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April 2013

PART D: Good Governance

By Narayan Varma, Chartered Accountant
Reading Time 2 mins
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Pavan Varma, an author and a former diplomat and corruption adviser to the Bihar Chief Minister wrote in the Times of India on Sunday 18th March 2013, under the title, “A Republic in Crisis” Excerpts thereof: There is an uncomfortable fact which we are unwilling to confront. And that is that our young republic is facing a systemic crisis.

This crisis is not about an individual. It is not about any one party. It is not about one international economic showdown. And, it is not a crisis which will be necessarily resolved by the next general elections, or the ones after that. The crisis that we are in is that two fundamental pillars of our republic, governance and democracy, which should be complimentary, have become antithetical to each other. This was not a situation envisaged by our Constitution makers. Their presumption was that democratic election would throw up a party, or a combination of parties, which on the basis of a stable majority would govern effectively in order to give back to the people what they had promised.

Governance and democracy must be complimentary to each other. There could be better solutions to the one I have proposed. But the blunt truth is that we must find a solution. We cannot afford to lose any more time. The people of India will not wait anymore.

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