Chakrabarty - Ethics in Governance in India.

Ethics in Governance in India

Governance and ethics are intertwined. A government functions within certain broad moral and ethical parameters, integrally linked with the sociological foundation of the polity in which it is articulated. The importance of ethics in governance has acquired a significant place in contemporary theoretical discussion.

This book situates ethics in governance in India in the national frame and incorporates the context of globalization, allowing for the increasing importance of non-state global actors in national decision making. The author argues that a lack of ethics quickly turns into corruption and leads to governmental efforts to deal with it. He proposes that ethics are a set of standards that a society places on itself to articulate its responses to societal needs, and discusses the efforts of the Indian government to eradicate corruption and its failure to do so.

A theoretical approach to the issues of ethics in governance and corruption, this book is of interest to academics in the fields of Asian Politics, in particular Indian politics, and political philosophy.

Bidyut Chakrabarty is Professor in Political Science at the University of Delhi, India.

Routledge contemporary South Asia series

Ethics in Governance in India

Bidyut Chakrabarty

First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Bidyut Chakrabarty

The right of Bidyut Chakrabarty to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Chakrabarty, Bidyut, 1958 author.
Title: Ethics in governance in India / Bidyut Chakrabarty.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge contemporary South Asia series ; 110 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015040387 (print) | LCCN 2015050352 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138100244 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315657783 (ebk) | ISBN 9781315657783 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political ethicsIndia. | Civil service ethicsIndia. | Public administrationMoral and ethical aspectsIndia.
Classification: LCC JQ229.E8 C53 2016 (print) | LCC JQ229.E8 (ebook) | DDC 172.0954dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040387

ISBN: 978-1-138-10024-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65778-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Dedicated to
Those fighting for justice and fair play

Contents

The decline of ethics in public life and its inevitable consequences continue to be intriguing to scholars and policy makers alike. Regardless of ideological differences, opinions converge on the point that corruption is an impediment to national/global growth. So it needs to be effectively combatted to secure the future of human civilization. But who will bell the cat, especially if those who are given the responsibility to capture it allow the cat to freely roam around! As the present study has shown, public authority breeds corruption and most of the institutional devices seem to have been handicapped given the growing vested interests in governance. Nobody seems to be serious in the containment of corruption and malpractices, because of the selfish motives of those who remain critical in dispensing public services. Corruption is said to have become inevitable in a rigid administration; nothing seems to move unless one dishes out monetary or other benefits in exchange for what one receives from the government. This was the scene in the context of the LicenseQuotaPermit Raj, as various studies of how the government functioned have shown. The impact was felt, though the social climate was such that no serious campaign was launched to challenge the system that seemed to have encouraged corrupt personnel to abuse public authority for personal enrichment. Attempts were made, as shown in the book, to weed out corruption by creating new public institutions and strengthening the existing ones. Despite putting these new mechanisms in place, the results did not seem to have been encouraging; that, however, raises a bigger question by suggesting that, without adequately changing the social climate, mere tweaking of the system by creating/strengthening institutions was futile. This is one side of the story; the other side is about the attempts, repeatedly made by the ordinary masses, to challenge the system and also the beneficiaries. The 19745 Total Revolution campaign by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) is illustrative here. It was a spontaneous campaign that soon built into a nation-wide mass movement against those who abused authority to fulfil partisan ideological and also gainful missions. The JP movement may have failed to achieve its goal; nonetheless, by catapulting the issue of corruption onto the centre stage of Indian politics, it not only built a new political trend, but also created an environment in which people got a voice. The 2011 Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption continued this, though the context was remarkably dissimilar. Like the 19745 JP assault on corruption in public life, the Anna Hazare campaign, despite having succeeded in creating a mass support base, gradually fizzled out without attaining its proclaimed aim of having a Lokpal. But that it triggered a mass momentum against corruption was undeniable. Both these movements reinforced the importance of creating a propitious social climate, in which tendencies supporting corruption and corrupt practices are considered anathema for healthy social growth.