People and Good Governance

Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh, has suggested to the Prime Minister that the concept of democratizing district administration may be extensively debated and discussed all over the country so that a truly participative decision may emerge.  A seminar in which elected leaders, professionals, academia, civil servants, NGOs and other citizens will participate, is also, being organized in the State Academy.

PEOPLE FIRST urges that the conclusions of such decisions and debates wherever held, may be communicated to it for assessing the wishes of the people.

The highly bureaucratized district administration should be placed under an elected district council to which the collector and other district officials are accountable.  Participative regional planning, public hearings, participatory councils and grassroots neighborhood committees will ensure transparency and responsible governance at all levels.

The recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission are no longer adequate

Centralized Planning, apart from being non-participative, is primarily based on incremental economic models and does not integrate regional socio-economic, infrastructure and environmental issues.  It is technically superficial and is primarily responsible for the socio-economic and environmental degeneration of the rural economy which, in turn, has made our villages and cities unsustainable.

 Centralized Planning requires a massive government bureaucracy to administer it.  This leads to heavy overheads, wastages, misuse of funds and corruption at various levels of governance.  Today, India is amongst the most bureaucratized countries in the world.

As a result of the 73^rd  and 74^th constitutional amendments, centralized planning has to be replaced by scientific regional planning.  There can no longer be any centrally sponsored schemes.  The central and state governments can, through the processes of the finance commissions, only devolve funds or local programmes without any conditions or stipulations.

Planning will be initiated by local governments will full participation of the tribal, rural and urban communities.  It will cover socio-economic, infrastructure and environmental issues expressed in descriptive, quantitative and spatial plans.  Such planning is internationally recognized as the only sound planning which integrates science and people.

Participation of people in planning and also at various stages of decision-making during implementation are implicit in the constitutional amendments and statements like “power to the people” which went with them.

There are several institutions in democratic functioning through which participation can be institutionalized.  First, right to information should be recognized as a human right.  There should be a commission for informed citizenship in every state or a division in the human rights commission to monitor that the right to information is not violated.

Next, the law should mandate right to be informed and to participate through institutions like (1) public hearings on project proposals at affected sites and villages, (2) participator councils at the local level on key issues  like empowerment of women, natural resource management and public tenders, and (3) neighbourhood  committees (traditional gram sabhas for tribal hamlets) functioning as grassroots democracies.

Participative regional planning and the above three institutions constitute powerful tools for regulating industrial locations and production processes and promoting equitable distribution and sustainable use of resources vital for sound human development.

The draft plans initiated by the local governments shall be consolidated by district planning committees and approved by the state governments.  In the central government, the ministry of finance will monitor the economy and the ministry of environment will monitor balanced regional development and inter-state resource issues.  The central and state governments will thus still have overall control over local programmes; only the process will be participative and methodology scientific.

Such planning will require decentralized public management in which programmes will be handled at the appropriate level of government.  The staff requirement and frictional losses, that is overheads, wastages, misuse and corruption, will, as a consequence, be dramatically reduced.

The massive state bureaucracy in India has become obstructive, inefficient and corrupt.  It, however, adopts a holier than thou attitude and openly criticises the political leadership for corruption and misgovernance.  It denigrates the people are being either cheats or morons.  It asserts that if power is given to the municipalities and panchayats, they will sell the nation.

Politicians are accountable to the people after every five years; they can be made fully accountable through known institutions of democratic functioning like public hearings.  The state bureaucracy is wielding unbridled power without any accountability to the people whatsoever.  Many political leaders are now finding too much of bureaucracy a hindrance to their development initiatives and see no reason why there should be so many middlemen between them and the people.

Some people still vouch for the state bureaucracy.  A reasonable size of state bureaucracy is essential; some in it may also be very efficient.  There are, however, structural limitations in bureaucratic functioning; excessive dependence on it can be damaging.  Total faith in the state bureaucracy is a colonial hang-over and must be discarded.

The constitutional amendments have left serious lacunae in the administrative structure at the district level unresolved.  First, the institution of the district collector,  the ultimate symbol of the colonial rule, has been left undisturbed.  While some district collectors may be good, the district collector as an institution vested with immense powers is a contradiction in a democratic polity.  It has now become a serious bottleneck in development management.  The other district officials also have no accountability to the people.

Secondly, the relationship between district offices and the local governments has been left undefined.  While gram panchayats can seek coordination from the zila panchayat, nagar panchyats and municipalities have still to deal with a bureaucratic district office and a remote state directorate.  Finally, the district planning committees have no defined institutional moorings which will render them ineffective.

The only proper institutional arrangement is that in place of a zila panchayat  and a  district planning committee, there should be a single elected district council in overall charge of the whole district.  The collector and other district officers should be fully accountable to the district council and the district council to the people.  Thus there will be a fully accountable and responsible political entity at the district level.  This will simplify administration, improve its access to the people and drastically reduce bureaucratic and other overheads.

The district councils shall consolidate the local plans and coordinate and assist in their implementation.  Such district or county councils exist in all well managed democracies.  For metropolitan areas there can be metropolitan councils.  As proposed by the Bhuria committee, district councils of tribal districts may be given some legislative powers.

It may be argued that high quality leadership and professional support may not be forthcoming at the local level.  If small countries like  Nepal, Singapore and Switzerland can produce national level leadership, there is no reason why, given the opportunity, a district of comparable size cannot produce good local leadership which people can hold accountable.

The above institutional changes will need an amendment to the Constitution.  To promote responsible governance through transparency, the amendment should explicitly provide for involvement of the people at various stages of decisionsmaking through the known institutions of democratic functioning described in Section 5.

The law should require that decisions on matters like design and tenders of district works and forestry programmes and auctions shall be taken by the district government with the assistance of specially constituted committees in which independent citizens and professionals deliberate in an open court-like environment. This will promote transparency, professionalism and accountability and reduce the huge multi-level bureaucracy, delays and corruption implicit in the present system.  The collector and district heads of police, education, public works, forests, etc. should be appointed on contract through open selection.

The state governments and legislators may see the district collectors and local programmes slipping out of their control.  They should understand that power increases through sharing.  Further, political parties not in power in the state will get an opportunity to share power in the districts.  The increased political should actually be welcomed by them. 

States demanding autonomy should realize that they can get control over regional issues only if they agree to foster district and local empowerment.  Some people are worried that emergence of strong state and local governance may lead to balkanization of the nation.  The fact is that once people get control over regional and local issues, they will be enthused to strengthen the central government to protect the national borders. 

The present multi-party national political scene, offers the best opportunity for bringing about the above changes in the polity.  Notwithstanding the need for a constitutional amendment, given political consensus, the implementation can have depth and the process can be speedy.

Political leadership is generally receptive to empowerment of the people.  The resistance is largely from the state bureaucracy and pseudo intellectuals.  The leadership and the people should guard against getting misled by them.

If an open polity to supplement an open economy is instituted now, the turn of the century may see a vibrant responsibly industrialized nation of empowered people.   If it is not done, the nation may destroy itself.