Need to govern

Looking around the country at this juncture, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that we are in facing a crisis; not just because several parts of India are going through violence or natural disasters, but a crisis of lack of governance.  There are several ways to look at governance — or lack of it — which makes it difficult to come up with a precise definition. But we can understand the lack when we see it — the breakdown of efficient management which creates the feeling of loss of control. You only have to look around the disorder and anomie across the country to grasp its the glaring absence.

In Jammu & Kashmir, state and the central governments remain passive spectators even as communalists and secessionists play havoc with the state’s fragile peace. In Orissa, the state government watches as Hindutva elements attack Christians, after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmananda Saraswati was allegedly killed by Maoists and Christian and Hindutva fundamentalists derive mileage out of it in the rest of the country.
In Bihar, the administration takes almost a week to react  to  millions of people rendered homeless by the flood fury of the Kosi river. In Mumbai, the state government offers bombast and little else as goons destroy private property. It takes strong words from the Bombay High Court to rein in the hoodlums of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena; left to itself it is possible that the government would never have reacted.

In each of these instances, the crisis could have been averted if governments had done what they were voted in to do — take decisive action. When the Kosi embankment was breached upstream, there was still time enough to mount emergency relief operations without waiting for the problem to become a crisis and then a tragedy. In J&K, the  problem was allowed to fester and politicians manipulated communal sentiments to gain advantage in an election year. In Orissa, aggressive communalism was not kept under check. And the naked display of chauvinism in Maharashtra has suited every political party.

Is lack of governance endemic? Not necessarily. Nitish Kumar’s administration had so far delivered some semblance of economic development to Bihar. There has been peace, fragile perhaps, in J&K for some years. And most governments have realised that they need to provide the basics to the people. But often these good intentions give way to systemic inefficiencies and even cynicism — often the lack of effective decision-making is an engineered problem to keep the political pot boiling. But the fact is that the country craves governance all the time which, sadly, is not forthcoming.