Ethics for Governance

Reinventing Public Services

B. P. Mathur

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317559696
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a comprehensive overview of India's public services and bureaucratic systems, and explores why widespread corruption and inefficient delivery have slowed development. It:

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• discusses the underlying reasons for the prevailing inefficiency in public services;

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• examines the complex linkages between ethics-based public service, India's cultural and spiritual heritage, and its current economic development model; and

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• outlines ways to create an ethics code and an environment that is conducive to better administration and good governance.

Lucid, accessible, and meticulously researched, this will prove essential to scholars and students of public administration, governance studies and political science, particularly bureaucrats, policy-makers and civil service aspirants.

1 The Rise of Modern State

DOI: 10.4324/9781315734019-1

Possession of power makes men blind and deaf, they cannot see things which are under their very nose and cannot hear things which invade their ears. There is thus no knowing what power-intoxicated government may not do — Mahatma Gandhi.¹

The rise of welfare states in the 20th century has led to the government influencing the life of an individual to an extraordinary degree. Governments can be both tyrannical and beneficent: they can create misery for the people of the State, snatch life and liberty and choke freedom; they can be munificent and provide an environment where the citizens are assured of the basic comforts of life and can lead a fulfilling life. It is, therefore, necessary that we understand what is government and its purpose. How does a government come about and what power does it have over a person? Who sanctions that power? Are there any limits in the exercise of government power; if these limits are exceeded, does an individual (and the community) have any remedies? We also need to understand what principles and values a government should imbibe to meet the aspirations of people in today’s highly technological and complex world.²

The fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order which enables individuals to enjoy freedom. Freedom is essential to the life of an individual and without it the individual will wither. A person, however, cannot have a license to do anything he or she likes. Rules for behaviour must he made and enforced, but not so much as to fatally poison freedom; but only a touch to preserve it. Political theorist Thomas Hobbes thought, in uncivilised times, in times before government, there existed continual war with ‘every man against every man’ and the ‘life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.³ To avoid this, the man must cede his natural right of self-defence to a sovereign authority with full powers preferably an absolute monarch. This Hobbesian view is to be contrasted with that of John Locke who thought that the original state of man was happy and was characterised by reason and tolerance. He thought that all human beings, in their natural state, were equal and free to pursue matters, considered as inalienable rights — life, health, liberty, and possessions. Locke’s theories on the nature of man have held sway for 300 years. Man by his nature is driven to seek ‘power, ambition, lucre, lust’,⁴ and will take from others to achieve his goals, unless restrained. The principal constraint for any one individual is that he does not want to lose what he has in the attempt in getting more and, above all, he does not want himself or his family to get hurt and lose liberty or life. In such a situation, one way is to submit to a common power such as a great king — who is created, supported and kept powerful, to fight enemies from abroad. The alternative to government is anarchy, which means no law or supreme power. Anarchism exists in those places where people, individually or by voluntary groups, are left to sort out their own affairs. Most individuals need some order in their lives, much before they can get on with leading it.

Government is the continuous exercise of the power to control all the individuals that make up a community. Usually we think of this community as the whole of all those who live in some sort of geographical area, the larger political units being sovereign countries. This government power is exercised by a body of persons who are charged with the authority of governing. Out of pure fear people have, since the earliest times, preferred to band themselves together in a group under a strong leader. The principal fear is the fear of other people — either from within or without the group. The members within the group still continue to run the risk of being a victim to the leader himself but since the leader would like to stay in power, it is a lesser risk. It never occurred to either the members or the leader that the former should have much say in the choice of the latter. The Greeks and the Romans, about two millennia ago, experimented with some idea of democracy but that was only in the smaller city–states. Historically, workable democracies, in a representative form, seem to have appeared on the world stage only about 250 years ago.

