too few diplomats; too much garbage and too few city officials; too many stray pigs and too few pig catchers (there is only one in entire Bengaluru) will attest to the fact that we actually do need more public officials. The shortage of officials is something that runs through the Union, State and local governments. In the Union government alone, the Seventh Pay Commission reports, there is an overall vacancy of around 18 per cent. It is unable to fill even the sanctioned strength, leave alone raising the numbers to levels adequate to deliver adequate baseline governance.

So, if we are concerned about improving governance, we should be really concerned about how to add strength to the machinery of the government. When you have only around 130 police personnel and 1.2 judges per 1,00,000 population, and you need at least 200 of the former and 10 of the latter, asking whether they are being overpaid misses the point.

Will better pay, perks and pensions be enough? By no means.

Restructuring the bureaucracy

In all the debate over the Pay Commission’s recommendations, what you do not hear is the need to implement the recommendations of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), another commission that submitted a series of reports to the Union government through 2009. By no means radical, it still offers several concrete proposals on restructuring the bureaucracy. The civil service will resist change, but it is up to the political leadership to insist that the Pay Commission and the Administrative Reforms Commission are two sides of the same coin. With better remuneration, there is an accompanying need to modernise government machinery. Unfortunately, the United Progressive Alliance government went cold on this. The Narendra Modi government would do well to use the opportunity created by the Pay Commission to implement the recommendations of the Reforms Commission.

Restructuring the bureaucracy involves, as Posner argues, a review of what government employees do, what incentives they face and what type of people are attracted to the job. Many regulators believe their job is to limit the industries they regulate. Unless they are given a new song sheet that explicitly changes their mandate to ensure competition and fair play, they will continue their old ways. Given his comments on the railways, Mr. Modi does not appear to believe in getting the government out of business. That still leaves room for corporatisation and also freeing ownership from direct management of businesses by civil servants. Every civil servant running a business is a civil servant taken away from policymaking and governance.

Today, except for a few departments, we neither appoint nor promote civil servants based on their performance. There are many other criteria — from preventing nepotism to promoting social justice — but the Indian government is perhaps the only organisation in the country where “doing the job well” ranks as being relatively unimportant to one’s career prospects. Contrast this with the humble tea stall, where the proprietor is first concerned about the integrity and competence of his employees. An edifice constructed on badly designed incentives cannot be expected to deliver the desired outcomes. Implementing the Administrative Reforms Commission report is the first step in bringing about change of this nature.

Expect the next weeks and months to be consumed by debates on “edges”, panels, allowances and pensions that the various civil, paramilitary and military services get. There will be a lot of heartburn, jealousy, genuine grievances and ill-will. These are the inevitable result of an unreformed bureaucracy, but of little consequence to the larger public interest.

What the Modi government should do is announce that, henceforth, India will have a combined pay and administrative reforms commission, reflecting a new mindset. One that is ready to pay its public officials well, increase their numbers, invest in building competency, and, in the same breath, restructure government machinery to remain current with the times. That would do wonders for minimum government, maximum governance.

(Nitin Pai is director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent think tank and school of public policy.)

Keywords: Seventh Pay Commission, GDP, government employees

Source: The Hindu, 01-12-2015

An unjustified pay hike

As we brace for another series of Pay Commission-mandated salary hikes, the question is if it is the best use of government resources.

As public servants get ready to enjoy the New Year’s blessing that the Seventh Pay Commission is expected to bestow, it may be a time for the rest of us to look this gift horse in the mouth. The Fourteenth Finance Commission estimates the cost of the Sixth Pay Commission at over Rs. 90,000 crore annually, since pay and allowances of Union government employees more than doubled between 2007-08 and 2011-12. Compare this to the estimates in the economic survey for the year 2011-12, about Rs. 70,000 crore each for food subsidy, fertilizer and petroleum subsidy and less than Rs. 40,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Simply put, the additional Central government expenditure due to the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission was over 40 per cent of the major subsidies. If we take into account the costs to the State governments, the tab for Sixth Pay Commission largesse is probably equivalent to all the subsidies provided by the Central government.

