Ethics in Governance in India

Bidyut Chakrabarty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317329084
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Governance and ethics are intertwined. A government functions within certain broad moral and ethical parameters, integrally linked with the sociological foundation of the polity in which it is articulated. The importance of ethics in governance has acquired a significant place in contemporary theoretical discussion.

This book situates ethics in governance in India in the national frame and incorporates the context of globalization, allowing for the increasing importance of non-state global actors in national decision making. The author argues that a lack of ethics quickly turns into corruption and leads to governmental efforts to deal with it. He proposes that ethics are a set of standards that a society places on itself to articulate its responses to societal needs, and discusses the efforts of the Indian government at eradicating corruption and its failure.

A theoretical approach to the issues of ethics in governance and corruption, this book is of interest to academics in the fields of Asian Politics, in particular Indian politics, and political philosophy.

1 Situating ethics in governance

Citizens and administration

In conventional public administration, citizens remain recipients and hence they hardly have a role to play in governance. Endorsed by the Weberian notion of hierarchical bureaucracy, public administration, in its earlier articulation, did not seem to pay adequate attention to the role that the citizens are expected to play in public governance. Public administration was hardly public in sum and substance. The idea was challenged off and on; and there were changes in the texture and functioning of public administration as history progressed. One of the fundamental changes that was brought about as a result of politico-ideological campaigns in various phases of history was about the nature of public governance in which the role of citizens began to be recognized as integral to its functioning. It was made possible in a changed environment where top-down administrative values no longer remained as attractive as before. Instead, the idea of the ‘bottom-up’ administration, entailing the critical importance of the public in decision making, seemed to have become theoretically far more acceptable. The idea that citizens are important in governance is not new; what is new now is the effort towards articulating this idea in practice. Citizens need to be taken into account seriously while formulating policy decisions: they do not remain mere cogs in a machine, but are actively involved in running the machine in accordance with their ideological priorities.

Citizens’ involvement in decision making is critical to ethics in governance. In order to make administration transparent, the role of stakeholders can never be undermined because it was they who, being faced by the reality, know what is better for their well-being. Only then are administrative decisions likely to be based on an appropriate understanding of the reality, something usually sacrificed given the appreciation of the top-down strategy of public administration. The aim is to create and also sustain an administration that is responsive enough to arrive at effective decisions for public well-being. What is basic here is to evolve mechanisms whereby citizens’ views are respected while making decisions pertinent to their well-being both individually as well as collectively. This is an important aspect of governance in India, in its new avatar that has attracted immense attention. By concentrating on these instruments of citizens’ empowerment in the changed socio-ideological circumstances, the chapter provides an elaborate study not only of these mechanisms but also their contextual roots in India’s volatile political milieu. The fundamental argument that the chapter makes relates to the consolidation of newer devices for citizens empowerment that are being meaningfully utilized to make public governance sensitive to the demands and also requirements of the stakeholders. These instruments seems to have become effective, the argument further underlines, because of a favourable socio-political environment supporting proactive citizens as integral to democratic political processes.

Interactions between citizens and administration

Being a citizen is more than a status; it is about the entitlement to the rights and privileges of a person that ensures a quality life. So, citizenship is more than a set of rights and obligations; it is an innate orientation for the well-being of state and society. The ancient Greeks realized that, and the polity of Athens institutionalized citizenship through its diverse associations, councils and authorities within the urban framework had evolved. In that environment, citizenship, in principle, meant participation in the co-production of policies. At the basis of this participation stood a belief in the ‘happy veracity’ of man. However, in modern times the status aspects of citizenship are stressed heavily and the qualitative aspects of citizenship appear to be grossly underestimated. In their wake, public administration as a discipline, was, until recently, more focused on the improvement of state apparatuses than on the development of citizenship and the involvement of citizenship in the making of governmental policies.¹ This dominant trend is responsible for the alienation of citizens and thus there is an increase in citizens’ grievances against administration. Against this background, the present chapter deals with some significant dimensions of interaction between citizens and administration, namely citizens’ perception about administration, pre-conditions for citizens’ centric administration, people’s participation in administration, forms of public accountability and the role of public grievance redress machinery in India.

In a democracy, the administration–citizen relations are significant because the support and consent of the governed is a prerequisite for the sustenance of representative government. The state and in actual terms the administration has the major responsibility of providing the major amenities of life – education, health, employment opportunities, improved means of transport and infrastructure, etc. All this affects the individual and collective life of a very large number of people concerned. In public administration, two noticeable trends have emerged in recent times. First, there has been a large growth in the size of governmental administration as well as a vast expansion in its powers and activities. Second, in the wake of the spread of general education, and political and social awakening, there has been a rise in the expectations of people of the administration. The relationship between law and public opinion in a democracy was discussed by A V Dicey at about the end of the last century.² The importance of the subject grew sharply after the Second World War, thanks to the growth of welfare as well as socialist ideologies in the new states. People in affluent societies are growing less concerned about the old concept of liberty than about a love of material comfort and pleasure. The focus of the relationship between state and society has shifted from political liberty to economic prosperity and social justice. The state has expanded its political base through universal adult franchise. Administration has, therefore, of necessity penetrated into every aspect of civic life. The bulk of the citizens who are voters and beneficiaries of state services are more keen to get services supplied than on the subtle aspects of how they get them.³ The position of the citizens from being mere recipients of administrative help and services has now shifted to their being the prime movers in the affairs of governance.

