Governance Illusion

Governance is hard and good governance, meaning efficient and effective governance, is harder.

- SRI AUROBINDO

Optics is a poor substitute for outcomes, but when outcomes are hard to come by through governance, then optics can be relied upon rather than admitting failure.When the airline business grinds to a halt and airports across India are an angry mess, the solution is to circulate photographs of an airline CEO folding his hands in supplication before the minister. Problem solved. When dozens die in a fire in a structure that shouldn’t have existed, the solution is to bulldoze the remains of the structure. Of course, thousands of such structures remain.

Another satisfactory solution is renaming. In New India, MNREGA will now be called Pujya Bapu Rural Employment Guarantee Act and expanded. Ten years ago, a few months after taking office, prime minister Modi said in the Lok Sabha that MNREGA would be continued only because it would show how poorly Manmohan Singh’s government had performed: ‘My political instincts tell me that MNREGA should not be discontinued,’ he said, mocking the Opposition benches, “because it is a living memorial to your failures. After so many years in power, all you were able to deliver is for a poor man to dig ditches a few days a month.’