Sonalde Desai

As we brace for another Pay Commission-mandated salary hike, the question to ask is not whether the government can afford it but if it is the best use of government resources. Government employees receive Dearness Allowance (DA) annually to compensate for inflation; they also receive an annual performance appraisal for promotions, which brings with it salary increases. So the decadal salary increases under the Central Pay Commission (CPC) are meant to address inequities in salaries across different parts of the government, across ranks as well as between the public sector and private sector. It is the latter that has provided the greatest justification for salary increases granted under CPC in the past.

False premise

Dizzying salary packages reported for new Indian Institute of Management graduates or Indian Institute of Technology graduates funnel a sense of discontent among public sector employees since it is hard to imagine any 25-year-old government servant receiving a package of Rs. 40 lakh per annum. This smoke and mirrors strategy masks several observations made by the Sixth Pay Commission. First, it noted that the contention of vast disparities between private sector and government employees was not borne out by data. The CPC found that compensation to Group C and D employees in government was higher than that in the private sector; for Group B it was similar and only for Group A was it lower. Group A employees form less than 5 per cent of the total Central government workforce; Group C and D are about 90 per cent. Second, it noted that a government job offers many other benefits not available in the private sector and the fear of flight away from public service towards the private sector is overblown.

“The Fourteenth Finance Commission estimates the cost of the Sixth Pay Commission at over Rs. 90,000 crore annually.”

In spite of these observations, the ultimate recommendations of the Sixth CPC led to substantial increases in the salary and allowance of all public servants, first in the Central service and later on in State governments. A comparison of incomes between private sector employees and government employees using data from India Human Development Surveys (IHDS) of 2004-05 and 2011-12 is instructive in understanding the consequences of the last CPC. These surveys of over 40,000 households were jointly organised by the National Council of Applied Economic Research and the University of Maryland. The graphic shows monthly salaries for men aged 25-59 in 2011-12. Many women work part time as anganwadi workers and ASHA workers and hence are excluded from this comparison, but their inclusion will not change the fundamental results.

The results show that at every single level of education, government workers are paid more than private sector workers and more importantly, the public service advantage has increased rather than decreased after the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. A driver in government service earns far more than one in private service, but so does an engineer. This comparison does not include the other benefits government service provides including PF contributions, housing benefits, health insurance and, frequently, admission of children to coveted Kendriya Vidyalayas.

One might say that the problem is not global but is concentrated in highly skilled positions. Individuals who are highly skilled may be more likely to choose the private sector. Here only the Union Public Service Commission can tell us if the qualification of the entering cohort of the Indian Administrative Service officers is declining, but at a slightly lower stratospheric level, we see no such evidence. The IHDS shows that among college graduates with a first class degree, government service still seems to be preferred. In 2004-05, among the male college graduates employed in public service, 37 per cent had a first division; this proportion had increased to 39 per cent by 2011-12. This is not to say that skill upgradation is not taking place in the private sector, where the proportion of first class degree holders among graduates has increased from 28 per cent to 35 per cent, but these figures do not suggest that government services are suffering on an average; just that the more qualified individuals are seeking salaried work and moving away from farming and small businesses benefitting both government service and the private sector.

“One might say that the problem is not global but is concentrated in highly skilled positions.”

That salary increases will be bestowed by the Seventh CPC is a given. Whether it will address the real challenge, lower wages for Group A officers compared to the private sector, and recognise the public service advantage for the rest of the employees remains questionable. Let us hope that the Seventh CPC will address the challenge of government salaries with a scalpel rather than an axe.

(Sonalde Desai is senior fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research and Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland. Views are personal.)