There are different ways in which citizens interact with the administrative agencies in day to day life. Mohit Bhattacharya illustrates five categories⁴ of such interactions. These could be in the form of:

• Clients: In this form, citizens seek to obtain benefits or services from governmental agencies. For example, a patient visits a governmental hospital for a medical check or treatment.

• Regulatees: As a regulatee, the public interacts with many government agencies such as the police, income tax authorities, licensing authorities etc.

• Litigants: As litigants, the public moves the court against ‘unjust’ actions of public agencies. For example, people seek redress from the court when the motor vehicles authority may be delaying issuance of car licenses.

• Participants: In this form people become direct participants in decision making in public agencies at different levels. For example, parents become members of a school’s guardians’ committee or an irrigation project associates the farmers with the different decision-making processes of the project.

• Cutting edge encounters: In this form people approach agencies that are responsible for day today primary services and facilities to the public. For example, people approach the municipal employees for water, electricity, and sanitation facilities.

• Protesters: besides the above five, there could be another form of interaction – people as protesters. People often interact with government agencies on public policy as protesters, opposing the injustice in government policy and action. For example, people oppose the construction of a dam in their locality.

Thus, the citizens in day-to-day life constantly interact with the administration. The contact may be for varied purposes; for example, it may be for getting basic services such as water, electricity and health services or it may be for getting a driving license or income tax return from the income tax department. Sometimes people get an opportunity to directly participate in policy-making and implementation of a governmental agency or project. When people do not get services in time or are harassed by public authorities, they seek redress of their grievances from the court and when they do not see justice coming from any side they resort to protesting or criticizing the unjust policy and action of the government. Through these happy or unhappy interactions, citizens form opinions about public administration.

Citizens’ perception about administration

Though, ideally speaking, the interaction between citizens and administration is supposed to be trustworthy and purposeful, in reality, it is observed that this is always plagued by conflicts, stresses and strains. Discontent among the citizens, which is due to the result of a wide disparity between the performance of administration and popular expectations, has become a normal feature. The general feeling that persists among the people is that the policies are cumbersome, or the processes of administration are found to be unjust. Yet another important problem is the deterioration in the standards of honesty and integrity in both politics and administration due to corruption. Rigid observance of rules and regulations, non-acknowledgement of complaints and the inordinate delay in the disposal of various matters account for the lack of faith of the public in administration.

Research findings on citizen–administration relations in India reveal interesting data, and information studies on ‘Police Administration’ by Davis H Bayley (1969), ‘Rural Development’ by Rakesh Hooja (1978) and ‘Urban Government’ by V Jagannadhan (1978) reveal citizens’ perceptions about public administration in India. According to Mohit Bhattacharya, the general perceptions of the people about administration that emerge out of these studies include:

• unhelpful attitude of officials especially lower level functionaries

• inordinate delay and waiting period

• favouritism in administration

• need for middlemen (brokers) to get things done

• citizens’ ignorance about procedures involved in getting things done

• rich–poor discrimination in administration: the rich having access to administration and the general tendency of officials to avoid the poor and underplay their needs and interests.⁵

A recent study by the Centre for Media Studies shows that a majority of citizens are not satisfied with the delivery of public services. In seven out of the eleven departments covered by the study, less than one-third of the citizens are satisfied with the services delivered. In fact, in most needs-based services, such as the police, judiciary and municipalities, (which enjoy a greater discretion and power), not even 20 per cent of the households are satisfied with the services. Even in essential services such as the PDS (food distribution system), hospitals, and electricity and water supplies, a mere 30–40 per cent of the households are happy with the services.⁶

Thus, administration in India is generally perceived to be unresponsive, insensitive and corrupt. W A Robson observes that

In mind of average citizen, bureaucracy still suffers from traditional defects associated with it. These are an excessive sense of self-importance on the part of officials or an undue idea of the importance of their office, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface and acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1 Situating ethics in governance: citizens and administration
• 2 Democratic decentralization and ethics in governance
• 3 Ethics and administrative reforms in India
• 4 Civil service reforms in India: an aid to ethics in governance
• 5 Institutional responses to the decline of ethics in governance in a historical perspective
• 6 Contemporary politico-ideological efforts towards arresting the ethics deficit in governance and corruption
• Conclusion
• Bibliographical notes and a select bibliography
• Index