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Public oriented policies must

Young Bites. Dated: 10/18/2017 1:13:54 PM

Religion should not be mixed with politics. As politics must comprise young leaders as they possess youth and advanced thinking which is very necessary for our country, senior leaders as they have a lot of experiences in different aspects/stages of life. Both age groups is necessary. Politics should not be religion biased. As it might hamper the growth of the economy, there might be cultural differences among people, might be nepotism and hatred among people. It may hurt the slogan of Unity in diversity. Currently, there is a great debate, or to say enormous pressure, on developing countries to adopt “good policies” or “good institution” to take-off the path of economic growth. To achieve this, there is wide consensus that broadly three things have to be set right through ‘good’ governance, negotiating the conflicts for inclusive development. There are often political factors involved in why some countries remain poor, and one of those is bad government. Governments need to do lots of things to encourage development – they need to build and maintain infrastructure, and raise and spend finance wisely, on the right projects. When governments are inept at managing infrastructure, development is impossible. Nobody wants to build a factory in a city where the power could go out at any time. They also need to set up their laws and business practices in a way that encourages investment and initiative that protect businesses and individuals legally and that honour property rights, contracts and copyrights. As per the 7th schedule of Indian constitution ‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are State subjects. Each State has, therefore, has full administrative control over the police. The biggest issue that plagues the police forces is political interference. Political affiliations play a large role in departmental inquiries, performance appraisals and awards are given to officers. The judgment clearly said that all decisions on transfer of officers and personnel should be free from political interference. As per Judgment State governments should set up police establishment boards to take decisions on transfers. Though the board has been established, they are not independent. Court’s directive to separate criminal investigation and law and order is followed on paper. Thus Political interference in policing has rendered police toothless. The state governments are sometimes hesitant to take action just for the sake of vote bank. This political interference paralyzes the police. Also since it is a state subject, there are different laws which create problem in smooth coordination. The need of the hour is to reform and strengthen police, however, states response has been rather slow. So both center and state will have to co-operate. Since the shift of subject to union list will affect the federalism, this can be moved in the concurrent list. This will help in Uniform police system all over the nation & best practices can be implemented across the nation. Along with that more funds from the center can be accessed for infrastructure. The idea should be to transform police as a “service”, not a “force”. With public sector banks and their non-performing loans, prevention is far easier than cure. It is thus critical that the Government, apart from mulling ideas to rid PSBs of their present stockpile of bad loans, also initiates structural reforms to prevent their recurrence. The constitution of the Bank Boards Bureau (BBB) in April last year, chaired by former CAG Vinod Rai, fired up expectations that the governance overhaul would move quickly ahead. But a year on, the bureau has taken baby steps towards this objective. The fault lies mainly with the Centre which has hamstrung its efforts through a very restrictive mandate. It is by now widely acknowledged that the bad lending decisions at PSBs can be traced mainly to governance issues — poor risk management and credit appraisal systems, dual regulation by the RBI and the finance ministry, political interference in lending and top level appointments, as well as the poor compensation and brief tenures of their boards.