Keywords: Seventh Pay Commission, Sixth Pay Commission, government employees

Source: The Hindu, 30-10-2015

IAS trainees to put in 3 months at Centre before big district postings

Sobhana K Nair in New Delhi mirrorfeedback TWEET @MumbaiMirror

New Delhi





In a change from the established norm, freshly-minted IAS officers will have to first work for three months in overcrowded Union ministries as assistant secretaries, instead of being posted across the country as district collectors after completing their introductory training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Musoorie.This latest order from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) says IAS officers from a fresh batch need a `holistic overview of the functioning of the central government', and they will be attached to joint and additional secretaries who will mentor them.
The new batch of 180 officers is expected to start their three-month stint in central government departments from August 22. Sources said PM Narendra Modi felt that IAS trainees were given too much power and space all of a sudden and space in district postings.
“Central government experience at an early stage would equip the officer with greater knowledge of policy formulation, an appreciation of the country's diversity and result ant challenges, and exposure to the best practices from different parts of the country,“ a letter by DOPT secretary Sanjay Kothari to all chief secre taries reads.
The DoPT order, though, hasn't gone down too well with the young IAS officers. “It would be a total waste of time. We will be spending time in the company of central civil service officers of desk officer and under-secretary rank. We are not going to learn anything. Rather, we will miss out on field experience,“ a trainee IAS officer, who declined to be named, said.
The trainee officers, who were expecting generous accommodation in the districts they would have normally been posted in, are not upbeat about having to live in state guest houses in Delhi. The government is not willing to give them space in the Lutyen's Zone as well.
“The proposal has originated from the Prime Minister's Office. It was suggested that the training period at the Centre should be for a year. Later, it was reduced to three months,“ a senior DOPT official said.
“I think it is a good move. Young officers will get a top-down view and learn about Centre-State relationships. More importantly, it will help them in not getting carried away,“ said former Delhi chief secretary Shailaja Chandra.
The DOPT is awaiting a reply from the state governments, a few of whom have expressed displeasure at losing their new officers.

Why everyone loves ‘good governance’

Democracy without politics and citizenship without rights are the twin pillars of ‘good governance’.

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’. We are the only country in the world that officially celebrates Christmas as ‘Good Governance Day’. Nobody speaks of the need for a good government anymore – only good governance.

Behind this mass enthusiasm for the virtues of ‘good governance’ is none other than the prime minister himself. His own website says so: “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.”

While the degree to which adolescents obsess about good governance may be a matter of debate, there is no doubt that it occupies pride of place in the publicity spiels of theModi regime — so much so that it’s now a truism that the Modi mandate of the 2014 polls is “a mandate for good governance” (http://tinyurl.com/pwyotg2)

But what exactly does ‘good governance’ mean? According to Mr. Modi, “good governance is putting people at the centre of the development process”.

Well, if that is what it is, then some obvious questions pop up, such as: Is it good governance to eliminate the need for people’s consent in land acquisition, as the NDA’s land bill amendments want to do?

Mr. Modi has also said that good governance must be ‘pro-people’ and ‘pro-active’. If so, then is pro-actively cutting public expenditure on health and education, as has been done in this year’s budget, good governance? Or, for that matter, is the dilution of the rights of industrial workers, which is what the proposed labour reforms seek to do, good governance?

The short answer to all these questions is a resounding yes. For the long answer, we need to visit the history of the concept of governance itself, and how it has come to occupy such a central place in development discourse.

A brief history of ‘governance’

The term ‘governance’ was first used — in the sense in which it is deployed today — by the World Bank in a 1989 report on African economies. Trying to account for the failure of its Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the World Bank put the blame on a “crisis of governance.”

But ‘crisis of governance’ doesn’t convey much unless one defines ‘governance’. The World Bank initially defined it simply as “the exercise of political power to manage a nation’s affairs”. This early definition is quite indicative of the animating logic and future discursive career of governance: it is silent on the legitimacy or otherwise of the political power in question. So whether the Bank’s client was a democracy or a dictatorship didn’t matter. What mattered for governance is that efficient management must trump politics. Efficient management, just to be clear, means the withdrawal of the state in favour of the market.

Over the years, the World Bank expanded its ‘governance’ model to include elements of a liberal democracy, such as a legal framework for enforcement of contracts, accountability, etc. At the same time, it brokered a marriage between governance and development. Nations deemed to be in need of ‘development’ could now be told that the only way to get ‘development’ is through ‘governance’ — that is, by embracing the free market.

But for this, it was necessary to first create a demand for good governance. That meant identifying the markers of ‘bad governance’. Unfortunately, what constitutes ‘bad governance’ in the neo-liberal text book — an activist state trying to even out socio-economic disparities through distributive justice — is rather popular among the masses, especially the poor. In an electoral democracy, a direct attack on welfare was never going to resonate beyond the rich and middle-classes, as successive governments in India have found to their cost.

