Need for Groundwork..

Lalit Modi (IPL), Suresh Kalmadi (Common Wealth Games), Ashok Chavan (Real Estate Politics & Military establishment), Ramchandran Nair(Housing finance), A Raja (2G spectrum allocation-Telecom), these are the names pervading all corners of the media. No wonder why India stands pathetically low on rankings when it comes to righteousness and relative ease of doing business.
Revelations like these shows on what scale, and how badly governance in India is circumvented by the wires of corruption and lack of surveillance. Had our policies and procedures been stringent and comprehensive, these scams wouldn’t have been unearthed by media but the respective monitoring authorities.

Media has done a very commendable job by investigating and exposing these sporadic mighty misdoings taking place in various organizations. But can we rely only on media to keep an eye over matters relating to corporate governance and others? No! We cannot! Media lacks the required power and authority and as a matter of fact, it is not the job of media to do so. Its job starts when the concerned authorities catch such clandestine illegal activities and bring it to the knowledge of media, so that media can further showcase it to the stakeholders (public).

The scams which reach the eye of media are the ones substantial in scale, but what about those small ones permeating all public, private departments? The ones which keep harassing you and me on quotidian basis.

All said but nothing done. Call for better governance has kept voicing from time to time but only to die in newspaper articles, media reports and government files.

It is the time to take newer initiatives towards better governance on the grass root level, the ones which reach out, which are result oriented, which turns around the way we and our resources are managed. As reference and with my understanding, these are some of the ways in which these initiatives can be taken:

· Whenever some scam gets exposed, the very first outburst of public is towards the elite political leaders. And this is all right because they are responsible for the delivery of justice to people. But before blaming any one we should ask ourselves a question, did we made a thoughtful and well considered decision while choosing our local representatives who further go on to collectively choose the elite ones for the top of hierarchy? We blame MPs for non-performance but forget that the real person concerned with execution of public works in our area is the MLA, whom we never give careful thought while electing.

So it calls for the public to choose the right person for the chair at the bottom of the pyramid, because it is the base only which supports the top.

· You must have noticed big holes on the altogether newly constructed roads in your area, which left you wondering that why didn’t they complete the piping works before constructing the new road itself? Small issue like this and many others make a strong mark on the already starving exchequer.

It calls for a very simple solution, let us create a state level ‘coordination authority’ having offices and operations in all districts, whose sole task will be to consult all concerned departments before any infrastructure development project is initiated. This will not only lead to removal of wastage from the system but will fasten the pace of infrastructure development.

· Have you ever thought, why the people who are concerned with cleaning of roads (the sweepers), the people responsible for the upkeep of street lights, never turn up to show their faces? You will be surprised to know that in many instances there exist no recruited person for the same, they exist only on papers. This is where subcontracting turns to be a menace. Public authorities subcontract these tasks to private contractors who put fake numbers (financials, human resource) to bid and take away the contracts.

This call for a revamp in policies and procedures, there should be cap on the type & amount of work which can be subcontracted (work involving small investments should be handled by authorities themselves while only the big ones involving sizeable investments should be considered for subcontracting).

· Why is the case that for a single work, public is supposed to move to various different departments to get numerous different kinds of documents. A procedure of work based on ‘all departments-single document’ should be religiously followed. This will put the burden of documentation on the authorities and will bring accountability in to the system, because in case of discrepancies an ‘all department-single document’ can be reversely verified with ease.

· The reconstruction of polity after the independence was no more than an extension of colonial arrangements we lived under for several decades, where we have got used to the dictatorship and the emphasis is never to get organised and grouped.

But the situation demands for us to come together and create self help groups or watchdogs, and create responsibility and accountability in local corruption ridden governance. And the existence of aids like RTI will definitely provide enhanced empowerment to the grouped n organized citizens.

Such many more close-to-ground steps and initiatives will have to be undertaken for establishment of responsible and effective governance in our country.

Someone well said it that only good governance is required for an economy to grow because all other issues can be solved easily under the aegis of proper governance.