Be Mains Ready

Approach

• Introduce by explaining the need for collective efforts of government and civil society.
• Mention about the role of other stakeholders in good governance.
• Conclude by mentioning the benefits of citizen-centric governance with examples.

Introduction

According to the Kautilya’s Arthashastra, good governance comes with peace and order which can be achieved through the collaboration of different actors in a community. Thus, good governance involves collective efforts of the government, the civil society groups and the private sector as well. It is therefore a form of governing that goes beyond government.

Body

Government is only one of the actors in governance. There cannot be over reliance on government for effective governance.

Issues involved in overreliance on government are:

• Increase in government expenditure.
• Long delays in completion of certain projects leading to cost and time overruns.
• Dissatisfaction of the citizens if there is no effective grievance redressal mechanism.
• Possibility of social malpractices like corruption and abuse of power.

Governance involves citizens as active participants. Hence, to make governance more effective, participation of other organizations like NGOs, private companies, Self Help Groups, Resident Welfare Associations in urban areas, etc is also important.

As mentioned in the 2nd ARC report, benefits of ‘citizen centric governance’ include:

• It enables citizens to demand accountability.
• Makes government programmes and services more effective and sustainable.
• Enables the poor and marginalized to influence public policy and service delivery.
• Promotes vibrant grassroot democracy.
• Promotes egalitarian society by giving opportunity to the citizens to participate in philanthropic programmes.

Also, participation of citizens becomes advantageous not only to the citizens but to the government officials as well as it facilitates their work, receiving concrete inputs from the grassroot level. Hence, mechanisms like social audits should be promoted which represent a bottom-up approach where citizens are critical agents of change.

Few examples of collective participation are:

• Polio eradication programme: implemented at all levels by both public agencies and private clinics and hospitals in urban and rural areas and, at many places with direct citizen’s involvement.
• Involving private sector using Corporate Sector Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to drive change in society.
  
  • The 'Adopt A Heritage: Apni Dharohar, Apni Pehchaan' scheme for development and maintenance of tourist amenities at heritage sites.
  • P&G India’s education program Shiksha - Live, Learn & Thrive, for child education.
• Kerala’s Operation Sulaimani, a decentralized participatory project to address hunger in urban areas involving private restaurants and citizens.
• IAS Prashant Nair's initiative ‘Compassionate Kozhikode’ using social media platform to mobilize the private sector and the community.

Therefore, the aim of governance is to secure maximum good of the maximum number of people through not just government efforts, but also the efforts of private organizations and the community.

Conclusion

Governance thus aims at improving the administrative structure and processes by making them efficient, effective and responsive. It is a two-way collaborative process between the providers and the recipients of services. Only by such collaborative efforts, government’s motto of ‘maximum governance, minimum government’ can be achieved.