Corruption and governance

Enter corruption, the godfather of good governance. ‘Corruption’ is not an ahistorical, value-neutral descriptor. Even in the short span of India’s post-independence history, it has been deployed in different ways in the service of different political agendas. Matthew Jenkins, a historian of corruption, has written about how, for instance, in 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. As Jenkins puts it, Narayan “viewed the capitalist system itself as corrupt”. He cites Narayan’s famous quote that “wealth cannot be amassed except by exploitation.” But the anti-corruption discourse that grew around the Hazare movement did not share Narayan’s reservations about the corrupting influences of the profit motive. Corruption as a morally charged idea had disappeared altogether. What replaced it was a narrow, technical idea of corruption as bribery, which went well with the economistic notion of man as a rational agent who responds to incentives.

Overnight, the entire political class, the bureaucracy, and social infrastructure (such as the public distribution system, for instance), began to be deemed as hotbeds of corruption and held solely responsible for the state’s failures to deliver the benefits of economic growth. Conversely, any government engaged in the delivery of socially critical economic goods was held to be offering incentives for corruption.

In other words, it is not neo-liberal economic polices but corruption that is to blame for the benefits of economic growth not trickling down — or not trickling down enough — to the masses.

Now that corruption had been identified as the biggest hurdle to economic development, the stage was set for its antidote: good governance. This trajectory – 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 it is by no means unique to India. As Jenkins points out, the “international anti-corruption consensus” has been a powerful vehicle for manoeuvring recalcitrant nations onto the neo-liberal track.

With the UPA II regime showing no signs of progress on the second wave of economic reforms, the demon of corruption was summoned to boot it out. And in its place, we now have the NDA, which is good governance incarnate, and invested with the mandate to roll out the next phase of reforms that its predecessor could not.

Elements of good governance

So, what’s definitely out is welfare expenditure, for not only is it a bad idea economically, it also represents what everyone hates – corruption. Also out is political interference in policy-making – which can lead to distortions to please vote banks. Major policy measures shall be decided by unelected experts, who don’t have to worry about winning the next election.

What’s in are accountability, transparency, empowerment, and citizen participation – all of which are key elements of Mr. Modi’s ‘good governance’ agenda. On the face of it, these don’t seem like bad ideas. But like development, they all have a dual meaning – one in the context of social transformation, another in the neo-liberal vision of good governance.

So if we take, for instance, accountability, good governance doesn’t mean accountability to the people – it is about accountability to business and to investors, who are risking their money with expectations in return.

Similarly, transparency doesn’t necessarily mean that the state should render its decision-making transparent to its citizens — if that were the case, a regime going gaga over good governance wouldn’t have kept the post of Chief Information Commissioner vacant for nine months. Again, the transparency in question 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).

As for empowerment, the good governance version of it, which imagines the state giving power to the disempowered, say, through technology (e-governance, m-governance), is a cruel joke on the original meaning of the term.

In human history, there has never been an instance of a powerful political group voluntarily giving up its power. Which is why real empowerment is always an outcome of political confrontation and struggle – the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and all other rights-based movements are examples of attempts to empower people through the institution of legally enforceable rights. The good governance model of empowerment is allergic to any rights-based empowerment. It conceives of empowerment in individualistic-consumerist rather than collective terms. It offers little scope, for instance, to remedy the social disempowerment caused by caste.

Finally, we come to citizen participation. In social movements, citizenship was a powerful tool for obtaining political and economic rights for the marginalised, such as refugees, or the displaced. But in the good governance model, citizenship essentially means ‘market citizenship’ – the individual’s acquisition of the legal and other paraphernalia required for accessing the market.

Participation means participation in the market – as a wage-earner, consumer, producer. It could also mean participation in the limited domain of project implementation, which serves the purpose of conferring a sheen of democratic legitimacy on development projects decided and designed by an elite. It certainly does not mean participation in the sense of political contestation – of having a say on the model of development to be adopted.

To sum up, good governance is today a major discursive tool enabling the global transition of democracies to a form of government that some academics have labelled “soft authoritarianism”. A more accurate description would be “authoritarianism with a democratic face”.

Good governance entails the substitution of politics – which is what democracy is all about — with management. It seeks to insulate policy-making from the chaotic pressures of democracy.

So what kind of a government does good governance mandate? Given that there is only one model of development possible in the good governance framework – market-led development – a government that upholds good governance will have to cease being a guarantor of the citizens’ socio-economic rights. It would instead function as a facilitator and enabler of the market, which would deliver these goods and services to those who can afford them.