The ‘states’ as we know today is a typical European invention of some four to five hundred years ago. According to historian S. E. Finer,

in place of the gangling, decentralized feudal regnum of the Middle Ages, the Europeans had recreated the State: a sharply defined discrete territorial unit, possessing a common political superior, recognizing and being recognized by other similarly constituted units as entirely free to do what it pleased within its own boundaries: in short as sovereign.⁵

These sovereign states had five non-medieval features: standing armies, professional bureaucracies, fiscal centralisation, extensive trading networks, and institutionalised diplomatic dialogue with fellow sovereign states. The peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War was a forerunner in creating European sovereign states. The treaty not only signalled the end of the perennial, destructive wars that had ravaged Europe but recognised peace as the highest goal of the community of the states. It established the concept of nation — state sovereignty based on territoriality and the absence of a role for external agents in domestic structures. It established the principle that all members have equal legal standing and guaranteed each other their independence and non-interference in their domestic affairs.

The Industrial Revolution had greatly increased the wealth and power of the European States and, coupled with technological advances in firearms (especially artillery) and the ocean-going ships, this helped them dominate and colonise a large part of the world from America and Africa to South East Asia. The European imperial powers transmitted their concept of the State to their colonies; when these countries attained independence and nationhood around the middle of the 20th century, they retained its basic features such as centralised power, standing army and bureaucracy.

The installation of a democratic form of government in France and the USA towards the latter half of the 18th century made governments an important player in the life of citizens. The term ‘democracy’ first appeared in ancient Greek political thought, but Plato was not enamoured by it and gave his own version in The Republic.⁶ Plato believed in philosopher–rulers, the choicest of the best of men the State is able to produce, who should rule over the middle class and the lower class.⁷ The Athenian democracy is considered to be the first direct democracy in the world, though prototypes of democratic institutions known as mahajanapada and panchayat did exist in ancient India. The Roman republics also had representative governments though enfranchisement was limited to male citizens. However, democracy, in the modern sense, evolved in Great Britain, the USA and France. The American Declaration of Independence (1776) proclaimed: ‘All men are equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’.⁸ The United States Constitution, adopted in 1788, provided for an elected government and was based on the principle of natural freedom and equality. The ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’, the fundamental document of French Revolution (1789) states that (a) men are born free and remain free and equal in rights; (b) all citizens being free are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, employment; (c) citizens he guaranteed rights of liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression and freedom of speech.⁹

Initially, when democracies were established in Western countries, the main expectation of people was that the government would provide liberty and ensure equality and justice to its citizens. It was thought that the government should also provide national defence, administer justice, maintain public order and personal safety, and provide public services, such as health programmes and roadways, which do not lend themselves to voluntary effort. However, rapid industrialisation since the 19th century led to vast expansion of national wealth and improvement in living standards. Harnessing national energy helped in generating large surpluses, which were turned to military and civilian use. As the State’s prosperity increased it began to look into the welfare of its citizens, trying to ease their suffering. The government’s polices included the citizens’ right to education, provision for sickness, unemployment allowance and pension for old age — ensuring the role and power of the State in the life of an ordinary citizen.

The Socialist Doctrine

The adoption of the socialist doctrine as a practical policy in the 20th century dramatically transformed the role of State; though, paradoxical as it may sound, original socialists thinkers had little faith in the government’s capacity for economic and social transformation. British and French thinkers, such as Robert Owen, PierreJoseph Proudhon and Henri de Saint-Simon, criticised the excesses of poverty and inequality caused by the Industrial Revolution and advocated reforms such as the egalitarian distribution of wealth and the transformation of society into small communities in which private property was to be abolished.¹⁰ Production was sceptical of the State intruding into the lives of citizens and felt that under the pretext of public utility, the government would harass and repress them.¹¹ However, it was the revolutionary thinking of Karl Marx that brought a fundamental change in people’s idea about the way society and economy needed to be organised. Marx felt that unbridled capitalism and laissez-faire would inevitably lead to the exploitation of the labour class and, thus, advocated for the community taking over the means of production and distribution and argued for establishment of dictatorship of the proletariat. Karl Marx felt that the State belonged to the stronger and the wealthier class, who exercise a virtual dictatorship over the rest of the society. Marx declared, ‘[t]he executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’.¹² The economist and Nobel Laureate W. Arthur Lewis observes,

