DailyPost 2725
DELIBERATE MISGOVERNANCE SANS ACCOUNTABILILY
The best way to describe the governance side of our robust and vibrant democracy is deliberate misgovernance. No government in last few decades can claim to have risen beyond it. If you scratch a little deep into the surface of government formation; single party or a coalition, the breaking down of governments and reassembling of it, the malaise is very conspicuous. Additionally, the nature of distribution of prized ministries and departments, which leads to the creation of governments, speaks of the urge to indulge in deliberate misgovernance. The political class has never battled for anything based on expertise or the urge of deliver and be accountable for it.
Can deliberate misgovernance be an agenda on its own? No way, it has to have a hidden agenda. What we call as the hidden agenda is out there in the public domain and most of us are aware of it. What is the cause and purpose of running black box governance, when the spirit of democracy and the Indian constitution is exactly the opposite? Decision making happens in rarefied atmosphere, where the political executive and the bureaucracy are aware of it and it is presumed that the people don’t deserve to know of it. On the contrary you have to battle with those decisions.
What is the quantum of time that the common man is spending to take care of his mandatory and regulatory compliances? Interestingly, the government sits on the pulpit, being the ruling deity of whatever it surveys? We have to battle misgovernance, which is based on an agenda, which delivers “democratic luxury” to all its stakeholders. Some very blatant examples will prove the point, leaving aside the normal step motherly treatment the people face on a day-to-day basis, compared to the political class and government servants. The battle for a hospital bed in the second wave of Covid, with not government in sight, the oxygen langar is the only inspirational thought left with us. The governments were found int courts even then.
We have even stopped talking of our abysmal performance on the Human Development Indices, today it no one’s agenda. What has misgovernance made of public exchequer money and administrative machinery deployed to deliver? Who is accountable? What about quality education? And who all have gained out of dishing our substandard education? Zero accountability. You have to get into long drawn court battles to get even an iota of governance. What happens to the SBI Chairman for deliberately providing false information and that to, to the highest court in the land? Unaccountability or outright crime. It was selling the credibility of an organization which created him. What to do with an election commissioner who had best of “professional life” decided to disappear without a trace, when he was needed the most. It is the epitome of lack of ownership, responsibility and accountability. Have we reached the post governance era?
INDIAN DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN MADE TO SURREPTITIOUSLY TRANSITION TO POST GOVERNANCE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.