An Overview of Good Governance

AN OVERVIEW OF 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.

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

What’s in are accountability, transparency, empowerment, and citizen participation – all of which are key elements of ‘good governance’ agenda.

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.

Civil Servant Independence and Good Governance

The right to judicial remedies … is a constitutional right of the subjects … Employees of the State cannot become members of a different class to whom such right is not available. — Justice J. Chelameswar and Justice A.K. Sikri of the Supreme Court of India (September 22, 2014) in Vijay Shankar Pandey vs Union of India and Another.

Amid the din raised over the case involving the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader J. Jayalalithaa, an important and recent ruling by the Supreme Court of India in an entirely different domain has gone virtually unnoticed.

This judgment was in the cause of good public administration, a sector vital to economic development. The message that the top court possibly wanted to send through its order was that an honest civil servant can bank on the Court if blatant injustice has been done to him or her by an unfair executive.

(a) Black money case

The judgment possibly took cognisance of the fact that over the years, the Indian bureaucracy has become a spineless structure that cannot stand up to unethical pressures by the Executive or the moneyed in society, thereby belying the worthy dream of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, free India’s first Home Minister. It was the doughty Sardar’s vision and resoluteness that ensured that efforts in some quarters in post-Independence India to abolish the centrally recruited and overseen All India Services did not succeed.

The nation has greatly benefited from the continuance of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS) in particular. Certain events since 1975, viz., the period post-Emergency, have however been the cause for dismay among those who have been looking for a professional, honest and independent civil service that would bolster an equally dedicated political class. It is against this backdrop that one should analyse the recent Supreme Court decision.

It all began in 2010 when V.S. Pandey, a senior IAS officer, Uttar Pradesh cadre, joined hands with Julio Ribeiro, the former police chief, and a few others, under the auspices of a non-governmental organisation-styled India Rejuvenation Initiative (IRI), to file a writ petition on the need to ferret out black money owned by Indians and stashed abroad.

The petition culminated in the Supreme Court decision (2011) known as Ram Jethmalani and Others vs the Union of India. Reacting to this, Pandey was served a charge sheet by the U.P. government on five counts for alleged violation of four clauses of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

(b) Charges, exoneration

The gravamen of the charge against Pandey was that, in being a co-signatory to the said writ petition by Ribeiro and others, he had endorsed an affidavit by one Jasbeer Singh that was critical of some senior officers of the Government of India (mainly from the Enforcement Directorate). The charge sheet added that in not having obtained the government’s permission before joining the said NGO and deposing in an inquiry where the Central and State governments were likely to be criticised, he had violated the conduct rules.

An enquiry officer appointed to look into the charges against Pandey exonerated him of all the charges on August 30, 2012. Strangely, a copy of this report of exoneration was not served on Pandey. On September 9, 2012, a selection committee that was considering cases of IAS officers in U.P. for promotion to the super timescale ignored Pandey’s case, although he had been exonerated and was eligible for promotion. The committee’s decision was in a sealed cover, a usual practice in respect of officers against whom disciplinary action was pending.

Worse was to follow. The enquiry officer’s finding was rejected by the U.P. government on September 26, 2012, on the ground that his report was cursory and that he had failed to properly investigate all relevant facts. The State government went on to invoke the Public Servants (Inquiries) Act, 1850 and appoint a two-member committee to look once more into the charges against Pandey.

Significantly, the State government’s action came on the same day as the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) dismissing Pandey’s appeal seeking his promotion. Following this, Pandey went to the Supreme Court on a writ that was recently disposed of by a bench comprising Justices Chelameswar and Sikri in favour of Pandey. In doing so, the judges made some comments on what was palpably an act of rancour and vindictiveness by the government. What was striking about this remarkable judicial order was the thoroughness with which the bench demolished each averment against Pandey.

(c) Upholding an individual’s right

First, the Court held that since Pandey never disputed the charges made against him, there were no facts to be investigated by the enquiry officer.

Second, relying on the decision (1971) of the Supreme Court inK.R. Deb vs Collector of Central Excise, Shillong, the bench held that a second inquiry against Pandey was untenable. There could at best be a further inquiry, but not a second one on the same facts. And, in the Pandey case, the facts were such that a further inquiry was hardly warranted.

As regards violation of a stipulation of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules that an officer could not depose before an individual, or committee or any other authority without the sanction of the government, the bench held that joining in averments made in a writ petition before a court was equivalent to taking part in a judicial process for which no citizen needed to get the government’s nod. An individual’s fundamental right did not get diminished just because he was a member of the civil service.

The two judges were categorical that this was a clear case of harassment of a hapless civil servant. They did not also fail to notice that while the government chose to proceed against Pandey, it ignored the action of another official, Jasbeer Singh, who had filed an additional affidavit that was critical of the government. The bench allowed Pandey’s petition and went beyond, to award him the costs involved. In doing so it said, “The requirement of (a) democratic republic is that every action of the State is to be informed with reason. State is not a hierarchy of regressively genuflecting coterie of bureaucracy.”

(d) The need for support

This landmark judicial order comes at a time when, in my view, an intimidated civil service needs support. In many States, public servant morale is at its nadir and it requires the oxygen of an unequivocal imprimatur from the highest court of the land that would help to halt the hands of a meddling political class.

Nothing else would bring about at least a marginal improvement to what is an undeniably appalling situation. Wide publicity to its salient features would go a long way in reinstilling courage into large sections of the bureaucracy which is baulking in fear of reprisal for its legitimate actions and has been coerced into condemnable passivity.

Civil servant independence in the country is at best nominal. Nonconformity even to spurn whimsical and arbitrary directives received from above is widely recognised as a very risky proposition. Signs of defiance are fraught with such serious consequences that even the most courageous civil servant thinks many times over before turning down even a palpably unethical and illegal direction.

The few mavericks who display a semblance of remonstrance are heavily penalised so as to deter potential dissenters. It is this sordid state of affairs that convinces me that Justices Chelameshwar and Sikri will have to be hailed for coming squarely to the rescue of a hapless senior official of the U.P. government for his alleged intransigence.

(With valuable inputs from The Hindu newspaper)