As for those who can’t afford them, if they behave well, they might get the carrot of cash/credit, which is essential to function as a market citizen. If they misbehave, the stick of repression is an ever-present threat. Democracy without politics, and citizenship without rights — these are the twin pillars of good governance as it’s advocated today. The beauty of it is that everyone seems to love it.

sampath.g@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: good governnance, Narendra Modi, Modi government, NDA government, corruption issues, Narendra Modi governance, Structural Adjustment Programmes

Jun 24 2015 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Civil Society Applauds India's Stand on Internet Governance

Neha Alawadhi

New Delhi





India decides to support multistakeholder model; implementation deemed the key

India's decision to support the multistakeholder model of internet governance has drawn mostly applause from civil society organisations and individuals who have been following the issue, even as they cautioned that implementation will determine the success of the model.A day after communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said India will support the multistakeholder model, reactions poured in on Tuesday, largely hailing the move to break the longstanding status quo on the issue.
“What matters now is how the approach articulated by the minister is translated into coordinated action across various fora, including ICANN, BRICS, and perhaps most crucially the UN WSIS+10 Review Process, which culminates in the meeting of the UN General Assembly in December 2015,“ said Vinay Kesari, a lawyer specialising in ICT and internet governance.
Not just at international fora, India also needs to figure out policies that support its multistakeholder stand within the country , said Arun Mohan Sukumar, senior fellow at the Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University . “Multistakeholderism is very attractive in principle but, as the ICANN experience shows, it is susceptible to concerns like elite capture and lack of accountability to the general public,“ he said.
Prasad made the announcement in a video address during the opening ceremony of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)'s 53rd public meet ing in Buenos Aires on Monday. ICANN manages the Domain Name System (DNS), which helps organise the internet with the allotment of domain names such as .com, .org and .net and has often come under the scanner for not being transparent enough.
The multistakeholder model involves all stakeholders such as businesses, civil society , governments, research institutions and non-governmental organisations in the dialogue, decision-making and implementation of policymaking and governance.
The external affairs minis try , telecom department and the department of electronics and IT have long held divergent views on issues of internet governance, with no clear stand being made at international platforms.
While welcoming the announcement, Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society , said the minister could have explained in greater detail, especially the ongoing transition of internet governance control from US government to a multistakeholder model.
“He also spoke about government being responsible for security and human rights over the internet, which adds to the confusion over whether India will really let the internet be a fair and free medium,“ he said.
Prasanth Sugathan, counsel for the Software Freedom Law Centre, said the government should seek the views of other stakeholders as well on the issue. “When you talk of multistakeholderism, it should not be only at an international level. It should also happen at a national level. The government should have other parties also contributing to issues of internet governance,“ he said.

