Be Mains Ready

Approach

• Define governance in normative terms.
• Explain the essential principles of governance.
• Conclude by giving suggestions to improve the overall governance.

Introduction

UNDP (1997) describes governance as “the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs. It embraces all of the methods – good and bad – that societies use to distribute power and manage public resources and problems.”

Body

Governance in simple terms is the process of decision-making and its implementation in collective problem situations. Governance emphasizes not just routine implementation of policies and programmes but making the entire process accountable, democratic, participative and responsive to people's needs.

UNESCAP provides for eight major characteristics of good governance:

1. Accountability: Taking responsibility of the actions and decisions. Governance lays emphasis on making all the organs of government accountable for the performance of functions. An organization or an institution is accountable to those who will be affected by its decisions or actions.
2. Transparency: Information shall be freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement.
3. Responsive: It emphasizes on timely delivery of services to the citizens and an effective grievance redress mechanism.
4. Equitable and Inclusive: Governance should focus on social well being of the most vulnerable section of the society.
5. Effectiveness and Efficiency: Sustainable use of resources to meet the needs of society and to obtain the optimum results.
6. Rule of law: It emphasizes on fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. Need for impartial judiciary and incorruptible police force.
7. People’s participation: Participatory governance provides opportunities for citizens to take part in decision making, implementation and monitoring of government activities.
8. Consensus oriented: Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus on the best interests of the whole community and ways to achieve it.

Conclusion

Thus to achieve good governance, we need to overcome the crucial deficiencies in the governance system including non-availability of information to the people, lack of accountability, poor management of the public sector, lack of appropriate legal framework, etc. Only then the quality of governance can be improved and sustained.