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Polity, Constitution and Governance

Some Ideas On Governance

Introduction: The Constitution of India has clearly articulated the social and economic goals and has specified agents for achieving the promised social revelation. Matters concerning formation and working of the executive agencies (both political and civil) are spelt out. Citizens have been assured that the executive together with other organs of the State (Legislative & Judiciary) would uphold their rights and remove the inequities from which the anti-democratic forces derive their sustenance. Good Governance, it was hoped, would transform the social, political and economic life of the people, within the framework of democracy.

Inadequacies and Failures: In the beginning the constitutional arrangements relating to governance worked more or less to general satisfaction and provided the law abiding citizens with a fairly safe, and secure life. However, as time passed their inadequacies have become evident and Government has lost its élan as it has failed to live up to the expectations of the Constitution to give real substance to the policies designed to promote social well being even the most modest expectations have remained unfulfilled.

The present situation is characterised by a pervasive disenchantment with the way things have worked out. It is futile to debate whether it is the institutions provided by the Constitution that have failed or whether the men who work these institutions have failed. Probably both, but while we cannot abolish the men we can only endeavour to improve the environment in which these men function hoping that a more conducive environment would improve behaviour and performance of the men and women who command the strategic heights of governance.

Failure to ensure the socio-economic goals is now no longer attributable to scarcity of resources but to the failure of Governance. It is the insufficient attention paid to such a transformation that has deepened the fissures between the people and the administration. The failure to regenerate society lay in the basic conceptual weakness that encouraged the untested assumption that people are best served when the ruling classes originate, execute and administer policies, plans and programmes for their welfare from above. This misconceived paternalism has reinforced the tyranny of the Status Quo and has gravely weakened forces of change. The Indian problem, Nehru had recognised, was not to foster stability in the system but to transform it. The ‘Law and Order’ pre-occupation of the bureaucratic mind led to the entrenchment of the system that the Constitution had promised to transform. This mind-set thwarted the initiates for legislative to socio-economic well being of all sections of people. Repeated surgery, in the shape of constitutional amendments, had to be resorted to instill even minimal transformative features. Examples include land reforms and steps to deal with the entrenched injustices of the caste system and halting measures for evoking rights to property as transcendental.

Another fundamental flaw vitiating governance emanated from the lack of conviction that the consent of the people is the basis of democratic government. The over-arching theme, a legacy from the Colonial days, that people remain a passive category subjects rather than citizens remained firmly rooted on official mind. People aroused only at intervals of five years or there about to choose their rulers and to go back again to a life of political passivity. Political mobilisation of masses mostly remained neglected. This produced all manner of infirmities and has given rise to alienation of the people from the political system.

Rights of the people are inalienable. The words “we the people” signify not only the moral and historical insight of founding fathers but they serve to reaffirm they are the source of all constitutional authority and that the test of Good Governance was measure of people’s well being. However, the functionaries of the State have failed to realize that they are servants of the people and not their masters. Test of a vibrant democracy is the degree of success in calling its Executive to be accountable to the people.

The words ‘we the people……’ were not empty rhetoric; they were earnestly inscribed to recognise and respect India’s political sovereign – the people. The highest rank of a person in a democratic country is to be its citizen. But the new administration class, working under the mesmeric spell of colonial attitudes, was reluctant to consider the people at large as citizens. They continued to treat them as subjects or ‘ryots’ both owing allegiance to a superior master. This denial robbed them of power and made it possible for the executive to snuff out the significance of the people. It is the possession of power that gives people control over their destiny and authority over those whom they have chosen to serve them. Ambedkar had cautioned: “By independence we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for any thing going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves”.

