Day 65 – Q 2. In democracy, individuals are governed by institutions. In the light of current degradation of institutional set up, what can be the long term impacts on governance?
2. In democracy, individuals are governed by institutions. In the light of current degradation of institutional set up, what can be the long term impacts on governance?
Introduction
In a vibrant democracy, institutions play an important role in providing good governance to the citizens through their transparent, non-partisan and impartial working process. Recently, there has been debate going on regarding degradation of institutional setup with instances of feud in CBI, tussle between government and RBI etc. coming to public view.
Body
Long term impacts on governance
- Increase in trust deficit between citizens and government. This leads to erosion of credibility and confidence degradation.
- Decline of transparency in the working of institutions, thus making it prone to biasness and partiality.
- Decline of Accountability towards the citizens for whom it is meant to provide good governance.
- Prone to corrupt practices – decline of institutions gives rise to increase in discretion of officials which in turn gives rise to corruption.
- Democratic and Constitutional values which are meant to govern these institutions will be on decline. Favouritism, partisanship and Nepotism etc. will the negative values governing institutional functioning.
- Decline in quality of services when there is lack of proper grievance redressal mechanism.
- Centre-state relations impacted which are based on co-operative federalism. Example- Recent withdrawal of general consent for CBI by Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.
Measures needed to prevent such degradation
- Strengthen checks and balances such as make RTI working more robust and Citizen Charter implementation effective.
- Fast and effective grievance redressal mechanism.
- Fair, non-partisan and transparent selection process for appointmentsof officials.
- Providingautonomy to institutions with lesser government control to provide more governance with less government.
Conclusion
Robust working of institutions is the foundation stone of democracy and there is need to preserve the same for effective and efficient governance of citizens and nation as a whole.
Best answer: Ritik
