Governance and Public Policy

Government is the set of institutions that hold power. Governance is the way that power is used: how decisions are made, money is spent and services are delivered. A democracy is judged not only by how its leaders are chosen but by how well it is governed day to day, including the public policies it adopts and how it makes them.

"Good governance" describes the qualities that make a government work for its people. The widely accepted attributes are:

• Participation: people have a say in decisions that affect them.
• Rule of law: fair laws, applied equally to all.
• Transparency: information is open and accessible.
• Accountability: officials answer for their actions.
• Responsiveness: institutions serve people in reasonable time.
• Equity and inclusiveness: no group is left out.
• Effectiveness and efficiency: good results from the resources used.
• Consensus orientation: decisions balance different interests.

Good governance also depends on where decisions are taken. Decentralisation means moving power from the centre to lower levels. It comes in distinct forms, and exams test the difference:

• Democratic decentralisation: real political power and democratic decision-making are transferred to elected bodies at the local level. The people of a village or town elect their own representatives, who decide local matters.
• Administrative delegation: higher authorities merely assign tasks to subordinate officials. Power stays at the top and can be taken back at will.
• Federalism: a constitutional division of powers between the Union and the states. It concerns two fixed levels of government, not the grant of power to local bodies.
• Direct democracy: citizens themselves vote on every decision, as in a referendum, rather than electing representatives.

Local self-government in India, the system of Panchayati Raj in villages and municipalities in towns, is the classic exercise in democratic decentralisation. The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments (1992) gave these bodies constitutional status, regular elections and devolved functions. Local self-government is therefore not mere delegation by officials. It is self-rule by elected local representatives, which deepens democracy by bringing government closest to the people.

E-governance is the use of information and communication technology to deliver government services. It makes administration faster, cheaper and more transparent. It runs along four relationships:

• G2C (government to citizen): online services, certificates, payments.
• G2B (government to business): licences, taxes, procurement.
• G2G (government to government): data sharing between departments.
• G2E (government to employees): internal services for staff.

Programmes such as Digital India aim to take these services to every citizen. They also reduce the chance of corruption by cutting out middlemen.

India builds its flagship digital services on shared, reusable platforms, often called digital public infrastructure. A key design choice is openness. Aarogya Setu (the health and contact-tracing app), CoWIN (the vaccination management portal), DigiLocker (the digital document wallet) and DIKSHA (the school education platform) are all built on top of open-source digital platforms. Open-source code can be inspected, reused and extended by anyone, which lets new services be assembled quickly on the same base.

Aadhaar, the national digital identity platform, follows the same open design. It provides open APIs (application programming interfaces), so it can be integrated into electronic devices and into other services. It supports online biometric authentication, and this includes iris authentication alongside fingerprints.

To fight corruption in high office, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 created an anti-corruption ombudsman:

• the Lokpal at the central level, and
• a Lokayukta in each state (the Act requires every state to set one up within a year).

Key features of the Lokpal:

• Composition: a Chairperson plus a maximum of eight members. At least half must be judicial members, and at least half must be from SC / ST / OBC / minorities / women.
• Selection: chosen by a committee headed by the Prime Minister. The committee also includes the Speaker of Lok Sabha, the Leader of Opposition, the Chief Justice of India (or a Judge nominated by him) and an eminent jurist.
• Tenure: the Chairperson and members hold office for five years or until age 70, whichever is earlier.
• Jurisdiction: it can inquire into corruption complaints against public servants. This includes the Prime Minister, with safeguards excluding matters of international relations, security, public order, atomic energy and space. It also covers ministers, MPs and Group A–D officials. Its inquiry wing investigates; a prosecution wing prosecutes before special courts.

The Lokpal is distinct from the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). The CVC is a separate statutory body under the CVC Act, 2003. It supervises vigilance in central organisations and oversees the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Alongside them, tools such as the Right to Information, citizen's charters and social audits let ordinary people hold the administration to account. The RTI Act, 2005 gives any citizen the right to seek information from a public authority. The authority must reply within 30 days. Where the life or liberty of a person is at stake, it must reply within 48 hours.

Governance rests on specific laws, and questions often pair an everyday action with the Act that punishes or regulates it. A few frequently confused statutes:

• Official Secrets Act, 1923: India's anti-espionage law. It punishes spying, wrongful communication of secret information and offences near prohibited places such as military installations. It specifically covers the unauthorised wearing of police or military uniforms and knowingly misleading or interfering with a police or military officer engaged in duty in or near a prohibited place.
• Arms (Amendment) Act, 2019: an amendment to the Arms Act, 1959, the law regulating firearms. It made celebratory gunfire that endangers personal safety a distinct offence, increased punishments for illegal possession and reduced the number of firearms a person may hold from three to two.
• Indian Evidence Act, 1872: governs only the rules of evidence in courts, what may be proved and how. It does not create offences about uniforms or interference with officers. Attributing policing offences to this Act is a standard trap.

