It pursued the policy of 'Economic reform' and now as it was said by the President of India Mrs Pratibha Devisingh Patilin in the joint session of the Parliament of India on the occasion of commencement of the 15th Lok Sabha, the government wants to 'Reform Governance'. What exactly they want to do?

Her address indicates something about it. The Government sees the 'overwhelming' mandate it has received (in the recent general election) as a vindication of the policy architecture that it has put in place.

If the government is thinking on this line, it can be safely presumed that the government does not want to radically change the 'policy architecture' that it has put in place in the last five years of its rule. It just wants to consolidate them, which would require re-energising government and improving governance. However, there is no indication that the government intends to do away with the maladministration that breed corruption in the governance.

For a common man 'Reform in Governance' means quick and corruption free response from the government officials or public servants. Modus operandi of corruption is that the public servants delay the response time to such an extent that the concerned persons are compelled to bribe them if they want their work done. When no bribe comes their way, the public servants, after an inordinate delay, generally respond in negative unless they are compelled to respond positively.

The present government's all the programmes and policies suffer from this evil that needs immediate redressal, and it is where reform in governance is badly needed.

Many recommendation of the Administrative reform commission in this regard proved to be unfruitful. Neither earlier governments did anything nor Dr Manmohan Singh's government seems interested in doing anything to push this issue to a logical end.

For example, there was a suggestion to reduce the response time for a public servant to one month. It was suggested that every public servant should be legally bound to respond within this timeframe either rejecting the applications or disposing them favourably. It was further suggested if a government servant does not respond within a given reasonable time-frame, the petition should be treated as rejected and the petitioner should be given right to make application to higher officials who should again hear the petitioner and make decision in a given timeframe. The process should go on to the top.

Had this beautiful suggestion accepted, the response time from the government servants would have been substantially reduced and the corruption level minimized.

Other suggestions can also be invited to make governance effective, impartial and corruption free. However, this is not the priority of the government. It wants a different type of 'Reform in Governance'.

This presidential address has indicated certain things like making information readily available on public domain and ombudsman at the district level. These may serve some of the purposes of good governance, but we have already seen what happened to the institution of the Lokayuktas. Lok Pal at the central level putting the Prime Minister under its jurisdiction is yet unfulfilled. Lokayuktas at state level are neither being given sufficient human resource nor finance. Moreover, they have been given little power to tackle the problem effectively. It is anybody's guess what would going to happen to the institution of the ombudsman at the district level.

As for the information to be put on public domain, it will prove a daunting task. There is already Right to Information Act under which government departments are supposed to give information to the people within a limited timeframe of 30 days. Of course, there are certain exceptions under which information are supposed to be given within 24 hours or within 35 days. However, getting information from the government offices is yet a difficult task for common people. Moreover, many departments and noting are exempted from this act.

In this scenario, right and timely information on public domain will be a dream. Even now there are many government websites, which contain some information for public, but they are not updated. We need information on demand, which obviously will take time because this is not the priority area for the government. Government officials are yet to take this website affair seriously. Presently they lack even functional technological knowledge as well as proper approach to smoothly run such websites.

But maladministration and corruption are not the only thing about governance or any reform in it. It is all encompassing - governing the life of people from the womb to the grave.

Only a few days ago, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had said that he wanted to give a new meaning to parliamentary democracy.

He is welcome if he wants to follow the right direction. We know that his own party is not run on the democratic principles. We wonder as to how he can give new direction to the country to reflect democracy in true sense.

It is clear that his principle of governance is similar to the policies and programmes of the IMF and the World Bank. He is working for Economic reform on their principle. They now, in their working papers, are emphasizing on Reform in Governance in a particular direction. Therefore, one naturally is forced to think that this country will be witnessing a new phase of Reform in Governance in the lines of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that they have been emphasizing for quite some time.#