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Self Government is better than even good Governance. Unless self-government is ensured by clear devolution of power from the centre to the periphery, people are prevented from participation in Governance. They can not eliminate arbitrariness in executive actions which generally tilts the balance in favour of the privileged. Moreover the ‘top-down’ state of affairs does not legitimise ‘self-government’ which is of primordial value. ‘Top-down’ administration stifles public initiative. To make people effective they must consciously enjoy and assert their constitutional entitlements and not be mere supplicants for or objects of administrative largesse. That is the rationale of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution. A strong sense of public duty comes from empowerment. People’s attitude changes from one of obedience to authority to active participation in governance. It is only when the gap between the executive and the people is narrowed down through decentralisation that democratisation can occur. The whole configuration of governance changes if democratic order is conceived not as a ‘once in five year ritual’ of changing the guard but as a continuous renewal of democratic life from a knowledgeable and participative citizen body. A citizen as a political and social unit could alone take responsibility for transformation of the state of the society. Adequate constitutional amendments in this regard could alone make it possible for strengthening people’s say in governance involving beneficiaries in implementation, introducing flexibility through greater autonomy to States and local bodies, enabling greater involvement of voluntary agencies, introducing better delivery systems through self-help groups and so on. The essence of the matter is that there should be effective participative democracy at all levels; once people become the fountainhead of power, their role in governance becomes meaningful and effective. It encourages an active sense of public duty, replacing emphasis from authority and obedience to active participation. The system can deliver the goods through devolution, decentralization and democratization, thereby narrowing the gap between the base of the polity and its super-structure.

Institutions and structures do impinge on the working of the fundamental law of the land. There is, however, a substantive problem of the philosophy that underlies such institutions and structures. And that has to do with the role of the State. Immediately after the Second World War, when the decolonised world began its quest for development, the intellectual context favoured a strong, in fact a leading, role for the State in the development process. It was partly a legacy of the Great Depression, but it was also a reflection of the major changes brought about by the October Revolution in 1917. An alternative route to the process of industrialisation, which held the key to the removal of poverty, in which the role of the market in the allocation of resources was believed to be marginal, was the lynchpin of the strategy for development enshrined in our Constitution.

Some of the shortcomings in the governance outlined above are inherent in the centralized nature of the Indian State which lays down the parameters of the administration. There is an indissoluble link between the two. This was evident when the norms of colonial administration, with their long ancestry, came early to stamp their features on the post-independence dispensation. Colonial administration had created a top-down system of command and obedience in which State and local units of government were treated as subordinate to the Central Government.

Reallocation of Subjects in the 7th Schedule: Reallocation of subjects from the three Lists given in the Seventh Schedule is a prerequisite in this context, to make governance come closer to the people. The Central List of subjects should contract drastically, confining the Centre to subjects of national importance such as defence, National Security, foreign policy, Interstate-rivers, communication, macro-economic, planning, environment, etc. The list of subjects meant for the States and for other layers of government will have to be augmented with the Centre refraining from involvement in matters best addressed at the lower levels.

Rationalisation of size of Governments & Devolution of their functions: There is no reason why the central government should have large and unwieldy ministries handling subjects like education, health, agriculture, rural development, social welfare, industry, power, etc. when these areas can more conveniently and appropriately be handled at the state, regional or district levels. The centre can at best be a clearing house of ideas and knowledge but for it to be actually involved in shaping policy and in allocation of resources is an over-lapping of jurisdiction. Down sizing of the Government should also follow Big Governments are not always conducive to efficiency and promptness. People should know where the buck stops.

Similarly, if the state governments do not delegate authority and resources to units below the state, similar acts of aggregation and aggression occur depriving local bodies of initiative, capacity for innovation and experimentation. The richness and diversity of experience across tens of thousands of communities in locations across the country is sought to be standardised and homogenised by such straitjacketing as is involved in the present arrangements. We need to break away in a decisive manner from this dogma of centralisation which had its counterpart in centralised planning. There must be power in the local governments to ‘remould through experimentation, our economic practices and institutions to meet the changing social and economic needs. A single courageous unit of local government may serve as a laboratory and try a novel, social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