THINK POST-MILLENNIUM - Legal Identity for All is Necessary for Good Governance

Bjorn Lomborg





Corruption last year cost the world more than $1 trillion. That is a trillion dollars we can't use to get better healthcare, education, food and environment. A study shows that corruption in India costs each citizen $87 each year. And corruption is only part of the problem of poor governance--many countries are run ineffectively , lacking accountability , transparency and rule of law.Running countries better would have obvious benefits. It would not only reduce corruption but governments would provide more services the public wants and at better quality. It is also likely that economic growth would increase. In a recent UN survey of 7 million people around the world, an honest and responsive government was fourth in the list of people's priorities, with only education and healthcare and better jobs being rated higher.Survey participants from South Asia even placed it third.
But how should we get better governance? This is an important question as the world is considering what goals to set. At the turn of the century , the international community agreed on a far-reaching set of targets to improve the lives of the world's poorest people by 2015: the Millennium Development Goals. They focused on health, poverty and education and did a great deal of good. But they didn't mention governance.
This September, the world's 193 nations aim to set the next set of targets for the year 2030. They want to look across all major areas, and they want to include some targets on good governance. Without it, tackling problems like nutrition and environment becomes harder--if there is corruption, most of the money for food may go elsewhere, and if there is little institutional control, ambitious environmental rules may just be flouted.
It is vitally important that we choose the best targets for 2030. To help the world's governments pick the best targets, my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, has asked 60 teams of experts to do an economic analysis of the more promising proposals, showing which targets will cost little and do much good--and which ones will cost lots but do little good, essentially providing a level playing field to compare widely different targets.
Mary E Hilderbrand of the Center for International Development at Harvard has written the main paper on improving governance. As she points out, it is obvious that wellgoverned nations are better than illgoverned ones. But there is one major problem: we don't know much about how to get good governance. A study of 80 countries where the World Bank had programmes to improve governance showed that governance improved in 39% of coun tries but worsened in 25%--what could look like a moderate success.However, all the countries the World Bank didn't help had similar success and failure rates--suggesting that the World Bank programmes had made no difference.
The simple point is that while everyone can agree it would be great to get rid of corruption and have more transparent and accountable government, we often know very little about how to achieve it. That is why proposed targets like “Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all its forms“ sound great, but are essentially well-meaning slogans with little content.
Indeed, Hilderbrand finds that many proposed targets are too generalised and some even a poor use of resources. However, she does find one target that would do a lot of good for each dollar spent. “By 2030, provide legal identify for all, including birth registration.“ This may sound like a very unambitious step to those of us lucky enough to live in prosperous democracies where such things are taken for granted, but it would be a major step forward for many developing countries.
Importantly , this is a measurable outcome, so progress can be monitored. It also means that there must be functioning public services to provide registration facilities and maintain records. Building this capacity in a single well-defined area would provide a clear model for how other services can be provided effectively . It is also unlikely in any case that a registration service would exist in a vacuum; an effective one would almost certainly be a sign of an emerging public service competence.
There are also real benefits to each citizen of having a proper legal identity. It helps them to claim their legal rights, for example, and would certainly also help to establish property rights, which are vital to allow individuals to prosper and the economy to grow. Elections become less vulnerable to corruption when voters are properly registered. And, as an economy grows, a proper legal identity is essential for opening a bank account or getting a driving license.
Good governance is important.But instead of platitudes we should focus on measurable, attainable targets that will actually make a big difference for the next 15 years.
The author is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center NEXT WEEK: Health systems

Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Beyond The Spoils System

Shailesh Gandhi





Why can't we select governors and key public servants on merit rather than patronage politics?

There is considerable debate underway on whether various statutory heads n the country should be replaced because of a change in political dispensation at the Centre. It is therefore the right time to discuss whether these highly paid public servants deliver significant value and how their selection process could be changed to enhance their value.While there is an active debate about whether present governors selected by the UPA government should be retained or pushed out, we hardly discuss whether they perform any useful functions. It is an accepted fact that most members and heads of various commissions and corporations are appointed as a consequence of their closeness to political leaders in government, and not because of their suitability for the job.
Governors and lokayuktas among many others, who head regulatory functions, are beholden to political masters who have gifted these jobs to them.
There is rarely any evaluation about their merit or suitability for the job.
Democracy operates at various levels and in a wide variety of ways. Apart from the legislature, executive and judiciary, it is felt necessary to have various other institutions to take care of special needs and to act as checks and balances in the system.
Most of these, whether created by the Constitution or by statute, have very important functions to perform. But the majority of those appointed to these positions are retired senior citizens who are physically and mentally incapable of working even 40 hours a week. They do not feel the need to be accountable and look at their jobs as sinecures and rewards, for having served some political masters and keeping them happy .
We have a peculiar situation where a police constable, driver or peon is employed by a due process of selection and evaluation for the job. When these are violated and selection is done arbitrarily we protest and sometimes get courts to intervene. On the other hand, at the highest levels of public office, jobs are doled out based on arbitrary political recommendations.
This writer's selection as a Central Information Commissioner was a random occurrence rather than a consequence of any process or evaluation. If some governors, lokayuktas, regulators, commissioners are good it is by chance rather than by design.
There are many senior bureaucrats and other power brokers who spend considerable time and effort to get the right recommendation to bag these jobs. Usually on offer is significant proof of personal loyalty in addition to political loyalty , as well as an implied promise of being willing to do the master's bidding when required.
Under such circumstances, these institutions have become largely ineffective. Even bright or honest people capable of working hard do not deliver because they have often been rewarded with a position for which they are not suitable.
It is time to demand a transparent process of selection for such high positions. It should generally start six months before a vacancy arises and should be an invitation for applications/nominations of persons along with a set of criteria for the relevant job.
Drawing up a list of requirements and suitability for different jobs ­ including that of governor ­ is not a very difficult task. Candidates could be shortlisted by a panel based on seeing which of them meet the objective criteria which are laid down. Such a shortlist of persons should be interviewed before people and media by an eminent pre-selection committee.
If this is done citizens would be able to see if the persons were basically competent, suitable and committed to the job they wanted to take up. It would act as a check on completely arbitrary choices made on the basis of patronage politics.
The pre-selection committee would recommend a panel which could be three times the number of persons to be selected.
The final selection from this panel could be done by the same political system which now operates. If this is done properly those occupying such positions would draw respect from every one and also have the required moral authority .
Besides a transparent process of selection it should be incumbent for all such bodies to display the work done by them on their websites. Citizens should be able to evaluate whether the various statutory bodies are delivering meaningful results in a satisfactory and time-bound manner.
This could be achieved by having a satisfaction evaluation of those who have approached these bodies every six months.
We must get the right persons willing to be accountable at the highest levels of public service.
Concurrently , distribution of plum jobs as political largesse must stop.
Once we do this we won't have the unholy spectacle of our governors and other authorities being shunted out whenever there is a change of the party serving at the Centre. The present practice is a reminder that these positions have been given as largesse and do not deliver any significant value to citizens and democracy .
The writer is a former Central Information Commissioner .