The pattern to remember: uniforms and interference with officers near prohibited places fall under the Official Secrets Act, celebratory gunfire falls under the Arms (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the Evidence Act deals with court procedure, not conduct.

Law also governs how the state may recognise merit without creating titles of nobility, which Article 18 (abolition of titles) forbids:

• Article 18(1) abolishes titles. The state may confer no title except a military or academic distinction. The ban operates only against the state; universities may still confer honours.
• The Padma Awards (Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri) and the Bharat Ratna were instituted in 1954. The Supreme Court held in Balaji Raghavan v Union of India (1996) that these awards are not titles of nobility. They do not violate Article 14 (equality before the law) or Article 18, provided they are not used as a prefix or suffix to the recipient's name.
• The Padma Awards have been suspended twice: once by the Janata government in 1977 and again during the 1992–97 period, before being restored.
• The Bharat Ratna is capped at a maximum of three awards in a year (not five). The Bharat Ratna ranks ninth in the Warrant of Precedence, just below Union Cabinet Ministers.

A public policy is a considered course of action the government adopts to deal with a public problem. In other words, it is what a government chooses to do, or not to do. Policy-making is usually described as a cycle of stages:

• Agenda-setting: a problem gains enough attention to demand action.
• Formulation: options are designed and weighed.
• Adoption: the government chooses one and gives it legal form.
• Implementation: the administration puts it into practice.
• Evaluation: its results are measured, and the policy is continued, changed or dropped.

Many actors shape public policy in India:

• the political executive: the Cabinet sets priorities and takes the major decisions.
• the bureaucracy: the permanent civil service drafts and carries out policy, advised by the Cabinet Secretariat.
• think tanks and advisory bodies such as NITI Aayog.
• the legislature, which debates and sanctions.
• outside influences: pressure groups, the media, experts and citizens.

NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) was created by a Cabinet resolution on 1 January 2015, replacing the Planning Commission. Like its predecessor, it is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body. It is a policy think-tank that promotes co-operative federalism by involving the states in economic policy-making. It does not hand down centrally fixed five-year plans. The Prime Minister is its Chairperson. A Vice-Chairperson and a CEO run it day to day.

A nodal ministry is usually fixed for each major law or programme. For example, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs is the nodal agency for the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. This Act recognises the forest rights of tribal and forest-dwelling communities.

Regional development bodies also shape policy. The North Eastern Council (NEC), after its 2002 amendment, comprises the Governors and Chief Ministers of its constituent states plus three members nominated by the President. The Union Home Minister is not a statutory member.

Statutes can also create policy bodies at the district level with a single, defined purpose. District Mineral Foundations (DMFs) were set up under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015 in every district affected by mining. Their sole purpose is to work for the interest and benefit of persons and areas affected by mining operations. They do not promote mineral exploration, and they do not authorise state governments to issue licences for exploration. Both are standard exam traps.

At the apex, advisory councils bring the Union and the states together on one subject. The National Water Resources Council is the top policy body for water. The Prime Minister chairs it, and the Union Minister of Water Resources is its Vice-Chairman.

Through public interest litigation (PIL) and a wide reading of Article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty), the courts have stepped into areas once left to the executive. By reading "life" to mean a life of dignity, the Supreme Court has converted several non-justiciable Directive Principles into enforceable rights under Article 21. Directive Principles are policy goals the state must strive for, but they are not individually enforceable. The rights read in include:

• Right to livelihood
• Decent / pollution-free environment
• Health and shelter
• Right to food: courts have ordered relief in starvation cases and read in a right to food, water and education
• Right to a speedy and fair trial
• Legal aid
• Humane prison and detention conditions

PIL relaxes the usual rule of locus standi. Any public-spirited person can move the court on behalf of those unable to do so themselves. This judicial activism fills gaps where the other organs are slow. But it raises a question of balance. Each organ should respect the proper role of the others. Critics warn against "judicial overreach" into matters of pure policy.

The state also governs the quality of goods. Certification marks tell the consumer that a product meets a set standard, and each mark belongs to a specific issuing body:

• BIS Standard Mark (ISI mark): issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the national standards body. Certification is voluntary for most goods but mandatory for items affecting safety, including automotive tyres and tubes, cement, LPG cylinders and packaged drinking water.
• AGMARK: a quality certification for agricultural products such as spices, ghee and honey. It is issued by the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection under the Ministry of Agriculture, India's own agency. It has no connection with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a UN body.
• Eco Mark: a government scheme, launched in 1991 and administered through BIS, that labels Indian products which are environment friendly across their life cycle, from raw material to disposal.
• FSSAI mark: issued by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India for packaged food.
• Hallmark: the BIS certification of the purity of gold and silver jewellery.

The exam trap is to misattribute the issuing agency. AGMARK is Indian, not from the FAO. The Eco Mark signals environmental friendliness, not purity or nutrition.