National Human Development Report: 2001 - Indira Gandhi Institute ...

NATIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001 GOVERNANCE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 123sation is not necessarily the solution to addressing the problem. Prevalentinstitutional arrangements have to be reviewed and changes made wherethose vested with power are also made accountable, their functioning mademore transparent and subjected to social audit, with a view to minimise thediscretionary decisions. All such procedures, laws and regulations that breedcorruption and come in the way of efficient delivery system will have to beeliminated. The perverse system of incentives in public life, which makescorruption a high-return-low-risk activity, need to be addressed. In thiscontext, public examples have to be made out of people convicted oncorruption charges and the legal process in such cases has to be expedited.This, hopefully, will also address the growing permissiveness in the society, inthe more recent times, to the phenomenon of corruption. In addition, withchanges in economic policy regime, regulatory bodies that guide and monitorthe functioning of the relevant economic agents, lays down the rules ofconduct in the interest of consumers and devises such practices that help inefficient functioning of the system will have to be established in many sectorsof the economy that are now being opened up. At the same time, socialmonitoring through empowered, autonomous and credible structures willhave to be established even for the highest of the public offices. Right toinformation has to be the starting point for some of these changes.It turns out that efficient andeffective governance, be it in the Changing Face of Governancecase of the executive, the judiciaryor the legislature, requires theinstitutions, the delivery mechanismthat they adopt and the frameworkof supportive rules, regulations andprocedures to continuously evolve inharmony with each other and inresponse to the changing context. Itmakes the issue of governanceStatecontext specific to time and thestage of development in any society.The necessity of a continuousadaptation in governance practices,is also reflected in the changing roleand scope of the State, the marketand the civil society vis-à-vis eachother. With the acceptance ofmarket liberalism and globalisation,it is only expected that state yields to the market and the civil society inmany areas where it, so far, had a direct but distortionary and inefficientpresence. It includes areas where the State, for instance, had entered as aproducer of such goods and services that are also produced in the privatesector. It also includes the role of the State as a development catalyst where,perhaps, the civil society presently has better institutional capacity. At thesame time, with the growth of markets and presence of an aware andsensitive civil society, many developmental functions as well as functionsthat provide stability to the social order have to be progressively performedby the market and the civil society organisations. It means extension of themarket and the civil society domain at the expense of the State in someareas. It also implies an increase in the area of their respective overlaps.Civil SocietyMarket