"GOOD GOVERNANCE" - A DISTANT DREAM Author - VT Joshi

Election manifestoes have long become anachronisms. They are mere rituals routinely indulged in by all political parties on the eve of elections. The wild promises made in them are not taken seriously by either the parties themselves or by the voters. Nor are they ever meant to be fulfilled. Few, if any, even care to read the long winding documents – except perhaps their authors and copy editors.

The latest highly traumatized electoral exercise in Gujarat was no exception despite the disturbing communal events that preceded it. The yawning gap between promise and performance keeps ever widening as everywhere else while the high-stung campaign speeches have had no relevance to hard ground realities.

A subtle comment by the eminent cartoonist, R. K. Laxman, sums it up eloquently in his inimitable style. A weary party worker asks his co-workers while drafting a manifesto: “Election after election for years same promises, food, shelter, employment. Shall we offer something new this time?”

As if to answer it, Gujarat’s Narendra Modi has offered, tongue in cheek, “Security”. Which, in Sangh Parivar’s parlance, means communal reprisal. Equally mindless and unthinking was the Congress promise of a white paper on Godhra, if voted to power.

SHIBBOLETHS AND BUZZWORDS

As always and with all parties everywhere, there are no doubt attractive shibboleths and buzzwords thrown in for effect or diversion. For instance TRANSPARENCY and GOVERNANCE are two of the new fangled words increasingly in vogue these days. Like liberalization, privatization and globalisation, the new trinity of capitalist gods. In plain terms “governance” means what was once humbly called “administration”, qualified as good or bad, depending on the quality and standard of public service.

Administration does not improve a wee bit just by calling it by a new name. A rose smells as sweet call it by any name, averred the Bard four centuries ago. Times have changed a lot. A vital difference is that administration -- sorry one must use the glorified, pompous term “governance”-- is not a rose. Much less as fragrant. Far from it. It bristles with thorns. Indeed rotten for a long time, nay from times immemorial, if one may say so, except for a few bright patches in the long history of mankind. Or else how does one view and console oneself with the present sickening state of affairs.

Good governance means good roads, good civic amenities, good public services, goods and services at affordable prices, good schools, good dispensaries, good hospitals, competent health services, clean drinking water, pollution free environment and safe public transport, rapid agricultural and industrial growth, assured employment, two square meals for the teeming, starving millions et al. Good everything. And above all corruption-free administration, crime-free civil society. In short all that rarely obtains and is still a far cry. At any rate not in an adequate measure except for a miniscule of the privileged sections of society. In any case good governance is certainly not and should not be a VIP--oriented governance as it prevails at present.

DIVINITY

Of all the present day political worthies, L. K. Advani --- to his admirers a reincarnation of India’s iron man, Sardar Patel -- has propounded a fascinating new political theory: That good governance does not produce votes! So, by implication, you can bumble and blunder and yet get votes to rule the roost.

“There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how you will”, the redoubtable Deputy PM (and PM-in- waiting) seems to sing in unison with Shakespeare to quote him again.

Advani is not alone in the political firmament to say so. Almost the entire political class, both the ruling elite and the opposition stalwarts, sing the same dictum in varying tunes to suit their warped, fanciful roles in public life. They all talk in glorious terms in praise of “good governance” in public. As though “governance” and “government” they head or oppose, are two separate entities, independent of each other! Full well they know that one has to deliver the other, but they also know in their heart of hearts that they do not know how to deliver. So lofty “announcements” have become “achievements.”

Overwhelmed by the monumental complexities of the perils and problems facing the country, the leaders decide to resolve first their own problems of survival, political and personal, and make hay while the sun shines. Knowing that the sun will not shine long enough. But they also keep chanting the promise of “good governance”, hoping that it will be music to the voters’ ears to lull them at the hustings and induce them to vote them back to power again.

A NEW SARI

Apparently at least for some politicians there is a vested interest in keeping the masses poor. After the Dindigal by- election during an earlier stint of Jayalalita as chief minister of Tamil Nad sometime back, there were widespread rumours that dhotis and saris had been distributed among the voters of the constituency. A survey conducted by the then special correspondent of The Times of India was revealing. A middle aged poor woman residing in a slum admitted that she had received the gift of a new sari and that she had in fact voted for ruling party. The poor slum dweller added that it was her first ever new sari in her life. Can you blame the poor woman for “bartering away her precious vote for a new sari”?

MATHEMATICAL ENIGMA

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh, now in the ninth year of his unbroken two terms, has of late started singing a slightly different tune. With breath-taking mathematical accuracy he says 86 percent of the promises made in his party’s manifesto have already been fulfilled and the remaining 14 percent will be fulfilled before the next MP Assembly elections due in another 11 months. When his government was unexpectedly voted back to power against heavy odds for a second term in 1998 Digvijay Singh was asked what his priorities would be. Pat came his reply: “People are cursing me, abusing me for bad roads. So the first task will be to provide good roads”. Four years down the road, they largely continue to be pock marked with deeper potholes. In the most prosperous business segment of M.P. capital Bhopal, for instance, there are only potholes and no roads at all!

And so goes the story of “good governance”, the good old term for “good administration” which continues to be a cry in the wilderness. As it has long been for the vast multitudes of the poor masses – “the dumb driven cattle in the bivouac of life”, as one might say with a slight variation of poet Longfellow’s immortal lines. Indeed in the bivouac of the electoral life of the wily and the mighty!

VT Joshi

6 December, 2002

VT JOSHI (1925-2008) worked for more than fifty years as a journalist. He retired from THE TIMES OF INDIA in 1989. During 1985-89 he was the Special Correspondent of THE TIMES OF INDIA in Pakistan. His books "PAKISTAN: ZIA TO BENAZIR" and "INDIA AT CROSS ROADS" (co-author GG Puri) were widely reviewed in both India and Pakistan.

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