The Agenda of Good Governance

Medical doctors are used to saying: The operation was completely successful; unfortunately, we can’t save the patient. There are two parts in this statement, namely, “successful operation” and “saving of the patient”. The first part focuses on “the process” and second on “the results”. I will come back to this issue. Let me first take you to the issue of good governance agenda.

Good Governance

This government, coming to the power after Gen-Z revolt, has focused on good governance as its primary agenda. Defining governance may be a tricky issue but having “good” as a prefix reminds us of the possibility of having a “bad governance”. The people in the power could be seen defining good governance in terms of “service delivery” or “controlling corruption” while the opposition talk of “accountability”, “responsibility”, “transparency” and “responsiveness”.

I have no idea on service delivery other than promise to have home delivery of the passports. As about controlling corruption; corruption is an indicator of bad governance. You cannot establish good governance by controlling corruption; it moves other way round. You can control corruption by establishing good governance. The present government is mired with chicken-egg syndrome, not being able to differentiate cause and effect. It is shocked to read FM saying that the government has not been charged of evidential corruption within last six months of its existence! If this is the indicator of good governance, forget about public service delivery.

Recently, near abduction of the former CJ, in the middle of the night, from his residence, without arrest warrant, by the police and releasing him after 10 hours of interrogation, giving a lame duck excuse like “security threat” coming from undefined, unknown sources. That is clearly an example of bad governance. This incident is similar to parking of private vehicles at the entrance of some media houses and political leaders or mid night custody of a vocal journalist. The government is simply flexing its muscle, possibly issuing a threat – “if you don’t do this, I can do this”. We are basically into “gunda raj” – a mob rule. We experience this kind of behavior from mandales during panchayat days, from the members of Tarun Dal and Youth force, and from YCL in the aftermath of the Maoist coming to the power. Now, we have state force working behind.

Another instance of bad governance is the near impromptu transfer of a civil servant who gave off-the-cuff unsolicited advice, in the social media, to the government on managing dead bodies recovered in Rasuwa flooding. An ex-CDO was simply giving his personal experience handling dead bodies during Covid crisis. The government took it personally and, the very next day, he got transferred to Timure, the worst flood affected area, to use his experience!

Results vs. Process

Coming back to our medical example cited above, a good process may not produce successful results or even produce bad or unintended results. This is because the final outcome is contingent upon so many factor besides good process. But the important point is that it is near impossible to produce desired results following a bad or a maligned process. It is near impossible to save a patient with a bad or a faulty operation. The good governance agenda means following due process. Clearly, the government need to differentiate between rule of law and rule by law. It is dent exercising rule by law.

The Global Movement

Along with global anti-corruption drive, the agenda of good governance evolved from mid 1990s. If you turn the economic history of the world, what we see is continuous expansion of the governments all over the world. This was based on the assumption that if the government can do so much good during war time situations (WW I and WW II), it can definitely do better during peace time. The result was a tremendous expansion of the government. The untamed expansion of the government produced Reganomics and Thatcharism in 1980s that put a hold on government through mechanisms like marketization, privatization, decentralization and federalism. The economists have to make a forced and uncomfortable choice between market-failure (imperfect information, tyranny of the markets) and state-failure (bureaucratic sloth and corruption). The arrival of NGOs and INGOs in 1990s also did not solve the problem of market vs. state.

There are many countries in the West which first had political and civil rights before making achievements in the economic fronts. We do have cases where economic development preceded civil and political rights (Singapore, Malaysia, and recently, China). During 30 years of panchayati (mis)rule, we fundamentally believed that there cannot be economic development without first having political freedoms. The then governments speak about development as its primary agenda before political and civil rights. This is something akin to Lenin’s Omelet Thesis, that is, you have to break eggs (violate human rights) before making omelets (development). They churn out slogans like bikaskolagisanchar, bikaskolagisadak etc. Even King Birendra was dubbed as bikaspremi raja. Finally, the People’s Movement in 1990 put to an end to this belief and gave way for multiparty democracy. That is essentially a relaxation on political and civil rights. We believed that, with new found political and civil rights, economic developments follow automatically. The relationship is not that automatic. This is because there is an intervening variable called good governance. Remember when Deng Xio Ping said, “it does not matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mice”, he must be referring to governance variable.

Fourth Generation of Human Rights

Also it is worthwhile to remind that governance agenda is taking a shape of fourth generation of human rights. Civil and political rights coming at the first, economic and social and cultural coming at the second, environmental coming at the third. With the agenda of good governance, issues like “rights to be free from the evils of corruption”, “everyone has a right to know how his or her tax money is being used” or “rights to have good governance” have come into prominence.

Zidane Concept in Action

French footballer Zizou or Zidane used to say that given the choice between playing fair and losing a game, he prefers to win the game playing foul. This is the concept ingrained in the minds of this present government. But the sad part is there is no sight of winning the game, it is losing, moreover, losing fast, very fast.