[s]ocialism in particular, contrary to popular belief, is not committed either by its history or by its philosophy, to the glorification of the state or to the extension of its powers. On the contrary, the links of socialism are with liberalism and with anarchism, with emphasis on individual freedom, and in opposition to the extended state. The 19th century socialists were not predominantly well disposed to state, and in the blue print to socialists society which they constructed the state receives frequently only a minor role.¹³

The development of socialist doctrine as a practical policy took an altogether, different turn from what its original ideology had expounded. When Lenin came to power in the Soviet Union, as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he abolished private property in one stroke and all means of production and distribution were taken over by the State. This made the government an all powerful entity. Unlike the Soviet Union, the leaders of the socialist movement in Great Britain, who grouped themselves under the Fabian Society, believed in the ‘inevitability of gradualism’.¹⁴ Nevertheless, its most influential members Sidney and Beatrice Webb were ‘worshipers of the State’ and believed that all key industries must he in the State hand.¹⁵ They shaped the philosophy of the British Labour party which enshrined in its constitution the nationalisation of key industries as the sole method of socialist advance. After the Second World War, when the Labour party came to power under the leadership of Prime Minister Clement Atlee, all key industries such as coal, steel and power were nationalised. Similar economic philosophy was followed by other industrialised countries such as France and Italy. In the second half of 20th century, the concept of a ‘welfare state’ — in which the government took responsibility for the social security of its citizens — was deeply embedded in the practical philosophy of most advanced industrial economies. This dramatically increased the role of the State in the economic life of the individual, even in the so-called free market economies.

The Interventionist State

Governments, even in advanced capitalist countries, have come to occupy a critical role in the life of the nation as a result of the periodical downturn of economy and the hardship it causes to people. The economic depression of the 1930s and the adoption of the Keynesian prescription of stimulating effective demand through massive injection of public money had placed the State at the centre stage of economic management in a nation. Today, governments across the world play a crucial role in maintaining fiscal stability and determining monetary and price policy, exchange rate, wage and employment policy, which directly impact the life of citizens. Since the 1980s, governments in the USA and the UK and other Western countries have been actively pursuing neoliberal economic policies under the intellectual influence of Fredrick von Hayek and Milton Friedman. They are actively supported by international institutions, such as The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), who promote a policy of free play of market forces and profess a philosophy of minimum interference and regulation of the economy. In the long run, this policy proved disastrous and was responsible for the serious downturn of their economies in 2008. These nations are still struggling to recover from the aftermath and their governments have turned interventionist, pursuing Keynesianism again, pouring trillions of dollars of public money in the economy to boost economic growth. Given the play of economic forces in today’s glohalised world, the State has inevitab...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• I Introduction
• 1 The Rise of Modern State
• 2 Ingredients of Good Governance
• II Values and Character-Making
• 3 Fundamental Values for Humanity
• 4 Character-Building for National Reconstruction
• 5 Restoring Values: Inculcating Indian Ethos
• III Indian Administration through the Ages
• 6 Ancient Indian Polity
• 7 The Mahabharata: Fundamentals of Governance
• 8 Kautilya: The Art of Governance
• 9 The Medieval Administration
• 10 The British Administration
• IV Contemporary India
• 11 Indian Polity after Independence
• 12 The Current Economic Setting
• 13 Constructing a New Economic Model
• 14 The Gandhian Alternative to Economic Development
• V Part V: Public Administration: Problems and Solution
• 15 Public Services: Why They Don't Function?
• 16 Senior Civil Services: Reinventing Them
• 17 International Experience in Reform: New Public Management
• 18 Reforming Public Management: An Agenda
• VI An Ethical Framework
• 19 The Ethics of Public Service
• 20 An Ethics Code: International Perspective
• 21 An Ethics Code for Public Servants in India
• VII The Challenges
• 22 Combating Corruption: The Ethical Dimension
• 23 Leadership and Individual Excellence
• 24 Epilogue: India Realising its Destiny
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index