MAKING GOVERNANCE WORK: TOWARDS ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY

We call India a democracy, since we have a constitution and a reasonably fair system of elections. However, it has not delivered the desired expectations of fairness, equity and progress since our governance has been poor. The dilemma is that if ‘we the people’ govern our nation, how is it that we are unhappy with our governance? The truth is that the government is largely unaccountable to us, and except for electing our representatives, we do not have much say in the way the government functions. The legislators, bureaucrats and judges have not imbibed and internalized the thought that they are public servants. Until 12 October 2005, there was very little transparency in their functioning. Citizens knew only what the government chose to tell them, and even those in power who may have wished to share information with the public were shackled by the oath of secrecy and the ‘Official Secrets Act’.