However we need a few cautionary sign posts. A major achievement since the attainment of independence has been the creation of a common Indian market that approaches in size some of the biggest markets in the world. This is the foundation of political unity. Anything that weakens or threatens to weaken or destroys India’s political unity has to be prevented. Therefore no unit of the Union can be empowered to weaken the foundations of the common market. It is because of this predominant consideration that currency belongs pre-eminently to the realm of the Union government. So does the defence of the realm, the hallmark of national sovereignty. Further it should always be kept in view that when the Centre does not hold societies become polarised. Similarly, the fact that some items belong to the union list does not mean that the Union can act in any manner it things fit as long as it is assured of legislative support. The concept of continuous renewal of consent means that, within limits central policies are publicly debated and agreed to. The citizens should have access to information, data, arguments that go into the making of executive or legislative decisions. Only then can citizens feel that they have contributed to the functioning of the polity.

This has to be considered with devolution of authority, responsibility and resources to appropriate levels. Decentralisation cannot work without the devolution of resources. If the major sources of revenue remain with the centre then the notion of the state autonomy would lack substance. Therefore, along with re-configuration of the three lists of the constitution there has also to be a re-configuration of the sources of revenue. The states should be able to raise resources for the tasks they have to undertake. This would bring into broad relief issues of regional imbalance. However they cannot be swept under the carpet by making the comfortable assumption that the centre can act as a big brother to help the weaklings. The last four decades have amply demonstrated that regional imbalances have grown in spite of these subventions provided by the centre to help the weaker states.

The principle that responsibility must be accompanied by corresponding resources can be dispensed with only at the cost of perpetuating the beggars mentality. The gap between the rich and the poor states within the country has to be bridged by policies that stimulate growth in the poor states, rather than by handouts which end up in the hands of the undeserving. The existing policy regime has only stimulated competition between the states on the size of the plan. The bigger the size the more successful is the political leadership of the state supposed to be. Performances and outcomes do not matter. Thus U.P. and Bihar can continue to wallow in illiteracy while state leaders go about trumpeting the size of the plan they have secured from the Planning Commission. The states must have the matching resource to do what they ought to but they must also take the responsibility, fiscal, political and administrative, for what has to be done.

The present policy regime is an elaborate subterfuge for seeking scapegoats. The Constitution has encouraged this charade. The sooner it ends the better it will be. This is the only way to harmonise the imperatives of all round development with those of reducing, and ultimately eliminating, caste-based iniquities. The list of subjects allocated in the 3 lists indicated under Schedule 7 will have to be drastically reallocated to make the States operate on a more federal bases than at present. This is inseparable from an equal insight in financial framework in which generation of fiscal resources acquires greater and balanced autonomy. Consistent with this principle, it would be desirable to provide in the constitution that the additional terms of reference under Article 280(3)(d) in the interests of sound finance should be finalised in consultation with the States, preferably through an endorsement of the National Development Council. Also the time would appear to have come to give to the recommendations of the Finance Commissions the status of a legally binding award. This would enforce accountable and responsible behaviour throughout the spectrum of the institutions of governance.

Human Resource Management and Involvement of Community: When one talks about resources it does not only mean financial resources, it implies human resources as well. You cannot ask a district councillor to take charge of primary or secondary education at the district level without giving the elected district council control over administrators and teachers who run the school system. If a primary school teacher looks to a distant education director or the education minister or state level elected representative from the area for his promotion or any other improvement in his conditions of service, he is not going to be accountable and responsive to the needs of the local community. This simple example raises the question of the present structure of social and economic services and how it needs to be remodelled or refashioned to bring it in line with the requirements of the age of decentralisation. We have to think in terms of services being owned by the communities which use these services. There is no reason why the district councils cannot recruit, train, manage cadres of school teachers, supervisors, administrators for primary and secondary education, leaving the area of high speciality professionals like curriculum developers to be handled by regional or state level bodies. This would bring local communities in intimate relationship with the education personnel and create appropriate environment for bringing forth responsibility and accountable behaviour from services to the local communities that pay them. It will also ensure that the communities themselves fulfil their obligations towards such personnel and towards the larger objectives of creating and sustaining a healthy and vibrant education system. Similar logic can be employed in regard to other services which are needed at the district levels and it can be extended upwards to the state level.