Jun 07 2014 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)

11-Point Plan to make Govt Shipshape

YASHODHARA DASGUPTA

NEW DELHI





Cab secy tells depts to identity archaic laws & curb decision-making to a maximum of 4 layers

India's top civil servant has asked government departments to identity archaic laws and regulations that hold up progress and to restrict decision-making to a maximum of four layers, continuing a drive by the Narendra Modi government to galvanise the bureaucracy and end the policy paralysis that is perceived to have plagued the Congress-led UPA government. The directives, spelt out in a letter from Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth to all secretaries, are part of an 11-point plan to improve governance.The letter is the outcome of a meeting between the prime minister and the secretaries of all government departments on Wednesday , during which Modi urged bureaucrats to serve the people and promised that the political leadership will back decisions taken in good faith. “Every department has been asked to identify and repeal at least 10 rules or processes and even archaic Acts that have be come redundant and the removal of which would not lead to any loss of efficiency. Also, decision-making layers would be cut down to a maximum of four,“ said an official aware of the development.
Importantly , the letter calls upon ministries to engage in collaborative decision-making and consult frequently to resolve differences.
But if there is no resolution, the Cabinet secretariat or the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) will step in. The previous regime is widely regarded to have been prone to inter-departmental strife with ministries often working at cross-purposes, resulting in projects not receiving clearances.
UPA PLANS UNDER REVIEW PAGE 11 Officials said several steps are being taken to reduce clutter — both physical as well as bureaucratic formalities — as part of the PM’s directive to make government offices clean, hygienic and conducive for work.In a bid to improve processes, departments have also been asked to identify forms that are widely used and crunch or shorten them, wherever possible, to one page only. Unnecessary or irrelevant information should not be sought, says the letter from the cabinet secretary.
The directions are also specific when it comes to physical cleanliness. All government buildings and work spaces of departments should be cleared
of obstructions and spruced up, says the letter.In pursuance of this goal, passages and stairs should be cleared of obstructions, which means no office material or cupboards should be found in these spaces. Officials have been asked to ensure files, papers and so on are neatly stacked so that a “positive work environment is created“.
In certain departments, the clean-up has already begun with the disposal of old/irrelevant files and folders stacked near staircases. “The secretaries have even made rounds to see the condition of the building, passages and so on,“ said one government official.
Departments have been ordered to use information tech nology while submitting information. Eventually, this should be universalised.
Government offices would have to weed out files and papers “in accordance with rules of record-keeping including digitalisation, wherever necessary“ within 3-4 weeks.
“Digitalisation of papers has already been introduced to an extent for current files. It is the old documents and folders that would need to be taken care of,“ said another government official.
The Cabinet secretariat has asked ministries to draft a plan of action based on the 11 commandments. Interim progress will be monitored in meetings with a Group of Secretaries in the week beginning June 9.