Day 57 – Q 4.What happens if governance lacks morality? What contradictions arise in such a scenario? Explain.

4. What happens if governance lacks morality? What contradictions arise in such a scenario? Explain. 

अगर शासन में नैतिकता का अभाव है तो क्या होगा? ऐसे परिदृश्य में क्या विरोधाभास पैदा होते हैं? बताएं।

Introduction:

Morality and Ethics in governance is required for a welfare society. To contribute to a better society in terms of freedom, equality, fraternity and social justice, it is important for the body of governance to inculcate ethics and moral values through society, education, family, friends, etc.

Body:

Lack of morality in governance leads to a disturbed and skewed development of society:

• No guiding discretion: Laws leave huge scope of discretion for officers; like, the governor while selecting the CM in case of hung assembly or the speaker while deciding over money bill. The officers need to take decisions based on ethics and propriety. When there is no morality, discretion is misused and hampers the overall welfare administration.
• Sustainability in governance is reduced: An administrator, achieving goals set by the institution through unethical means may set a bad precedent for others to follow and this may act as a justification for other unethical acts. Thus, this can hurt the long term interests of the organization either through dwindling credibility or pervading corruption.
• Efficiency is disturbed: Probity in an organization brings transparency and accountability. It eliminates corruption and siphoning of funds. However, absence of morality will disrupt this accountability and invariably lead to corruption.
• Satisfaction of the administrators as well as citizens is hampered: Proper outcome is not realised if moral values and ethics based governance is absent. 

Contradictions that arise when governance lacks morality:

• It would discourage transparency and accountability and lead to decisions based on self-interest in functions of any government authority.
• Absence of compassion, love, empathy towards vulnerable and weaker sections of society and thus ineffective policy implementation and formulation.
• Corruption becomes a rampant problem and slowly becomes the only way to get things done.
• It promotes personal gain and ignores public welfare.
• Promotes lethargy and inefficiency, leading to employees not dedicated to the service.
• Ineffective and improper utilization of resources.
• Citizen charters, Code of conduct and code of ethics which are based on morality and ethics are the tool of any government institution to ensure positive administration. This is absent when governance lacks morality.

Way forward:

• Envisaging threats to ethical standards and integrity in the public sector.
• Foster ethical competence in civil servants along with strengthening professional ethics.
• Development of administrative practices and processes which promote moral values and integrity.
• Enactment of efficient laws which require all public officials to state reasons for all their official decisions.
• Effective complaints and redressal procedures.

Conclusion:

Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity play a major role in administration as they have to face many conflicts of interests during policy making, decision making and policy implementation. Thus, it must be ensured that governance is based on morality, ethics and a sound emotional intelligence for promoting an efficient growth of society as a whole.