Role_of_Cag

ROLE OF CAG IN MEETING CHALLENGES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE Governance is a function executed by the government of a particular nation. Governance means administration and regulation of laws. It is otherwise defined as the process of decision making and process by which decisions are implemented or not implemented. Thus good governance means making right decision and right implementation of such decisions. Right decision and right implementation means, the decisions should be appealing to the major chunk of the society. The concept of governance and good governance emerged right before 19th century but gained much relevance in this 21st century where the most world nations now follows violation of human rights and most of leaders of various nations follows autocratic Hitler model ruling. India is one of the fastest growing economies even in midst of the recession, just after China. Many projects of multi-national companies are going to implement in India. Also the central government and state government are going to implement many developmental projects both independently as well as with collaboration with private sector. It is here comes the relevance of Comptroller and Auditor General of India, who ensures that the taxpayer’s money is no way wasted and is not deposited in any Swiss Banks. The CAG in India has its own relevant role in meeting challenges of good governance in India. GOOD GOVERNANCE As stated above good governance means right decision making and right implementation of such decisions. The perspective of good governance may vary from person to person. Still it has some basic characteristics. Certain characteristics of good governance can be enumerated. Good governance requires the participation of every people from every class of society. Participation by both men and women is a key cornerstone of good governance. Participation could be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives. It is important to point out that representative democracy does not necessarily mean that the concerns of the most vulnerable in society would be taken into consideration in decision making. Participation needs to be informed and organized. This means freedom of association and expression on the one hand and an organized civil society on the other hand. Ours is a democratic form of government. The government is elected by the people, functions for the people and consists represents of the people. Good governance requires fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. It also requires full protection of human rights, particularly those of minorities. Impartial enforcement of laws requires an independent judiciary and an impartial and incorruptible police force. Every citizen of the country should be considered equal irrespective of their social status and financial stability. Another characteristic of the good governance is the transparency, which means that decisions taken and their enforcement are done in a manner that follows rules and regulations. It also means that information is freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement. It also means that enough information is provided and that it is provided in easily understandable forms and media. Every class of people should be aware about the law enforced by the government. Good governance requires that institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe. There are several actors and as many view points in a given society. Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on what is in the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved. It also requires a broad and long-term perspective on what is needed for sustainable human development and how to achieve the goals of such development. This can only result from an understanding of the historical, cultural and social contexts of a given society or community. Another characteristic feature of the good governance is the equity and inclusiveness. A society’s well being depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society. This requires all groups, but particularly the most vulnerable, have opportunities to improve or maintain their well being. Our law clearly states that every person is equal before the law and judiciary in India. The implementation of good governance should clearly look upon to this matter of providing equality to every class of people. Another feature of the good governance is its effectiveness and efficiency. Good governance means that processes and institutions produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal. The concept of efficiency in the context of good governance also covers the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment. Accountability is a key requirement of good governance. Not only governmental institutions but also the private sector and civil society organizations must be accountable to the public and to their institutional stakeholders. Who is accountable to who varies depending on whether decisions or actions taken are internal or external to an organization or institution. In general an organization or an institution is accountable to those who will be affected by its decisions or actions. Accountability cannot be enforced without transparency and the rule of law. CHALLENGES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE As everything has two sides the good governance too has challenges. The government of India is now facing the challenges as it is now trying hard to accomplish the good governance by satisfying every class of people. Challenges of good governance can be enumerated. The major challenge of meeting the good governance is the corruption of the political leaders. In earlier the politicians are meant to work for the welfare of the society. But now it has changed. A man or woman starts to work as a politician only with the intention to make money. They all see politics as the best fertilized soil for making large sum of money without any effort. If good governance is to be implemented in India the corruption of the politicians should be checked. Now India is ranking 84th position in the most corruption free position. This year it is revealed by a magazine that Indian’s deposits in Swiss banks is more than the size of annul budget of India. This single statement is enough to show the growth of corruption in our society and its deep rootedness. Another challenge to good governance is the lack of commitment of government servants. The government officials usually think that they are in the offices to govern the common people. They often forget the fact that they are civil servants hence they are there for serving the people. But what they actually do is that they unreasonably harass the common people but does anything for the financially strong ones. Because they provide lump sum amount to these so called civil servants for the work done. They usually like to work as the represents of the political leaders or political parties rather than to work as the servants of the common man. There is another deep rooted challenge to enable good governance in India. It is its reluctance to change. It is said that ‘change has no change, since it continues’. But in Indian context it is ‘no change’. Changes are not welcomed by the Indian society. Even in this 21st century India is following British style of ruling and police rule. These unrealistic and unlawful laws should be changed accordingly. If India has to prosper in this 21st century everyone should be ready to accept the changes. Recently when a multinational company came to invest in India, the common illiterate people of lead by greedy politicians protested against it. Then it invested in another place and started its operations. The common people of that place got the advantage. The challenges to good governance if enumerated it would just like a long book. The challenges also include the lack of common man’s involvement, illiteracy, diversity, inequality etc. As we all know that India is a unique nation with unity in its diversity. But actually a question arises. Is there is unity in its diversity' In real it would be a big no. India’s actual problem is not because of different religions or different caste or creed. Its real problem is the various types languages. India is the only country in the entire with these kind of various languages. Another major problem of India is its division according to the states. Even though it has a central level ministry to control these states, the disputes between the states form a major headache in unifying India. Another major challenge of meeting good governance in India is the determination of accountability of the person. If a person or politician has done any crime or any work the accountability lies on a large number of persons. The major headache behind this is that if any problem occurs it takes time to solve such problems. That’s why many of the vigilance cases are still under the band of red tapism in India. ROLE OF CAG CAG functions as the friend of the taxpayer. He assesses the quality of the government expenditure. CAG has very much relevance in the Indian democracy as illiteracy of people is paving way to political corruption. The ultimate of hope of people is in the hands of judiciary. As CAG is a judicial person, he has certain responsibilities to the people of India. The first and foremost duty of CAG of India is to check the corruption of India. The CAG of the country should be vigilant in protecting the money of the common man of the nation. The government is functioning with the money provided by the taxpayers. If this money is wasted away means taken away the common people is the one who is going to suffer. The recent scams like the 2G spectrum case, S- Band spectrum scam, Commonwealth scams etc shows that the correction in the 21st century in India has gone up to a sum of about 3 lakh crores of rupees. Just think if this amount is available to the common man or if this amount is available to fund the development programme in India many people is going to get its benefits. One of the most disadvantageous thing is that CAG comes to know about the scams or corruptions only after auditing the accounts. There is no humanly way to anticipate about these things in advance. Otherwise we could have prevented the outflow of taxpayers money to the Swiss banks. But one thing that CAG can do is that to monitor the functions of various developmental projects implemented by the government right from its beginning, to monitor the activities of the so called society serving politicians, and to monitor the activities like tenders, inviting of the quotations etc for the government backed projects. If it is done so the corruption can be stopped right from its beginning. Then the common man’s money is saved. One thing has to be remembered if the money is not correctly utilized our country is going to face the situation of Greece. Role of CAG has to be enhanced in India. So that it can abolish the deep rooted corruption that spread like an incurable cancer in the Indian society. If CAG could accomplish this then India is going to be super developed country by 2030. As our former president visioned, we can achieve our target at least by 2030(even though he wished it to happen by 2020). The civil servants, bureaucrats, and others should remember one thing that if the common man’s tax paid is taken away to Swiss bank accounts then the government can’t even pay them salaries and other allowances. Also it involves some social commitments. So these things can be achieved all together also by enhancing the activities of CAG to the common people who actually governs the country in this democratic setup.