What is urgently required at this juncture is a straightforward recognition in the fundamental law, cutting through the verbiage of devolution, that a district is the basic unit of planning for development - social, cultural, economic and human. Along with this it is necessary to provide that creation of new districts has to conform to the criteria of viability. Otherwise the political process already under pressure of the forces of fragmentation would be unable to at least moderate the present trends.

More Powers to Local Elected Bodies: Functions, finances and functionaries would have to be placed under the direct supervision and command of elected bodies at relevant levels of operations. This would, to a substantial degree, correct the existing distortions and make officials answerable and accountable to the people. This has implications in respect of devolution of political and financial powers from the Centre, too. Devolving as much power as possible to local and regional levels of government increases the ability of the system to foster citizenship and to enhance the citizen’s decision-making abilities. Officers at local levels have greater initiative in implementation under the watchful eyes of the people directly effected.

Dispersal of power through local autonomy maximises opportunities for popular participation and helps change the nature of the relationship between the State and the civil society. Instead of being merely the passive recipients of rights, citizens become active agents. A democratic society cannot function properly if everything in it is left only to the state or even to statutory bodies. Statutory action will be infractuous if it is not underpinned by voluntary action. The driving force for regeneration comes not from the state or its institutions but from social movement. People acquire more characteristics of a ruler than ruled where they set up associations and NGOs to assert their rights and preferences in the domain of public policies. This exercise of political power through civil society originated as different from statutory (bodies) opens the way for concomitant democracy. Civil society consists of open and secular institutions that mediate between the citizen and the state. Thereby state and civil society do not work as antithetical or substitutable but as complementary to each other. Private associations and pressure groups act as a powerful brake on state Institutions and also monitor the conduct of public servants. In the absence of civil societies the state machinery and civil servants becomes the dominant nexus of power. The modern idea of self-government requires emergence of civil society which would make people self-reliant rather than remain dependent on state institutions and subject to their control.

One of the marked weakness of the present regime has been its failure to effectively play its role in the socializing process. It has failed to use the machinery of the state to create a society of equals founded on the principles of social justice, secularism and eradication of casteism. In this regard, the situation of the Dalits and backward castes points to glaring failure of the state. In spite of several programmes launched by it, the state has failed to energetically lift up the Dalits and members of other lower castes. As the executive has overwhelmingly identified itself with the stratified sections of the privileged few, it remained insensitive to the calamities that befell the weaker sections of the society and reluctantly took steps to repel the most injurious actions perpetrated against them. Large sections of these people remained docile, submissive, passive and tame. Piecemeal changes improved the conditions slightly, but the very spirit of the people by which the Constitution was to be sustained continued to rap.

Poverty which had its roots in the old system of land holding and wealth accumulation also remained by and large unvanquished by the programmes launched to eradicate it. The executive machinery failed the basic aims of the Constitution to eradicate mass poverty and illiteracy and to improve the standard of health and general well-being. These received scant support from the regime in spite of big promises made to fulfil the scheme of things enshrined in the Constitution. The administrative classes emerging as an elitist class failed to identify themselves with the meek and helpless, nor did they strengthen social movements wedded to social transformation. Relevant provisions of the Constitution in this respect remained mostly neglected by the executive agencies.

The arrangements of administration (bed-rock of governance) under the Constitution now appeared inadequate to meet the situation. The effectiveness of premier services to play its role in augmenting the socialising process remained limited and foreclosed possibilities of finding just solutions.

(With inputs from Paper prepared for the Commission by Dr. Abid Hussain @ http://lawmin.nic.in)

Questions :

1. What are the weaknesses in our Governance system ? Do you think our constitutional provisions are enough for eradicating it ?

2. Governance is the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. Explain.
    

This is a Part of Public Administration Online Coaching & Study Kit