Infusing South Asia Governance Challenges in South Asia

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Infusing South AsiaGovernance Challenges in
South Asia

• G. Shabbir Cheema
• Director
• Asia-Pacific Governance and Democracy Initiative
• Senior Fellow, East-West Center

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Part One Introduction

• Over the past few decades, many transformations
  have taken place in South Asia.
• Three of those are relevant to our discussion
  today.

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Part One Introduction

• First, effective "governance" is recognized as a
  necessary condition to combat poverty and lagging
  development including inadequate access to
  services, protection of the environment, and
  economic opportunities.

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Part One Introduction

• Second, because of high incidence of poverty and
  exclusion of various groups, government are
  increasingly focusing on human development
  defined as enlarging people's choices, expanding
  their freedoms, and enhancing human capabilities.

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Part One Introduction

• Human development as one of the big ideas
  presented and advocated by Noble Lauriette
  Amartya Sen from India and late Mahbub-ul-Haq of
  Pakistan, both economists and class fellows at
  Cambridge
• In almost every country in South Asia, annual
  human development report where the question is
  asked "Governance for what".

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Part One Introduction

• Third, all South Asian countries (other than
  Bhutan) today are electoral democracies, with
  varying degrees of sustainability of democratic
  institutions.

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Part One Introduction

• These transformations are taking place in the
  context of globalization, with both positive and
  negative consequences
• increasing poverty and income equalities
• impact of trade liberalization on domestic
  industries
• inability of the private sector to absorb
  restructured public enterprises
• low capacity of governments to put in place
  social safety nets

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Part One Introduction

• Two types of pressures for effective democratic
  governance
• To cope with demands of the global economy
• pressures from citizens for increased
  transparency and participation.

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Part Two The Dual Reality

• South Asia is replete with examples of poor
  governance, which erode the capacity of
  communities and individuals especially the poor
  and disadvantagedto meet their basic human
  needs.
• an inefficient deployment of resources and
  crippling debt burdens and in some cases defense
  expenditures
• social divisions drawn on ethnic, sectarian and
  regional lines, as reflected in many intra-state
  conflicts

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Part Two The Dual Reality (cont.)

• arbitrary law enforcement resulting from
  weakness of institutions
• in some cases failed political leadership
• uneven development and access to services and
  increasing income disparities - what poor
  governance means for ordinary citizens schools
  without teachers, courts without justice, local
  bureaucrats demanding bribes at every turn..

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Part Two The Dual Reality

• Yet, some great examples of potential, as
  reflected in
• rapid economic growth and ICT revolution
  especially the emergence of India as the center
  of growth, entrepreneurships and innovation
• active civil society engagement in dealing with
  such issues as micro-finance and population
  growth such as in Bangladesh
• Greater participation of women in economic and
  political activities especially in Bangladesh,
  India and Sri Lanka

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• The need to improve the quality of electoral and
  parliamentary process. What is the issue with
  regard to free, fair and regular elections?
  India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
• What is the issue with regard to the
  parliamentary process? Capacity, constituent
  relations, checks and balances

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• To decentralize in order to improve local
  governance and citizen participation
• Pakistan
• India including the amendment to the Indian
  constitution which reserves seats for women
• Nepal the issue still being debated
• Sri Lanka the Tamil insurgency and its recent
  defeat

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• High levels of corruption two views about
  corruption in the literature
• The South Asian corruption has four
  characteristics
• 1. upstream while making fundamental policy
  decisions 2. South Asian corruption has wings
  i.e. smuggled out to safe heavens abroad
• 3. weak process of accountability of senior
  politicians and officials the big fish unlike the
  US
• 4. corruption in South Asia leads to mass
  deprivation in view of scarcity of resources
  unlike in the Western countries

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• (cont.)
• Actions needed accountability mechanisms,
  declaration of assets transparent procurement
  procedures right to information act national
  anti-corruption commissions public education
• Some good examples India's right to
  information Act media's role in Pakistan to
  shame the politicians and senior officials about
  corrupt practices PILDAT programs to pressure
  ministers and government officials to make their
  assets public

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• Civil society engagement evolution and growth
  legal framework accountability capacity impact
  on democratic governance
• Pakistan Lawyers movement Civil society in
  India and Bangladesh in policy advocacy and
  access to services

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• Capacity and accountability of civil service
  the first level link between citizens and
  government for resource allocation, and service
  delivery and access
• Overblown responsibilities of civil service
  during the colonial and post colonial period
• Gaps between planning and policymaking and
  implementation
• Politicization of civil service leading to lack
  of impartiality and erosion of this institution
• Procedures for recruitment, promotion, transfers,
  training and other personnel policies

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• 5)
• Size Close to 50 civil servants for every 1000
  people in Sri Lanka five fold increase in India
  from 1950 to early 1990s increase in the number
  of ministries
• Impact of huge size of bureaucracy on
  inefficiencies but also high cost In Pakistan,
  spending on civil service accounts for more than
  half of non-defense and non-interest expenditures
• with globalization and retrenchment of civil
  service ratio is being decreased but the role of
  civil service continues to be vital changing
  roles of civil service in the global economy

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• Judicial reform to ensure checks and balances
• Modern systems of civil and criminal justice have
  been in operation for over a century, but some
  issues
• Lack of effective access to justice for large
  segments of population case load and long
  delays erosion of judiciary in subordinate
  judiciary manned by inadequately trained judges
  and high level of corruption

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• (cont.)
• Separation of powers between Executive and
  Judiciary has been largely implemented in India
  but in Pakistan and Bangladesh
• Too many cases and too few judges in Bangladesh,
  cases on average take from 5 to 20 years
• Low pays, high cost and rampant corruption A TI
  survey in India showed that 63 percent of the
  respondents had to bribe court officials in order
  to get a verdict in their favor. Poor do not have
  resources to pay bribes

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• (cont.)
• Constraints on the independence of judiciary in
  the past present situation an improvement
  India, Pakistan
• Politicization of justice engagement of
  political actors to influence the supreme
  judiciary -----

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• Economic dimension of governance in South Asia
  South Asian countries are getting bigger without
  getting better
• Key problems hindering effective economic
  management states are too big in unproductive
  areas and too small in essential areas
• Over-extended in production and trade creating
  inefficiencies and wasteful expenditures till
  recently on economic controls unable to actually
  enforce legislation such as that dealing with
  environment and human rights

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• (cont.)
• They are fragile in performance in areas that are
  essential for any responsible state such as
  social services delivery and access,
  redistributing resources such as land ownership,
  macroeconomic stability, coordinating government
  policies etc.

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• Civil-military relations
• The need for professional armed forces and
  civilian control over the military as the
  cornerstones of democratic governance
• The interventions of military in Pakistan and
  Bangladesh over the years leading to the
  weakening of democratic institutions because of
  the break
• Reasons for military interventions in both
  countries

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Part Three - What are the key dimensions and
challenges of governance in South Asia today?

• Civil-military relations
• long term impact on the functioning of various
  institutions because of military's direct control
  on defense expenditure, involvement in economy,
  and in many cases continued weaknesses of
  democratic institutions
• Today in Pakistan democratically elected
  government enjoys "entrance legitimacy" but is
  suffering from "performance legitimacy" and thus
  outsourcing key policymaking such as that deal
  with extremisms and terrorism to the military
  which continues to weaken democratic institutions.

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Summing up

• Pockets of the entrepreneurship and innovation
  yet, high incidence of poverty and low levels of
  human development
• Challenge to improve governance which is both
  democratic and effective the need to build
  institutions by responding to the governance
  challenges