ARTICLES-January 2008


Changing face of governance
Deccan Herald, February 28, 2008

A stitch in time saves nine
The Financial Express, February 25, 2008

Changing with Times: Lateral entry into Public Services
The Economic Times, February 11, 2008

M&As and Corporate India
The Economic Times, February 01, 2008

Changing face of governance

By George Cheriyan
Deccan Herald, February 28, 2008

The concept of governance has evolved to transcend the arena of the nation-state.


Conventionally, governance encompasses the manner in which the state and its various institutions negotiate and mediate with people, markets and civil society, through laws, policies, regulation and finance. Today governance is overarching with many dimensions including institutional and political manifestations. Governance refers to decision-making and the process through which power is exercised to utilise economic and social resources for development.

The concept of governance, over the last 15 years, has evolved to transcend the conventional arena of the nation-state or government. Market forces as well as civil-society processes and citizens' initiatives have increasingly started influencing the process of governance today. Many civil society organizations (CSOs) strongly believe that governance is not just the effective management of economic resources.

Accountability

Citizens have the right to demand accountability and public actors are obliged to be accountable to citizens. This is a fundamental principle of democracy and a keystone of a growing movement around the world that focuses on strengthening capacities within government and civil society to make public institutions more responsive to citizens.

Traditionally, in a parliamentary system, political accountability of the executive is to the voters through elected assemblies. Administrative and legal accountability of the executive branch is exercised through administrative procedures and the court of law. But since decision-making and implementation is now to be shared with the interests of the private sector, it has become difficult to fix political responsibility.

Democratic governance underlines the spirit of a contract – that rulers and people were bound to each other by reciprocal obligations. In other words, it established the “basic bargain” between the government and its citizens that entails accountability of the government to the citizens in lieu of the authority vested in it by the citizens.

The traditional paradigms of public administration and democratic accountability had to fit well together.

However, now a new approach has emerged in which the citizen actively engages in holding those in power accountable for their actions, decisions and behavior called – Social Accountability (SAc). Mechanisms of SAc can be initiated and supported by the state, citizens or both, but very often they are demand-driven and operate from the bottom-up.

It refers to a broad range of actions and mechanisms that citizens, communities, civil society organisations and independent media can use to hold public servants and public and private service providers accountable.

Traditionally, these have included protests, demonstrations, campaigns etc.

In recent times, attempts have been made, particularly by CSOs; to apply SAc mechanisms in a systematic manner. Different instances of gradual, albeit grudging, acceptance of such mechanisms by the State and evidence of better public performance through the use of such mechanisms have lent credence to the need for greater use and institutionalisation of social accountability mechanisms within the governance process.

Access to government-held information is a pre-condition to ensure accountability and in turn good governance.

The plea here is not for piecemeal access to information, but for deliberately and systematically integrating information in the debate on fundamental public issues.

Development

Lately, good governance is highlighted in political discourses in India. Reforms could help to come out of the morass of problems that our country faces, which includes bureaucratic inertia and inefficiency, corruption, poor quality public services and delays in delivery of justice.

There is a need for the state to encourage private capital initiatives, and build capabilities rather than redistribute wealth. Some states have adopted a stakeholder approach according to which the service providers, which provide public services, would be held responsible to their end users, or consumers, provided of course, the latter pay for the services.

SAc contributes to increased development effectiveness through improved public service delivery and better-informed policy design. The right to good governance is also considered as an essential part of the citizen’s rights that one can expect from the government.

(The writer is Associate Director of Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS International), Jaipur.)

Changing with Times: Lateral entry into Public Services

The Economic Times, February 11, 2008
INDIA is perhaps the only large country carrying the legacy of the Raj whereby an elite generalist civil service still dominates the top jobs in the country , but with little domain expertise in most cases. It is quite unfortunate that the Indian civil services has not been changed at all since independence and has retained most of its normative procedure especially in matters of selection. Albeit, the current recruitment selection procedure at the entry level is aimed towards selecting individuals with best calibre, and it is working well. However, over time, these bright people often get lost in the vortex of a generalist system, while the Peter Principle also applies to many. Times have changed and with it the complexities of demands on a person's capabilities. This increased in the administration raising questions over effectiveness of services being delivered by them-civil servants.

This issue was highlighted by the Prime Minister of India at a recent gathering of alumni's from 'London School of Economics' of the alumni from India and the region, where he urged the desirability of lateral entry into the senior Indian civil services. This remark has again led to a debate being ignited. While a section feels that the government can benefit by recruiting people at higher levels from non-government backgrounds, or what is called as the followers of one line of thought believe that time is ripe for lateral entry into civil services. While  the other line of thought is that the traditional method of entry into  the civil services is effective enough, and through additional expertise can be done through, which could be encouraged by providingtraining to the existing civil personnel.

It has often been felt that the bureaucracy of the day has tended to become impervious to new thinking and is unwilling to go beyond the orthodox way of functioning. In these circumstances, lateral entry could breathe some fresh air into the system. With healthy economic growth, there is a great need for expertise in the government from different fields. Lateral entry can bring, along with it, immaculate thinking and innovation, which are the basis for effective formulation and implementation of administrative reforms. In addition, the  flexibility to induct people with competence and expertise will give the much required boost to the system and help in serving the people better.

Apparently, there will be enough suitable candidates interested in applying their skills on a much broader canvass, just as I G Patel and Manmohan Singh in the past and C Rangarajan, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Ashok Lahiri, Shankar Acharya, Vijay Kelkar and R V Shahi in recent years. All these appointments were done on an ad hoc basis, based upon the capability of the individual.

However, a systemic effort at lateral entry was made in the past by the Government of India by creating an Industrial Management Pool (IMP), wherein successful private sector managers were attracted to specialised public sector jobs. This was in operation from 1957 to 1977, and we had several eminent people in command, such as P. L. Tandon, who left a multinational and took over the STC of India Ltd as its chairman. However, the IMP was abandoned due to arbitrariness of some appointments. Alas, it was a well thought out scheme, and rather than scrapping it, efforts could have been made to rectify thedrawbacks.

There have been various instances where it can be observed that the government has allowed successfully lateral entry into various departments like the departments of space, atomic energy, science and technology etc., which have been headed in the secretariat by experts in the respective fields. Taking these examples as time tested results (What results are you talking about?)it can be inferred that the lateral entry into civil services will help to improve overall effectiveness of public services.

However, we have to be careful in allowing lateral entries at a large scale, as in the IMP experiment, it could turn into one more political tool, if appointments are made arbitrarily. Another drawback of lateral entry is that there are no precise and proper guidelines regarding what actually amounts to 'eligibility for appointment' and 'who can be considered to be an expert or having adequate knowledge.' It is also felt that, if lateral entry is allowed it may become a determinant factor for the available pool of talent within the civil services as prospective candidates for senior posts.

It is important that government needs to study the issue carefully, including analyse the past failures, to make appropriate provisions to attract talent from the private sector, NGOs etc. to make the system effective and efficient. Ensuring that the selection procedure for lateral entry is transparent, speedy and immune from political pressures represents a huge challenge for government. Government could also appoint a group of eminent persons to select the right individuals. The long-term objective should be to give members of all services as well as the lateral entrant's equal access to most medium and senior level posts.

(The author is secretary-general, CUTS)
 

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